Is science a public service, and are scientists public servants?
By Max Lawson Sometimes Davos has a way of creating moments of great theatre; where the elites who run the world can be in some ways held to account, or at least called out. On a panel this week at Davos, my boss, Gabriela Bucher…
Profiting from Pain
By Max Lawson We are living through extraordinary times. Extraordinarily bad for the vast majority of humanity. Extraordinarily good if you are one of the richest people in the world. Normally they meet in January at Davos, but that face-to-face meeting was postponed, due to…
Hunger, Inequality and the Birth of Oxfam
By Max Lawson The other day I was speaking to Nellie, an old friend who is a primary school teacher in Malawi, about the rapidly rising prices: ‘Prices have risen, just since last month. Imagine a loaf of bread was 600kwacha, now it is 1000….
Debt Crisis and Austerity could Worsen Extremely High Inequality in SADC Region
By Anthony Kamande Southern Africa is the most unequal region in Africa and the most unequal subregion in the world. Decades of colonial legacy, corruption, elite power and poor governance have hampered inclusive development in the region as wealth and income are increasingly concentrated in the hands…
Austerity is Not the Answer to Africa’s Colliding Crises
By Anthony Kamande Our continent faces droughts and spiking prices that are pushing millions into hunger and poverty, a debt crisis and the ongoing pandemic. So why are countries cutting billions in spending? Anthony Kamande introduces a new Oxfam Pan Africa briefing based on our…
Golden Passports – Inequality and Refugees
By Max Lawson and Evelien van Roemburg Once again, daily our screens are filled with the heart-breaking scenes of many hundreds of thousands of people fleeing. At such moments, stories are told in the simplest way, and all distinctions are blurred; refugees become just that,…
CUI BONO COVID?
By Hernan Saenz Cortes Cui Bono? is one of those legal-jargon phrases that all law students (should) know. For the rest of us, it sounds like another Latin phrased that is used only by those who had a very expensive education. However, answering it can…
Former UK PM Gordon Brown on the Extraordinary COVID Response We Need
By Elizabeth Njambi Max and Nabil welcome former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the Oxfam EQUALS podcast for an incisive interview. The pandemic is far from over. Vaccine inequality rages on. We ask Gordon what he would do if he was leading the G20…
In East Africa, the Pandemic has Pushed Millions out of Work: Here’s what Governments Need to do
Anthony Kamande Out of the blue over Christmas, while I was visiting my home village some 200km from Nairobi, a helicopter landed. This was extraordinary: my village only got electricity in 2017 and an event like this had never happened before. (Even now, as most…
Life in Socialist Countries and the Fight against Inequality
By Max Lawson My friend Olga Ghazaryan was born in 1962 in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a small mountainous country in the Caucasus, and that time one of the republics that made up the USSR. I have known Olga since around 2003, when we…