Owen Barder gave a brilliant lecture on complexity and development to my LSE students earlier this year. Afterwards, I asked him to dig deeper into the ‘so whats’ for aid agencies. The result is this elegant essay (a bit long for a blog, but who cares?). I will try and get some responses to his arguments from similarly large brains.

Another interesting feedback loop in the aid system: a new report, The Marketplace of Ideas for Policy Change summarizes a survey of 6,750 policymakers and practitioners in 126 low- and middle-income countries to find out which of the innumerable bits of advice and analysis churned out by aid agencies, international organizations and NGOs actually influence their work. What’s most alarming

Sometimes failure is not ‘failing faster, failing forward etc’. It’s just… failure. Dilbert explains  There seems to have been a polite punch-up over the SDGs at the recent Gates Foundation shindig, according to Tom Paulson. SMART targets (read apolitical, health-dominated and few) v holistic (read laundry list). How one NGO helps communities negotiate with investors for proper valuation of natural

[Oops. This was supposed to go up next Thursday when the book is published, but I hit the wrong button and posted it by mistake – blame the UK elections for keeping me up all night…..] If you work in advocacy, especially the international sort, this is a necessary but painful read – it’s hard finding yourself the brunt of

Guest post from the LSE’s Alice Evans from the LSE  Across the world, support for gender equality is rising. More girls are going to school. Women are increasingly being recognised and supported in historically male-dominated domains, such as employment and politics. Growing numbers of men are sharing unpaid care work. In short, young women are ‘beginning to envision a future similar

The ‘Doing Development Differently’ network has been going great guns since it launched late last year, with hundreds of wonks and practitioners signing up to the DDD manifesto. It’s just had its second big get together, a thrilla in Manila – I couldn’t go so Andrew Wells-Dang (Oxfam-Vietnam) reports back. Mabuhay! I and about 50 other development wonks gathered for

The UK general election takes place tomorrow. I’ve spared you so far, but on Monday I went to what has to be the most enjoyable and substantive event of the election campaign – watching party leaders and ministers being grilled by an ‘accountability assembly’ of the community organisation Citizens UK in a packed Methodist Central Hall, within spitting distance of

Grammar pedants rally behind the Oxford comma, [h/t Alexander Macleod] ‘International analysts predict the seeds of a so-called “American Spring,” fomented by technology’. How press would cover Baltimore if it was in a foreign country. [h/t Ian Birrell] Smart Owen Barder essay on the future of aid Planetary Boundaries and Human Prosperity. Kate Raworth teams up with Johan Rockstrom This is

Here’s a second instalment on ‘influencing’, following yesterday’s piece from Erinch Sahan   There’s a lot of talk in the aid biz about ‘getting out of our siloes’ – the traditional division of labour between ‘long term development’, ‘humanitarian’ and ‘advocacy’. I’ve seen this most starkly in some classic campaigns like Make Poverty History or Make Trade Fair, which seemed to