Laura German is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia, and author of Power/Knowledge/Land: Contested Ontologies of Land and its Governance in Africa (University of Michigan Press) Duncan: I’m really pleased about this conversation because I’m way out of date on this topic. This is about land ownership and what we used to call land grabs. I last worked

Guest post by  Jane Lonsdale and Joanne Choe. This post was first published on the DevPolicy blog Questions that repeatedly come up when supporting reform programs include: how do we work with local politics to influence change without reinforcing existing elitism and capture of power? How do we “dance with the system” whilst at the same time trying to change the system?

‘Why are civil wars lasting longer?’ Asked a recent Economist essay – exactly the kind of big, hairy question to justify my subscription. Don’t agree with all of it, but very thought-provoking. Some extracts from a typically highly readable piece: ‘The average ongoing conflict in the mid-1980s had been blazing for about 13 years; by 2021 that figure had risen to 20.

Went to a big event on public attitudes to aid recently . Weird being back in conference mode – panels galore, a few lightbulb moments, buzzy coffee breaks, the occasional bit of powerpoint poisoning. Still struggling to make sense of it all. Let’s try. The panel was presenting the findings of a 10 year research programme currently known most recently

Guest post by Tom Wein, Director of the IDinsight Dignity Initiative Five years ago, I published a post here on FP2P considering the role of dignity in development. Back then I wrote: “Development aims to give people better lives. In doing so, we mainly aim to increase wealth and health – in part because we can measure those outcomes with

Guest post by Babken Babajanian The current global crisis, with soaring prices for food and fuel, has been devastating for many people around the world. But for older people in poor countries with no access to pensions or social protection, it is particularly bleak. And worse still for older women.  Sadly, although they are bearing the brunt of the crisis,

Guest post by Nicola Nixon, Erman Rahman, Sumaya Saluja and Rahpriyanto Alam Surya Putra ‘Coalition-building’: one of those topics that gets enthusiastic nods of approval among development practitioners. But what distinguishes effective from ineffective coalitions and what can donors do to support them?’ In The Asia Foundation’s recent reflection paper On the right tack: reflections on coalition-building in The Asia

‘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

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

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