News

DAI, in association with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is hosting a workshop convening policymakers, practitioners, and academics to explore the topic, “From Critique to Construction: Next Steps in Making Participation Work for Development,” in London on May 30 at Central Westminster Hall.

In sheer numbers, the second NASA International Space Apps Challenge April 20-21 made a big splash. More than 9,000 people worldwide—four times as many as last year—dove into the 48-hour hackathon to confront questions of space exploration and social need, churning out some 600 potential solutions. Nowhere was participation more intense than in Kathmandu, Nepal, where 60 software developers, engineers, designers, and technologists comprised 17 teams that, working side by side, devised products including: an all-terrain, GPS-guided, video-equipped rover for disaster response; and a way to more quickly detect potentially dangerous climate-change anomalies using data from space.

Space enthusiasts, tech wizards, and citizen scientists the world over are prepping for the second International Space Apps Challenge, a 48-hour hackathon led by NASA April 20-21. Their mission: use images from space, open-source data, and earthly know-how to make apps that address climate change and improve life on earth—and beyond.

There is no doubting the growth in popularity of mobile banking. According to Juniper Research, the market for mobile payments is expected to reach more than $600 billion (£393bn) globally this year—double the figure of February 2011. And many development organizations are riding that telecom wave to reach people who don’t have access to financial institutions. But that doesn’t mean mobile banking is without its challenges. 

The Fiscal Policy and Expenditure Management Program will launch the Expresate campaign on March 21 in San Salvador. Expresate, or to “express yourself,” aims to teach future taxpayers that compliance is a social responsibility that—in the long term—fosters economic growth and social development of their country.

To encourage out-of-the-box thinking and generate commitment among Pakistan’s leading minds and policy influencers on the need to nurture innovative approaches in education, the DAI-led Ilm Ideas project, funded by the U.K. Department for International Development, partnered with an education nonprofit, Developyst, and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund to bring together leaders from education, government, microfinance, poverty alleviation, and technology sectors to form Pakistan’s first Education Innovation Alliance.