Ryan C Briggs

Fall classes have started again so my time on the DC metro has increased greatly. The commuting has meant that I’ve been blowing through podcasts at an alarming rate, and I’ve come across a few that are worth sharing. These links are to the webpages of the podcasts, but all of them can be found in iTunes as well.

Podcasts that are consistently good:

• Development Drums, a podcast by Owen Barder on a wide variety of development issues. This is a must listen.
• Africa today, BBC’s Monday to Friday summary of news about the continent.

One-off podcasts:

• Even if you aren’t into economics, you should still listen to the Econ talk interview with Paul Collier about his recent book (see Chris Blattman talk about it here).
• If you are into economics, then Econ Talk is great. I particularly enjoyed this interview with Peter Blair Henry on the relative importance of institutions and policies on growth.
• Binyavanga Wainaina gave an interview to American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith on the ethics of aid (see Texas in Africa talk about it here).
• [update: Sep 9, 2009] Terrence, pointed out that LSE’s Public Lectures and Events podcasts are often development related. I enjoyed Amartya Sen’s talk on The Idea of Justice.

Tangentially related video podcasts:

• Tea with the Economist is not always about development but is consistently good. Of particular interest will be this interview with Michela Wrong.
• TVO’s Big Ideas (audio or video) is also not about development but is often interesting. Readers might find Margaret MacMillan’s talk on her book Paris 1919 and Niall Ferguson’s talk on his book Empire particularly interesting (and controversial, in the case of Ferguson).
• Finally, CSIS has occasionally interesting audio and video podcasts on Africa, global health, and trade and economics, among other topics.

Something that caught my attention at the NSI aid conference was that China does not publish its foreign aid budget. I knew that China wasn’t part of the OECD DAC, didn’t follow the Paris Declaration, and that it had a reputation for not sharing information, but I still found this a little shocking.

Unofficial reports have placed China’s Pacific aid budget at around 300 million USD, including concessional loans. It was apparently only 33 million in 2005. That is a lot of invisible money floating around just the Pacific. Other concerns with China’s aid is that they seem to have a tendency to spend money on the kind of infrastructure projects that failed miserably in the 1950s—Foreign Policy has an article claiming that China spent between 2 and 3 billion USD in Africa on infrastructure alone over the last two years—and they tend to ship in their own labour.

The obvious question is what should be done about this, if anything. What I am more interested in knowing is who is getting this money and why are they taking it. Are the offers from the West really less competitive than the Chinese offers? How can the West close this gap while still maintaining good aid policies?

I was hoping to dig into this more, but the conference (the inspiration for the post) is fast receding into history and I should get this out there now. I would love to hear your thoughts on China’s aid program on twitter.