If you’re looking for a teaching resource on current debates on agriculture and development, take a look at ‘The Future of Agriculture’, a rather goodsynthesis of a two week online debate hosted by Oxfam last December. The paper, written by Maya Manzi and Gine Zwart, has a 10 page summary of the 23 posts and comments from some 300 participants,

There’s a fascinating, brilliant and I think, very significant, piece on the role of feminism in driving action on violence against women in the latest issue of Gender and Development (ungated versions on Oxfam policy and practice website, please note). Authors Laurel Weldon and Mala Htun have painstakingly constructed the mother of all databases, covering 70 countries over four decades

I have a guest slot on the World Bank’s governance blog, who repost relevant FP2P pieces. But when I read this great piece from the blog’s eminence grise Sina Odugbemi, I decided to reverse the traffic and repost it on FP2P. Sina’s a comms specialist, a novelist, and a very good writer – enjoy. The growing militancy of middle class

There’s a big fuss going on in the UK right now about CEO pay scales in the big NGOs. With some misgivings, I weighed in with a piece on the Guardian website yesterday. Unfortunately, my weakness for a good one liner was spotted by the sub, who take a throwaway ‘you pay peanuts, you get monkeys’ comment and made it

I recently began an interesting conversation with our new campaigns and policy czar, Ben Phillips, who then asked me to pick the FP2P collective brain-hive for further ideas. Here goes. The issue is ‘cold’ v ‘hot’ campaigning. Over the next couple of years, we will be doing a lot of campaigning on climate change and inequality. Inequality is flavour of

Nouriel Roubini (aka Doctor Doom) and the Economist cover story on the same topic? It must be serious. The issue is whether the glitter is coming off the BRICS growth surge. First the Economist: ‘China will be lucky if it manages to hit its official target of 7.5% growth in 2013, a far cry from the double-digit rates that the

Take a look at this table, from a new paper by Arjan de Haan. It shows the last 15 years of social policy initiatives in China and India, and their breathtaking scale. And here’s a chunk from the accompanying one pager: Though social spending in both countries appears rather low, and many deficits remain in terms of effective social protection,

We interrupt this blog to urge you to go and see an extraordinary film about Indonesia’s aging executioners. Here’s an extract from an NPR review, the wikipedia synopsis and the trailer, which gives a sense of its unique combination of the ‘banality of evil‘ of the old men, and the surreal quality of their reenaction. That must be down to

Bilateral Investment Treaties are one of those nerdy ‘important but dull’ bits of international governance that too often get ignored by NGOs and others. So thanks to Liz May at Traidcraft for drawing my attention to this week’s punch-up between South Africa and the EU. First the fisticuffs. According to South Africa’s equivalent of the FT, Business Day, ‘Karel De

By blog-reader standards, the Economist’s Special Reports can be pretty long (15 pages in this case), but they are sharply written and stuffed full with great stats. As long as they steer clear of economic policy, they are also not as ideology-laden as some of the magazine’s other content. So if you can spare half an hour, read this week’s report

Ok this is a bit weird, but I want to turn an infographic into a blogpost. The ODI, which just seems to get better and better, has just put out a 10 killer facts on elections and democracy infographic by Alina Rocha Menocal, and it’s great. Here’s a summary: Most countries today are formal democracies. An astonishing political transformation has taken

I’m turning into a big fan of crowdsourcing. This set of top analyses, infographics and videos was suggested by a mix of Oxfam Egyptologists and a call for suggestions on twitter. Given how polarized the coup v revolution debate is right now, I won’t attach names to particular pieces, but thanks to all the Oxfamistas, plus Laurence Chandy, Kate Cooper,