CGD apologizes; agonizing and proverbs on aid; UN April Fool; what the G20 should do on food prices; climate and populism; can Africa do industrial policy? Links I liked

Last Friday I whinged about CGD’s attacks on Oxfam’s health research, Now comes this graceful (and public) response. ‘I deeply apologize to Oxfam and its partners and to our readers for the tone of my post. I should have dialed way back on the snark. Mea culpa.’ Kudos to Amanda Glassman for that. She doesn’t give on inch on the issues, so there will doubtless be disagreements in the future, but at least now we can have the argument without the stupid stuff. To be continued……

Aid slot: 10 Aid proverbs from Ben Ramalingam and Claire Melamed agonizes intelligently over the future of aid.

An April Fool’s Day effort from Aid Watch. A bit limp, but at least they tried – I just couldn’t face it – and ‘Josette Sheeran, the “World Food Program Executive Director, who is really a heavily tattooed computer hacker from Boulder’ got a laugh.

A confidential draft report from leading international agencies has urged G-20 governments “immediately to strengthen” global rules on agricultural import and export restrictions as well as subsidies that distort production (eg on biofuels), discourage supply or constrain international trade. [h/t Bert Maerten]

“Given that the route to a global climate deal that many elites thought would be the shortest and easiest has now turned out to be an illusion, a clearer-eyed assessment of the forces of populism in the major actors is not only useful but essential. Populists may well buy into national competition for global leadership in emerging low carbon industries in a way that they will never do for an elite concern about climate.” Matthew Lockwood on Political Climate is consistently fascinating

Can African governments do industrial policy? Dani Rodrik thinks so.