The boy who harnessed the wind

Great TED.com talk by William Kamkwamba from Malawi on building a windmill for his family when he was 14. Wired article here and William’s blog here.

Let them keep their millions: should ‘development’ be refused in Madagascar?

Rio Tinto has invested 1.2 billion USD to implement a mineral sands project in southeastern Madagascar, in what is both a global biodiversity hotspot and one of Madagascar’s poorest and more isolated regions.

Africa up for grabs?

There has been a lot of interest in African land deals in the past few weeks. Amy Glass raised the case of Madagascar on this blog, and Gwynne Dyer in a syndicated article calls it a ‘neo-colonialist land grab’ noting the ‘new’ colonists now include a new set of powers including China India, South Korea and the Arab Gulf States. The scale of foreign companies entering the Africa land market is huge, and while all of these deals may not go through, the implications of the some that do go ahead have enormous implications for peasant agriculture on the continent.

Addressing HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence

The Research School of Humanities presented the Work-in-Progress Seminar Series on 3rd April. Professor Rosemary Jolly, Department of English, IPPH & SARC, Queen’s University spoke on “Implicit Lies, Stigma, and Silence: the humanities’ crucial contribution to addressing HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence effectively’.

Professor Jolly says, “This paper developed out of my work on highly stigmatized issues, such as gender-based violence and STI co-infection, within the context of deeply impoverished communities affected by histories of compounded trauma and structural oppression in the form of colonialism and racism. It attempts to outline what critical theory drawn from the humanities can bring to our understanding of the stigmatized subject of HIV/GBV.”
A recording of the audio can be be downloaded here.

‘Zero Tolerance’ with exceptions?: The UN and NGO response to peacekeeping

The ANU Gender, Sexuality and Culture Seminar Series. Gabrielle Simm (PhD Candidate) on “‘Zero Tolerance’ with exceptions?: The UN and NGO response to peacekeeping“. 1.00 – 2.30pm, Monday 6 April 2009, Seminar Room C, Top Floor, RSPAS Coombs Building.

The humanities’ contribution to addressing HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence

The Research School of Humanities presents the Work-in-Progress Seminar Series. Professor Rosemary Jolly, Department of English, IPPH & SARC, Queen’s University, ‘On Implicit Lies, Stigma, and Silence: the humanities’ crucial contribution to addressing HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence effectively‘. 1- 2.30 pm, Friday 3rd April, Theatrette, Old Canberra House.

Commentary on Dambisa Moyo’s book ‘Dead Aid’

Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid has received a lot of publicity over the last month and joins a long list of popular books attacking aid programs, and those organisations and groups that deliver it. This book is by an economist who has spent most of her working life with Goldmann Sachs the investment advisory service, and before that the World Bank. I emphasise that point as most of the commentary highlights her Zambian heritage, and it is used to give her more credibility than the many middle age white males who comment on aid to Africa – and I readily admit falling into that category. Of course there are also many black voices who comment on the aid policies to Africa but take a different line, and we can think of Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, or former UN Supremo Kofi Annan, all of whom have lived and worked in Africa; or the Kenyan lawyer Binaifer Nowrojee who is a member of the Coalition for Women’s Human Rights in Conflict Situations, and writes extensively on gender and conflict in Africa contexts.

The line Ms Moyo takes is a familiar one, and that is the debt crisis in Africa is of Africa’s own doing and that ‘aid’ makes things worse. What is interesting is that the book comes out at the time the world is facing by far the worst global recession since the 1930s, and the solutions Ms Moyo is suggesting for Africa, are now generally been agreed as been part of the cause of the current crisis: that is, access to unfettered global exchange markets, and poor credit regulations – particularly in the US. One can argue that Goldman Sachs is probably more to do the problem than the solution.

That aside, this book’s rather passionate defence of the neoliberal approaches to development is rather selective in its view of aid and development. While it readily accepts the role of the re-building of Europe after the war and cites the Marshall Plan as a very positive example, Ms Moyo seems to be less supportive of the aid successes in the developing world of the last sixty years, and the role it had in many countries, some of which are in Africa. She also suggests that the Asian successes are to do with ‘free market policies’ and ‘outward orientation’. While we can agree with an outward orientation, one is hard pressed to find any Asian country, successful or otherwise, that practices free market policies. Much of the success is to do with a high level of government (and dare I say it ‘aid’) investment in strategic areas, and in planning. None of this is mentioned in Ms Moyo’s book. [...]

A Program Planners’ Guide to Consultative Research for Improving Young Child Feeding

K. Dickin and M. Griffiths, 1997. Designing by Dialogue. A Program Planners’ Guide to Consultative Research for Improving Young Child Feeding, Support Analysis and Research in Africa project.
According to what the authors write in the introduction, this manual aims ‘to give you tools to design, carry out, and analyse the results of formative, consultative research [...]

Green Jobs for the Poor

Lieuw-Kie-Song, 2009, Green Jobs for the Poor: a public employment approach, UNDP
Green jobs are jobs beneficial to the environment, such as those aimed at reducing carbon emissions or at realising alternative sources of energy use. In this paper the author discusses the utility of such green jobs to address environmental concerns and create jobs for [...]