A global team of researchers analyzed 34 studies of unconditional cash-transfer programs administered in low- and middle-income countries.
A woman sorts through some maize kernels received as part of a food donation amid a devastating drought in Marsabit County, Kenya.
Photo by Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images
Building business skills to improve livelihoods is increasingly recognised as bringing value to the fight against poverty. But it can also set up identity conflict and community-level tension.
Protests against the coup in Myanmar, an example of ‘democratic backsliding’ that is growing more prevelent worldwide.
STR/EPA-EFE
How can democratic nations help fledgling democracies and others struggling against the tide of autocrats?
Zimbabwe leaders welcome Chinese COVID-19 experts at the Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare on May 11, 2020.
Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images
China is providing masks, vaccines, medical equipment and personnel to African countries ignored by the U.S. in recent years, positioning itself as an essential partner to the region.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade on display in Montgomery, Alabama.
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.
Until now the U.S. hasn’t coordinated its disaster aid and development spending.
Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images
The Trump White House questioned the value of foreign aid and neglected policies related to helping low-income countries. But US aid had already needed improvement.
African countries have an opportunity to reduce poverty with new policies.
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The mere presence of NGOs, no matter their size or aims, inadvertently reduced the legitimacy of local village headmen.
Lone Sharks supporter Scott Morrison gives out Wallabies rugby jerseys to Pacific Islands leaders after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Port Moresby. There will be fewer hand-outs in future.
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
The strength of Australian aid is that it has been fully grant-based. Offering Pacific nations debt-based development financing instead is no way to win friends.
Many people in South Sudan live in camps for the internally displaced after years of war.
AP Photo/Sam Mednick
Without change, the trajectory of growth and development in the world will remain consistent with that of the past 80 years.
Malian migrant Mamoudou Gassama met French president Emmanuel Macron on May 22, 2018. He was officially given French citizenship soon after.
Thibault Camus/AFP
Power imbalances and inequality lie at the heart of the international development industry. But the Oxfam scandal shows that organisations mustn’t succumb to it.
Getting aid to those who need it in Kenya.
Oxfam International/flickr.com
Even as incomes are squeezed, the British public continues to give more money to international NGOs than anyone else.
Women’s NGOs work hard to improve the lives of women in the developing world, including in countries like India and Tanzania. But then they’re often cut out from the process. This photo was taken in the remote village of Uzi on Zanzibar Island in Tanzania in April 2016.
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NGOs (non-government organizations) run by women in India and Tanzania fuel the success of development projects, but the women are too easily marginalized once the projects get off the ground.
When the DfID minister held secret meetings with government officials while on holiday, she seems to have forgotten about her quest to stamp out dodgy dealings in development spending.
Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, and Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), SOAS, University of London