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What is Abt’s approach to governance?

By Graham Teskey This blog can be downloaded as a pdf at the bottom of this post. ‘Good’ governance—a mix of liberal democracy and free market institutions—is often claimed to be necessary for poverty reduction, growth and development1. Abt Associates does not subscribe to this view for the reason that there is no evidence to support …

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Digital Solutions in Health: why Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning should be a critical part of Pacific countries’ investment

Didar Ali, Technical Advisor – Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning The unrecognizeable medical staff uses digital tablet to review medical chart. I was pleased to attend the three-day Indo-Pacific Digital Health Users Forum in Fiji last week, where I learned about the increased use of technology in the health sector, the Pacific context and the …

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Boundary riding, dual worlds and critical friends: reflections from the field

Ayesha from Papua New Guinea and Lilis from Indonesia* I sat down with Ayesha and Lilis (two rising stars from Abt-managed Australian Government funded aid projects in Indonesia and PNG) and said “tell me something interesting”. I was not disappointed. I was stuck by Ayesha’s idea of 'boundary riding’. Ayehsa – herself an Australian-Papua New …

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Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Complex Programs in Complex Contexts: Three Facility Case Studies

By Tara Davda and Lavinia Tyrrel Aid is complex, and it is delivered in complex contexts. Any seasoned development practitioner would agree with this. For most of us, aid is about supporting positive change, and change necessarily means a renegotiation of power and resources. It means understanding the interests, motivations and incentives of those with …

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Playing in the sand-box or the tar-pit? Supporting politically-informed programming in large ‘Facilities’

As I exited my last position at The Asia Foundation, William Cole challenged me to: …report back in a year and tell me if its possible to think and work politically in high-value, multi-sector facility mechanisms So, after our involvement in three such 'Facilities' over the last 12-18 months[1], what is the verdict? Are we …

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DDD4 Jakarta

The fourth meeting of the ‘Doing Development Differently’ movement (as one of its founders, Michael Woolcock, calls it) was held over two days in Jakarta a couple of weeks ago. Jointly hosted by the Government of Indonesia, the World Bank and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the workshop attracted over 200 participants from …

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