Guardian: Why are foodies turning their backs on Fairtrade? “When you get to the bottom of it, [the Fairtrade scheme] is kind of neo-imperialistic,” he says. “It’s something we impose on them.” He’s thinking particularly of the pressure for producers to form groups, usually co-operatives, in order to join. “Can you imagine what British farmers would […]
Great resource by Infodev (PDF) for African startups trying to understand where they fit into the investment chasm: Evidence suggests the existence of a financing gap for transactions worth up to $500,000, with more severe problems for ventures seeking up to $100,000. Problems in accessing finance are much less severe for transactions exceeding the $500,000 […]
When digital altruism isn’t altruism: Responding to criticism about Facebook serving its own commercial interests under the guise of philanthropy, Zuckerberg says, "We’re doing Internet.org to serve our mission of connecting the world rather than trying to make a profit anytime soon. We could make much more money from advertising to rich people than we’d […]
Ronald's radio from Project Diaspora on Vimeo. Almost 3 years ago, Ida Horner and myself held the second Villages in Action conference in my village of Kikube. I brought along a HD video camera and put it in the hands of my little brother and my nephew. After the conference, I mass downloaded all the […]
Ethan Zuckerman’s thoughts on Global Voices turning 10: Global Voices started as a project that rounded up blog posts from around the world, when possible organizing them into themed stories illustrating an aspect of the social media conversation in a country or region. Over time, we began offering citizen media perspectives on breaking news through […]
Decolonizing Development: Opportunities and Alternative Post-2015 I’ll be speaking at University of Toronto Scarborough Saturday, February 7th and Sunday, February 8th. The 4th year of the conference will be dedicated to challenging “current concepts about development.” I’ll be contributing to a discussion on social entrepreneurship. This ambitious and innovative conference aims to dismantle (neo) colonial […]
My second op-ed of 2015 is a fuller rundown of my thoughts on post-2015 development agenda. Sadly, Financial Times’ BeyondBRICS blog has it hidden behind a registration wall. If you are patient enough to register (you can do so easily by logging in with Twitter) and read it, I’d appreciate your feedback. After decades of […]
My latest op-ed for the Guardian. On a few ideas the international development complex can utilize to reach voices at the end of the development mile. This was published as part of the Action/2015 push aimed at mobilizing global participation in the “post 2015″ development agenda. If you haven’t noticed, we are now in a […]
For a while now, we’ve been talking about raising support for the local organizations that have been at the forefront of the ebola response in the 4 most affect countries in West Africa. In previous tweet chats, we discussion the missing narratives in the coverage of the ebola crisis, donations to local organizations, and the […]
On October 18th, Western Union’s foundation arm announced a plan to mobilize support for the ebola response in West Africa: The Western Union Foundation is making a grant of US$25,000 to the International Medical Corps to support the organization’s response actions, which includes teams of trainers traveling in affected areas of Sierra Leone and Liberia to increase the […]