Facilitating Systemic Change: PEPFAR and Healthcare in Ethiopia

Academics tend to focus on the negatives in international development, not giving as much attention and space to reflect on what has worked well. I previously wrote about a small-scale agricultural project. Here is a brief overview of a large-scale, long-term project that facilitated systemic change: The same year that I first arrived in Ethiopia, in […]

Tags: #Ethiopia #Healthcare #HIV/AIDS #PEPFAR #Systematic Change

Viewing Complexity Through Life Histories

Thinking about people and objects as components in interconnected, non-linear and dynamic systems, rather than as compartmentalized and independent actors, began to take shape during the early 1900s with work by the biologist Von Bertalanffy. Throughout the last century, the systems approach was applied in a wide range of areas of inquiry, and has been used […]

Tags: #complex adaptive system #Complexity #Dynamic systems #Life History #Ramalingam

Mapping coups d’etat in sub-Saharan Africa

Patrick McGowan analyzed planned, attempted, successful and failed coups d’etat in sub-Saharan African states from 1956-2001. Political instability during this period was much higher than other regions of the world, negatively affecting economic growth and human development. McGowan finds that the rate of success of attempted coups was higher than 40%, with an increase of attempts following a successful […]

Tags: #Coup d'etat #Instability #Post-colonialism #sub-Saharan Africa

One of the Most Effective Aid Projects (Agriculture)

Many individuals and organizations suggest that selecting and implementing highly effective international development projects is straightforward. My experience working in North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia over the last twelve years is that it is far more complex. When projects are smaller-scale, some of the most effective international development projects I have seen are […]

Tags: #Agriculture #Effective aid #International development #Irrigation #Thinking Outside the Box

Top Posts from 2015

Posts with the most page views in 2015: 1. International Development Essential Reading (Books) 2. Conducting Research in Ethiopia 3. Advice for Conducting Household Surveys 4. Want to Volunteer Overseas and Don’t Know Where to Start? 5. PhD Reality Check

Land’s End (2014)

Tania Murray Li, professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, published Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier in 2014. If you are interested in ideas put forward by James C. Scott, such as his Weapons of the Weak or Seeing Like a State, Li provides a number of challenges and alternative conclusions. In […]

Tags: #coercion and control #Ethnography #invisibilization #Tania Murray Li #Tarmac Bias