Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
New York Times columnist Nick Kristof just announced his 2010 Win a Trip contest. The lucky winner will accompany Kristof on a reporting trip to Africa to cover global poverty. This contest is a rare opportunity for a university student to experience a part of the world that few Americans see with such a seasoned expert like Kristof.
CGD president Nancy Birdsall urged the United States to exercise leadership at the upcoming G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in a speech today at the Center for Global Development.
This blog also appeared on the Huffington Post
Secretary Clinton will be leaving August 5 for a seven-country tour of Africa. She will hit Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde. (Whew!) The itinerary suggests that the theme of the trip will be more real politik than President Obama’s recent visit to Ghana which stressed good governance and was a celebration of Ghana’s recent electoral and economic successes. The Secretary, in choosing the largest economies and the continent’s most influential capitals, is likely to highlight more traditional U.S. economic and security interests. A few thoughts on what to expect -- and what Africa can hope for:
If you want to understand how poor people in poor countries manage money, invest in Portfolios of the Poor. The new book's four authors---Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven---took up an idea of David Hulme, to compile financial diaries of poor households.
How long should presidents rule? On Tuesday, Colombia’s senate approved a national referendum to amend the constitution—again—to allow the popular president Alvaro Uribe to stand for election next year to yet another term in office.
You should care because this is representative of a big phenomenon that spans the whole developing world. For good reasons, many developing countries built presidential term limits into their constitutions—the contracts that govern how people agree to be ruled by each other.
An open letter to President Obama and congressional leaders on the importance of global development and foreign assistance reform was published in Politico last week on behalf of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) and signed by more than 150 influential individuals and organizations. The letter says, in part:
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