All kinds of social media were set alight this week by the controversy created by t-shirt entrepreneur Jason Sadler and his attempt to send 1MillionShirts to Africa. Unfortunately for Sadler, the belief that he was making an important contribution to Africa’s development was swiftly crushed, and he was savaged by the online development community. To his credit, Sadler halted his campaign at '0,000,625 t-shirts sent' and immediately organised a roundtable to work out where he went so wrong. African aid provider TMS Ruge's detailed account of the debate is worth a look.- This week, Obama & Bono met to discuss the preparation of United States leading up to the UN Millennium Development Goal summit in September. The focus of the meeting was on innovation, the use of technology in development and ways of making US foreign aid more effective. Bono is not the only pop star/philanthropist Obama has cleared his schedule for this year.
- An NGO called Open Mind has revamped the antiquated 'question box' idea to provide greater access to information for rural and isolated communities in developing countries. Question Box is now in use in parts of India and Uganda after a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With an open-source version in development to allow free use of the software code, the initiative could prove useful elsewhere — perhaps in Papua New Guinea?
- President of US think-tank Centre for Global Development, Nancy Birdsall, and colleague William D Savedoff, have launched their new book Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid, which focuses on the education sector. The COD Aid model involves a hands-off approach by donors, treating aid as a long-term business contract involving outcomes (progress), independent verification and transparency, and ensuring the model is complementary to other aid forms. Unsurprisingly, some are keen on the new model, and some are not.
Photo by Flickr user Aymanshamma, used under a Creative Commons licence.
