One of the biggest problems in international development is that health statistics are badly kept in many of the countries with the most to gain. Finally something is being done about it.
There is a way for governments to find out the consensus on global issues such as climate change. But it involves painstaking, complex work, and an end to the adversarial clash of competing ideologies.
Bjorn Lomborg’s “consensus” approach involves ranking global development policies by their ratio of benefit to cost. But this hard-headed economic rationale can actually end up entrenching inequality.
At the dawn of the 21st century, 189 UN member states adopted the Millennium Declaration as the first common framework for promoting global development, committing to eight goals (six covering health and…
The UK has been named the top performer in Europe when it comes to entrepreneurs and fourth in the world, behind the US, Canada and Australia. Indeed, the top ten best performers are dominated by high-income…
Like many aid-dependent countries in the developing world, Malawi cannot balance its books without donor support, which makes up as much as 40% of the national budget. Yet because of the ongoing nightmare…
The geography of knowledge has always been uneven. Some people and places have always been more visible and had more voices than others. But the internet seemed to promise something different: a greater…
Science has often come to the rescue when it comes to the world’s big problems, be it the Green Revolution that helped avoid mass starvation or the small pox vaccine that eradicated the disease. There…
There are few aspirations that almost all of the globe’s human population shares. Good health is one, and I believe healthcare to be a fundamental human right. Illness impedes individuals from supporting…
In the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annual letter, published recently, Bill Gates declared “by 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world”. Pointing to the fact that during the…
Justine Greening, the international development secretary, recently made a speech on how business can contribute to development. Three quarters of it was about the importance of economic growth in developing…
South Africa is not the most comfortable country to live in. Unemployment levels dwarf those in the troubled economies of Europe. The unemployed survive because families redistribute income internally…
The end of the Cold War and the era of “unipolar” US dominance that followed has led many to wonder about the future of international power. Who will rival, or perhaps even replace, the US? At least one…
The G20 has been dominated by Syria, tax reform, and playground infighting among world leaders. But where is the talk of ending hunger, eradicating diseases or cancelling debts? Back in 2005, as the G8…