Tag: international development
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How Drones are changing Africa
Inventors and entrepreneurs across Africa are using Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to tackle some of the ‘development problems’ which the continent faces. Combating poaching, tracking illegal shipping activities, monitoring oil spills and adding value to Safaris. In Nigeria, archaeologists are using drones to map traces of the ancient Yoruba civilization In Sudan, they…
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Where’s Our Aid Money Gone?
UK Development aid intended to maintain stability in Northern Syria has apparently ended up in the hands I Jihadists who abuse human rights. This is according to a recent BBC Panorama documentary, which aired this Monday. The problem seemed to be down to one private UK company who DFID channelled the money through. The programme…
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Different Types of Aid in International Development
Aid refers to any flow of resources from developed countries to the developing world. Aid can come in the form of money, technology, gifts or training, and can either be provided in the form of a grant which does not have to pay back or a loan with interest which does have to be paid…
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Arguments Against Trade as a Strategy for Development
Andre Gunder Frank (1971) argues that the reason trade doesn’t work for poor countries is a legacy of colonialism – before independence, the colonizing power simply took these commodities. After independence, developing societies are often still over-dependent on exporting these primary commodities, which typically have a very low market-value, and rich countries are happy to…
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Defining ‘Development’
International development professionals categorise countries into ‘more’ or ‘less’ developed. This post explores the meanings and origins of these terms, looking at the concepts of first, second and third world, before looking at the criticism that such systems of classification are ethnocentric, western constructions. This post has primarily been written for students studying the Global…
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Crude – The Real Cost of Oil
This documentary is the story of a lawsuit by tens of thousands of Ecuadorans against Chevron over contamination of the Ecuadorean Amazon.The case, worth $27 billion is one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. The Plaintiffs are suing Chevron for damage cause by 30 years of operation in the Amazon between 1960-1990.…
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How to End Poverty in 15 years
In this hour long programme Hans Rosling asks how we can eradicate extreme poverty in 15 years, which is goal number 1.1 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to which 193 nations signed up to in September 2015, in New York. While recognising that relative poverty exists within rich and poor countries…
