I’m posting some of the best work from this year’s LSE activism students this week. Here’s Jessica Louise (jessalou1998@gmail.com if you want to see her full campaign strategy and/or offer her a job) introducing her campaign. As an active campaigner for Trussell Trust, one of the UK’s leading charities supporting food banks throughout the nation, I am constantly amazed by

I’m a big fan of league tables for comparing performance by powerful players, whether governments, NGOs or corporates. If done well, they can prompt a race to the top, with players competing to move up the table in successive years. The latest one of these to cross my timeline was the 2023 Food and Beverage Benchmark Report, produced by ‘KnowTheChain’,

Kevin Watkins introduces a new paper on a crucial topic Governments will this week gather in Rome for a UN event with one of those titles designed to induce profound boredom. The FAO is marking the second anniversary of the 2021 World Food System Summit with a ‘Stocktaking Moment’. Yes, I know, those two words feel like a good enough

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Governance in Africa (University of Michigan Press) Duncan: I’m really pleased about this conversation because I’m way out of date on this topic.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 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

A tribute by Craig Castro Robin Palmer, Oxfam GB (OGB)’s former global land advisor, passed away on Sunday 19 February 2023. He was a wonderful friend and colleague from whom I personally learned so much about land and property rights in Africa. As a regional advisor for OGB in southern Africa, I worked closely with Robin in organizing a landmark

Powerful piece in the Economist earlier this month stressing a link that is sometimes lost in the coverage of hunger crises – the link to ‘men with guns’ as they put it. Some excerpts: ‘At first glance, Vladimir Putin has little in common with an Ethiopian foot-soldier. One man has palaces and nuclear weapons, the other a shack and an

Guest post from Oxfam’s Anthony Kamande and Dailes Judge, ahead of this week’s African Union meeting It’s been more than two months since it rained in Nakuru County, Kenya, and Jane’s bean crop is long gone. Her only hope on her small plot of 0.8 hectares is the maize crop – but it will also be gone if it doesn’t

Aid organizations, including Oxfam, where I work part time, have been trying to draw attention to the looming hunger crisis across much of Sub-Saharan Africa. But some have been criticised for portraying the causes as mainly about drought, when in fact, war and conflict in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia have been crucial factors. So I’m reposting this excellent

This post by Oxfam’s Max Lawson first appeared on its Equals blog. I’ll be summarizing our new paper on the East Africa hunger crisis tomorrow. The other day I was speaking to Nellie, an old friend and primary school teacher in Malawi, about the rapidly rising prices: ‘Prices have risen, just since last month.  Imagine a loaf of bread was

Guest post by Naomi Hossain & Patta Scott-Villiers In March FAO’s global food price index jumped by 17% to a level unprecedented in its 30-year history. The food riots predicted by the head of the World Trade Organization have already kicked off in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Deadly fuel riots in Peru, rising discontent in Kenya and the rising price