Duncan Green's Blog, page 49

How to Decolonize Academia. Interview with Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo

I recently sat down with Akosua Adomako Ampofo, President of the African Studies Association of Africa to discuss her life, decolonization (including my own) and the research system. It’s 40 minutes, really interesting, and follows nicely from yesterday’s much-talked about post by Teni Tayo, but here’s some highlights for the non podcast community. Personal Background: […]

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Africa as the World’s Problem Child and how I feel about it as an African

By Teniola Tayo Before I came to study for a Masters in International Development at the London School of Economics in September 2019, I had never been to Europe – or to any part of the Western world for that matter. The “Global North”, if you like. However, I never thought that the fact that […]

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Top tips on building a career in aid and development

Chaired a great panel on this at the LSE last week. The speakers were from the big donors – bilateral ones like DFID and USAID, regional banks like the ADB and EBRD, and a World Banker to add the multilateral view, and from all stages of their careers, but their advice applies pretty well to […]

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What Place for Human Rights in the Growing Movement against Inequality?

Guest post by Allison Corkery and Ignacio Saiz of the Center for Economic and Social Rights Last month, to coincide with the annual Davos meeting, tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of the Global Protest to #FightInequality. What are the implications for human rights advocates? Leading human rights figures are increasingly acknowledging the threat […]

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Links I Liked

What’s the half life of different social media (time it takes for a piece of content to reach 50% of its total lifetime engagement) ht @anutopiaa Why systems thinking changes how we think about development. Good student write-up of great Owen Barder LSE lecture ‘Why are people protesting? Using data for 118 countries from 2007 […]

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Development Nutshell: FP2P posts for w/b 3rd February

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An uncomfortable conversation about the gulf between CSOs and the ultra-marginalized. Can it be bridged?

Spent an enjoyable day last week in The Hague (see yesterday’s post). No I wasn’t on trial, I was opening a conference on ‘Pushing the Boundaries in Advocacy for Inclusion’ (my slides here). The good thing about opening an event is that you can then relax and listen and learn. And as this was a […]

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In Search of the Helpful Academic: 10 ways they can support Practitioners

OK, I admit it, I’m sometimes a bit rude to academics, even though I have a foot in both camps (I’m 3 days a week at Oxfam, 2 at LSE). I’ve accused them of treating everyone in the aid business as either stupid, or venal, or both; I’ve complained that they slag off aid practitioners […]

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New Oxfam guide to Market-Based Programming (+ great comms)

Stumbled across a really sharp new Oxfam briefing on ‘market-based programming’ (MBP). Super concise, with lots of graphics, and a powerful practical rebuttal to any idea that we are kneejerk ‘anti-market’. It starts from the obvious, yet often ignored, observation that markets show a remarkable ability to survive disaster and resurface at speed: ‘Communities and […]

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Six Ways Conflict is Changing, by David Milliband

IRC boss David Milliband gave a speech to the ‘West Point Class of 1983’ recently (i.e. US military leaders). The full speech has lots of the protocol stuff required of such set pieces, but also includes his take on ‘six dimensions of change in conflict where we work today’, which I thought were pretty interesting. […]

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