Aidnography

Hi all, I hope many of you are still on or about to leave for Global Northern summer holidays and I hope even more so that you are in a healthy, friendly & safe space... As the Swedish academic break is slowly coming to an end, I prepared a fresh link review with more reflective content from Syria, Italy, Sudan & different spaces from UNRISD to African cultural spaces and New York policy wonkery...- plus an interesting section with new reports & longer-read food for thought! Enjoy! P.S.: A look into the archive reminded me that a certain Nick Kristof used to write about #globaldev-and we didn't like it very much... My quotes of the week So I think we are rightly more sensitive to reductive descriptions, yet these have applied to Africa more than to any other continent on earth. Africa was never hopeless and it will never be perfect. What it is — as I hope this series contributes to showing — is a place of immense history, cultural wealth, and breathtaking creativity, wh

Hi all, Me & the blog are officially on our summer break, but some interesting readings have been piling up so I want to share them as well as a few open access books that should make interesting additions to your summer holiday or autumn course reading lists... My quotes of the week The Lankelly Chase chief executive, Julian Corner, said: “Philanthropy is a function of colonial capitalism, it has been shaped by it, is being driven by it, and yet philosophically it tries to position itself as somehow a cure for the ills of colonial capitalism, and that contradiction needs to stop.” ( UK charity foundation to abolish itself and give away £130m) As the Winooski River retreated on Wednesday, it revealed the only climate refuge that remains: neighbors aiding neighbors. “The sense I have gotten,” a friend who lives in Montpelier texted me, “is an overwhelming willingness of people to volunteer, to help in any way they can.” (Even ‘Safe’ Places Are Experiencing Climate Chaos in America)

As a new minister for development and trade takes over #globaldev in Finland, it is time to take a closer look at how profoundly the foundations of Nordic global engagement and development cooperation are changing. Ann Danaiya Usher from Development Today writes : For the first time, a party viewed as being far-right on the political spectrum takes over the aid portfolio in a Nordic country. Finland’s new Development and Trade Minister Ville Tavio from the Finns Party is cutting aid and linking assistance to the return of asylum seekers. NightCafe prompt "feminist foreign policy" Even if the Finns Party rejects the “far-right” label, Finland is not the first country in the Nordic region where populist, right-leaning parties and coalitions are dismantling the foundations of their historic development policies. Denmark-a new Nordic UK? Until the beginning of the year Denmark was in the news until the initial plans to process asylum seekers in Rwanda was suspended . But increas

Hi all, Botched biodiversity projects in Guinea, harmful algorithms in Jordan, tea pickers destroying machines in Kenya, sugar & global health in Barbados, plus stories about UN leadership & localization 'wars' really highlight the global nature of #globaldev in this week's news review... Our academic summer break is around the corner & my weekly #globaldev review will return in the second half of August. As a little summer project I collected a few historical books on, well, you may have guessed it, 'development' & some book reviews should be showing up during the break similar to the one on Lords of Poverty . My quotes of the week “Many people in Jordan are not getting financial support because their hardships don’t fit an algorithm’s rigid model of what poverty should look like,” said Amos Toh, senior technology and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The World Bank should not let the promise of better data and technology distract from

Hi all, AI & ChatGPT, fast fashion, weaponization of social media, refugee protection & many challenges for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh & Myanmar are so of this week's stories-plus a little Gates foundation skepticism & a leading humanitarian scholar who joins Extinction Rebellion in her home country! My quotes of the week “Fraud is not restricted to aid, and it’s not restricted to cash. The question for me is how, then, agencies deal with it after they uncover it.” (GiveDirectly loses $900,000 in DRC mobile cash fraud) “The world has failed to support the most vulnerable, but this can be reversed. The lives of millions of people suffering in silence can improve, if funding and resources are allocated based on need, not geopolitical interest, and media headlines of the day.” (Burkina Faso is the world’s ‘most neglected crisis’ as focus remains on Ukraine) When he first started working at the market 24 years ago, he remembers bein