In Pursuit of Development

In the wake of President Lula's re-election, Brazil finds itself at a critical juncture, with numerous questions arising about the relationship between the political, legislative, and judicial systems. As Brazil grapples with its political dynamics, it is crucial to understand the extent to which the judiciary maintains its autonomy and upholds the rule of law. In this episode, we dive deep into this crucial aspect, highlighting the challenges and potential implications for the country's democratic fabric.

Conrado Hübner Mendes is a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of São Paulo. His work encompasses the separation of powers, judicial review, theories of justice and democracy, and the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court. Twitter: @conradohubner

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:43
• Current political situation in Brazil - 03:10
• Relationship between the political and judicial systems - 06:38
• Tackling poverty, inequality, and corruption - 23:36
• Constitutionalization of environmental protection in Latin America- 29:54

Host:

Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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Our world is currently facing numerous crises. While progress on global poverty reduction has stalled, the incidence of violent conflicts is on the rise. Along with rising poverty and inequality in some parts of the world, geopolitical tensions are also fast escalating, and we are in the midst of a climate crisis that requires urgent political action. The resources available to address these numerous challenges appear, however, to be grossly inadequate. There is growing concern whether and to what extent rich countries are willing to take on greater responsibility for addressing global challenges, including increased finance for sustainable development, climate adaptation, and global public goods. The case of Norway is particularly interesting. It is extremely wealthy, frequently tops human development rankings, and is often praised for being a generous provider of foreign aid. But it is also a major exporter of oil and gas. Does this mean that Norway should take on additional global responsibilities? And although foreign aid can only provide a small fraction of the required resources, it is nonetheless of crucial importance in many low-income countries. What then is the future of aid in a fragmented world order where countries are becoming more selfish? Should Norway be doing much more than it already is? If so, what? 

Anne Beathe Tvinnereim is Norway’s Minister of International Development. She has had a long and distinguished career in politics and diplomacy, and is currently the deputy leader of the Centre Party, which forms the ruling coalition together with the Labour party. Anne Beathe studied political science at the University of Oslo and wrote a thought-provoking Master’s thesis over a decade ago on aid. Twitter: @AnneBeathe_

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Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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Steve Krasner has for decades been one of the most influential international relations scholars in the world. He is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution.In 2002, he served as Director for Governance and Development at the National Security Council. And from 2005 to 2007, he was Director of the Policy Planning at the US Department of State. 

In his latest book, How to Make Love to a Despot: An alternative foreign policy for the 21st Century, Steve Krasner argues that because prosperous, democratic nations are exceptions in international politics, the United States ought to adopt policies “acceptable to despotic rulers”. This means coming to terms with the “good-enough governance” of nondemocratic governments rather than trying to consolidate democracy around the world.

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Although traditional approaches to aid may often have been well-intentioned, they relied heavily on large-scale endeavors initiated by a handful of aid agencies and international organizations. The situation today is very different. There are disruptive forces in the form of large corporations, Silicon Valley startups, and billionaire philanthropists, who are spearheading a paradigm shift towards data-driven and outcome-focused global development. Entrepreneurial startups are also offering a range of services to farmers and rural inhabitants as well as urban customers; and new organizations are helping individuals to directly send money to those in need via an app. 

Raj Kumar is the President and Editor-in-Chief at Devex, the media platform for the global development community. He is a media leader and former humanitarian council chair for the World Economic Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His work has led him to more than 50 countries, where he has had the honor to meet many of the aid workers and development professionals who make up the Devex community. He is the author of the book The Business of Changing the World: How Billionaires, Tech Disrupters, and Social Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Aid Industry, which is a go-to primer on the ideas, people, and technology disrupting the aid industry. Twitter: @raj_devex

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:40
• Media and global development - 03:15
• Origins and impact of Devex's journalism - 16:34
• Role of businesses in global development - 21:54
• The poor as customers - 30:00
• How billionaire philanthropists have disrupted aid world - 34:52
• Celebrities and global development - 43:30

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Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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There is considerable and growing attention and interest on understanding what works, where, how, and why in development. This also means there are numerous debates on how best we ought to generate evidence and measure development success and impact. One way of measuring development impact is through randomized control trials (RCTs), which have been very useful for establishing causal relationships and providing robust and reliable evidence for evaluating the effectiveness and safety of development programs.

While some regard RCTs as the gold standard, others are more critical of using it to measure what works. Critics argue that it is not just about 'what works,' but 'why things work' which should be prioritized when designing effective policies and interventions that can be scaled up. 

