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As development actions are increasingly being brought under the umbrella of top-down security and migration management the EU risks tipping the balance.

Following up on last year's interview, The Broker held another exclusive interview with Ángel Losada, the EU Special Representative for the Sahel. We met with Losada at a timely moment, shortly after the announcement of a new joint force of five S...

The SDGs have brought a surge of hope that is being translated into policies and procedures for ‘doing’, it is important that this hope does not disappear in the practices of politics and administration or post-development critiques.

What Africa lacks, in contrast to post-war Europe, is a deep network of institutions that a thriving local business sector both needs and creates.

The Sahel has become an economic, social and political breeding ground for violence but donor spending does not seem to address the region's main challenges.

The new EU migration trust fund's use of development aid and its focus on ‘migration management’ securitizes both development and migration policy and will end up serving neither.

The next two years will be crucial for the West African country of Liberia. In 2016 the United Nations peacekeeping force UNMIL will transfer the full responsibility for security to the Liberian authorities, and in 2017 a new president will be ele...

The borders of the Sahel are vast and difficult, but not impossible, to manage effectively.

In Ethiopia and many African countries, we need a recalibration of developmentalist authoritarianism that feeds exclusion and conflict.

Reading today’s newspapers in 10 years’ time we would probably reach the conclusion that the Netherlands is suffering collective short-sightedness.

Agricultural development programmes have too long focused on semi-subsistence smallholders in an effort to achieve food security. We have to aim instead for an agricultural sector based on medium-sized, mixed family farms that contribute to the Af...

Political economy analysis lays bare the flaws in technocratic, aid centric approaches to development that have long characterised mainstream practice.

The implications of TTIP for employment are uncertain for the EU and US, but also for developing countries.

SMEs can and need to play an important role in securing and creating new jobs, if development programmes revert their focus to job creation with the help of effective trainings and restructured access to finance.

In July 2014, the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development proposed a universal set of post-2015 goals and targets to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The draft consists of 17 ambitious goals for social, economic and enviro...

In response to Seth Kaplan: shifting from externally designed to local solutions, and from seeing poverty as isolated to the periphery to it being interconnected with the global economy and its inequalities.

Developing a stable and decent labour market is a matter of willingness and making choices.

The Dudley Seers lecture at the EADI General Conference was given by French economist Francois Bourguignon of the Paris School of Economics. Bourguignon analysed 50 years of development economics, characterized by a shift from a pure growth strate...

Social protection is an important element of responsible development, but establishing adequate programmes is complex, as discussions at the EADI conference in Bonn, Germany, once more highlighted.

Follow The Broker at the EADI general conference “Responsible Development in a Polycentric World: Inequality, Citizenship and the Middle Classes”.

If you want to be a genuine agent of change while being financially sustainable you need to be able to truly listen and interact with the people you are trying to serve. In order to do this, the following points are crucial.

The African Studies Centre (ASC), the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS/EUR) and globalization think tank The Broker are excited to announce that they will be hosting the Secretariat fo...

Impact sourcing is a promising means to enhance employment and training opportunities for the poor and underprivileged.

Employment is a critical path to women’s economic empowerment, but it is by no means a simple relationship.

Over 200 million people worldwide are officially unemployed and looking for work. A much larger number of people, however, has a job, but one that is uncertain, unstable and precarious and does not help them out of poverty. Rising economic growth...

The creation of more decent jobs should be central to economic policies. The prevailing assumption that GDP growth alone will generate more decent work is not valid. And it obstructs the creation of a society in which labour serves and dignifies b...

Welcome to The Broker’s dossier on employment. Global employment trends can be confusing. For example, they show an increase in the numbers of unemployed people while at the same time an increase in the amount of jobs. Population growth alone cann...

The international discussion on the changing nature of jobs and employment is taking place on many levels. The table here contains a number of institutional reports, research papers and other sources that The Broker’s editors have found useful in...

The belief that economic growth– together with low inflation rates, technological innovations and good education–is enough to create all the jobs a country needs, is in decline. The reality now is that technology is improving so fast that better e...

In many countries the share of labour in national income has declined over the last three decades. As a result, the low and middle-income groups of people who depend the most on wages for their income are crumbling. Meanwhile, the rich elites who...

Who benefits or loses from globalization is no longer based on the sector in which one works or the skill group one belongs to. Ongoing technological innovations have enabled greater global competition for a number of jobs. The key challenge for i...

The post-MDG agenda should be based on an alternative theory of development, leading to a simple framework of only three complementary goals: reducing global inequalities, abandoning growth, and enhancing trust.

Inequality indicators play an important role in the process of choosing the post-2015 goals. Related to this issue is the question of what level of inequality is acceptable – a certain amount of inequality can stimulate economic growth, but too mu...

Inequality is the result of political choices. It is now a growing worldwide problem that causes social problems, financial instability and hinders economic growth. These were some of the key messages from The Broker’s panel at the recent Developm...

To really tackle the resource curse, local communities need to obtain a meaningful and informed position in consultation processes, at the negotiation table and in monitoring panels.

Welcome to The Broker Dossier on Social Entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is increasingly popular as a way of doing business while achieving a social and economic impact. However, many questions still remain about what social entrepreneurs...

