- At a speech delivered at the University of Queensland last week, Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong accused the current government of having “damaged Australia’s reputation as a reliable partner in the region” by cutting the aid budget, and committed to increase development assistance as a percentage of national income if Labor came to power after the next election.
- In this piece, the Shadow Minister for Competition Andrew Leight exposes the importance of remittances for developing countries and states that under a Labor government, the “confusopoly” created by exchange rate mark-up would disappear, thanks to full fee transparency.
- Sarah Hendriks, the director of the Gender Equality program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, demonstrates how digitalisation can help women in the developing world by including them in financial decision-making. She also mentions a McKinsey Global Institute study that estimates that fully incorporating women into the economy would add $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025.
- A tropical cyclone called Idai hit Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, killing hundreds and displacing millions. According to BBC Weather’s Chris Fawkes, “There is a risk of more rain over the next few days for the northern half of Mozambique and southern Malawi.”
- Trang Tran looks at the various ways Belt and Road Initiative countries can manage their investment risks.
- Here is a nice podcast to better understand the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
- Abdi Latif Dahir and Yomi Kazeem explain why democratic elections in Africa have such a strong impact on the continent’s economy.
- Lee Crawfurd offers a one-sentence summary for the 22 papers on global education presented at the SREE conference.
- Photographer Carol Allen-Storey exhibits “Hope for Rwanda”, a series of photos displaying how young unmarried mothers are often forced to live in poverty, unable to find work and shunned by their families and communities.
- Josh Hallwright, program lead for the Australian Humanitarian Partnership for Oxfam Australia, makes the case for Blockchain for development, highlighting the importance of the collaboration between international civil society and the private sector.
Aid links: cyclones, “confusopoly”, collaboration, more
Links and stories from the aid and development sector.
Photo: NASA
Published 20 Mar 2019
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