In Why Nations Fail, Acemoğlu & Robinson argue that institutions matter for development and prosperity.  Economic institutions can be broadly inclusive, leading to sustained economic prosperity, or extractive, enriching elites but doing little for the majority of the population. So far, that is not very new or exciting. A lot of development thinking has focused on institutions for at least 20 years, following the disappointing results of the Washington Consensus. In this book Acemoğlu & Robinson make the key point that these institutions which block development come about and persist because they benefit powerful elites.

Too often we act as if institutions block development because the leaders of those countries don’t know how to make them better: Acemoğlu & Robinson say that they generally persist because the leaders of those countries don’t want to make them better.  As Acemoğlu says in the podcast, “Getting institutions right is not an engineering problem, it is a political problem”.

The podcast is in three broad parts. After the introduction, Acemoğlu & Robinson talk about their view that it is institutions which explain why some nations fail and others succeed, and why this explanation is better than alternative explanations such as geography or culture. Second, they talk abut the idea that institutions which block development tend to persist because of politics. And at the end, they talk about how change happens, and what (if anything) outsiders can do to accelerate and shape it.

Read the transcript of Development Drums 40.

This is the third in a series of three episodes of Development Drums looking at politics and power in development. In Episode 36,  Rakesh Rajani and Martin Tisné discuss accountability and openness. In Episode 37 Duncan Green talks about his book From Poverty to Power.

Links mentioned in the podcast 

Why Nations Fail on Amazon (affiliate link)

Arvind Subramanian’s review of Why Nations Fail

Blog post by Acemoğlu & Robinson about David Cameron’s Golden Thread

Pods in Print: the people who do our transcripts

Bill Gates’s review of Why Nations Fail

Acemoğlu and Robinson response to Gates

Jeff Sachs’s review of Why Nations Fail ($)

Acemoğlu and Robinson response to Sachs

Here are some global development podcasts:

• Development Drums (website | stitcher | iTunes)
• Global Prosperity Wonkcast (website | stitcher | iTunes)
• Guardian Development Podcast (website | iTunes)
• Overseas Development Institute (website) (I can’t find them on iTunes or Stitcher)

Bob Geldof is a singer, songwriter, author, actor and part-time political activist. As lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, Geldof had chart success with Rat Trap and I Don’t Like Mondays. In 1984, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure brought together a group of musicians under the name Band Aid to record a single they wrote together, Do They Know Its Christmas?, which became one of the best-selling singles of all time.  They went on to organise the Live Aid charity concert in 1985, and the Live 8 concert in 2005.

I met Bob Geldof in London to talk about his work fighting poverty in Africa. He talks in this podcast about 8 Miles, a new private equity company which he helped to establish to channel investment into Africa. We also talk about Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8 and the Gleneagles Summit.  He is characteristically robust about suggestions that Band Aid may have helped portray Africa in an negative light, and about allegations that money intended for famine relief was diverted to opposing sides in Ethiopia’s civil war.

In this longer version of the interview Bob reflects on how his own upbringing may have led to him responding as he did to news reports of famine in Ethiopia, and on the planning of Live Aid, Live 8 and Gleneagles. (Everything in the highlights is also in this longer version.)

Read the transcript of the full interview with Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof is a singer, songwriter, author, actor and part-time political activist. As lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, Geldof had chart success with Rat Trap and I Don’t Like Mondays. In 1984, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure brought together a group of musicians under the name Band Aid to record a single they wrote together, Do They Know Its Christmas?, which became one of the best-selling singles of all time.  They went on to organise the Live Aid charity concert in 1985, and the Live 8 concert in 2005.

I met Bob Geldof in London to talk about his work fighting poverty in Africa. He talks in this podcast about 8 Miles, a new private equity company which he helped to establish to channel investment into Africa. We also talk about Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8 and the Gleneagles Summit.  He is characteristically robust about suggestions that Band Aid may have helped portray Africa in an negative light, and about allegations that money intended for famine relief was diverted to opposing sides in Ethiopia’s civil war.

In the longer version of the interview, also available as a Development Drums podcast, Bob reflects on how his own upbringing may have led to him responding as he did to news reports of famine in Ethiopia, and on the planning of Live Aid, Live 8 and Gleneagles. (Everything in the highlights is also in the longer version.)

