Maybe it’s my Latin America background, but I’ve always been fascinated by the rise of evangelical Christianity, and its potential social and political impact. Religion in general is an inexcusable blind spot for a lot of the aid business, and activists are particularly alarmed by the kind of happy clappy Protestant churches who go in for guitars, ecstasy, speaking in

OK, book done, back from recuperative holiday, time to get back to daily blogging. Earlier this month I headed off for the London launch of the 2016 World Development Report, ‘Digital Dividends’. The World Bank’s annual flagship is always a big moment in wonkland, and there has been a lot of positive buzz around this one. Here’s how the Bank summarizes

I’m off for a holiday, so this is the last blog for a couple of weeks. Back after that. Let’s make 2016 the year when we try and stop people unthinkingly hit ‘reply all’ and clogging up our inboxes. Next time someone does it, why not send them this photo? In Kerala, Pembillai Orumai—Women’s Unity, an organization of Dalit tea

Another contribution to this week’s conference on ‘Power, Politics and Positive Deviance’, which I’m gutted to be missing. I finally got round to reading The Power of Positive Deviance, in which management guru Richard Pascale teams up with the two key practitioners – the Sternins (Jerry and Monique) – to analyse over 20 years of experience in developing the Positive

Blog break over – did you miss me? Thought not. After a month in writing purdah, I sent off the How Change Happens manuscript to OUP last week, so it is now their problem (for a couple of months at least). So let’s get restarted with a spot of whimsy. One of the ideas that never made it into the final draft

Happy Monday morning everyone. Here’s Dilbert on meetings Busy week for tax geeks: A Eurodad analysis of the European Commission’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Package IDS tax guru Mick Moore on the links between the flawed new OECD tax agreement on TNCs, aka the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) recommendations and the Google (non) tax scandal? Although Maya Forstater doesn’t think

Still in writing purdah (going well thanks), but unable to stay away from social media altogether – here’s a few links from last week’s twitter stream. Smart headline from NY Post (at least the Panda in Washington zoo appreciated the weather) [h/t Chris Blattman] Overview of state of women’s empowerment in Africa from Brookings Oxfam did its Davos thing again,

Today is ‘Blue Monday’, supposedly the most miserable day of the year (actually just something dreamt up in 2005 by a holiday firm as a marketing ploy). But in any case, allow me to make it even worse with this truly awful video [h/t or possibly eternal damnation to Tim Aldred for sending it]. ‘We love the SDGs’. Take it

Hi there, been tweeting the odd link when I should be rewriting the book. Here’s last week’s highlights. And if Mark Fried is reading this, here’s what a really tough editor is like. Feeling a bit of a failure? Take heart from this lot [h/t Winnie Byanyima] Latest aid stats. Good news: Global aid highest in history in 2014 ($137bn)

Hi there, I’m briefly emerging from writing purdah to do the usual feedback post on last year’s blog 2015 stats: Overall: 318, 825 ‘unique visitors’ – not quite the same as ‘different readers’, as if you read the blog on your PC, laptop and mobile, that counts as 3 people.  Within the year, the usual trend – a weekly cycle