10 Frontier Technologies for International Development

November 1, 2016
Ben Ramalingam, leader of the Digital and Technology research group at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), introduces their new report on new and emerging technologies, and how international organisations can capitalise on their potential. New and emerging technologies have often underpinned and enabled significant development progress over the decades – from vaccines to mobile phones to the internet. The
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Can Publishers survive Open Access? We’ll find out when How Change Happens is published today

October 27, 2016
It’s Open Access Week and How Change Happens is officially published in the UK today, as both a book and an open access pdf. The process has been pretty exciting. The traditional author descends from the mountain of scholarship clutching a rather expensive tablet of stone, in which his/her wisdom is set out to a suitably grateful but largely passive
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Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic

October 11, 2016
Guest book review from Anita Makri, an editor and writer going freelance after 5+ years with SciDev.Net. (@anita_makri) I’m sure that to readers of this blog the Ebola epidemic that devastated West Africa a couple of years ago needs no introduction (just in case, here’s a nice summary by the Guardian’s health editor). So I’ll cut to the chase, and
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Ten Quick Ways to generate a Blog Post

October 7, 2016
I’m running a ‘blogging for beginners’ session at LSE today, so thought I’d post this to coincide. Whenever I try and get evangelical about blogging, the anguished cry goes up ‘where do I find the time?!’ I admit I’m spoilt – blogging takes up 30-40% of my 4 days a week at Oxfam. But at five posts a week, that
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Beer and Tacos with Samir Doshi from USAID

October 5, 2016
  Had a fun dinner in Brixton market last week with Samir Doshi, a Senior Scientist at USAID’s U.S. Global Development Lab, which describes itself as “an innovation hub that takes smart risks to test new ideas and partner within the Agency and with other actors to harness the power of innovative tools and approaches that accelerate development impact.” This
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Deworming Delusions and the flimsiness of ‘evidence-based policy’

July 28, 2016
This post is co-authored with Mohga Kamal-Yanni (right) Should I blog about things that are way over my head? Well it’s never stopped me in the past…… My LSE colleague Tim Allen, along with Melissa Parker and Katja Polman have edited an issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science on ‘Biosocial Approaches to the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases’. It’s open
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How can rethinking innovation achieve Technology Justice?

July 22, 2016
Amber Meikle of Practical Action, introduces ‘Rethink, Retool, Reboot Technology as if people and planet mattered’, a new book on a massively neglected topic The history of mankind’s development has long featured technology – from early cultivation techniques, fire, and the wheel, all the way to 3D printing and nanotechnology. Today, technology underpins all aspects of everyday life: from how
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Campaigning to Make India’s Roads Safer: A nice How Change Happens case study

July 7, 2016
A smart How Change Happens case study by David Bornstein in the New York Times’ ‘Fixes’ series (highly recommended). Bornstein looks at the advocacy of the SaveLife Foundation, set up by Piyush Tewari, a businessman, after his cousin Shivam was knocked down by a jeep then left to bleed to death by the roadside. Excerpts + commentary from me in italics.
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Want to empower women? Digital Financial Services are the way to go!

July 5, 2016
Sophie Romana (left) and Shelley Spencer (right) report back from the June 8 high level roundtable organized by NetHope and USAID, which brought together mobile banking and gender champions to reflect on how Digital Financial Services (“DFS”) can galvanize women’s empowerment. Women’s empowerment is often measured by their access to resources and ability to make decisions over how they are used.  Recent
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So what do we really know about innovation in international development? Summary of new book (+ you get to vote)

May 25, 2016
Ben Ramalingam of IDS and Kirsten Bound of Nesta share insights from their new open-access book on innovation for development (download it here). And you get to vote (see end) Innovation is increasingly popular in international development. The last ten years have seen new initiatives, funds, and pilots aplenty. While some of this involves genuinely novel and experimental approaches, we
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Tikamgarh revisited, what’s happened to the amazing fishing communities I visited in 2006?

April 27, 2016
Just got back from a great week in India, including my first attempt at a phone vlog (above). One of the drawbacks of being a generalist is that you go somewhere, hear riveting stories of organization, resistance (and sometimes of course, of failure), but then never find out what happened next. But last week I managed to return to one of
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Blogging’s getting a bit old – what’s next? Plus, my first pitiful attempt at a vlog.

April 8, 2016
It’s quiet in the blogosphere. Too quiet. (In Westerns, saying that invariably means you’re about to get an arrow in the head). I’ve been blogging on FP2P for 8 years now and for the last few of them, have been wondering what comes next. There are few new entrants to the blog world, and some of the original development bloggers
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