In the hilltop village of Murehe, electricity is an exotic and faraway rumour. Like 97 per cent of the population in Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries, the villagers here rely on candles and kerosene for a dim and flickering light. [...] What’s even more significant is how the village got its lamps. This wasn’t a traditional charity giveaway – the old-fashioned type of foreign aid. Instead, there was a business plan, technical innovation, a system of income generation with village enterprises and a partnership with a profit-making company.

Overseas aid was cut from $5.03 billion in 2014-15, to $4.05 billion in 2015-16, a reduction of around 20 per cent. Further cuts are scheduled to follow until 2017-18, by which time Australia's aid budget relative to gross national income will have sunk to 0.21 percent, its lowest level since overseas assistance was formalised in the post-war period. It will also be substantially below what Australia's more prosperous OECD partners allocate.

More than a change in terminology is needed to challenge the view that if you don’t pay you owe unquestioning gratitude. [...] For the billions of the poorest people around the world who rely on philanthropic aid to meet even basic needs, as the saying goes, “beggars can’t be choosers”. But why shouldn’t philanthropic programmes abide by the same consumer rights rules expected of a traditional business selling soap or toothpaste?

Interestingly, the ‘Himalayan tragedy’ provided India with a readymade opportunity to score brownie points over its main rival and neighbour China on aid diplomacy and the Narendra Modi administration grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Although China had overtaken India as Nepal’s largest foreign investor in 2014, Beijing failed to catch up with New Delhi’s humanitarian diplomacy on this occasion.

West Africa’s medical system was brought within an inch of its life by a devastating epidemic. But Cuba could nurse it back to health.What follows is a modest proposal. It endeavors to solve three crucial problems all at once: U.S.-Cuba relations; the post-Ebola human resources deficits in physicians for Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; and the scarcity of skilled nurses in those same countries.

The UK government’s humanitarian response package for the Nepal earthquake now stands at £22.8 million, following a contribution to the United Nations’ emergency appeal, International Development Secretary Justine Greening announced today. Britain has released a new £5.3 million support package to the UN following their ‘Flash Appeal’ to provide additional help to people affected by the devastating 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake. 

The UN's humanitarian chief has said she is "extremely concerned" that Nepal's customs authorities are slowing the delivery of earthquake aid, as the death toll from the disaster crossed 7,000 on Sunday. After the government ruled out finding more survivors buried in the ruins of the capital Kathmandu, the focus was shifting to delivering aid to families and others in far-flung areas of the devastated nation

After the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that flattened parts of the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu on Saturday and unleashed avalanches on Mount Everest, India and China barely missed a beat. Within hours of the disaster, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dispatched military aircraft carrying workers, medicines and blankets.