Digital Archive....

Ethiopia: a tale of two development models from the valley where we began – By Richard Dowden African Arguments Amentu, Ethiopia The Rift Valley in Eastern Africa is our hole in the ground, where we all come from. Not far from here our earliest ancestors stopped hanging out in the trees and started to use their rear limbs to get around on. From here we began to migrate and multiply all over the world. Today a line of worn tarmac runs along the valley floor, fed by earth tracks through fields of stubble lying brown and empty after the harvest. Wriggling lines of green mark streams which lead to the Awash River. The east and west horizons are bordered with crazy grey mountains jagging into a light blue sky. Flashing like mirrors in the sun are the valley's huge blue lakes and, in recent years, vast rigid squares of plastic sheeting have sprung up. Two models of development sit cheek by jowl where mankind began to emerge some 3.6 million years ago. One model is s...

China-Africa Oil Ties: How Different from the US? China in Africa: The Real Story An updated report from the Council on Foreign Relations on China-Africa Oil Ties makes several statements that made it past reviewers (and that reflect conventional wisdom): Quoting journalist Howard French, the report says that " unlike the West , China 'has declined to tell African governments how they should run their countries, or to make its investments contingent on government reform '."  And quoting Fanie Herman and Tsai Ming-Yen, the report says: " The U.S. focuses on humanitarianism, good governance, and democratization of petroleum-producing states in their oil diplomacy approach," unlike China. I would have expected better than this in a report coming from the Council on Foreign Relations. Is the US oil diplomacy approach really focused on good governance and democratization in Equatorial Guinea, Angola, or Saudi Arabia? I don't think so. Ha...

When we (rigorously) measure effectiveness, what do we find? Initial results from an Oxfam experiment. From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green Guest post from ace evaluator Dr Karl Hughes (right, in the field. Literally.) Just over a year ago now, I wrote a blog featured on FP2P – Can we demonstrate effectiveness without bankrupting our NGO and/or becoming a randomista? – about Oxfam's attempt to up its game in understanding and demonstrating its effectiveness.  Here, I outlined our ambitious plan of 'randomly selecting and then evaluating, using relatively rigorous methods by NGO standards, 40-ish mature interventions in various thematic areas'.  We have dubbed these 'effectiveness reviews'.  Given that most NGOs are currently grappling with how to credibly demonstrate their effectiveness, our 'global experiment' has grabbed the attention of some eminent bloggers (see William Savedoff's post for a recent example).  Now I'm back with an...

What do DFID wonks think of Oxfam's attempt to measure its effectiveness? From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green More DFIDistas on the blog: this time Nick York, DFID's top evaluator and Caroline Hoy, who covers NGO evaluation, comment on Oxfam's publication of a set of 26 warts-and-all programme effectiveness reviews . Having seen Karl Hughes's 3ie working paper on process tracing and talked to the team in Oxfam about evaluation approaches, Caroline Hoy (our lead on evaluation for NGOs) and I have been reading with considerable interest the set of papers that Jennie Richmond has shared with us on ' Tackling the evaluation challenge – how do we know we are effective ?'. From DFID's perspective, and now 2 years into the challenges of 'embedding evaluation' in a serious way into our own work, we know how difficult it often is to find reliable methods to identify what works and measure impact for complex development interventions.  Althou...

NGO warns DfID is forgetting disabled children Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Global Campaign for Education welcomes progress on girls but warns DfID is forgetting disabled children and other minorities The UK government needs to rethink its education programmes to better support marginalised children and young people in accessing education in poorer countries, according to a report published by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) UK on Wednesday. The report, Equity and inclusion for all in education (pdf), analysed 14 of the Department for International Development's (DfID) operational plans. It found that, while the department has a clear mandate to ensure girls attend school, there is little evidence that it is addressing barriers to education faced by young people with disabilities, or those from particular religious minorities or ethnic groups. The needs of children living in vulnerable situations or location...

Why academic and implementation debates diverge in development Open The Echo Chamber I just witnessed a fascinating twitter exchange that beautifully summarizes the divide I am trying to bridge in my work and career.  Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva, the head of research at Oxfam GB, after seeing a post on GDP tweeted by Tim Harford (note: not written by Harford), tweeted the following: To which Harford tweeted back: This odd standoff between two intelligent, interesting thinkers is easily explained.  Bluntly, Harford's point is academic, and from that perspective mostly true.  Contemporary academic thinking on development has more or less moved beyond this question.  However, to say that it "never has been" an important question ignores the history of development, where there is little question that in the 50s and 60s there was significant conflation of GDP and well-being. But at the same time, Harford's response is deeply naive, a...

realities of rape in war Texas in Africa The Simon Fraser University Human Security Report for 2011/12 is out. This year's edition focuses on sexual violence in war, and the findings are astonishing. Essentially, SFU found that the data shows much of the conventional wisdom on such issues as rape as a weapon of war, who is committing rape in wartime, and  negative effects on education is completely wrong. Among the report's findings: Conflicts in which extreme sexual violence is committed (think DRC) are exceptional outliers, not the norm. While reporting of sexual violence in wartime has increased, there is no evidence to support the oft-repeated-by-high-level-UN-officials claim that incidences of wartime sexual violence are increasing.  Strategic rape incidences, aka "rape as a weapon of war" are not increasing, either. Domestic (household & intimate partner) sexual violence is by far the most prevalent form of sexual and gender-...