Recession, development and climate change: the big picture

This article of mine first appeared in the 25th October issue of the Scotsman.

If the 1930s are any guide, the seismic shock hitting the global economy has a long way to go. First came the plummeting stocks on Wall Street, then the social trauma of mass unemployment, soup kitchens and skid row. But they in turn triggered much deeper changes. Read More …

I’m on a speaking tour in the US from 10-21 November – everyone welcome

A quick plug. Now the summer is gone, and the students have sobered up from freshers’ week (or whatever it’s called in the US), I’m taking the From Poverty to Powerpoint to the US. The tour is from 10-21 November and includes the following venues: Read More …

World Health Report 2008 – getting back to basics

My thanks to colleague Tom Noel for sending over a handy summary of the World Health Organization’s latest overview. 30 years after the Alma Ata declaration on Primary Health Care, the WHO is reaffirming the importance of PHC in guaranteeing universal access, social protection and health systems designed around people’s needs and participation. Read More …

How can NGOs influence states?

From Poverty to Power argues that effective states and active citizens between them hold the key to unlocking development, but are states just too big and remote for NGOs to influence? I had some fascinating discussions on this at a workshop in Viet Nam a couple of weeks ago. Read More …

Meltdown Miscellany: stats and soundbites on the development impact

Here are a few of the things that have crossed my screen on the impact of the meltdown on developing countries. I would really appreciate suggestions for more sources on this – especially on the distributive impact within and between countries. Read More …

Vietnam: really making poverty history

Today is ‘Blog Action Day’ (no, really) and this year’s theme is poverty, so I thought I’d write about a success story. Viet Nam, where I attended a conference last week, is arguably the greatest poverty reduction triumph of recent decades, changing so fast that it is actually visible, even to the casual observer. Read More …

Launching From Poverty to Power in East Africa

I recently returned from a whirlwind launch trip to Uganda (where Fountain Publishers are the publishers), Kenya (where the distributor is Legacy Books) and Addis Ababa. Crucially, from my point of view, this was the first systematic presentation of the book to audiences in developing countries, so I was fairly nervous! Read More …

Can we measure inequality of opportunity? The World Bank has a go.

The World Bank has come up with a ‘Human Opportunity Index’ which pulls together in a single composite indicator both how many opportunities (e.g. overall access to primary education, clean water etc) are available in a given country or region, and how equitably those opportunities are distributed between rich and poor. The idea is to come up with an equivalent of the gini index (which measures economic inequality, for example of income or wealth), but one that measures inequality of opportunity - the disparities between the kinds of start in life that children of different groups can expect. Essentially they’re putting a number on the degree to which the ‘lottery of birth’ will determine a person’s life chances. Read More …

Two great new books on Africa

Just got back from launching the book in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia (more of that later). Between powerpoints, I read two great but contrasting new books on the region, both by ‘muzungus’, as whites are known in East Africa. Read More …