Posted in Development, South Africa, tagged apartheid, elections, FreedomDay, idealism, malaria, Mandela, medicine, UN, WorldMalariaDay on April 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Today (yesterday there) was Freedom Day in South Africa. It commemorates the first post-Apartheid election, by which Nelson Mandela was elected President.
Happy holiday, ZA, and many more!
Also, Sunday was World Malaria Day, which I completely didn’t notice on my calendar. Hopefully we won’t have too many more of those (both the Day and calendar mishaps) in the future.
Posted in Development, governance, law, misc., Politics, religion, tagged archeology, criminals, human rights, Islam, Israel, Judaism, libertarians, Links, NGOs, Politics, science, technology, UK, women, work on March 14, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I stumbled across a surprising number of links regarding the mistreatment of women in some form or another. A sampling:
Actually from a month ago – an article about world wide violence towards women
‘It is “un-Islamic” for Muslim women to contest a secular election.” Having studied Islam, I’m going to declare this complete BS.
Orthodox Judaism and women rabbis
A similar trend occurred regarding gay rights. Not really sure what this means.
Gay rights in the developing world
How to store a marriage in a computer
Development
Government jobs suck: a different take on the ‘brain drain’ problem
The Indian government has relegated anti-poverty work to NGOs
Honorable Mentions for the Best and Worst of Aid from AidWatcher readers
Law, Order and Governance
US Customs returns ancient Egyptian sarcophagus
England decides not to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12
Israeli troops used a boy as a human shield
Misc.
The Large Hadron Collider must be shut down to address design flaws
Magnificent… Johannesburg
Proof: libertarians are liberals who like free markets.
A million dollars just isn’t what it used to be
A different take on social media
Posted in Africa, Development, governance, misc., technology, tagged AU, banking, brazen, China, Links, NEPAD, NGOs, poverty, technology, twitter on February 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I always intend to read each one of these articles carefully and comment on them fully in separate blog posts, and then suddenly I’ve got 10 and 5 chapters of reading for class that I totally forgot about and so on. So here are some great articles/posts I’ve discovered over the past week.
Misc.
How to Bootstrap Student Diction
Love’s Labels Lost: Behind Gen Y’s Career Identity Crisis
The Luxury of Discontent – both this and Love’s Labels are from Generation Meh, a fellow Brazen Careerist member
Africa
The New Rules: China in Africa
A Fifth Poverty Trap for Africa?
African Leaders Approve New Agency to Replace NEPAD
Development
Designing Financial Services for the Poor
New Blog: Blood and Milk. I’ve been following Alanna Shaikh’s twitter feed for some time, but just now realized she has a blog.
‘Ungoverned Spaces’ – the article this post was ultimately based upon
The UN’s new report: Rethinking Poverty
NGOS
Blogging or Flogging – NGOs and the internet
Are NGOs Killing Civil Society?
Technology
Posted in Development, Networks and Infrastructure, technology, tagged D&S.com, OLPC, technology, XO on January 30, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I think I’ve now used ‘ridiculous’ or some form of it so many times in reference to iPad and technology as to lose all meaningfulness. It’s just that articles such as this one at Gartner infuriate me, as they seem to be based purely on enthusiasm and not reality. I’m all for enthusiasm and setting fire to the world, and I am not at all a luddite, but let’s not confuse the purpose and function of technology for that of people and institutions. Technology is NOT development. It is simply a tool for development. Nor will the mere appearance of technology lead to development (actually, if we define development as the rise in living standards, Jane Jacobs makes a powerful argument that technology can underdevelop or even un-develop). In any case, there’s more about the post over at D&S.
Posted in Africa, Development, misc., Networks and Infrastructure, tagged aid, BillGates, Chavez, China, Ethan Zuckerman, haiti, Links, Obama, philanthropy, twitter on January 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Some articles I wanted to share from the past two or so weeks:
Speaking of Twitter, Bill Gates finally joins and we enter The Age of Citizen Philanthropy
Haiti
Tech/Networks
Posted in advice, Development, tagged Ethan Zuckerman, outcome evaluation on January 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just saw this post (h/t Ethan Zuckerman) about ‘social outcomes’, which is rather timely since I just posted my final project for my Research Methods class – a proposal for outcome evaluation of 4 sectors of the Ugandan economy, with a focus on government policy (to be absolutely clear, this is just a proposal, and I did not do the data analysis suggested, so I don’t draw any real conclusions – because to draw conclusions without evidence is precisely the thing I’m arguing against).
Mr Morino’s is a good one, and a great deal more developed and possibly more fair than my own thinking about social outcomes, which is that the goal of a non-profit (especially in development) should be to put itself out of business by achieving its purpose. I’m sure that statement will get me in trouble, but having worked with a variety of non-profits over the year – all staffed by hard-working, dedicated people! – I’ve come to this conclusion. Development work, advocacy work, is not meant to be sustainable, because if it needs to be, it means that the work is not effective – it is not changing lives, it is not changing laws. On the other hand, I see no problem with redirecting the efforts of an effective team towards a new goal or mission, but at that point, make the mission shift (not creep) transparent and defined. Otherwise it just starts to look like self-perpetuation.
That isn’t at all what I write about in my outcome evaluation proposal, but his central idea – the importance of understanding the goal of an action, implementing it purposefully, and evaluating its effectiveness for less learned on what to do/not to do – informs my choice to propose an outcome evaluation for my topic. The assignment was simply to ask a research question and design a research plan around it. As I explain, I took an idea from Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion – the trap of landlocked states – and asked how a state might effectively implement his 9 strategies for development. I criticize those 9 strategies, as I think they are far too vague to be meaningful (as is most of development theory), and another look would allow us to be more focused in policy design. That is, in essence what this paper proposes, using 4 sectors of the Ugandan economy as case studies.
Here’s the link. It’s also available on the Writings page. Also, here’s the original proposal 1-pager.
