It’s World Food Day today – why is global progress going into reverse?

October 16, 2017
Guest post from Larissa Pelham, who is a food security wonk with probably the longest job title in Oxfam (see end for its full glory) World Food Day has come around again and with it the annual report on the State of World Food Insecurity. In a year which declared a potential ‘four famines’  – with South Sudan tipping into famine
Read more >>

Precarious Lives: Food, Work and Care after the Global Food Crisis. Launch of new report, 9th September

August 31, 2016
Oxfam researcher John Magrath profiles a new joint Oxfam/IDS report and tries to convince you to come along to the launch in London on 9th September Duncan has written previously about one of the projects he was most proud of initiating while in (nominal!) charge of Oxfam’s Research Team. This started out as Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility’ and
Read more >>

Which governments are doing best/worst in the fight against hunger and undernutrition?

July 3, 2014
The Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) 2013 measures political commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition in 45 developing countries. It uses two types of data. Primary data comes from Expert Perception Survey’s (EPS) and provides an in-depth view of six countries in the larger dataset (Bangladesh, Malawi, Zambia, Nepal, Tanzania and India). The secondary data analyses 45 countries across
Read more >>

Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer: welcome to a new generation of ‘development issues’

January 9, 2014
I failed miserably to stop myself browsing my various feeds over the Christmas break (New Year’s resolution: ‘browse less, produce more’ – destined for failure). One theme that emerged was the rise of the ‘North in the South’ on health – what I call Cinderella Issues. Things like road traffic accidents, the illegal drug trade, smoking or alcohol that do
Read more >>

How complexity thinking cut malnutrition in Vietnam by two thirds

November 8, 2013
To end complexity week, another of the fascinating case studies from Ben Ramalingam’s Aid on the Edge of Chaos In December 1991, Jerry and Monique Sternin arrived in Vietnam so Jerry could take up the role of Save the Children US Country Director. The country was still labouring under a US-led economic embargo and had seriously high levels of child
Read more >>

Which rich countries are good/bad on hunger and nutrition? A new index takes aim at the donors.

June 5, 2013
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the new Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index of developing countries. Yesterday, IDS published a second HANCI for the donor countries. The Index assesses governments on both their promises and performance, strokes the good guys and slaps the bad, provides arguments and data for civil society and scrutinizes aid levels. Some of the things
Read more >>

Do hunger and malnutrition make you want to cry? Time to get your HANCI out

April 11, 2013
Today sees the launch of the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI), produced by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) with funding from Irish Aid and DFID. It looks like it could become one of the more useful annual league tables. It may not be seen as a progressive view in the UK, but I’m a big league table fan,
Read more >>

Food price volatility and obesity – a new development challenge?

April 4, 2013
Continuing on the ‘new development threats’ theme of yesterday’s post on Big Tobacco, the latest issue of the World Bank’s Food Price Watch looks at the links between increasing food price volatility and obesity. A blog post by the Bank’s José Cuesta starts with a nice counter-intuitive quiz (below). The correct answers, by the way are C, B and C.
Read more >>

What’s up (or down) with global hunger?

October 16, 2012
Read more >>

What causes bad nutrition – not enough power or not enough vitamins?

February 22, 2012
Read more >>

Why sub-Saharan Africa needs Universal School Meals. Guest post from Swati Narayan

May 19, 2011
Read more >>

A definitive overview of education in the developing world

December 12, 2008
Read more >>