Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf to Texas in Africa and Political Climate. I didn’t have to go searching for them – they were all waiting for me on my homepage when I grabbed a coffee and turned on my laptop. All thanks to the wonders of Google Reader. Development people claim to be interested in ideas, yet an alarming number of my colleagues roll their eyes when I sing Google Reader’s praises and wail ‘I haven’t got time to read’. Pathetic. The point is that GR (or its equivalents) saves you time, and allows you to skim your gurus’ (or competitors’) output as it appears. It makes you better at your job, not least by giving you bullshitter’s rights in the first meeting of the day – ‘well the New York Times had a piece on this today, and it said…..’. And yes, I realize that if you’re reading this, you’re probably already connected, but why not make it your mission to go and persuade some colleagues (especially technophobic bosses) to do likewise? For sage advice on the practicalities, and a great development blog list, read Owen Barder. Meanwhile, here are some highlights from my morning trawl. What does the World Cup tell Ranil Dissanayake about the nuances of identity in Africa? Alanna Shaikh explores the limitations and dangers of the aid industry’s obsession with assessing impact and shows how crowdsourcing can work in practice, as she raises the funds for a violence-reducing Ushahidi project in Kyrgyzstan in 8 hours using Twitter Bill Easterly asks ‘Was the poverty of Africa determined in 1000 BC?’ and concludes that history, while not destiny, is a pretty good predictor of future performance “The only way in which we can get rid of “growth mania” is by getting rid of capitalism. It is not possible to have capitalism without growth.” Alejandro Nadal thinks the de-growthers have got it all wrong (or are being very disingenuous) Laura Freschi discusses the impact of right to information initiatives in India and Africa Is the best way to tackle climate change bottom up (technological innovation) or top down (global agreements)? Matthew Lockwood reviews the arguments and mines some data to ask ‘Do equality and security help the politics of climate?’ And finally, ‘What did the Chinese ever do for us?’ Texas in Africa takes some photos to demonstrate – the same section of road before and after China arrived in North Kivu in the DRC. Impact assessment anyone?
Thanks for the reads but personally I dont believe the poverty of Africa or any region has been predetermined.
Possibly useful: I made a google reader “bundle” of every international development-related blog I know of. It could jumpstart someone who is new to RSS readers: http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F03083567248256224205%2Fbundle%2FAlanna%20Shaikh%27s%20Int%27l%20Development%20Blogs%20List
More sites are now allowing personalised RSS feeds as well. For example google news allows you to personalise an RSS news feed, and Jobs4Development.com allows you to personalise their international development jobs feed.
It’s interesting how road projects never seem to involve creating a pavement for the vast majority of people who are going to have to walk beside the road, not drive along it. But still, of course better infrastructure is going to be positive overall.
I use Google Reader all the time too (and this blog is on it).
Another time-saver for me (as a writer) is Stumbleupon, which I can use to raise awareness of good articles I come across to others, but more importantly, where I can catalogue articles and snippets I want to keep for future reference.
It’s like my own personal library of digital “clippings” and I can choose my own category headings so am more likely to be able to find them again.
Would be interested in seeing a ‘bundle’ of the sites that Duncan reads.
Duncan: pretty much the blogroll on the right hand side of this blog