I’m doing this blog to share my thoughts about my time in Ethiopia with friends and family. I have decided to make my blog a travel-blog rather than a commentary on aid and politics in Ethiopia, in recognition of the fact that being able to do my job here is much more important than blogging, and that there might be a trade-off between the two. I’ll keep my thoughts on aid and politics for another day. I’ve also added a disclaimer.
Better safe than sorry
November 22nd, 2009The return of the “missing middle” – A response to David Roodman
March 14th, 2010There are lots of problems with development assistance. One of them is that people like me don’t really know what we’re doing, but pretend that we do. Or more specifically, that we rarely make explicit why we think that what we are doing will lead to the results that are hoped for.
My thinking on this has been stimulated by David Roodman of the Center for Global Development. David is in the process of writing a book about micro-finance and posed a question about definitions of development.
Not-Bob: Ethiopia on the BBC
March 7th, 2010I’m not going to comment on the recent stories about the possible diversion of aid to Ethiopia in the 1980s to buy arms, but readers might want to have a listen to three recent pieces about the country, and the UK’s aid relationship with the country, on the BBC’s World Tonight over the last couple of weeks.
Amanda in Addis and Adventures Up North
March 6th, 2010Amanda’s now back in the UK, recovering from our adventures in Ethiopia. For her first week, I was working but we managed to see quite a bit of Addis together, and then she was ably escorted by my taxi-driver-cum-friend Teddy.
Photos from Amanda’s visit
March 5th, 2010I’ll blog about our adventures soon, but for the moment the pictures are available here
Brain drains, brain gains and economists
February 19th, 2010Provoked or stimulated by a piece on migration on Owen Barder’s blog, referencing a piece on the AidWatchers blog, I’ve stuck my oar in. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.
Challenging the borders-up mentality prevalent in many developed countries certainly gets my vote (although the benefits of immigration in the rich world do tend to go to rich people, which complicates matters). And it’s good to question the conventional wisdom that the out-migration of skilled people is always bad for developing countries. But …. Read the rest of this entry »
The Corner House – persistently fighting corruption
February 14th, 2010As a PS to my tanzania-related rant, I thought I should big up the Corner House. Their persistence in pursuing British Aerospace and its networks of corruption is inspirational. Great work!
Less talk, more action – UK party politics and international development
February 9th, 2010As a follow up to the debate between Owen Barder and Kevin Watkins about development, party politics and the Conservative Party’s Green Paper on international development, readers might be interested in supporting the ONE campaign’s efforts to get the three main UK political parties to go on the record about their policies on tackling global poverty.