- The Economist reports on the growing role of private contractors in the aid sector, citing many cases from Australia. Senate Estimates recently revealed that close to 20% of Australia’s aid program is now being delivered by ten contractors.
- Michael Kleinman’s article in the Guardian arguing that the obsession of measuring impact is detrimental to development has raised both ire and support from great swathes of the development community.
- The Economist has a fascinating piece on why the census in Nigeria has been consistently unable to determine the size of its population.
- A new paper in the American Economic Review shows that natural resources explains up to a quarter of the average level of violence across African countries between 1997 and 2010.
- A new website, VoxDev.org, has been created to try to make development research more easily accessible. It already has contributions from some big-name development academics.
- Outgoing WHO Director-General Margaret Chan looks back on her decade-long tenure leading the organisation, which she leaves significantly weakened.
- Terence Wood struggles for answers as to why Australia and New Zealand have become so stingy with their aid budgets.
Aid and development links: Contractors, WHO leadership, aid budgets and more
The role of private contractors in the aid sector, how impact-measuring affects development, the link between resources and violence, and more.
Outgoing WHO Director-General Margaret Chan speaking at a conference at the International Telecommunication Union in Switzerland, June 2017 (Photo: Flickr/ITU)
Published 26 Jun 2017
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