“White saviour”, “poverty porn”, “reinforcing negative stereotypes” have been some of the phrases thrown at Ed Sheeran in recent weeks after he ‘won’ the 2017 Rusty Radiator award handed out by Radi-Aid. This annual award, along with the Golden Radiator, highlights the very worst and best fundraising videos in international development. The judges criticise videos […]

Guest post: Living and working in rwanda; what’s it really like?

Rosie Coleman explains what she’s learnt from her travels and living in different part of Africa over the past year. Check out her previous blog on how travelling helped her with her career. I’ve now lived in Rwanda’s capital Kigali for 5 weeks and I’ve been working and travelling in Africa for nearly a year. […]

Guest post: How travelling helped me reflect on my career and decide what to do next

Rosie Coleman explains why she took time off to travel and how it helped her career. Make sure you check out the video about her first three weeks in southern Africa too. I’d never taken a gap year. My travels had been holidays rather than extended periods spent overseas. After graduating from LSE in 2013, […]

Ghana from above

I written several blogs on must see sights in Ghana (part 1 & part 2) and even a blog with 23 photos showing why you should never visit Ghana. I like to try and challenge the stereotype that West Africa isn’t a tourist friendly place to visit and has as many captivating attractions as anywhere else […]

23 photos to show why you should never visit Ghana

23 photos to show why you should never, ever, visit Ghana. 1. The sunsets aren’t worth watching 2. The beaches are awful 3. The tourist attractions will make you yawn 4. The wildlife is the same as everywhere else 5. Live sport isn’t entertaining at all 6. The waterfalls are tiny 7. Everyone is always […]

Universities have a duty to stop promoting orphanage volunteering

This post was originally written by myself for the London School of Economics, who have full copyright. See the original post. At LSE we’re incredibly passionate about volunteering and the role that students play in changing the world for the better. Our most recent research shows that almost 50% of our undergraduates volunteer during their time […]

An interview with Ashish Thakkar

When invited to review Ashish Thakkar’s book, The Lion Awakes, I was also asked to do a Q&A with him about some of the topics that he explores in the book. Thank you to Ashish for taking the time to answer my questions so fully! How do you view the importance of aid versus trade (or […]

Review: ‘The Lion Awakes’, by Ashish Thakkar

Africa is home to six of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Collective GDP has now reached $2 trillion, up from $587 billion in 2000. 400,000 new companies were registered in 2014 and by 2040 Africa will have a larger workforce than China. These statistics, impressive as they are, only tell a small part of […]

The Orphan Myth: Keeping Families Together

A new documentary from PBS has, once again, highlighted the problem with the institutionalisation of children across the world. The film explores why children, often with living parents, are put in to care centres. It also explains the psychological damage this often does to the children, why orphanages are expensive ways to raise children and how governments […]

Tag: Africa

Returning to Ghana

Memories of an AFCON

Human zoos in 2018

The two sides of Ed Sheeran’s development work