Links I Liked

Tried to stay abreast of the twitter stream while in Australia last week (back in UK now). Here’s some of the best links

Squid ink infused black burger, tomato ice cream and other weird flavour combos from around the world, [h/t Chris Blatmann]

yum yum

The repeated “success, scale, fail” experience of aid magic bullets (playpumps etc) over the last 20 years. Great essay from Michael Hobbes

The Payment by Results debate just got interesting. Excellent CGD response to BOND’s critique of Payment by Results, acknowledging serious problems in implementation

A significant challenge to the anti-GM movement. A meta-analysis of hundreds of impact studies from 1995-2014 finds big benefits in developing countries

Important new paper by Rim Turkmani, Mary Kaldor et al has some rays of hope on Syria: local ceasefires could hold the key to easing humanitarian suffering

And a bunch of stuff following up the recent Doing Development Differently conference at Harvard:

What’s the hardest thing about ‘doing development differently’. Nice 4m compilation of angst-ridden clips from participants (including me)

The organizers have produced a commendably well written and short ‘Doing Development Differently’ manifesto (you can sign up if you agree with it – I have)

Meanwhile, in the sceptics’ corner: Dilbert on not Doing Development Differently [h/t Søren Jarnvig]

And Matt Andrews has got his amazing students churning out audio visuals on the DDD agenda – adds a whole new dimension to making the students do all the work: definitely going to try and introduce this when I start teaching at LSE in January. Check out the PDIA rap (‘lemme hear ya say P D I A’), or this impressive student animation summarizing the nitty gritty of ‘problem driven iterative adaptation’

 

Finally, this Wednesday I’m off to Malta to give a Kapucinski lecture on citizen mobilization, power and change. Here’s the webcast link if you want to listen in (rant starts at 4pm, GMT)