Another related aspect in this context is the generalizability puzzle, i.e., whether the results of a specific program can be generalized to other contexts. For example, there are questions about whether a study can inform policy only in the location in which it was undertaken. Should policymakers mainly rely on whatever evidence is available locally, even if it is not of very good quality? There is also the question of whether a new local randomized evaluation should be undertaken before an attempt to scale up and the number of times such evaluations should be repeated before scaling up.

Rachel Glennerster is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. She uses randomized trials to study democracy and accountability, health, education, microfinance, and women’s empowerment mainly in West Africa and South Asia. Rachel spent 13 years as the executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, a key leader in popularizing RCTs in development economics. Thereafter she served as chief economist of the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Twitter: @rglenner

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:44
• Asking the right questions and answering them correctly - 03:45
• The added-value of RCTs and critique - 08:00
• The generalizability puzzle - 17:37
• Education and learning - 23:20
• Microfinance in India - 26:13
• Improving public services through participation - 34:30
• Impact of the media in Burkina Faso - 38:38
• Translating evidence into policy - 46:00

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Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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The conventional wisdom is that corruption is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has a significant impact on societies and individuals around the world. And most people would agree that corruption is bad. It can undermine the rule of law, erode public trust, and distort economic development. But there are those who argue that to truly address corruption, we must rethink our understanding of what it is and how it operates. This may include adopting a dialectical approach that pays attention to the practical and social life of corruption, and the strategies of the various actors involved. What is crucial in this context is how we can best unpack the complicated web of social norms, value acceptances, power relations, negotiations, and social networks that animates local discourse and practices of corruption.

Daniel Agbiboa is an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. In his recent book – They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria – he explores how transport workers encounter and respond to the situation defined by extortion and violence in which they ply their trade. Twitter: @DanielAgbiboa

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:52
• What the literature on corruption overlooks - 03:52
• The language of corruption in African countries - 08:03
• Why efforts to curb corruption often fail - 20:23
• The road transport sector in Nigeria- 28:54
• Rethinking anti-corruption policy - 46:20

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Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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One of the most important factors explaining ethnic change in the modern world is industrialization, which has resulted in significant changes in the way we live and work, including changes in migration patterns and social structures. As people move from rural areas to urban centers, they may find themselves interacting with others from very different cultural backgrounds and must therefore adapt to new social norms and customs.

Elliott Green is Professor of Development Studies in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. In his recent book — Industrialization and Assimilation: Understanding Ethnic Change in the Modern World — he provides a new framework to understand the origins of modern ethnic identities. Elliott explains how and why ethnicity changes across time, showing that, by altering the basis of economic production from land to labour, industrialization makes societies more ethnically homogenous. By lowering the relative value of rural land, industrialization results in people identifying less with narrow rural identities in favour of broader identities that can help them navigate the formal urban economy. Twitter: @ElliottDGreen

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:53
• Ethnicity and race - 03:20
• Negotiating identity - 12:36
• Assimilation and the state - 18:10
• Turkey, United States and New Zealand - 27:00
• Somalia, Uganda and Botswana - 32:30
• Ethiopia - 40:45
• South Africa - 44:50

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Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)

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Internet-based entrepreneurship has flourished in China for the past decade and a half. This includes start-ups in big cities, rural areas experiencing an e-commerce boom, and middle-class women reselling luxury goods. My guest argues that for many of these individuals involved in digital entrepreneurship, reinventing oneself as an entrepreneur has been an appealing way to adapt to a changing economy and society. Indeed, this everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention is remaking China amid changing geopolitical currents.

In her new book, The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy, Lin Zhang explores the surge in digital entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of global financial crises, the U.S.-China trade war, and the more recent pandemic. She argues that the rise of internet-based industries and practices has simultaneously empowered and exploited digital entrepreneurs and laborers. Despite embracing high-tech innovation, state-led entrepreneurialization does not represent a radical break with the past. Rather such entrepreneurship has also reinforced traditional Chinese ideas about state power, labor, gender, and identity.

Lin Zhang is an assistant professor of communication and media studies at the University of New Hampshire. Twitter:@LinZhang9

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:52
• Entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurship - 04:04
• Surge in entrepreneurialism in China following the 2008 financial crisis - 09:36
• Opportunities and challenges facing migrants - 18:10
• Elite, urban-based entrepreneurs vs. non-elite entrepreneurs - 34:04
• China’s reinvention and innovation efforts vis-a-vis the United States - 48:15

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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Effective altruism has been in the news of late. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, which collapsed in 2022, was for many years a leading voice for and financial sponsor of the effective altruist movement. He and others have argued for ‘longtermism’: the idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. As effective altruism and longtermism have become increasingly influential, these ideas have also been subject to greater scrutiny. 

