
GDI Lecture: Forced labour in global agricultural supply chains with Genevieve Le Baron
Listen or watch Professor Genevieve Le Baron, Co-Director, Sheffield Political Economy Research Intitute (SPERI), The University of Sheffield, discuss the business of forced labour in global agricultural supply chains

Exploring the UK’s NGO sector
Chris Jordan, Communications and Impact Manager
[Visit the NGO explorer site here]
After setting out to better understand the UK’s development NGO sector, Dan Brockington and Nicola Banks soon realised that pulling together the data on thousands of charities would be a huge challenge.
After heroic amounts of filtering and crunching data, their research produced some fascinating insights into the health of the sector as a whole. While working closely with a range of charities, the researchers soon realised there was a real desire (particularly on the part of smaller NGOs and those based outside of London) to access similar information and connect with their counterparts. read more…

Research focus: migration in Africa with Oliver Bakewell
Oliver Bakewell focuses on the intersections between migration and mobility and processes of development and change, with an empirical focus on migration within Africa.
In this short video, he talks about how academics research can challenge and inform policy and the major research projects he’s working on. read more…

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…