Xenophobia, bad governance, police violence, extreme poverty – we’re familiar with the terms and we know they are problems that must be dealt with. But it’s hard to go beyond the headlines when it’s not personal. … People like local commentator Sisonke Msimang have been writing about xenophobia from a South African perspective. Having spent …
The U.S. Agency for International Development and other bilateral donors announced last week a new commitment to infuse lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights into their development agendas. The move, however, left some activists and civil society leaders to wonder: Where does the world’s largest multilateral donor stand on LGBTI rights? The World Bank …
It was the summer of 2014, I was sitting in a boardroom with the air condition on and I was inside sweating. It was a blazing hot outside in the summer heat of London. That day I was waiting for the board meeting of Stonewall housing to start. I had just been recruited as a …
Last week, Feed the Future caught up with the 2014 class of the Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship, designed to bring more expert voices from the developing world into the global development discussion. The Fellowship, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helps recipients sharpen their messages, elevate their stories and communicate their insights …
The notion of “Africa rising” is understandably alluring. The vision of hundreds of millions of Africans striding into the middle class, mobile phones in hand, is certainly a refreshing antidote to endless images of death and deprivation. But while there is no denying that economies are growing rapidly across the continent, this feel-good narrative risks …