Tag Archives: Development policy

MDG 5a: An update on maternal mortality

Posted in: Aid Effectiveness, Health | February 12, 2013 at 8:00 am , by Mike Miesen

With two years left, it is highly unlikely that Millennium Development Goal 5a will be met worldwide. In our second post this week on the MDGs, Mike Miesen weighs in with some simple solutions....

Goals are good, but do the MDGs need to be simplified?

Posted in: Aid Effectiveness, Alternatives in development | February 11, 2013 at 4:00 pm , by Scott Weathers

7 comments

This week we present three posts around the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There are eight MDGs that need to be met by 2015. Given the unlikely even that all will be met, Scott Weathers suggests we condense the MDGs into something simpler....

Literacy in Development: the flaws with using literacy rates to inform development policy (part 3)

Posted in: Education | April 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm , by Alex Grey

One comment

In her third post on literacy and development, Alex Grey examines some of the issues associated with using literacy rates as a measurement to inform development policy, and shows how problematic approaches to monitoring literacy can lead to problems on the ground....

Literacy in development: economics and social sciences converge, uneasily (part 1)

Posted in: Education | March 2, 2012 at 11:12 pm , by Alex Grey

4 comments

Literacy is not a set of skills independently learned regardless of social and cultural context, nor is it simply synonymous with schooling. In part 1 of a three-part series, Alex Grey argues that unless ethnographic understandings inform literacy campaigns and other development projects, they are likely to be less successful...

Banking on the poor in China

Posted in: Microfinance | March 10, 2011 at 1:35 pm , by Brendan Rigby

3 comments

Earlier last week, it was announced by the central bank of Bangladesh that the Banker to the Poor, the Father of Microfinance, Professor Muhammad Yunus was being sacked. Professor Yunus and Bangladesh are synonymous with microfinance. And, although the Indian subcontinent accounts for the majority of the world’s MFIs...

1,250 reasons to love the NFL

Posted in: Fundraising | February 16, 2011 at 7:27 pm , by Brendan Rigby

2 comments

World Vision recently announced the names of those communities identified as suitable and in-need recipients for its annual Superbowl t-shirt giveaway. The lucky countries are Zambia, Armenia, Nicaragua, and Romania. This annual development practice has attracted much debate. I do not wish to enter the debate as there are far...

Bricks and mortar (or why Kanye West is right)

Posted in: Education | January 21, 2011 at 7:15 am , by Brendan Rigby

3 comments

Recently, Australian government has allocated some $222 million of its $500 million education aid for Indonesia for the construction of 2,000 secondary schools. This aid package of $500 million represents that largest single allocation by the Australian government to any single country. In this article, Brendan explores aid for education,...

Alternative approaches to nano-innovation and global health equity

Posted in: Technology | December 10, 2010 at 5:25 pm , by Donnie Maclurcan

No comments

Today is World Human Rights Day, a day to celebrate the universal rights afforded to all and a day to remember the widespread inequalities that still exist. Recent advances in nano-innovation signal the potential for big impacts on addressing inequalities in global health from this very, very, very small technology....

Sustainable development in the Australian policy context: a contest of values.

Posted in: Foreign Aid | May 18, 2010 at 12:25 am , by Sam Porter

No comments

We all know that sustainable development is a contestable concept. The origins of this contest go right back to the original Brundtland Report and subsequent Rio Earth Summit, which gave the world a supposedly ‘credible’ new vision of a development ‘pathway’ that could be both socially and ecologically sustainable.[1] This...

Aiding Australia’s Goals

Posted in: Foreign Aid | May 14, 2010 at 12:15 am , by Brendan Rigby

One comment

Joel Negin, Research Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, recently wrote on Australia’s increasing engagement with Africa through its aid program and causal connection to gaining a UN Security Council seat. He states that this assertion by some commentators “just doesn’t ring true”. However, Negin’s position and the...