In their search to become more financially self-reliant development NGOs are experimenting with social entrepreneurship. Many are doing this to strengthen their financial situation, but social entrepreneurship can do much more and opens up new way...

Social protection schemes look very different across the world. They traditionally protect people from income fall after shocks. But some programmes have higher aims: increasing the economic opportunities and promoting the potential of those who a...

The new World Bank strategy must take risk and uncertainty into account.

The complex relationship between insecurity issues and development can be clarified by including 'development disruptor' goals in the post-2015 framework.

Donors are estimated to receive a return from development aid of 50–80%. To understand the financial effects of aid on donor countries, we need a new economic model.

Criticism of East Asia’s alleged self-interest-led development aid can also be applied to Western donors.

Mandela was an ethical realist, who rejected confrontation both at home and internationally.

Will the BRICS Development Bank’s constructive capacities overcome its destructive ones? The world is watching.

Ensuring sufficient resources for public expenditure that are needed to spur economic transition means an ambitious global agenda. To start with the tax regime.

How can we create a more inclusive economy and what obstacles lie in the way? This debate seeks answers.

Norway’s recent international cooperation white paper, Sharing for Prosperity, seems stubbornly non-conformist. For it recommits Norway to some fundamental, if today unfashionable, purposes: for low-income lands, pursuit of growth-with-r...

The deadline for the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is approaching. A number of actors from the UN, regional organizations, academia, the private sector and civil society are involved in drawing up a post-2015 framework, which...

The global land rush has not lifted small-scale farmers out of poverty, nor has it increased agricultural productivity and food security. Speculative land acquisitions often leave fertile land unused, and deprive local communities of vital resources.

The EU’s renewable energy policy, that brace food-based biofuels, is at the expense of food security, poverty eradication and the climate.

‘Informal’ food trade is a key area in addressing food security: the best markets are those that already exist. Traditional or informal food trade persists and flourishes.

Dr. Adeel warns against a fragmented approach in formulating the post-2015 development agenda. We need to generate awareness of the interconnection between water, food and energy security, and of the relationship between water and economic perform...

The MDGs tend to disregard processes of change and the transformative power of that change. However, it is precisely that transformative power that is at the core of development issues, the primary goal of most development cooperation and the diff...

The Broker was present at the annual conference of the Development Studies Association in London on 3 November to learn about the present state of the debate within the development studies community in the UK. During the discussion, five hot issue...

Welcome to The Broker Dossier on inequality. The core of the Dossier is formed by three articles by editors from The Broker team. These articles aim to give you a clear idea of what inequality is about and offer you a bird’s eye view of the debate...

Today, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness has opened in Busan, Korea. The HLF4 is an opportunity for the global development community to come together and showcase the results that our partner countries have been producing, and to sh...

Er zijn veel redenen om positief te reageren op de kennisbrief van staatssecretaris Knapen. Een beter begrip van het fenomeen ontwikkeling en hoe internationale samenwerking  tot ontwikkeling leidt op die plaatsen in de wereld waar dat het ha...

Ten eerste ben ik blij met het heroverwegen van het kennisbeleid door DGIS en het opengooien van het debat zelf. Dit vooropgesteld. Ik denk dat er mooie kansen liggen, als verschillende kennisinstellingen, ministeries en het bedrijfsleven kunnen s...

De langverwachte kennisbrief is eindelijk verschenen en daar valt heel wat over te zeggen. Laat ik me in deze blog beperken tot een aantal hoofdzaken.AmbitiesDe WRR heeft een pleidooi gehouden voor een veel kennisintensiever beleid van Nederland o...

The discussion in this blog is about shaping platforms for knowledge generation, exchange and utilisation. Our input identifies the function of a knowledge platform as using existing research, in practice, policy and academia, for a meta-level ana...

The Water Operators’ Partnerships conference of 2 November 2024 in Amsterdam was for me a dive in the deep ocean. I entered a world I didn’t know before. Of course I know the struggle to make water and sanitation facilities accessible for the poor...

In this video at the Water Operators' Partnership (WOP) conference in Amsterdam (2 November 2024) Professor Hassan Warda of the Alexandria Univers...

Is water a commodity or a public good? Who can assume the right to open or close the water tap? This blog will focus on the public to public partnerships for water utilities.

Establishing the roles of young people in developing economies

Is brain-drain counter-balanced by remittances and returning émigrés?

Effective aid work means enabling NGOs to bring about real, lasting change for poor people.

Ensuring effective development in backward economies is urgent

The challenges of the coming HLF4 in Busan are increasingly discussed in various media. See here for a selection of leading views and opinions. 

The Broker, in cooperation with the OECD, invites you to contribute to this blog about the challenges of the coming HLF on aid effectivess at Busan. 

Look here for all the events planned within the framework of the Bellagio Initiative and some interesting links for more information.

The Broker is proud to have contributed to the Bellagio Initiative by hosting a lively online debate about human wellbeing and inclusive economics. 

A very interesting recent study by the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) looks in detail at which tropical areas of the world will be threatened most by climate change, pinpointing geographical hot...

Neither within the EU nor within ACP countries, the ACP-EU partnership is something that lives in the hearts and minds of citizens.

Today is a milestone for The Broker. The 25th issue of our magazine has been snail-mailed to subscribers world wide