Development and
Cooperation

Digital monthly 9/2020

Meanings of development

Indigenous community in Ecuador sharing a meal.
Buen Vivir

The good life

The indigenous development concept of Buen Vivir aims to ensure material, social and spiritual satisfaction for all

Informal businesses are common in Kenya: knife sharpening service in Nairobi.
Dysfunctional policy

Under-performing ODA darling

Despite under-performing governance, Kenya is still a donor darling

GiveDirectly is cost-efficient, bypasses bureaucracies and helps poor people take their fate into their own hands.
Official development assistance

Why taxation matters

Conventional ODA has often proved counterproductive, but there are alternative approaches

More Articles

Participants in an SDG conference in Kigali in 2019.
Our view

The crucial development challenge

To achieve the SDGs, humankind needs strong and competent institutions at national as well as supranational levels

A woman reports from a village planning group in Chad.
Participation

Valuable resource

New book about participatory methods in development projects has the makings of a standard

Rural people protesting against their village being submerged because of Omkreswahr dam on the Narmada river in 2012.
Infrastructure projects

Paying the price for development

When people are displaced to make room for large-scale development projects, the trauma and impoverishment are real and long-lasting

Growth in itself will not solve urban infrastructure problems: small shops on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Global trends

In urgent need of development

If Africa is not to fall behind further, the continent must develop fast

On 7 June, protesters in Bristol pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston and later threw it into the harbour.
Development discourse

Unsustainable western exceptionalism

For environmental reasons, western Europe and North America cannot be models of development

Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visiting Washington in 1949: US President Harry Truman declared “development” of “underdeveloped” countries to be the goal of foreign policy during the Cold War.
“Development”

False promises, questionable term

The term “development” makes false promises and perpetuates colonial dominance thinking

Women’s rights rally in Islamabad in 2019.
Gender

Changing stereotypes

In spite of various global assessments, many Pakistani women do not think anything is wrong with gender relations in their countries

Queen Elizabeth II and President Kwame Nkrumah depicted on a billboard in Accra in 1961 ahead of the monarch’s visit to the former colony Ghana, which was then considered to be an “underdeveloped” country.
International relations

From “underdevelopment” to the SDGs

Why stereotyped ideas of developed and developing nations are not helpful

Education matters: a high-school student doing homework in rural Burkina Faso.
UNDP

“Governance is fundamental”

UNDP chief explains how the concepts of “human development” and “sustainable development” are converging