I just finished reading Ed Carr‘s excellent book Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future. The book is anchored in Carr’s field research in Dominase and Ponkrum, two villages in central Ghana, over the span of a decade. From there he goes up to the global level, and back again to all the … Continue reading
Our tools for identifying cause-and-effect in the world are matched by a particular view of how causality works. Ideas from complexity theory are forcing us to update our views on causality, so our tools must be updated as well. Before getting to the updates, I want to start with some of the tools used under a … Continue reading
Last week I attended a seminar given by Lant Pritchett at the Center for Global Development where he discussed his new working paper (co-authored with Salimah Samji and Jeffrey Hammer), “It’s all about MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning (‘e’) to Crawl the Design Space.” Thoughts and ideas have been bouncing around in my mind since, so … Continue reading
How do you make decisions and manage resources in the face of complexity? It’s a tough nut to crack. Owen Barder recently wrote several blog posts on the implications of complexity theory for development. The whole series is highly recommended reading. I could write several more posts just highlighting all the great insights there, but instead I’m … Continue reading
Whenever I start a new job, I learn how to plan all over again. I’m not talking about big, strategic planning at the programmatic or organizational level, but rather the daily/weekly/maybe-monthly planning we each do individually to ensure that our own work is on track. I re-learn planning with every new position because the kind … Continue reading
I’m back in Nairobi and catching my breath this weekend. For the past three weeks, I’ve been visiting our regional offices throughout Kenya. My travels took me from the border with Uganda to the coast of the Indian Ocean, and from those regional offices I’ve traveled to a few of the surrounding areas. The standard way … Continue reading
I resisted. I really tried. But here I am anyway. Writing about this campaign. If you’re on Facebook or other social media, you don’t need me to include the video itself, since it’s popping up everywhere. But this post won’t make much sense without it, so here it is. Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012″ video If you … Continue reading
Picture an urban slum in a developing country. Walk around a bit. Think about what’s missing. We can move from the concrete up to the more abstract: there’s little in the way of pavement, proper drainage, government services, employment opportunities, secure property rights. It’s easy for outsiders to conclude that there are massive needs. There must be … Continue reading
A month ago, the Coalition of International Development Companies (CIDC) sent an email to my Find What Works email address.* I can only assume they want me to blog about it. The email itself was pretty straightforward: 50 companies (including the big names like DAI, Chemonics, MSI, etc.) had formed a new coalition to advocate … Continue reading
A recent set of essays in the Boston Review looks at the role of behavioral economics in development. The collection gives a good introduction to the impact of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on development thinking in recent years. The starting essay comes from Rachel Glennerster and Michael Kramer, with a series of responses and criticisms from … Continue reading
Last week, I posted on this blog with my brief response to Kristof’s DIY aid article. On Tuesday, I posted a longer version on Foreign Policy’s blog. Since then, it’s been commented on, summarized, and re-tweeted by various people — including a tweet from Kristof. My argument clearly resonated with some people. I appreciate the … Continue reading
