Archive for August, 2006
Monday, August 28th, 2006
A quick geography lesson
“Africa” has become more of a concept than a place in my mind, over the years of famine, civil war, and token coverage of brightly-coloured cultural events in the media. So when I decided to actually look over some of the details of the place, it was a real eye-opener. Geography was always my weak [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started by Rav Casley Gera
Monday, August 21st, 2006
My brain is tired
Over the last week I’ve read a load of essays on everything from the structure of dictatorial power to the effectiveness of participation methods in poverty measurement. Frankly, I didn’t understand much of it. There was a lot of debate about how many extremely poor people there are, and I’ve written a short essay about [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started, Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Sunday, August 20th, 2006
Counting the Poor
Warning: quite long. If preferred, download as a PDF
Any serious conversation about the nature and causes of poverty in Africa, and its reduction, must begin with an attempt to measure the scale of the problem. The Make Poverty History campaign, and the huge wave of debate, campaigning and publicity on the topic that seemed to [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Getting Started by Rav Casley Gera
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
And this is the news
OK. So I spent an afternoon reading Guardian articles from 2005 about Make Poverty History, The Africa Commission report, and The Future Of Africa. What did I learn? Well, it just increased my sense that there’s massive disagreement about, well, just about all of it. It has, however, given me a slightly better idea of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Researcher's Log by Rav Casley Gera
Saturday, August 5th, 2006
Down to business
OK. This is going to take some planning. African development is, I’m beginning to realise, quite a big topic. So I think I’m going to do some general reading first, and try to understand what the big issues are. Maybe I’ll start by looking through some of the newspaper coverage from last year.
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