Aidnography

It may be a bit unusual to start my book review with a link to another review , but it was Duncan Green who sparked my interest in The Business of Changing the World-How Billionaires, Tech Disrupters, and Social Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Aid Industry with his critical review. Basically, I agree with Duncan’s critical take on the book. When I read Kumar’s book I was often reminded of a dinner event at an elite university where every Thursday the international relations society invites a high profile speaker who pitches their industry to the next generation of future global innovative resourceful leaders: Last week, the State Department pitched foreign service, next week a senior executive from a tech company will talk about expanding their services to the ‘bottom billion’ and this week it is Raj Kumar’s turn to ‘sell’ the aid industry. As a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Kumar knows how to create a sales pitch in a way that to me as European seem

Hi all, A busy week with lost of enjoyable teaching on historical aspects of #globaldev is wrapping up & I'm glad to sit down and gather some good readings, tweets, vignettes from around the digital #globaldev sphere! My quotes of the week When I assumed my post, there were no established work routines; no specific directives from superiors or any information on violations against women. The only thing I was told was that I was expected to produce a one-year action plan to guide my work as the gender adviser. The lack of organizational memory was a challenge at the beginning, but it also gave me the chance to improvise and create. (My Year in Africa: Why This Brazilian Woman Peacekeeper Wants to Return) Close the Media Lab, disband the Ted Talks, refuse the money of tech billionaires, boycott agents like Brockman. Without such drastic changes, the powerful bullshit-industrial complex that is the “third culture” will continue unharmed, giving cover to the next Epstein. (

Hi all, We welcomed more than 150 new students to our Communication for Development courses this week so I'm equal parts exhausted and thrilled about the forthcoming semester with a great group of global students! My quotes of the week As I shared video footage with friends in Puerto Rico, they remarked, “I know the sound of that wind.” Is this what it means to be intimately connected by horror? Is there a new creolized language and aesthetic we have now become fluent in by default? We are island people. Where do you go? We live on slim margins. ( Hurricane Dorian Makes Bahamians the Latest Climate-Crisis Victims)   Giving charity and doing voluntourism are self-gratifying ways of filling this void that they feel – and are a whole lot easier than doing the work to find the root cause of what is wrong in their own lives. ( “We Aren’t Just Vehicles for your Guilt and Privilege”: A View from Nepal (Part One) Enjoy! New from aidnography Everything you have told me is true (book revi

I immensely enjoyed Mary Harper’s Everything you have told me is true- The Many Faces of Al Shabaab , even th ough her book covers difficult topics around Somalia’s troubled governance and Al Shabaab, an entity many would easily label a ‘terrorist organization’. Mary Harper is the BBC Africa editor and has reported on Africa and its conflict zones for 25 years and her biggest achievement with this book is her nuanced, careful, critical and ultimately empathetic engagement with Somalia and her citizens. Her book is not about a ‘failed state’ that has been captured by a terrorist group, but about the fact that Many people have multiple identities, one of which is some kind of association with Al Shabaab, sometimes voluntary, sometimes pragmatic, sometimes forced (p.5). This may not be an entirely surprising insight for academic researchers engaging in qualitative or ethnographic field work or journalists with in-depth knowledge of the area. At the same time it is a reminder of h

Hi all, Preparations for the new semester starting Monday are underway, but there's always time for some Friday afternoon & weekend #globaldev reads! My quotes of the week Now, imagine this scenario. A couple of newly minted MPH graduates from an African university, say in Rwanda, land in Washington DC for a 2-week visit. They visit a few hospitals, speak to a few health care workers and policymakers, read a few reports, and write up a nice assessment of the US health system with several recommendations on how to fix the issues they saw. They submit their manuscript to the American Journal of Public Health. Can you imagine AJPH even sending it out for review? Even if the paper got published somewhere, would US health researchers take it seriously? (10 Fixes for Global Health Consulting Malpractice) The new Indonesian law is probably too heavy handed, but it is in the right direction. There is little doubt that there is a problem with #trickledownscience, and governments in the