How representations of Africa by NGOs impact diaspora community’s identity and engagement with international development
Edward Ademolu, PhD Researcher, Global Development Institute
What role, if anything, do representations of Africa by NGOs have on identity and engagement with International Development, by African diaspora communities?” Do they, readily accept development representations as visual documentaries upholding authoritative truths about Africa and communities therein? Are these popular images in sync with their own personal interpretations and views of their countries of heritage? Or do they simply reflect more popular understandings of and by ‘the British public’ within which African diaspora are implicated? As such, all these speculative questions and theoretical possibilities necessarily form and undergird the foundation upon which my research is situated.
Seeing and Being Development’s ‘Other’: Representations of Africa and Diaspora Audiences
Edward Ademolu, PhD Researcher, Global Development Institute
As a young child in the 1990s my introduction to international development was through watching Comic Relief’s performative biennial telethon ‘Red Nose Day’. This high-profile event armed with prosthetic noses, mainstream contemporary music, and a slew of largely-white celebrities from film and the pop world fronting carefully-curated episodes of black and brown suffering, opened my eyes to distant poverty. While Comic Relief telethons raise, as they always do, millions of sympathy-laden donations from well-entertained audiences, my lasting impressions of this programme would always be of a vast horde of shaven-headed, undifferentiated masses smiling and waving enthusiastically at the documentary-makers camera. I distinctly remember feeling slightly perplexed about why there were so many brown children with no shoes, soiled Disney-branded t-shirts and who had seemingly full stomachs held by very slim frames.
Podcast: Studying African Farmer-led Irrigation with Phil Woodhouse and Dan Brockington
Professor Phil Woodhouse and Professor Dan Brockington discuss their research project Studying African Farmer Led Irrigation. The project brings together social science researchers from the UK and irrigation scientists from the Netherlands to work with African researchers in Mozambique and Tanzania.
For more on Phil Woodhouse:
For more on Dan Brockington:
For more on Studying African Farmer-led Irrigation:
- Studying African Farmer-led Irrigation
- Policy Brief: Farmer-led irrigation development and investment strategies for food security, growth and employment in Africa.
- African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment? Philip Woodhouse, Gert Jan Veldwisch, Jean-Philippe Venot, Dan Brockington, Hans Komakech & Ângela Manjichi.
You can also find this and other episodes on:
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole
Has the One Belt One Road Initiative built an inroad into global trade?
Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute
In 2013 President Xi Jin Ping announced to the world China’s One Belt One Road Initiative. The Initiative set to change the landscape of global trade in this century through strategic infrastructure investments, recasting the past Silk Road and moulding a new Maritime Silk Road. Much is not known about the Initiative, including which other countries are involved in the six major economic corridors: the China–Mongolia–Russia corridor, the new Eurasian Land Bridge, the China–Central Asia–West Asia corridor, the China–Indochina Peninsula corridor, the China–Pakistan corridor, and the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar corridor. So far information garnered by observers, including the World Bank, listed 60 countries in the last five years. read more…
DSA2018 at the Global Development Institute
We were delighted to host the 2018 Development Studies Association Annual Conference at The University of Manchester, focused on global inequalities, a theme which is one of the University’s five research beacons.
Development Studies has a long tradition at Manchester, with 2018 marking our 60th anniversary as a University department. 2018 is also the 40th anniversary of the Development Studies Association and ahead of the conference, we produced a short documentary celebrating these milestones. read more…
Corruption and innovation in European regions: building on the shoulders of giants
Corruption or poor quality governance is inimical to wealth creation. Corruption imposes disincentives to economic activity via two channels. First, a corrupt government is unattractive to people outside its pool of cronies and connections (“crons & cons”), prohibiting outside talents to replenish the governance structure. Second, it imposes disincentives to essentially risky innovative activities (bringing new products or services to the market cf Schumpeter 1942). The risk for the inventor is initially set by an unfair condition put in place to the advantage of the pool of crons and cons (e.g. licences that prioritise them and not awarded on merit). Also inventors are under a shadow of threat: extraction of their innovation rewards as arbitrary rents. Thus would be inventors shrink. A variant of Acemoglu-Robinson hypothesis follows i.e. corruption hinders technological innovation.
Call for papers – Public Service Ethics, Values and Spirituality
Call for Papers: Public Service Ethics, Values and Spirituality: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing and Transitional Countries
Special issue in: Public Administration and Development (PAD)
Special Issue Guest Editors
Dr Farhad Hossain (Corresponding Editor), The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Dr Anthony Sumnaya Kumasey, University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana
Dr Christopher J. Rees, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Dr Aminu Mamman, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Gender and environmental relations in the disposal of menstrual hygiene products
By Mariana Lopez, PhD researcher, Global Development Institute
A recent study in rural Jharkhand, India found that 17% of the women dumped their sanitary pads in the same pond where they bathe. “If you search the bottom of the lake, you will find the whole bed covered with napkins.”
Research has been conducted on various dimensions of menstrual hygiene, including: the origins of menstrual taboos; health issues associated with tampons; the effects of accessibility to sanitary products on girls’ education, hygiene and rights and the dynamics behind the advertisements of menstrual hygiene products. However, an aspect that remains understudied are the effects that these products have on the environment and on the livelihoods of waste pickers.
DSA2018: Development, global inequalities, and the long histories of social injustice: meeting Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff ahead of the DSA 2018 Conference
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
By Dr Chris Lyon, Research Associate
Shortly before being removed in a process widely considered to be a coup, and which was quietly but effectively supported by the United States, a left-leaning President of Brazil passionately denounced the agents of the coup thus: “The democracy they seek is the democracy of privilege, the democracy of intolerance and hatred […] It is the democracy of the national and international monopolies, a democracy that can fight against the people”.
DSA2018: Welcome to the Development Studies Association conference
Welcome from the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester
We are very pleased and honoured to welcome you all to the 2018 Development Studies Association Annual Conference here at The University of Manchester. We are delighted to host this conference focused on global inequalities, a theme which is one of five research beacons of The University of Manchester. Development studies has a long tradition at Manchester, with 2018 marking our 60th anniversary as a university department. We have recently combined the strengths of our Institute for Development Policy and Management and Brooks World Poverty Institute to form the Global Development Institute as part of the university’s continued commitment to and promotion of development studies. We are pleased to continue our long and productive relationship with the Development Studies Association in a year in which it also celebrates an anniversary – 40 years. read more…