‘False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World’, by Alan Beattie, the world trade editor at the Financial Times is published tomorrow in the UK and is already doing well in the US. It explores the historical backstory to current economic debates on trade, corruption, the ‘curse of wealth’ in oil and mineral producing nations, the rise of Russia, China

The Dambisa Moyo phenomenon shows no signs of abating, with a front page story in the FT and an elevation this month to Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. The publicity is also selling a lot of books – she’s currently 3rd in Amazon US sales rankings for books on ‘policy and current events’ (no sour grapes there,

I read with sorrow but no great surprise about the death of yet another outstanding activist in a road crash. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, a renowned pan-Africanist, journalist and campaigner, died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya on 25 May – Africa Day. For an obituary and hundreds of affectionate farewells see Pambezuka News. Tajudeen (pictured), a Nigerian, was a fearsome

At the last minute, the UN has postponed its ‘Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development’ from 1-3 June to 24-26th June, still in New York. This will allow it time to sort out the draft conclusions and try and convince a respectable number of world leaders to attend. The process for arriving at

This week’s Economist has an excellent overview of the issues surrounding what it calls ‘outsourcing’s third wave’ (the first two were manufacturing and services) – deals in which foreign investors are buying up huge tracts of land in poor countries to produce food to ship back home (see map). Some highlights: Saudi investors are spending $100m to lease land from the

The African Development Bank is doing some excellent analysis and has just updated the paper submitted to the April G20 Summit by African Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (new paper here, original paper for G20 here). Main points: ‘For the first time since 1994, per capita income will contract in 2009 for the continent as a whole. Indeed a

I spoke at an UNCTAD symposium on the global crisis in Geneva this week (Oxfam’s pre-conference submission is here). A laudable attempt to get a conversation going with civil society organizations, but a classically frustrating UN event – dozens of developing country delegates mingling with NGOs and others, but any real exchange was deadened by a format of interminable lists

Shortly after the US election, I blogged about the promising discussions on US aid reform in Washington. Those are now starting to bear fruit. In late April, Howard Berman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a bill (The Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009–HR 2139). Here are some of his covering remarks: ‘This legislation is an important

Normally, I find the use of scenarios to think through policy issues pretty shallow and unhelpful. But a new paper on the institutional architecture for climate change, by Alex Evans and David Steven, has a horribly plausible and thought-provoking scenario among its three possible futures. A slightly truncated version follows in a couple of paras time. Evans and Steven argue

Chris Blattman has kicked off a heated debate on whether aid officials should fly business class, see here for example Over on global dashboard, Mark Weston provides an overview on land grabs William Easterly applies his tests for dodgy regressions to Paul Collier’s latest book and Chris Blattman (again, when does he work or sleep?) joins in the fun by adding Karl

Remittances sent to developing countries in 2008 from migrant workers overseas came to a massive $305bn – two and a half times greater than the (record) volume of global aid. But how are they weathering the global crisis? I’ve just been reading the World Bank’s latest (OK, end of March – I’m playing catchup as usual) Migration and Development Brief.

What can an NGO like Oxfam do to help build women’s grassroots leadership and participation? Just been reading a series of case studies from around the world, which throw up a strikingly similar set of conclusions. Drawing on experiences in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the UK, the study finds that progress relies on tackling structural barriers to women’s participation