Digital Archive....

The sun is at last setting on Britain's imperial myth | Pankaj Mishra Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk The atrocities in Kenya are the tip of a history of violence that reveals the repackaging of empire for the fantasy it is Scuttling away from India in 1947, after plunging the jewel in the crown into a catastrophic partition , "the British", the novelist Paul Scott famously wrote, "came to the end of themselves as they were". The legacy of British rule, and the manner of their departures – civil wars and impoverished nation states locked expensively into antagonism, whether in the Middle East, Africa or the Malay Peninsula – was clearer by the time Scott completed his Raj Quartet in the early 1970s. No more, he believed, could the British allow themselves any soothing illusions about the basis and consequences of their power. Scott had clearly not anticipated the collective need to forget crimes and disaste...

Cashless Bus Payments from Google & Equity Bank Bankelele Someone said that a matatu owner is the seventh or eighth person to get paid at the end of a busy day, only getting residual cash after the driver, turn boy, tout, tax man, council person, policeman, and sometimes the driver's girlfriend have taken their cut. But on Tuesday April 30, Google and Equity Bank unveiled BebaPay , a cashless way for commuters to pay for transport in buses in Kenya - and which propels owners right to the front of that queue. The transport sector has many challenges and is known for some unpleasant habits like reckless driving, price hikes when it rains, bribing traffic police, ill-treatment of passengers, having unroadworthy vehicles etc. - but some investors who purchase the vehicles than can cost an average of Kshs. 4 million ($47,000) believe that a common thread behind these habits is the amount of liquid money that the sector generates and which is easily diverted t...

Growth and other good things Baobab Enlarge THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world's ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007. Zambia is one of them. Yet a frequent complaint heard in Lusaka, the capital, is that the country's rising GDP has passed much of the population by. The populist appeal of Michael Sata, who became president in 2011, is in part explained by a sense that ordinary Zambians had missed out on the benefits of economic growth. GDP is not a perfect measure of living standards. A new study from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative takes a broader look at well-being in Africa. As well as income per person, BCG's gauge of living standards includes jobs, governance, health, and inequality. Measured in this way, well-being in much of ...

Is it time for a rethink on the definition of aid? From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green Crushed by my humiliation at the hands of Claire Melamed, it would just make matters worse to come back for another round of post-2015 jousting, so let's move on. I actually quite like blogging about meetings held under Chatham House rules , as they allow me to write about the discussion without worrying about who said what. And to take the credit for anything clever, of course. So last week, I found myself in a heated debate on the future of aid, with a bunch of NGOs and aid boffins. The topic was 'is it time for a re-think?' Why? Because the aid world is changing: -          New donors, such as foundations, philanthropists and emerging economies such as China and India are starting their own aid programmes, often outside the traditional donor club of the OECD DAC -          In...

What the World Bank Does Not Understand About "Doing Business" Global Dashboard - Blog covering International affairs and global risks In its 10-year history, the World Bank's Doing Business Report has achieved enormous influence. The annual study, one of the flagship knowledge products of the World Bank , is the leading tool to judge the business environments of developing countries, generating huge coverage in the media every year. Several countries—such as Rwanda —have used it as a guide to design reform programs. For its part, the Bank has advised over 80 countries on reforms to regulations measured in the DB. Its influence stretches even to academia, with over 1,000 articles being published in peer-reviewed journals using data in the index. But does it focus on the most important issues for companies in less developed countries? Based on my own almost 20 years of experience doing business in places such as Nigeria , Turkey, and China ,...

Volunteer placements in development: 10 ways to make them count Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk From managing expectations to setting up child protection policies and supporting local NGOs, our expert panel recommend how to get the best out of volunteer programmes Katie Turner, global research and advocacy advisor, volunteering for development, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), London, UK Learning should be reciprocal between volunteers and the communities they work in: Volunteers must develop a strong knowledge of the context within which they are placed. Some of this learning can be supported by the volunteer organisation through language training and briefing on the in-country context before the volunteer starts their placement. However, the onus also has to be on the volunteer to think about their placement in its broader context. As development evolves, so should volunteering: If volunteering in development is truly driven...