Read the transcript of the full interview with Bob Geldof

From Poverty to Power argues that it requires a radical redistribution of power, opportunities, and assets to break the cycle of poverty and inequality and to give poor people power over their own destinies.  According to Duncan Green, the forces driving this transformation are active citizens and effective states. Active citizens are important because people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny, fighting for rights and justice in their own society, and holding states and the private sector to account. Effective states are important because history shows that no country has prospered without a state structure than can actively manage the development process.

In this podcast Duncan Green talks about what he means by an effective state and by active citizens; whether there is a tension between them, and the scope and limitations for outsiders to try to accelerate and shape the change process.

Download the transcript.

Rakesh Rajani is a Tanzanian civil society leader who currently leads Twaweza (meaning ‘we can make it happen’ in Swahili), a 10-year initiative to enhance access to information, citizen agency, and public accountability in East Africa. Until the end of 2007 he served as the founding Executive Director of HakiElimu, an independent organization that promotes citizen engagement in education in Tanzania. He advises/serves on several boards, including Revenue Watch International, Aidspan (a watchdog of the Global Fund), the International Budget Partnership (IBP), ONE, the Foundation for Civil Society in Tanzania (FCS), and theHewlett/Gates Foundations initiative on Quality Education in Developing Countries (QEDC).

Martin Tisné is As director of policy at Omidyar Network. Before that, he director of the Transparency and Accountability Initiative where he helped found the Open Government Partnership. Previously, Martin founded the aid transparency campaign Publish What You Fund, helped launch Integrity Watch Afghanistan, and was a founding staff member at Tiri.

This is the first of three episodes of Development Drums which look at the relationship between effective and accountable states, active citizenship and development.

Download the transcript.

Download transcript (pdf)

In the first section, Diane shares her thoughts on economic growth as a satisfactory goal for economic and social policy, and discusses the measure of Gross Domestic Product in relation to indicators of happiness and welfare.

In addressing the challenges of economic growth, Diane highlights the need for a measure of wealth that transcends money and natural infrastructure to factor in human capital, environmental capital and natural resources.  Diane argues for going ‘back to basics’ on GDP, and introducing systematic asset measurement to monitor and control long-term change and assess how much is taken from future generations.

Diane explains the implications of, and offers solutions to, the ‘crisis of capitalism’: the financial crisis; the underlying problem of public debt and the structure of the welfare system; inequality and the loss of trust and social capital; and the lack of customer-focused financial innovation. Diane explains these challenges in relation to the related ‘crisis of governance’ that enables them to persist.

In the last section Diane discusses her ‘manifesto for enough’ in relation to how it addresses the challenges discussed earlier, along with how much it leaves unresolved.

Running time 1 hour and 7 minutes; size 44.5 Mb.

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This is a special edition of Development Drums. Instead of interviewing a guest, as normal, we bring you a presentation on Complexity and Development by Owen Barder.

This is the audio-only version of an online presentation with slides, which is available from the Center for Global Development.

You can also download the slides and full transcript.

In this presentation, adapted from his Kapuściński Lecture of May 2012, Owen Barder explores the implications of complexity theory for development policy. He explains how traditional economic models have tried and failed to understand why some countries have managed to improve living standards while other countries have not. Drawing on ideas about complex adaptive systems developed in in physics and biology, he argues that development is a property of a system, not the sum of what happen   s to the people within it.

This view of development has important policy implications for policy-makers who want to bring about faster development in their own country, or to help other countries to make faster progress.  The presentation finishes with seven implications for development policy.

This Development Drums podcast is just the audio, for those who want to listen to the presentation in the gym or during their commute. If you would rather see the full presentation including slides, you can do so on the CGD website.

Size: 41.5 Mb

This episode broadly focuses on two different views of why we might be interested in women in development: the first based on instrumental reasons (what can women and girls do for development) and the second on more structural and contextual reasons (what development can do for women and girls).

Our guests are Andrea Cornwall of the Institute of Development Studies and Prue Clarke of New Narratives.

Andrea Cornwall talks of ‘empowerment-lite’: the view that small-scale interventions often provide a palliative without addressing the structural causes of inequitable power relations; that they often tackle symptoms but not underlying causes of power imbalance.  She argues that a focus on ‘results’ tends to emphasize instrumental interventions and does not give
enough priority to interventions which help bring about changes in power dynamics.

Prue draws on her experience in working with women journalists in Africa to give examples of how the right small-scale instrumental interventions can change the political context and tackle causes of imbalance, focusing on stories that relate to women and children such as high teen pregnancy, unsafe abortion and female genital cutting.

On Friday the Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will decide who will be the Bank’s next President.

