ChatGPT. Discuss. Isn’t everyone? Right now, everyone seems to be playing with it, writing and/or worrying about it and with good reason. Some are already losing their jobs after publishing faked interviews. There are refuseniks – this is crowdsourced plagiarism and must be kept at bay. Students must not use it. Massive health warnings etc etc. That feels both King

‘Localization’ of aid, when you think about it, is actually quite an outsider’s word. It suggests taking the assets currently held in the North (money, knowledge, power) and somehow transferring them to the South. The value of this book, edited By Margit van Wessel, Tiina Kontinen, Justice Nyigmah Bawole is captured in the subtitle. It discards that idea and asks how CSOs in

I often experience a ‘disappointment cycle’ when reading papers on aid and development. The initial question/framing gets me excited – this is really going to tell me something new/interesting. But then the paper peters out, reverting to standard prescriptions and vague generalizations. That certainly was my feeling with the new paper from Chatham House and New York University’s Center on

Hi guys, back from holidays and busily catching up on the reading/timeline backlog. Here are some highlights LSE guidance on how to spot students using ChatGPT (what else?!). Does this remind you of any of your colleagues? 😉 Some nice practical suggestions for how to use it in your work to save time/look smarter What Will Happen in Sudan? Excellent

30 minutes of me talking you through the week’s posts, and adding the odd commentary Citizen action for accountability in challenging contexts: What have we learned? Venture Philanthropy and Asset Based Community-Driven Development – a marriage made in heaven? The Revenge of Power: A Great Book that will help you better understand Modern PoliticsFood and energy protests signal failures of accountability on

Guest post by Jeff Hallock and Naomi Hossain While the world was watching the war in Ukraine, its side-effects via rising food and energy prices were also playing out in the form of mass protests about the cost-of-living crisis in 148 countries. This global wave, unprecedented in world history, tells us that not only is the global economy in bad

I do love a ‘big book’ – one with a grand sweep, which tries to make sense of disparate events and processes, and leaves you feeling a little wiser. Think Francis Fukuyama (on the rise of the state), Ha-Joon Chang (on economics of development) or Yuen Yuen Ang (on China). I came away from Moises Naim’s latest book, The Revenge

Guest post by David Martin and Yogesh Ghore What can you achieve with C$30m and none of the usual constraints faced by official donors and NGOs? That’s the challenge for so called ‘venture philanthropists’ like us. The Comart Foundation is a mid-sized, family-run, Canadian charitable foundation, with an endowment of C$30 million and no permanent staff.  From our inception in

The Action for Empowerment and Accountability research consortium, led by IDS and with quite a lot of involvement from Oxfam (including me) is now winding up with the customary emission of academic papers (think puffballs reaching maturity). One of these is a whole issue of Development Policy Review (now Open Access – yay!) on ‘Citizen Action for Accountability in Challenging

Links I Liked6 tricks for diverting Britain’s Aid to the UKOxfam and BRAC: the links between Bloody-Mindedness and InnovationHow Beijing Commands: how the Communist Party combines Ambiguity and Clarity to Maximum Effect

Yuen Yuen Ang is a rising star in International Development scholarship. Understandably, she doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed as ‘the China person’ despite her brilliant book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, and has written more global works on corruption, among other things. But in a recent paper, she returns to the topic of China – analysing the combination of

Spent a buzzy couple of days IRL with Oxfam colleagues recently – the first such get together since Covid, and very moving/energising to be in a room together with others working on policy, advocacy, research etc in Oxfam GB’s ‘Impact Division’. One of the conversations was about innovation (isn’t it always?). Rather than generic thoughts on what helps/hinders creativity, I