Fortnightly links: Trump, education, tons of aid, donated shoes, and more

The ODI’s Alex Their offers his take on what a Trump presidency might mean for aid. And other ODI experts offer their views on President-elect Trump’s potential impact on other development issues (you have to press the plus buttons to see them). Meanwhile, Elizabeth Stuart offers an interesting argument: that Trump’s election illustrates the importance of the SDGs.

On the subject of the SDGs, they are the topic of the 2017 conference of the Australia-New Zealand Society of Ecological Economics. The conference webpage is here. The conference runs from 9-13 January 2017.

In the London Review of Books Owen Bennett-Jones offers a good primer on the intertwined histories, and ideological differences, of ISIS and al-Qaida.

David Evans blogs on the failure and then partial success of attempts to scale-up education interventions in India. (The paper his blog is based on is here.)

On AidWorks, Emily Troutman provides a sharp analysis of common problems with aid and humanitarian organizations’ use of “data” and “evidence-based” aid in their reporting and social media.

The Economist reports on shoe donation projects, such as that run by TOMS, and looks at recent studies that appear to show their positive impacts, if any, are very modest. If you want to see (at least some of) the studies in question, the webpage of the researcher, Bruce Wydick, is here. There’s another interesting paper on his site, which points to very clear benefits from providing disabled people with wheelchairs in Addis Ababa.

Lastly, if you feel you’ve done enough reading this week and are craving some audiovisual content instead, check out this short (20 minute) documentary on the connections between climate change and child marriage in Bangladesh.

image_pdfDownload PDF

Terence Wood

Terence Wood is a research fellow at the Development Policy Centre. His research focuses on political governance in Western Melanesia, and Australian and New Zealand aid.

Camilla Burkot

Camilla Burkot was a Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre, and Editor of the Devpolicy Blog, from 2015 to 2017. She has a background in social anthropology and holds a Master of Public Health from Columbia University, and has field experience in Eastern and Southern Africa, and PNG. She now works for the Burnet Institute.

Leave a Comment