Today we are publishing interviews with four of the candidates. In September 2009, the leaders of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh called for the “the heads and senior leadership of all international institutions [to] be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based process.” Despite this commitment, over last few months European Ministers have been horse-trading behind closed doors to try to get one of their nationals into a number of jobs which are up for grabs: as well as the Presidency of the EBRD, Ministers have to find a new Chair of the Eurogroup, someone to head the Eurozone’s permanent bail-out fund, and a new member of the board of the European Central Bank. But European Ministers have not been able to reach agreement, so for the first time ever the EBRD Governors have not been presented with a fait accompli. Five candidates will be in London this Thursday to be interviewed for the role, and the Governors are expected to make a decision by the end of the week. At the Center for Global Development we believe this appointment should not be based on nationality, in some gigantic trade-off between unrelated institutions, but on the basis of merit and substance.  We hope to make our own modest contribution to this by offering a public forum for the candidates to discuss their vision for the future of the EBRD. Over the last couple of days I interviewed the four candidates who accepted our offer. We’ve put the interviews together in a Development Drums podcast. You can listen to this online, or download the podcast to your MP3 player, either from the Development Drums website or free in iTunes.  We will also be publishing a transcript of the interviews.

In this interview, Toby firstly talks about consequentialism and the implications for development, with particular focus on cost-effectiveness. Secondly, Toby explains his personal decision to donate a substantial proportion of his income to the developing world, and shares with us the factors that guide his choice of recipients.

Development Drums is hosted by Owen Barder and produced by Anna Scott at the Center for Global Development.

Running time  1 hour and 8 minutes; size 25.8Mb.

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In this interview, Tim talks about the implications for development of his idea that successful complex systems emerge from a process of trial and error.

Development Drums is hosted by Owen Barder and produced by Anna Scott at the Center for Global Development.

Running time 56 minutes; size 40.2Mb.

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Tony Blair at the Center for Global Development

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair talks about his Africa Governance Initiative which aims to improve governance in Africa.  He talks about his views on leadership and governance in Africa, and more broadly about UK attitudes to development, the role of the UK Department for International Development, liberal interventionism, and his own future.

If you are interested in international development, you may also like these other podcasts:

• Global Prosperity Wonkcast from the Center for Global Development
• The Guardian Focus Podcast 

Running time 33 minutes; size 21.1 Mb.

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Running time 1 hour 1 minute; size: 29.6 Mb.

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My guests are Malini Mehra from the Center for Social Markets and Alex Evans from the Center on International Cooperation at NYU.

Malini Mehra and Alex Evans discuss the big development challenges of the 21st Century in Development Drums 25

The agenda for the discussion was a presentation given by Alex Evans to Members of Parliament in the British House of Commons.  In his presentation, Alex identified ten key issues for discussion: the changing distribution of poverty; demographic change; the financial crisis; oil prices; food prices; feeding the 9 billion; climate change; trade; the changing face of conflict; the global governance deficit; and the implications for UK development policy.

If you enjoy Development Drums, you may also enjoy the Center for Global Development’s Global Prosperity Wonkcasts, which are a bit shorter than Development Drums.  As with Development Drums, you can listen online, subscribe to the feed or subscribe free on iTunes.

The Guardian has also started a monthly development podcast.  The most recent editions are about “securitisation of aid” (that is, greater focus of aid on fragile states) and on so-called “land grabs“.  Again, you can subscribe to the feed directly, or get it free on iTunes.

Running time 1 hour 13 minutes; size 41 Mb.

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Andy Sumner and Claire Melamed

In this episode of Development Drums, Andy Sumner and Claire Melamed (Head of the Growth and Equity Programme at ODI) discuss the implications of this new data about where most of the world’s poor live.   If there are millions of people living in poverty in middle income countries, does this mean that growth does not lead to poverty reduction? What are the implications for donor countries? Do they have any interest in the income distribution in other nations, or is that an entirely internal matter?  Should aid be allocated differently as a results of these new figures? And what are the implications for non-aid development policies?

Download Andy’s paper, “Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion”.

Running time 44 minutes; size 22.3 Mb.

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The Ethiopian famine of 25 years ago was the greatest humanitarian disaster of the second half of the 20th century, killing more than 600,000 people before the world took notice. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicenter of the famine in 1984 and he returned at the time of Live Aid to research the definitive account of the disaster, A Year in the Death of Africa .

Peter Gill has returned to Ethiopia to tell the story of the last 25 years in Ethiopia. His book draws on interviews with leading Ethiopians and with foreign aid officials. He interviewed Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the leading development economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs. Most important of all, Gill has traveled throughout the country and interviewed many of Ethiopia’s citizens.

