In this second blog of two, Andy Sumner of King’s College London asks what a change of government in the UK might mean for UK development cooperation and policy: will a new DFID rise from the ashes? Will ODA spend rise back to 0.7% of GNI? And what might a change of government mean for UK development co-operation’s policy focus?

In this first of two blogs, Andy Sumner of King’s College London looks into his crystal ball and ask what a change of government in the UK might mean for UK development cooperation and policy. This first blog asks what has changed since 1997 (when DFID was established) and what a new government would inherit. The second part of the

In the second of this series of podcasts with UN and other aid leaders making change happen on the frontline, I talked to Cissy Kabasuuga of WFP about how she managed to unblock a school feeding programme in Eswatini. Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa · GELI Stories-Cissy Kabasuuga on building coalitions within UN & Eswatini for school feeding Duncan: Welcome

Guest post from Jess Crombie. Jess is a researcher and scholar at UAL, and a consultant for some of the leading organisations in the humanitarian sector. The term Poverty Porn (coined in 1985); the widely criticised (though still widely played) song ‘Do they Know It’s Christmas’; the Lammy/Dooley scandal around Comic Relief; the brutal murder of George Floyd, sparking worldwide

One of the best things about the course I give on ‘Influencing for Senior Leaders: Analysis, Strategy, and Practice’ is the anecdotes from the participants, who are working in the most difficult of circumstances and often achieve amazing results. So recently I started recording some of them to come up with a series of ‘GELI Stories’ (GELI is the name

Last week’s Economist had a really useful Special Report by Avantika Chilkoti on the evolving world of philanthropy. It highlighted the rise of what it calls ‘no strings giving’ or ‘trust-based philanthropy’, in which some v big donors have essentially adopted an institutional cash transfer approach: if organizations are doing good work, just sign the cheque and leave them to

For this podcast, I sat down a few months ago to discuss data and development with Claire Melamed, who runs the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Apologies for delay, Claire – got caught up in internal traffic. Also apologies for length of this transcript – turns out 30m talking = 2 blog length pieces. Duncan: Like any good Englishman,

Irwin Loy and Will Worley have an excellent 2024 curtain raiser on The New Humanitarian, which is now by some distance my favourite aid blog. It’s a bit long by FP2P standards, so I’ve cut it down a bit: Money: Learning to do less with less  In 2023, humanitarians took a look in the mirror and admitted what everyone already knew: They don’t have

I was lucky enough to attend the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley’s extraordinary speech at LSE last week (Video here or audio file here). Props to outgoing Oxfam CEO Danny Sriskandarajah and whoever else from Oxfam was involved in pulling it together, along with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, who hosted. It was jaw-dropping for both the performance, interweaving

Got a grilling from an unusual audience (for me) last week. 100+ senior military officers (colonels and above) from 40 countries, attending what amounts to a UK-sponsored ‘military Masters’ (my words) – a year-long course on strategy for future leaders. Can’t be more specific as it was Chatham House rule. My task was to introduce them to the wonderful world

Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms

The same subjects have been coming up again and again in random conversations recently, especially the ones where someone comes down to South London for a general chat in a local coffee shop (one of my favourite ways of avoiding work). In a recent discussion with Oxfam Mexico’s Estefanie Hechenberger, a small penny dropped – the value of looking at