I am a PhD candidate at American University in Washington, DC. I am interested in state formation and governance in low income countries. My dissertation examines the influence of foreign aid on incumbent advantage in African presidential elections.10 Articles on Aid
The Browser has collected ten interesting and well written articles on foreign aid (apologies in advance for the Browser’s photo of the African kids). I especially recommend Owen Barder’s article on the three narratives that came out of the MDG summit.
The most recent episode of This American Life is about reconstruction in Haiti. It features excellent stories which touch on nearly all of the major problems with foreign aid and development work. Being This American Life, it does this with good humour and clear language. This should be required reading for undergrad development classes.
You can listen here. (click through the donation request page if it appears)
Also, sorry for not posting recently. I was finishing up the remainder of my coursework.
The graph above shows some of data mentioned here broken down by year. As I mentioned the last time I used these stats, articles tagged “Africa” are on the continent and do not include articles on individual countries within Africa. If you are comparing this graph to the one on Somalia keep in mind that the scale of both axes has changed.
“Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking that it is a true one, is likely to be worse off than someone with no map at all; for he will fail to inquire whenever he can, to observe every detail on his way, and to search continuously with all this senses and all his intelligence for indications of where he should go.”