What stands out in these pages are the graphic encounters with these Ethiopians–the supposed beneficiaries of western aid–who still struggle on the knife-edge of existence. What also emerges is the often tense relationship between official aid-givers and recipients–whether in the area of economic reform or the modern demands for “governance” and political change.

Twenty five years on, we can say that we did feed the world. But did we change the face of poverty, did we close the gap between rich and poor, did we fulfill the promise of “development?”

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Rachel explains how rigorous evaluation techniques can give important insights into the effectiveness of development programmes.  She explains the role (and limitations) of randomised controlled trials, and she addresses some of the criticisms of this kind of evaluation.

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This podcast is in collaboration with the Overseas Development Institute.

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Forty percent of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. You may be surprised by the extent to which they use financial services.  Daryl and Jonathan describe their work and their findings.

Running time 62 minutes; size 25.4 Mb.

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President Obama spoke in Ghana on July 11, 2009 about US policy towards Africa.

In this episode of Development Drums, Todd Moss and Chris Blattman join me to talk about the speech, and what it means for the US and Africa.

• President Obama’s speech
• Chris Blattman’s blog
• Comments on the speech from Bill Easterly
• Comments on the speech from Mark Goldberg
• Comments on the speech from Foreign Policy
• Comments on the speech from Michael Kevane
• Comments on the speech from Leonard Wantchekon

(Am I missing some? Post them in the comments please.)

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Particular thanks to my father, Brian Barder, who is turning into an expert sound engineer. He set up the link between me in Addis Ababa and the interviewees in the United States, and made the recording.

Alan Beattie, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times, talks about his new book, False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World, with Professor Robert Wade of the London School of Economics.

Running time 41 minutes; size 17.8 Mb.

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Professor Peter Singer talks on Development Drums about his new book, The Life You Can Save. This book sets out an ethical case for why people should give more money to people in developing countries.

Here are the links mentioned in the podcast.

• The Life You Can Save website
• Buy The Life You Can Save from Amazon
• Give Well (the charity Peter Singer recommends in the podcast)
• Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Running time 58 minutes; size 22.1 Mb.

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Matthew Bishop and Mike Green talk about their book, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World and Why We Should Let Them

Running time 1 hour 5 minutes; size 33.8 Mb.

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Running time 25 minutes 56 seconds; size 16.9 Mb

Running time: 46 minutes 47 seconds. Size: 22Mb

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In this episode of Development Drums we talk about the International Criminal Court and the arrest warrant that has been issued for the President of Sudan. Some links:

• Amanda’s blog post on Bashir
• Nicholas Kristof (New York Times)
• Alex de Waal and Julie Flint
• Human Rights Watch

Also – Facebook Group for Development Drums

Nancy Birdsall (CGD) and Simon Maxwell (ODI) reflect on the London Poverty Summit on 9th and 10th March; and Minouche Shafik (DFID) talks about the forthcoming DFID White Paper.
 

Running time: 1 hour and 11 minutes. File size: 32.4 Mb

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The British Government held a 2 day conference on 9th and 10th March, bringing together some of the leading thinkers and practitioners on international development.

• Speech by Gordon Brown
• Speech by Douglas Alexander
• Eliminating world poverty: Building our common future (5mb) – Background paper to conference by ODI
• DFID White Paper Consultation website
• Andrew Natsios review of “Fixing Failed States”

 Download transcript (pdf)

In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier points out that poverty is falling quite rapidly for about eighty percent of the world.  He argues that the real crisis lies in a group of  58 failing states, home to the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty. He argues that these countries are the scene of a struggle between reformers and corrupt leaders.  Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that snare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance.   He argues that our standard solutions do not work against these traps: aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations.  The Bottom Billion, was the winner of the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize for the world’s best book on international affairs, and the 2008 Gold Medal Winner of the Arthur Ross Book Award, given by the Council on Foreign Relations.

In his new book, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, Paul Collier investigates the violence and poverty in the countries at the bottom of the world economy that are home to a billion people. He argues that pressures to introduce partial democratic reforms may have been counterproductive and that this may have increased the risk of political violence. He argues for 3 key policy measures that the rich world should implement to reverse the declining fortunes of these countries.

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Jonathan Glennie is the Christian Aid country representative in Bogota, Colombia, and he campaigned as part of Make Poverty History. His new book, The Trouble With Aid, argues that when you take into account all the effects that aid has, it can do more harm than good.  In this episode of Development Drums, Jonathan explains why he thinks that many countries should make it a priority to reduce their dependence on aid.

