Published daily by the Lowy Institute

Aid links: maternal mortality, school uniforms and truancy, more

Alexandre Dayant

Links and stories from the aid and development sector.

School children in Kenya (Photo: SIM USA/Flickr)
School children in Kenya (Photo: SIM USA/Flickr)
Published 18 Jun 2018     Follow @AlexandreDayant
  • Saku Akmeemana and Tobias Haque analyse the good, and bad, of the new report from the LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development, chaired by David Cameron, which looks at factors of instability in developing countries.
     
  • On VoxDev, Dean Karlan, Benjamin N. Roth, and Sendhil Mullainathan summarise their work on debt traps, explaining why street vendors in developing countries who are freed from debt and educated about the benefits of saving still go back to borrowing.
     
  • The maternal mortality rate (MMR) in India is one of the highest in the world. Journalist Amrit Dhillon spoke to Shiban Ganju, a Chicago-based doctor and founder of “Save a Mother”, an NGO that aims to educate rural women about pregnancy, nutrition, and the delivery, immunisation, and care of children. Its impact is impressive.
     
  • Last week, Abu Dhabi allocated Dh11 billion ($4 billion) in development aid for Ethiopia, a funding that will bolster the country’s fiscal and monetary policy, as well as enhance the liquidity and foreign exchange reserves of Ethiopia’s central bank.
     
  • Do free school uniforms help children stay in school? Dave Evans and Mũthoni Ngatia review the evidence for links between school uniforms and children’s education in Kenya, as well as around the world.
     
  • Duncan Green summarises the findings of a paper assessing the impact of Community-Driven Development (CDD) programs. Unfortunately, these don’t seem to be as efficient as expected.
     
  • On the Devpolicy blog, Stephen Howes asks how low Australian aid will go, while Terence Wood looks at how large the New Zealand aid increase actually is.

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