Ryan Briggs is an associate professor in the Guelph Institute of Development Studies and Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. He has worked extensively on foreign aid, African politics, and effective altruism. Twitter: @ryancbriggs

Resources:

• Ryan's research on foreign aid and African politics
• Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya (Lindsay R. Dolan)
• The Life You Can Save (conversation with Peter Singer, in season 3 of In Pursuit of Development)

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:43
• The current status of the effective altruism movement - 03:08
• Strengthening effective altruism with a capability approach - 15:07
• The political effects of foreign aid - 21:37
• Targeting the poorest in World Bank projects - 39:43
• How effective altruism can shape aid policies - 48:32

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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Professor Dan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)

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Many well-designed development programs do not deliver social benefits effectively, especially to marginalized citizens. While political will and good policy design are vital for a program’s success, they often run into resistance from local power systems. How states react to the local exercise of power that often comes into play at the “last mile” of project implementation appears to be particularly important. Indeed, the extent to which development programs avoid being captured by state or local power systems is key and something that concerns both scholars and practitioners. 

My guest has studied whether the opening of government records and the use of digital technology provide higher levels of government with better tools to effectively monitor local state action. Rajesh Veeraraghavan is an assistant professor in the Science Technology and International Affairs Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In a wonderful new book, Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India, Rajesh explores two crucial and interrelated questions: First, how can states best deliver social benefits to marginalized citizens? And second, what role can marginalized citizens and members of civil society play in strengthening systems of accountability? Twitter: @RajeshVeeraa

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:52
• India's ambitious social protection agenda - 05:02
• Bureaucratic capacity and motivation in the implementation process - 14:08
• Rights-based development programs and the Right to Information - 20:03
• The "patching development" concept - 33:45
• Addressing resistance in development programs - 50:54

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. He was previously at the World Bank, where his assignments included coordinating work on governance and anticorruption in infrastructure and natural resources, and managing investment and technical assistance projects covering telecommunications and the Internet. Charles has written several books, two of which we discussed in this conversation: Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, and Our World, Better: Global Progress and What You Can Do About It. We also discussed a recent report, where Charles and his coauthor Zack Gehan created a set of scenarios for the shape of the global economy in 2050. While their forecast for richer countries is not very optimistic, what they found is largely positive for developing and middle-income nations. For example, the report finds that incomes per capita on the African continent could be 76% higher in 2050 than they were a few years ago, and in India incomes could jump 136%. Twitter: @charlesjkenny

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:46
• Global development viewed from Washington - 02:52
• Reducing extreme poverty by 2050 - 07:15
• Economic growth, poverty and “degrowth” - 15:40
• What should the World Bank be doing more of? - 28:25
• The global public goods agenda - 39:00
• OECD DAC aid has lost its credibility - 43:30
• Combating pessimism and short-term thinking – 50:18

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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Our guest on this very special (100th) episode is someone I greatly admire and needs very little introduction. Helen Clark has engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social and cultural spheres. She was Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years and has also served as the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. Since 2019, she has chaired the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and in 2020, she was appointed co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, established by the World Health Organization. In addition to serving on numerous advisory boards and commissions, Helen is a strong and highly influential voice on gender equality and women’s leadership, sustainable development, climate action, peace and justice, and global health. Twitter: @HelenClarkNZ

Resources:

• Transforming or Tinkering? Inaction lays the groundwork for the next pandemic (Report of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response)
• It is time for ambitious, transformational change to the epidemic countermeasures ecosystem (The Lancet, 2023)
• The Helen Clark Foundation

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:45
• Development as it ought to be understood - 04:10
• The fragmented global development agenda - 08:10
• Role and relevance of the United Nations system - 15:37
• Preparing for the next pandemic - 20:28
• How politicians translate research into policy - 35:35
• The challenges faced by female leaders - 42:20

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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The European Union is collectively the biggest provider of international aid in the world, contributing over € 50 billion a year to the fight against poverty and the advancement of global development. However, while the EU’s capacities and impact in foreign and security policy have been extensively discussed among scholars and policymakers, its role in promoting global development has attracted less attention. Our guest has focused her research on the contestation of international norms and values, particularly the promotion of human rights norms in the EU’s development policy.In identifying the limits to the EU’s approach, her recent book discusses how standardised policies, particularly in the case of human rights sanctions, may be perceived as neo-colonially intrusive and can come at the cost of recognising the experiences and interests of vulnerable groups and allowing for partner countries’ democratic ownership of their own development trajectory. 