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Running time: 52 minutes. File size: 20Mb.

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In this episode of Development Drums, we discuss the continuing food crisis. What are the causes, and are we doing enough to tackle it?  We discuss policies to increase the incomes of farmers, and the impact of social transfer programmes.    We also look ahead to the forthcoming conference in Doha to discuss financing for development, particularly at proposals to reform the international tax rules so that developing countries get paid more tax.

And we mourn the passing of Miriam Makeba.

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Running time: 51 minutes. File size: 24 Mb

In this episode of Development Drums, we look at what President-Elect Obama and an increased Democrat majority in Congress might mean for US foreign assistance to developing countries.  Will the new administration implement administrative and legal reforms that enables US aid to be more effective?  Will the administration be able to double foreign assistance as they pledged during the campaign?  Who might be put in charge of an “elevated” agency to oversee aid? The panel is cautiously optimistic that change will come, but it will be incremental.

Dana Hovig explains the Mexico City Policy, known as the Global Gag Rule.  Fist implemented by Ronald Reagan, it was overturned by Bill Clinton on his first day in office, and reinstated by George W. Bush on his first day.  But the panel does not expect President Obama to tackle this on his first day.

Links

• Modernising Foreign Assistance Network
• Center for Global Development
• OxfamAmerica – aid reform
• Mexico City Policy (Global Gag Rule)
• Marie Stopes International
• Obama-Biden Foreign Policy

Declaration of interest: my partner works for Marie Stopes International.

Backgrounder on Eastern Congo with Patrick Smith.

In this additional episode of Development Drums, Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential, explains what is happening in the Eastern Congo.

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Running time: 19 min 43 seconds; File size 7 Mb.

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Running time: 36 min 38 secs; File size: 15Mb

Shantayanan Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region.  Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, and the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, and of the South Asia Region.  Shanta maintains the Africa Can blog.

Sheila Page is a specialist in trade at the Overseas Development Institue.

Links to topics discussed

The impact of the economic crisis on developing countries

• Will the financial crisis reduce foreign aid? | Shanta’s Blog: Africa Can
• Economic crisis threatens to destabilize developing countries – Los Angeles Times
• FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment – The best recipe for avoiding a global recession

The Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Governance

• The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership
• Chris Blattman’s Blog: No to Mo money
• Botswana’s Ex-President Wins Leadership Prize – NYTimes.com
• Festus Mogae: Africa’s Good Leader – TIME

African Free Trade Zone Agreed

• BBC NEWS | Business | African free trade zone is agreed
• allAfrica.com: Africa: Economic Community Target Gets Fresh Impetus

Food crisis

• Food crisis in retreat, but ‘major emergency’ still exists – International Herald Tribune
• FT.com | The Economists’ Forum | Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture
• Food and the poor | The new face of hunger | The Economist

File size: 15MB Running time: 46 minutes . Recorded 23 October 2008.

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Ngaire Woods is Professor of International Political Economy at Oxford University, and the Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, which is a research programme investigating how global institutions could better respond to the needs of developing countries.

David Roodman is at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. David is the architect of the Commitment to Development Index which ranks the world’s richest countries based on their adoption of policies that affect developing countries

• David Roodman’s article about the impact on aid of previous financial crises
• Ngaire Woods’s article in the Guardian
• Ngaire Woods’s The Globalizers

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We’ve done our best to respond to feedback:

• the sound quality is better
• more voices
• voices from the South
• more, shorter items
• more random bits of music

Please tell us what you think.

Links to items discussed in the show:

1. Should donors cap aid to Africa?
Adrian Wood article in FT
Discussion at CGD blog

2. Zimbabwe – How should the international community react?
Tsvangirai appeals for aid
Economist article

3. Billions wasted in aid, according to Care
Press release
Care report
Press report
Guardian article

4. World Bank Doing Business Report
World Bank report
BBC News story

Many thanks to my sister Virginia for providing a studio for Adrian; and to Bob Smith for the jingle.

 Download transcript (pdf)

Discussion of:

• Accra High Level Forum
• Accra Agenda for Action (pdf)
• Simon Maxwell Blog Report on Accra
• UN MDG Gap Task Force Report
• UK National Security Strategy
• World Bank Press Release on new poverty statistics
• World Bank paper – The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty

Many thanks to Bob Smith for providing the Development Drums jingle.