By Connie Veillette - A new report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs applauds U.S. government agencies for food security leadership but calls on them to up the game in the face of rising global challenges and shrinking aid budgets. While it is a positive assessment, the report highlights some areas of concern that could affect U.S. leadership [...]
By Sarah Jane Staats - What happens in the world is America’s business, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) argued in a major foreign policy speech at Brookings this week in what sounded a lot like a vice-presidential candidate speech (even if we’re not calling it that just yet). Roll over dog-gate! Step aside mommy-gate! There might finally be some serious comments [...]
By William Savedoff - Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid) is moving from concept to reality as I learned in a recent trip to Europe. In the process we are learning a lot about measuring outcomes and other implementation challenges. While I heard about the ways aid agencies are beginning to try COD Aid or similar initiatives, the internal [...]
By Nancy Birdsall - Congratulations to our colleague Liliana Rojas-Suarez, named by the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce as economist of the year. Past winners include Hernando de Soto and Julio Velarde of Peru – who in 2010 was also chosen by Emerging Markets business magazine as the best Central Banker in Latin America. The annual award recognizes Liliana’s many [...]
By Vijaya Ramachandran - This is a joint post with Julie Walz. The Assessing Progress in Haiti Act (H.R. 1016) was approved by a voice vote in the Senate this week, almost a year after it was passed by the House. The Act “directs the President to report to Congress on the status of post-earthquake humanitarian, reconstruction, and development [...]
By Alan Gelb - This is a joint post with Julia Clark and Christian Meyer. Industrial policy—as many have already commented—is back. (See here, here and here). The recent wave of post-financial-crisis interventionism has reignited the classic (and often heated) debate about whether governments can in fact nurture economic growth. Previous analysis of the East Asian miracle, and frustration [...]
By Victoria Fan - Amidst tough times, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is rapidly transforming for the better. After negative, if not slightly hysterical, press from cases of fraudulent spending (that the Global Fund itself discovered and reported in 2010), compounded by doubts among certain bilateral donors on the sustainability and efficiency of the Global [...]By Victoria Fan - This is a joint post with Rachel Silverman. Navigating the global health funding landscape can be confusing even for global health veterans; there are scores of donors and multilateral funding mechanisms, each with its own particular structure, personality, and philosophy. For the uninitiated, PEPFAR, GAVI, PMI, WHO, the Global Fund, UNITAID, and the Gates Foundation [...]
By Charles Kenny - A couple of weeks ago, CGD hosted a workshop on a transparency proposal we’re calling (at least for the moment) Publish What You Buy. In the spirit of openness, I meant to blog about it straight after –but where would have been the irony in that? So, two weeks later, (still) faster than a speeding [...]
: skip to main skip to sidebar Kopsa Otte Agriculture Blog Kopsa Otte CPAs Advisors have been involved in Income Tax Planning , Estate Planning Succession Planning for over 30 years . For more information about Kopsa Otte services , please contact us via e-mail at lkopsa kopsaotte.com or call 800-975-4829. Saturday , April 21, 2012 CROP INSURANCE 1 PRIORITY Southeast Farm Press SoutheastFarmPress.com reports , U.S . Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack , leaders of the U.S . Agriculture Crop Insurers Association and the directors of all U.S . grain associations agree that the single most critical part of the upcoming farm bill has to be crop insurance . According to the story , high grain prices have brought with them highest in history input costs , and risk associated with planting such
By Amanda Glassman - This is a joint post with Kate McQueston. This week the World Health Organization made dementia a priority, while Jim Kim—next in line for the World Bank—chose his as job creation. “Priority” is a word that is often used in global health and development when calling for increased attention to or funding of specific diseases, [...]
MobilizeU Guest Blog
By Mary Ododa MobilizeU Regional Coordinator
Rhodes University; Grahamstown, South Africa
The first week of the MobilizeU competition at Rhodes University in South Africa was a complete success!
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By Michael Clemens - How can the rural poor of Uganda achieve lasting opportunity, health, and security? One vision for this goal is the laudable enterprise of external charity, such as the efforts in Uganda encouraged by U.S. celebrities Tommy Hilfiger and Katie Holmes or the controversial work of Invisible Children. A starkly different approach is described below by [...]By Victoria Fan - A few weeks ago, the Independent Evaluation of the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) Phase 1 evaluation was released by the Global Fund on its website. Much to my dismay, however, this “evaluation” was only the ‘Baseline Report’ on AMFm which provides basic information on the pre-intervention data, based on my quick read of the Executive [...]By Amanda Glassman - For some time now, the food security movement has been stating that improving the agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers improves nutritional status. Last week’s G-8 Foreign Ministers Meeting Chair’s statement (here) reinforces this idea: Donor and partner government investments in agricultural development have proven to be one of the most effective means to promote broad-based [...]
By Vijaya Ramachandran - A new report from the World Bank asks a key question–why does cargo spend weeks in Sub-Saharan African ports—and comes up with some very thought-provoking ideas. Authors Gael Raballand, Salim Refas, Monical Beuran and Gozde Isik, argue that the answer is NOT that the lack of port capacity. Examining six Sub-Saharan African ports—Tema (Ghana), Lome [...]
By Charles Kenny - The Washington Post on Monday highlighted the latest results from a randomized study of a development intervention by the folks at MIT. This time, the subject of the study was clean cookstoves. As the Post noted, that’s timely because Hillary Clinton has been a strong advocate, backing the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and pledging [...]
By Todd Moss - This is a joint post with Stephanie Majerowicz Scott Fellow Idella Cooper 2nd from right When in Liberia last February, we kept running into dynamic young Liberians with American accents in high-powered jobs. They also seemed to have something else in common. Idella Cooper, the newly-appointed Deputy Justice Minister, had returned to her home country [...]By Vijaya Ramachandran - This post is joint with Ross Thuotte Today, the World Bank announced that Jim Yong Kim will be the institution’s next president. As the dust settles from the leadership selection debate, the focus will necessarily shift to the issues that confront Kim and the world’s leading development institution. One of the most difficult and important [...]
: skip to main skip to sidebar Kopsa Otte Agriculture Blog Kopsa Otte CPAs Advisors have been involved in Income Tax Planning , Estate Planning Succession Planning for over 30 years . For more information about Kopsa Otte services , please contact us via e-mail at lkopsa kopsaotte.com or call 800-975-4829. Friday , April 6, 2012 FARMERS WITH MF GLOBAL 1099’S A majority of our farm clients are incorporated so the March 1st filing requirement for farmers does not apply . But , unincorporated farmers file by March 1 of each year to escape having to pay estimated tax payments in January . This year , many farmers received their Form 1099 from MF Global very late and in many cases after March 1. The IRS just announced penalty relief for any farmers who had to file their return after March 1 due