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Every intermediary in aid can explain why it exists. Far fewer can explain what it costs, what power it keeps and when it will stop being needed. Money intended for people living in poverty rarely travels directly from a donor to a local organisation. It moves through governments, multilateral agencies, international NGOs, contractors, consultants and national partners before reaching the people closest to the problem. Each layer has a justification. Together, those layers ca

The most interesting argument in development is not whether the system works. It is what to do about the fact that it doesn't.

Real Aid. Real Conversations.

We are often told that our Western system for making political choices, what we call democracy, is the best in the world, with the implication that if every nation adopted it many of the world's problems would be solved, or at least made less bad. Every country, we assume, aspires to copy that system because they want the level of individual rights and freedom we have. After all, in the UK, Churchill told us: 'democracy is the least bad form of government, after you have trie

The people most affected by poverty are often missing from the data used to describe it. If the numbers are incomplete, how reliable are the policies built upon them?

The language of saving Africa places outsiders at the centre. What changes when communities define the problem, lead the response and decide what progress means?