I sat down (via Zoom) this week with one of the most interesting observers of China, Yuen Yuen Ang. Her ground-breaking new book, China’s Gilded Age (see my review here), discusses the links between corruption and China’s stellar rise – and the real history of corruption and capitalism. DG: China disproves everything we hear from Western political scientists. People like

Guest post by Hannah Ryder, CEO of Development Reimagined, and former head of partnerships for UNDP China What do the governments of countries like Cameroon or Cambodia really think of Chinese aid and loans? It’s a question few commentators and funders ask, and even fewer are interested in helping respond to the challenges they raise. Instead, the focus is typically

Might be time for the Avon and Somerset Police to consider using a different media spokesman, or at least calling him Robert…. Ht James Herring ‘8 big food & drink companies paid out over $18bn to shareholders since January – ten times more than has been requested in the UN COVID-19 appeal to stop people going hungry.’ New Oxfam report

My last round up before heading off for holiday for a week. Walking in the English rain – what’s not to like?

Kirsty McNeill of Save the Children had a great piece on Global Dashboard this week. It mainly focuses on the UK, but I think its relevance is much wider than that. I’ve cut down the original for the tl;dr community, but if you have time, do read the full post here. In a fight between a rewind and a revolution,

A new book from Yuen Yuen Ang is always a cause for celebration. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, is a brilliant application of systems thinking to the biggest development story of the last half century (review and podcast if you haven’t already digested it). Now she’s turned her attention to a massive conundrum and gaping hole in a lot

On the occasion of the “ILO Global Summit on COVID-19 and the World of Work” Oxfam’s Filippo Artuso, Iñigo Macías-Aymar, and Franziska Mager looked into what we know about the unequal impact of COVID-19 on workers, and how to rebuild fairer societies. The coronavirus pandemic and global lockdown measures have shone a light on pre-existing inequalities in labour markets. What

Priyanka Kotamraju (@peekayty ) introduces the Local Diaries: Untold Stories of Women podcast. She is an editor in the Chitrakoot Collective and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Sadrunissa is a young woman from Varanasi in northern India whose dreams abruptly faded in the wake of COVID-19. In January, she joined a tailoring course. It was the first time Sadrunissa had

Things I hate. This oldie-but-goodie has had me grinning to myself for the last 24 hours, on and off – can’t be bad. CGD is publishing some really excellent thinking around the pandemic. Here’s an example: Beyond Lockdown⁠—Sustainable COVID Control for Low-Income Countries. As is Oxfam. ‘Care work must be at the heart of a feminist COVID-19 recovery.’ New research

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Johns Hopkins University and the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health are doing some thinking on the future of advocacy, especially on health-related issues, but of wider relevance. The first of three papers is now out, on Local Ownership, Sustainability, and Grant-making. Two other briefs in the series are in the pipeline, on the need for and types of

This is a shortened and slightly updated version of a post by Alcinda Honwana and Nyeleti Honwana, which first appeared on the SSRC’s Kujenga Amani blog The African continent has, thus far, fared comparatively well in the pandemic, with just under 400,000 confirmed infections and about 10,000 fatalities at the end of June 2020. Even so, the heavy economic, social, and emotional