Johanne Døhlie Saltnes is a lecturer and collaborating researcher at the Institute for International Relations (IREL) at the University of Brasilia. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow at ARENA, Centre for European Studies, at the University of Oslo. Her book, The European Union and Global Development: A Rights-Based Approach?, was published in 2021 by Routledge. Johanne is the academic editor of ECPR’s political science blog, The Loop. Twitter: @johannesaltnes

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:55
• The current status of the Human Rights-Based Approach to development - 04:10
• The EU as a global development player- 07:42
• The application of the EU's human rights clause - 15:56
• Impact of applying a human rights-based approach in national contexts - 38:00

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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China plays a crucial role in the development policies of many countries around the world. It offers grants and loans, and builds major infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, power plants, parliament buildings, hotels, and football stadiums. A new book claims that that much of the conventional wisdom about Chinese development finance rests on untested assumptions, individual case studies, and incomplete data sources. The authors argue that Beijing’s use of debt rather than aid to bankroll big-ticket infrastructure projects certainly creates new opportunities for developing countries to achieve rapid socioeconomic gains. However, such actions also introduce major risks, such as corruption, political capture, and conflict. 

Axel Dreher is a Professor of International and Development Politics at Heidelberg University, Germany. Together with Andreas Fuchs, Bradley Parks, Austin Strange and Michael Tierney, Axel co-authored Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China's Overseas Development Program (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Twitter: @DreherAxel

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:50
• On why is it hard to find data on Chinese aid and investments - 04:04
• Chinese aid, motives, and soft power- 09:40
• The methods for unpacking Chinese aid data - 24:30
• Understanding the transition from "benefactor" to "banker" - 32:00
• The need and long-term viability of big infrastructure projects - 43:44

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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Fridays For Future is a youth-led  movement that began in August 2018. This movement was inspired by 15-year-old Greta Thunberg and other young activists, who sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. While Greta has become a household name, there are many other young activists around the world who are also making a vital contribution by pressuring their governments to undertake climate action. 

Our guest – Hilda Flavia Nakabuye – is one of these inspiring young African leaders. While pursuing her university studies in Kampala, Hilda began to acquire a nuanced understanding of the causes of unpredictable rainy seasons, frequent heatwaves, droughts and floods that she had witnessed growing up in southern Uganda. Indeed, she began connecting the dots and realized that much of what she and her family had experienced (and what her country continues to experience) was and is caused by climate disruption. She therefore decided to become a climate and environmental rights activist and founded Uganda’s Fridays for Future movement in 2019. Twitter: @NakabuyeHildaF @Fridays4FutureU

Resources

• Fridays for Future
• Fridays for Future Uganda

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:38
• How to promote both development and protect the environment - 04:00
• Growing climate activismamong Africa’s youth- 08:56
• The menace of air pollution - 24:30
• Uganda’s oil and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline - 35:40

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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The onset of the pandemic in 2020 marked a turning point in the 30-year pursuit of successful global poverty reduction. According to recent World Bank estimates, the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population likely fell by 4 percent in 2020. And as a result, the number of people living in extreme poverty likely increased by 11  percent in 2020—i.e. it increased from 648 million to 719 million. The pandemic also increased global inequality. In terms of lost income, the world’s poor paid the highest price for the pandemic; Indeed, the percentage income losses of the poorest are estimated to have been double those of the richest. The rise in extreme poverty and decline of shared prosperity caused by inflation, currency depreciations, and broader overlapping crises facing development, pose numerous challenges for global development.

