Should rich countries focus aid on fragile states? Drop development and just fund humanitarian work? Make aid a tool of soft power? The current debate on how to spend dwindling aid budgets is a depressing read, says Neil McCulloch. Let’s stop thinking about how to “buy results” and instead look at how best to support domestic initiatives for progressive change.

Amid a worldwide backlash against women’s rights, and after its own aid cuts that further threaten those rights, it has never been more urgent for the UK government to speak up loudly for global gender equality, says the Gender and Development Network.

What are the lessons for activists from the cut in the UK development budget? Did big agencies get their messaging all wrong? How much damage did the closure of DFID do? Or the departure of David Cameron as PM? Katy Chakrabortty unpacks the implosion of UK aid…

Twenty years after he watched Nelson Mandela’s rousing launch speech in Trafalgar Square, Dominic Vickers reflects on the impact of the landmark Make Poverty History campaign for trade justice, debt relief and better aid – and wonders if a new generation can take up the cause again. 

The recent £1.5 billion cut in the aid budget heralds an era of “less money, more policy”, with any return to spending 0.7% of GDP a long way away, says Andy Sumner of King’s College London. As we await three reviews of development policy, early signs suggest climate change and diplomatic interests will drive priorities – and there is little chance DFID will be reborn.

According to Dan Brockington and Nicola Banks, the evidence suggests that the demise of UK aid is greatly exaggerated. They want to know if they’ve missed something… International development NGOs are facing interesting times in the UK. We live in a rising tide of nationalism, parochialism and suspicion of, not care for, distant strangers. Austerity measures make charities, and the giving