The recollections of a young MSF doctor provide a refreshing take on the humanitarian aid worker experience. Brown is a candid author who unpicks the fragile emotions surrounding his work in Africa.

This searingly honest and funny personal account of his work in Angola, Mozambique and Sudan charts the emotional highs and lows of helping those in need in isolated and under-equipped conditions.

Although he suffers a painful breakdown and ends his work with MSF, Brown emerges from his experiences surprisingly optimistic, and there is a positive tone throughout the book.

By working on a medical frontline, Brown is engaging in ‘a bed for the night’ humanitarianism – immediate interventions that can save lives but the patients may remain as vulnerable as before.

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The government has signalled reconciliatory tones towards the opposition, calling for national political dialogue. If this is a genuine wish to open the public sphere, or political rhetoric intended to prolong the lifespan of the government remains to be seen.

Some political prisoners were released. The government invited the opposition to take active part in the on-going constitution drafting process, which is mired in conflicts over the role of religion.

The new policy to engage armed groups in dialogue could open the possibility for the umbrella coalition of opposition, the National Consensus Forces, to face the government in unison.

The move of the government is perceived by the opposition as political rhetoric. Observers however detect a genuine will from the government to open the political space for the opposition.

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The assumptions and ideas that drive development policy are never static, but the rise of non-traditional donors and non-Western economic powers has accelerated the pace of change in recent years.

Many of the current trends in African development stem from East Asia. Dams, highways and other works of civil engineering are being built on a large scale and at a fast clip across the continent.

Some of this is due to the rapid influx of Chinese money and labour into these countries’ construction sectors but China’s own experience has had at least as much of an impact.

High-tech and technological solutions are making their way into every policy sector, but their influence is particularly noticeable in three areas: education, agriculture and political leaderships.

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Northern Mali has been in the hands of armed Salafist forces for a year, but it has not yet become another ‘Afghanistan’. These ‘al-Qaeda’ forces are of a different origin and nature.

The danger is, however, that if the international response to Mali is too heavy-handed, it may create a dynamic that pushes the conflict into a similar pattern like the one in Afghanistan.

With African countries leading the international intervention the ‘war on terror’ rhetoric may be avoided, but the composition of the ECOWAS troops has certain drawbacks.

There is a risk that this international intervention may repeat several of the early mistakes made in Afghanistan as well as in West African countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone.

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Africa has robust growth, and the region’s economic prospects remain good. GDP per capita has expanded at 2.4 percent per year, good for an average increase in GDP per capita of 50 percent since 1996.

But the averages also hide a substantial degree of variation. For example, GDP per capita in resource-rich countries grew 2.2 times faster during 1996-2011 than in resource-poor countries.

Despite the better growth performance, poverty declined substantially less in resource-rich countries. Fast growth has also been recorded in resource-poor countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Most importantly, the youth bulge will need to be absorbed in productive jobs. Migration out of agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns appears more conducive to faster poverty reduction.

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Recent years have seen a growing interest on taxation in developing countries among aid agencies. This reflects a concern for raising domestic revenues to finance public goods and services.

It also represents a recognition of the centrality of taxation for growth and redistribution. However, efforts to broaden the tax base are intimately connected to the quality of government expenditure.

Aid to taxation can be grouped into three broad working areas: (1) strengthen tax policy and design; (2) build more effective tax administrations; and (3) encourage constructive state-society engagement around taxes.

This article discusses experiences with donor support to strengthen tax systems in developing countries and challenges in scaling up donor efforts, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

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Does organizing groups of rural women producers contribute to empowerment as well as increasing their incomes? Yes, it can be a step towards increased empowerment under the right conditions.

Women rarely have equal say in or leadership of mixed groups, while women-only groups may face challenges with business viability. Empowerment was greater when women participate in informal as well as formal groups.

Learning from experience, development actors need to adopt flexible approaches to supporting collective action, taking the wider context into account, and supporting women’s own initiatives.

We also need to pay more attention to the policy environment, setting explicit targets to address women’s participation and leadership, and protecting the space for informal association.

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Illegal transactions of wealth out of developing countries is estimated to equal 3-5 times total global aid flows from all donor countries, or 6-8 times total Norwegian foreign aid over the past 50 years.

The amounts evaporating into the pockets of wealthy and influential African leaders and their families as corruption each year exceed by far the total aid from all donors to the region.

Nordic aid has been distributed to around 100 of the world’s poorest countries for more than 50 years, with surprisingly modest impact on income and wealth inequality in the recipient countries.

The Nordic countries should keep a zero corruption vision and work pro-actively to fulfil it by reallocating a considerable share of their aid budgets to anti-corruption activities.

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A new dynamic stage has been reached in the debate on social protection and cash transfer programs, both internationally and on the African scene.

These issues are likely to figure more prominently in connection with the on-going discussions about the new multilateral development goals beyond 2015.

In Africa the debate has also been influenced by the current dilemma: high economic growth rates in many African countries, but persistent poverty and widening income gaps.

Stronger African action at the political leadership levels is needed with increased willingness to embark on concrete programs in cooperation with civil society.

Aid agencies need to take a stronger interest in cash transfers as a means to fight poverty. Sweden has a legacy of being in the forefront regarding social protection systems.

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Land is a big deal for Oxfam. Last year we published Risky Business, looking at the explosion in channelling development finance to private sector businesses via Financial Intermediaries.

We worried that such poorly governed financing was fuelling land grabs and involved some worrying characteristics – opacity, complexity, and focus on financial returns over development impact.

Since then a lot has happened. Oxfam has been asking the World Bank to freeze its large agriculture investments until it puts in place measures to tackle the threat of land grabs.

Looks like we have two very different World Banks on land grabs. So who do we believe, Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde? In terms of hard cash, the IFC increasingly dominates.

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