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, he served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he played a key role in shaping the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program. Indermit has published extensively on policy issues facing developing countries, sovereign debt, green growth, labor markets, poverty and inequality, and managing natural resource wealth. His pioneering work includes introducing the concept of the “middle income trap” to describe how developing countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. Indermit also spearheaded the influential World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography. Twitter: @IndermitGill

Resources:

• The New Threat to Prosperity Everywhere (Indermit Gill, 13 March 2022, Project Syndicate)
• Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 (World Bank report)

Key highlights:

• Introduction - 00:52
• How "development" has changed over the years - 03:22
• The current status of the World Bank's twin goals - 08:56
• Growing global poverty and how to best measure poverty - 13:38
• The "middle income trap" and natural resource curse thesis - 21:00
• Sustainable development, renewal energy, and climate change- 29:50
• Addressing the debt crisis - 40:15

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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In the past few decades, we have witnessed the rise and consolidation of “evidence-based medicine” among health professionals. This refers to a systematic approach to medicine in which doctors and other health care professionals use the best available scientific evidence from clinical research to help make decisions about the care of individual patients. But the COVID-19 pandemic has managed to transform what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. These debates have taken place within and beyond the medical establishment, such as in news reports and social media posts. And suddenly everyone began offering an opinion on the efficacy of measures such as quarantines, lock downs, school closures, and mandatory face masks. How then should we understand “evidence”? Does evidence mean the same thing in different contexts and constituencies? 

In their new book, Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics: Scientific Vs Narrative Rationality, and Medical Knowledge Practices, Eivind Engebretsen and Mona Baker argue that we ought to adopt a more nuanced and socially responsive approach to medical expertise that incorporates scientific and lay processes of making sense of the world and how we decide to act in it. Using the narrative framework, they offer a model of analysis that sheds greater light on why different people arrive at different decisions based on the same sources of evidence and why we must acknowledge their reasons for doing so as rooted in different types of rationality rather than dismissing them as irrational. 

Eivind Engebretsen is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, where he is also the Executive Chairman of the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education.

Mona Baker is Director of the Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at Shanghai International Studies University. She is also affiliated with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education at the University of Oslo.

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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The global development domain currently faces huge challenges. Apart from trying to stimulate economic growth and ensuring a fair distribution of the benefits of that growth, national governments and their international partners must also tackle complex conflicts, provide humanitarian assistance, and not least address the harmful impacts of climate disruption. What then should the role of external actors be? How can good intentions be best mobilized into effective actions on the ground?

Håvard Mokleiv Nygård is a Deputy Director-General of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Norad, where he directs the Department of Knowledge. Until a few years ago, he was Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), where his research focused on armed conflict and political violence, peace building, and patterns of democratic development. Twitter: @havardmn

Resources:

• Joint statement by donors on locally led development (December 2022)
• Norwegian aid statistics (Norad.no)

Key highlights 

• Introduction - 00:49
• Foreign aid vs. development cooperation - 04:52
• Locally led development - 13:10
• The aid effectiveness debate - 24:15
• What works in global development and how to measure success - 43:49
• Bridging the gap between research and policy and the future of aid - 52:45

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Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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The role of social media in spreading political misinformation has received considerable attention. But various forms of social media also facilitate and enable participatory democracy across boundaries. They help to hold leaders to account as well as provide channels for airing the needs and demands of marginalised communities and vulnerable groups. These demands can sometimes even be propelled to the centre of public debates. While there has been considerable focus on Twitter and Facebook, the private messaging application WhatsApp has emerged as a especially popular medium for inter-personal communication. But WhatsApp has not received the attention it deserves. What is so special about WhatsApp and how and why has it emerged as the main form of communication for a wide range of actors on the African continent? 

Jamie Hitchen is an independent research analyst and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on social media in West Africa and recently co-edited a volume with Idayat Hassan entitled WhatsApp and Everyday Life in West Africa: Beyond Fake News. 

Twitter: @jchitchen

Resources

• Social Media Disruption: Nigeria’s WhatsApp Politics, Journal of Democracy (2020)
• If blackouts don’t work, what might? Tackling fake news in West Africa, African Arguments (2022)

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

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https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/

Host

Professor Dan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)

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Subscribe: 

https://globaldevpod.substack.com/

While much of the success of the show is due to my fabulous guests, I am also lucky to have a wonderful team to assist me at the University of Oslo. I wish to in particular thank Kristoffer Ring, our IT guru, and Oda Fagerland, Bella Reid, and Eliska Sottova for research assistance and transcripts.

My colleague Desmond McNeill, who was on the show earlier this year discussing the power of ideas and metaphors in international development policy, has invented a game which he calls “acronisation”. 

The game is designed to test your knowledge about international organizations and bilateral aid agencies. 

If you can identity 10 acronyms or more, Desmond would be delighted to receive an e-mail from you latest by the 11th of January. 

Please write to Desmond at: desmond.mcneill@sum.uio.no

Happy holidays!

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod

Apple Google Spotify YouTube

https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/

Host

Professor Dan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)

Apple Google Spotify YouTube

Subscribe: 

https://globaldevpod.substack.com/