Back from Bangladesh and still processing both the real life and blog discussions on microfinance institutions (MFIs), following last week’s post and the good debate in the comments. A few final (probably…) observations: Microcredit v Microfinance: point taken. A lot of the doubts and criticisms apply to microcredit (loans), not to the wider range of financial services (insurance, savings etc)

I spent some time yesterday with a group of 20 Bangladeshi small farmers (13 men, 7 women) linked to a sustainable agriculture NGO, Unnayan Dhara (sorry, they don’t yet have a website). Among other things (climate change, access to markets etc) I asked them about microfinance, given my post on Wednesday and the subsequent discussion on the comments. Here’s a

There has been significant progress in recent years in getting kids into school, but what’s the point if the teachers don’t show up for work? In general, the poorer the country, the higher the level of absenteeism. The explanations are both obvious (wages are so low, teachers need to look for second jobs, or funnel their students into private tuition)

The intellectual battlefield of development is littered with magic bullets. New ideas or technologies such as the internet or mobile phones are picked up, promoted as panaceas that will end poverty and transform societies, and then rapidly cut down to size by scrutiny and research. That process seems to be well under way on microfinance. As it happens, I’m in

Last month, the UK’s Department for International Development, (DFID), published its fourth White Paper since it was created as a fully fledged ministry by the incoming Labour Government in 1997. So what?  Well, it sets out the thinking for one of the more cutting edge bilateral aid organizations, so it’s at least worth a skim. White Papers are a big

One of the more exciting proposals in the UK Conservative’s recent Green Paper on development (see previous post here) is the idea of making aid ‘Cash on Delivery’ (CoD). ‘We will commit to pay a certain amount to a recipient government for a specific measure of progress – for example £100 for every extra child who attends school, or for

Finding out which people in any given community live below the poverty line is actually quite hard. Why do it? To target services like microfinance  (let’s not get into the targetting v universal provision argument here); comparing poverty rates in different regions and countries, and tracking changes over time. But both income and consumption poverty are hard to assess directly

This week I attended the launch of ‘One World Conservatism’, a ‘Green Paper’ (i.e. discussion document) in which the Conservative Party (who if you believe the opinion polls, are highly likely to take over from Gordon Brown’s Labour at the next election, due before next June) set out its thinking on international development. The Green Paper is the product of

One of the more unusual curtain raiser documents for the G8 summit last week was ‘Caritas in Veritate’ (Charity in Truth), the latest encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI. NGOs and development wonks tend to ignore these kinds of documents, but research shows that churches matter far more in the lives of poor people than NGOs do, so it’s worth paying

The IMF has just revised April’s World Economic Outlook growth projections for 2009 and 2010 (see table). Here’s the summary on developing countries: ‘Emerging and developing economies are projected to regain growth momentum during the second half of 2009, albeit with notable regional differences. Low-income countries are facing important challenges of their own because official aid has fallen and these

As expected, some of the more aid sceptic governments will be seeking ways to wriggle out of their commitments at the G8 summit, which opens in Italy today. But rather than just say ‘we’re breaking our promises – tough’, they are floating various kinds of creative accounting to allow them to meet their commitments without actually spending more money. The

In the end the UN Conference that considered Joe Stiglitz’s Commission’s report on the crisis was even more underwhelming than I predicted (given the chaotic preparations, which included a last minute postponement). Only 14 heads of state attended, 10 of them from Latin America; most of Stiglitz’ recommendations bit the dust (e.g. his proposal for a new Global Economic Council);