Anthony Kamande, Oxfam’s Inequality Research Coordinator, reflects on growing up in Kenya and the launch of Oxfam’s latest ‘Commitment to Reducing Inequality’ Index As I sat down to write this article, I reflected a little bit on the power of public services. The fifth-born in a family of eight siblings, I am the first to have completed secondary education, and

Malawi’s not-so-natural disasters on the rise, from a recent Economist Climate Change is a Class Issue. Max Lawson’s latest post on the Equals blog, including the carbon emissions version of Branko Milanovic’s famous elephant graph v clever (and shocking) infographic on the UK’s already infamous ‘mini-budget’. Click and scroll right. ht Dom Joly. Borrow a person instead of a book

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Ha-Joon Chang on Economics v Science Fiction, and other great ways to end your weeks this autumn – the LSE’s Cutting Edge lectures are back Heads up for this year’s LSE ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ lecture series, which kicks off next Friday (14th October). We’re moving into hybrid mode this year, with a mix of online

Two participants from our recent influencing training in Panama (Thomas Dunmore Rodriguez, National Influencing Adviser at Oxfam, and Alice Shackelford, UN Resident Coordinator in Honduras) discuss what they learned and the implications for more effective advocacy A couple of weeks ago the GELI course on Influencing for Senior Leaders brought representatives from the UN and several national and international NGOs

Well that was intense. We’ve just come to the end of a one year programme to design and deliver a training course on ‘influencing’ to senior aid leaders (UN, INGOs, Red Cross/Crescent and National NGOs). 6 months to design the materials and methodology; the rest to deliver the training to 6 cohorts of 25 people in 5 locations around the

(Featured Image above – Italy’s new North-South divide) Best employment contract ever? Ht Dr Helen Salisbury 4 advantages of working with faith groups to address the food crisis After the budget, 6 challenges facing UK aid Meanwhile, USAID cracks on: Samantha Power announces USAID Africa Localization Initiative RIP Hilary Mantel. Here she is on understanding history ht Jim Pickard Should

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Since in-real-life contact resumed, I have been to some classically terrible academic seminars (which took me back to this 2016 cathartic rant). Here are my notes from one recent purgatorial experience: ‘Forgotten just how bad academic seminars can be (come back Covid, all is forgiven!): Not reading the room (full of people who know the context), so they spend most

I sat down recently with one of the stars of the Oxfam firmament, John Kitui, its Country Director in Kenya, Here’s a partial transcript of the conversation. DG: Let’s better start with the thing that everyone knows, which is that there’s a horrendous drought in East Africa. Can you tell me a little bit about what you are doing as

The aid sector and academia do a pretty terrible job of describing real life in poor countries. You’ll struggle to find joy, fun, hobbies, parties, chilling, crazy stuff that makes no ‘sense’. Even sex is usually portrayed as a ‘risk factor’. Short of living somewhere, accessing that other side of life requires reading novels, poetry, or watching films or theatre.

In the interests of everyone’s sanity, I’m keeping this a queen-free zone, which means it’s based on about 10% of my timeline… The academic year is starting and there’s some good stuff open to all – get these in your diaries: Great line up in this year’s ‘Cutting Edge’ lecture series at LSE, starting with Ha-Joon Chang on economics v