Hrishipara daily financial diaries: Managing income volatility
The Hrishipara Daily Diary Project tracks the daily money transactions of households in central Bangladesh. This is the third in our series ‘Tracking Transactions, Understanding Lives’, which focuses on individual diarists, creating pictures that give a sense of what these lives are like.
Managing income volatility: Ubaydullah, the brick-breaker
We have been tracking Ubaydullah’s 5-person household since mid-August 2015. His income varies a lot from month to month, so how does he manage such volatility? Chart 1 sets the scene. read more…
Revisiting the ICC indictment against Al Bashir in the wake of the current protest movements in Sudan
Dr Tanja Müller, Reader/Associate Professor in Development Studies, Global Development Institute
Since January 2019, Sudan has seen protests in different parts of the country that quickly moved from anger at worsening economic and social conditions to the demand of regime change and free elections. It was initially met with brute force – often carried out by forces originally created and recruited to deal with rebel movements in Darfur – the war in Darfur in turn a key in the ICC indictment. Even if compared to other protests in the past, the repression was arguably much more measured with, according to Africa Confidential, the death toll well below 100 where previously mass killings of civilians were the response. But then how do we know? Many Sudanese journalists have reportedly been detained, and at least six foreign correspondents in Sudan had their accreditation invoked. read more…
In conversation: Laila Iskander on recycling & informal settlements
In this episode, Diana Mitlin talks to former Egyptian Minister Laila Iskander about recycling and informal settlements in Egypt.
Laila Iskander served as Minister for the Environment and Minister for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements in Egypt. She has worked as a researcher, speaker and consultant with governmental and international agencies as well as with the private sector in the fields of gender, education and development, environment, child labour and governance. Her consultation work encompasses grassroots’ issues and policy matters. She received the Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the ‘Green Nobel’, for her work with the Zabbaleen garbage collectors of Cairo.
Diana Mitlin is Professor of Global Urbanism and Managing Director of the Global Development Institute. read more…
Scaling up participation: conference
Professor Diana Mitlin, Professor of Global Urbanism, Global Development Institute
How can participation be scaled up to make an impact that has relevance at the scale required? What are the challenges that must be tackled in terms of exclusion of those who have the lowest incomes and are the most vulnerable? What is the contribution of the state, and how can a supportive response be catalysed? How significant is devolution and subsidiarity? And how can we shift from the neighbourhood to city-wide interventions, inclusive, multi-sectoral and multi-scalar?
A conference at the University of Manchester on June 12-13 2019 offers a unique insight into these and related challenges. Professors Victoria Beard, Vanessa Watson, Gabriella Carolini and Gianpaolo Baiochhi will debate with NGO experts, Somsook Boonyabancha (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights), Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay (Participatory Research in Asia), Carlos Revilla (ADD, Bolivia) and Jhono Bennett (1to1, South Africa). The experiences of SDI affiliated-social movements from Kenya and Zimbabwe will add the grassroots perspective to the discussions. And their African knowledge will be enhanced by histories of social movements from Rosario in Argentina. read more…
From the Classroom to Cape Town, HRD’s Fieldwork Visits to South Africa
“Welcome to the Mother City” is the slogan that greets you as you make your way through Cape Town International Airport upon arrival. For those of us who have been lucky enough to have travelled there as part of the MSc in Human Resource Development (International Development) programme at the University of Manchester, we can safely say that we have always been very well looked after.
Situated at the southern tip of Africa and beside the impressive Table Mountain, Cape Town has generously hosted HRD students from the university for the last two years as they learn first-hand about some of the workplace realities faced by those running NGOs, local government institutes and departments, consultancy companies, as well as private businesses.
International development’s had its time
Often associated with a North-South binary, the term ‘international development’ seems increasingly inappropriate for encompassing the various actors, processes and major challenges with which our world currently engages. In a new paper in Progress in Human Geography, I argue that global development holds potential as an emerging paradigm better fitted to the early 21st century, but critical attention is required as to what that may involve. read more…
GDI Lecture: Agrarian crises, institutional innovation and gender with Bina Agarwal
Listen or watch Professor Bina Agarwal, Global Development Institute, discuss Agrarian crises, institutional innovation and gender: Can group farming provide an answer? read more…
Debating the new geographies of development: the 2019 Development and Change Forum Issue
Dr Rory Horner and Professor David Hulme
Since 1990 the global map of development has shifted from one of “divergence, big time” to “converging divergence”. This involves some converging in development indicators between North and South in aggregate, alongside divergence or growing inequality within many countries. To better capture the nature of contemporary challenges, this means we need to go beyond the traditional notion of ‘international’ development to consider a different form of ‘global’ development in relation to the whole world.
In a nutshell, this was our argument in an article in Development and Change, prompting the editors to commission 8 critical commentaries by a variety of leading thinkers on development. The whole issue is open access, but here’s our summary of the key questions and issues that were raised. read more…
BAPA+40: Learning from the Global South
One word to describe the current state of multilateralism is “contested”. Within existing international institutions, like the United Nations, debates on global governance reform have been politicised to a point of gridlock. New multilateral institutions, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or the New Development Bank, have been created, but mainly because emerging economies were dissatisfied with their lack of voice in the Bretton Woods institutions. Increased nationalist and populist movements around the world, as well as rivalries among rising powers, have added to these contestations.
Despite these trends, global cooperation has achieved major milestones recently. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change were launched. Since then, countries have translated these frameworks into concrete policies to benefit their people, often in new forms of collaboration across governments and with non-government actors.
Against this background of “contested cooperation”, the global development community meets for the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40) from 20-22 March 2019. This is not another UN conference where developing countries gather to present their demands towards richer countries. Instead, the conference is a celebration of solidarity among developing countries. More than 40 years after a landmark UN conference on the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA), developing countries showcase their achievements in cooperating and learning from each other. read more…
Fieldwork in Cape Town South Africa: our experience Development Informatics group 2019
Jody-kay Jackson (ICTs for Development MSc) & Raghav Mutneja (Management and Information Systems: Change and Development MSc)
Fieldwork is an essential part of the Management and Information Systems: Change and Development and ICTs for Development master’s programs and this year, the students got to visit the lovely city of Cape Town in The Republic of South Africa. The 10-day trip was full of excitement, activities, learning, new experiences and of course, a nice opportunity for all of us to get away from the chilling weather in Manchester. And South Africa greeted us all with nice and warm sunshine. read more…