Andy Sumner

Andy Sumner is co-director of the King’s International Development Institute at King’s College London. He is an interdisciplinary development economist. His research covers global poverty and Southeast Asia, specifically, Indonesia. Before taking his position at King’s college, he was a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. He holds associate positions at Oxford University at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. He is a vice president of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes and a council member of the Development Studies Association. He was listed in Foreign Policy Magazine’s ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ and writes a regular column for Global Policy.

Can Obama bend it like Bono?

What do Obama and Bono have in common? Both have proposed that the world should seek to end extreme poverty over the next twenty years or so. Obama said so in...

What is catalytic foreign aid?

  Is ‘aid exit’ or 'catalytic aid' a new development strategy for poor countries? You might think so judging by comments buzzing around about 'catalytic...

Politics, hunger and the muppets

Sesame Street is addressing head on the issues of 50m Americans living with hunger (see Alex post here on the staggering data in the Economist recently) by...

How to unseat foreign aid mantras?

I just finished a fantastic and provocative book – a wake up call to the aid and development ‘industry’ (of which I am a part so good to be woken up once in a...

What is resilience?

Just back from a lot of discussion on scarcity, resilience and crises at a conference convened by the Development Studies Association and European Association...

Ducks, Gyms and Chinese foreign aid

Foreign aid from ‘new donors’ (aka emerging economies) now makes up around $10bn/year. And this has doubled in the last five years as the Economist noted last...

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Let’s make climate a culture war!

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If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad?  No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...