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Aid and development links: Zuckerberg’s billions, the sweatshop fallacy, aid insurance and more

How development professionals think Mark Zuckerberg should direct his charity dollars, the latest foreign aid stats and sweatshops: a road to nowhere.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s developer conference in San Jose last month (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s developer conference in San Jose last month (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Published 1 May 2017   Follow @jonathan_pryke

  • The OECD has released the official numbers for foreign aid flows in 2016. Total aid has increased 9% from 2015 to $US142 billion, but critics argue that much of this increase is staying at home to pay for the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe.
     
  • Meanwhile global remittances to developing countries have declined for the second year in a row by about 2.4% in 2016. Remittances still stand at $429 billion, three times that of foreign aid flows.
     
  • Terence Wood discusses in these two blog posts the aid legacy of Murray McCully’s time as New Zealand’s foreign minister as he steps down from the job today.
     
  • Michael Hobbes asked 40 development professionals how Mark Zuckerberg should spend the $45 billion he has pledged to charity.
     
  • A recent op-ed in the New York Times from Christopher Blattman and Stefan Dercon argues that, based on their recent research, sweatshops are actually not the pathway out of poverty many have touted them to be.
     
  • The Guardian has launched a new website focusing on inequality, supported by the Ford Foundation.
     
  • Owen Barder discusses how insurance can radically improve emergency aid by making responses more timely and predictable.
     
  • The Centre for Global Development is putting together a series of US Foreign Assistance Agency Briefs. No doubt targeted towards the new Administration, they are also useful for those on the outside trying to understand the complicated US aid network.
     
  • Finally, on a bit of a tangent, the LSE impact blog discusses a new, and very useful, Chrome plugin Unpaywall which helps you get around journal paywalls wherever legally possible.


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