This article was originally posted by the Center for Global Development. I’m excited to share that the Center for Global Development (CGD) and Foreign Policy magazine will honor US Senator Richard Lugar with the 2012 Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award.  The award, bestowed annually since 2003, recognizes an individual or organization for changing the

When you opt to buy fair trade certified coffee at the grocery store instead of uncertified, how much good are you doing? My guest on this week’s Wonkcast, Kimberly Ann Elliott, draws on her recent policy paper, Is My Fair Trade Coffee Really Fair? Trends and Challenges in Fair Trade Certification, to tell me why the answer may be more complicated than you’d think.

Tonight, Esther Duflo, an award-winning development economist, will be giving a talk at the Center for Global Development’s Sixth Annual Richard H. Sabot Lecture. We’re really excited about her presentation because to be perfectly honest, she’s kind of a big deal. She knows how to take economics out of the lab and into the field

Antimicrobial resistance, or drug resistance, can be a tricky topic to wrap your head around, so we thought we’d highlight a a very cool new interactive map from the Center for Global Development (CGD). It shows drug resistance data relating to selected infectious diseases across the world, including HIV, pneumonia, shigella, MDR-TB, malaria and MRSA.

Nancy Birdsall, the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) founding president, talks about a new approach to help improve the impact of foreign aid in developing countries: cash on delivery aid. Read her original post on CGD’s Views from the Center blog. “Experimentation on foreign aid is valuable — and rare.” This is the single most

Feel like there’s just no hope for the world these days? Well, it might be time to change your outlook. While the income per capita around the world has not increased, people are exponentially happier than ever before. And life expectancy has even increased by 10 years, despite economies facing monetary crises. How is this

As you’ve probably figured out by now, we’re big fans of data visualizations and poverty statistics. This new report from the Brookings Institution (PDF) has some exciting new data on global poverty levels. According to the report’s authors, the Millennium Development Goal to halve the rate of global poverty by 2015 was met sometime in

If you’re curious to learn more about the Sudan vote and what that might mean for the fate of the country, we encourage you to listen to Center for Global Development Fellow Ben Leo’s podcast on Sudan’s debt. The $35 billion external debt is a critical issue in the upcoming referendum — if oil-rich Southern

In the world of international development, it can be a challenge to look on the bright side when it comes to poverty, governance and corruption –- but not for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A fierce optimist, he believes that Africa’s time is now. By supporting visionary leaders who are tackling poverty in Africa,

We just found out that Publish What You Pay — a coalition that encourages citizens to hold their governments accountable in poor but resource-rich countries — has been awarded the Center for Global Development’s (CDG) 2010 Commitment to Development “Ideals to Action” Award. This award honors individuals or organizations that have made a significant contribution

Julie Walz from the Center for Global Development talks about the organization’s latest report, which ranks countries by their commitment to aid and development. Last week, at the Center for Global Development, we released the annual Commitment to Development Index -– a ranking of how well rich countries help development abroad. Though there is clearly

ONE’s policy team played with QuODA — a new tool developed by the Center for Global Development and Brookings — all day yesterday. For the first time, QuODA lets you measure the effectiveness of aid to developing countries across donors by looking at a wide range of quantifiable indicators on aid quality (such as measurements

Another must-read for today, this one from Nancy Birdsall and Sarah Jane Staats on recent rumors of tension in the State Department, White House, and USAID over control of U.S. global development strategy. Birdsall and Staats offer a little perspective: In reality, the president, the secretary of state and the head of USAID all want

Our readers are probably aware that in the last couple days a successful coup was staged in Niger to overthrow President Mahamadou Tandja. This obviously creates a tricky situation when considering humanitarian aid in the region. Jenny Aker from the Center for Global Development contends that a current food crisis in Niger runs the risk

With so many news reports, eye witness accounts, and images from the region it can seem overwhelming to really wrap your head around what this crisis means for Haiti going forward. I highly recommend this Q&A; with Ruth Levine, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Ruth’s experience and knowledge of the region