No English? No French? No job: why NGOs need to rethink their insistence on colonial languages

Abbas KigoziParticipation and Leadership, Power Shifts

You could speak three languages and still not count as ‘bilingual’ to many development sector recruiters – and that needs to change, says Oxfam in Africa’s Abbas Kigozi.

How my new book unpacks the problem with projects

Caitlin ScottMethodology, Research

The ‘project’ is intrinsic to modern international development – yet this basic form of organising our work is not something neutral or benign, says Caitlin Scott, but has real, often distorting, effects on the way development organisations think and act.

‘Be more Norway’: a model policy report on the UK’s international future

Duncan GreenGovernance, Influencing, Research

It’s time for the country to accept it is now an ‘offshore mid-sized power’, say the experienced ‘insider’ authors of radical proposals to reset the UK’s approach to international affairs. Duncan Green on key insights from The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs.

Lisa Nandy on the UK’s future development policy under Labour

Duncan GreenEvents, In the news, Influencing

‘People know better than we do’, the opposition party’s shadow minister for international development tells the Overseas Development Institute. Duncan Green on what he thinks her first major speech in post potentially means for UK policy and for the “development cluster” of academics, think-tanks and NGOs.

Institutional Racism in the Aid Sector and how Oxfam is responding

lydia ZigomoGeneral

Institutional racism in the aid sector interconnects with colonialism, and in turn links with the promotion of intersectional feminism. This is due to the role patriarchy plays in defining who is marginalised and discriminated against, by these intersecting systems of oppression.   But what about the aid sector? From my 25 years in the sector, there are two parts – the …

Decolonising development narratives

Shaz ElaheeGeneral

Narratives around “development”  On January 6th 2021, white supremacists stormed the US capitol after months of lies and misinformation about election fraud was spread by Donald Trump and his allies. Several reporters and prominent politicians called the violent insurrection “unamerican,” likening the scenes to a “banana republic” and saying “those are the sorts of things that happen in third-world nations.” Reporting live on …