development

Women who can read have children who live longer.

by Eddie 19.08.2010

My friend Dave has written an extremely powerful piece for the Wycliffe Bible Translators Magazine; Words for Life. Anée wept bitterly as she held her baby close to her chest. She was filled with a confusion of anger, grief and guilt. She was supposed to have taken the medicine herself and the baby would have [...]

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Aid to Africa: Some Hard Questions

by Eddie 13.01.2010

Africa Expat Wife has written a long and thoughtful piece on the issue of British Aid to Africa in a time of recession. It makes far from comfortable reading, but it asks the sorts of hard questions which need to be faced up to. I read over Christmas that the UK Government will have to [...]

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More on Malaria, Nets and Foreign Aid

by Eddie 16.04.2009

My thoughts on malaria and the aid industry in Africa stirred up some comments a few weeks back. Well, tmsruge weighs in with much stronger comments than I mine, inspired by some celebrity stunt in the US that I was unaware of. The solution to malaria, much like varied solutions to ending our addiction to [...]

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Bald Heads and Malaria

by Eddie 06.02.2009

“There is more money put into baldness drugs than into malaria,” Gates quipped, triggering laughter. “Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted. That is why that priority has been set.” I’m an expert in this field, being bald and having had malaria a number of times. I want to go on [...]

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Aid Pandemic

by Eddie 05.02.2009

Lingamish has taken a break from blogging about cats to post a thought provoking piece on the problem of aid and dependency in Africa. God sees this big world as a whole. You’re not the savior for Africa. You’re part of his Body working to heal the world. Find locals with the same burden as [...]

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The Challenge of Dependency

by Eddie 24.11.2008

It is so easy for Westerners to think that the problems in the developing world can be answered by pouring money into it. This is true in the political sphere but also in the mission world. It is reletively easy to give money to projects and such like, but the results are not always as [...]

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Keeping Our Eyes Wide Shut

by Eddie 04.09.2008

This is a bit of a follow on from my recent post on the Gospel and responding to human need. It seems to me that one of the reasons that those of us in richer countries don’t respond to the needs of the poor is that we spend so much of our effort worrying about [...]

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The Food Crisis in West Africa: A Woman’s Plight

by Eddie 25.07.2008

This video speaks for itself. Bamogo picked up an ax and chopped an old stump into firewood. She gathered straw and carried it to her house to start a fire. She set a blackened pot on the flames and poured in water, which she had fetched from a pump a half-mile away that morning. Standing [...]

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Lingamish on Dependency

by Eddie 26.11.2007

David Ker has just posted a very thoughtful short piece on issues surrounding aid to the developing world. He particularly looks at how this effects the Bible translation project he is working on. By the way, if you would be interested in supporting the Nyungwe translation project, you can sponsor the team for a day [...]

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One Laptop Per Child

by Eddie 29.08.2007

Sometimes an idea which can seem good in one context seems positively daft in another. There is an illustration of this in Lingamish’s treatment of the well intentioned, but ultimately unrealistic one laptop per child project. This project is a very good example of creating dependency, which I touched on here. By the way, if [...]

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When Charity Destroys Dignity

by Eddie 23.08.2007

Overcoming unhealthy dependency in the Christian Movement. Glenn J. Schwartz. This is one of the books that I reckon should be read by everyone who has an involvement in cross-cultural mission work. The book is composed of a series of video scripts and some other articles and at times it would be improved by some [...]

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