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

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 Annabel Dulhunty, building on this 2018 post from Tom Wein The idea of human dignity frequently appears as a lofty overarching goal for development agencies and programs. Dignity is fundamental to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet practical ways of addressing and measuring the dignity of program participants are frequently overlooked. For example, the preamble to

We’ve had a cracking series of lectures and discussions on our Friday afternoon LSE ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ series, so I thought I’d post some links to the youtube videos and podcasts for those who are looking for some escape from the family Christmas (or otherwise just need some good brainfood). Grouping a bit by subject

The World Inequality Report 2022 came out recently, and it’s a total gold mine, as you’d expect from a summary of the work of over 100 researchers over 4 years from every corner of the globe (OK, I know globes don’t have corners, but cut me some slack here – I’m clinging on til the Christmas break). Here are some

Guest post from Ximena Echeverria Magariños and Jay Goulden, of CARE International INGOs have for many years felt the need to communicate how many people their programs reach in a year, but the numbers of people our programs “touch” doesn’t tell us anything about the difference they make in people’s lives. Increasingly, INGOs are seeking to report numbers of people

  Last week I posted a bit of a rant about UK aid cuts. The next day, Ranil Dissanayake had a piece on CGD’s blog looking at what kind of post-cuts aid programme is emerging under the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It’s brilliant, so I asked to post an abridged version (the original is roughly twice as long).

What is going on with the cuts to the UK’s aid budget? Judging from first impressions, the axe is being arbitrarily taken to a lot of really good aid programmes, with no overall plan or rationale. Surely that must be wrong – this is a £10 billion budget we’re talking about, even after the cuts. Any manager knows that budgets

Next up in my series of interviews on the real-world influence of researchers at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development, I explore the impact of Claire Elder’s work on Somalia, which raises a whole host of issues around how research can influence policy and practice: How the act of researching for a PhD can itself lay the groundwork

Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of diaries as a research tool into issues such as governance and finance. Here Sandrine N’simire, Ishara Tchumisi and Patricia Stys, of LSE’s Centre for Public Authority in International Development, discuss their experiences conducting research using ‘financial diaries’ as part of LSE’s Water Governance project in Goma, DRC. This blog forms part of the Idjwi

Larissa Pelham, Oxfam’s Social Protection Adviser, reports back on a 4 day Zoomathon Covid-19 has catapulted social protection into the spotlight.  From furloughing to school feeding programmes delivered to homes, 212 states and territories across the world have planned or delivered 1179 social protection interventions in response to the pandemic.  It is the backbone support to families and individuals to

This week’s Economist Special Report on the World Economy is a thought-provoking and beautifully written helicopter overview of the current meltdown. Some extracts: ‘Conditions before the pandemic were forged by the three biggest economic shocks of the 21st century: the integration of China into the world trading system, the financial crisis and the rise of the digital economy. As Chinese