Kenneth King (and bloglines) in The Hague

Today I went to the Institute of Social Studies for a lecture by Professor Kenneth King, former director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. It had been pretty stressful getting there - the trains were having problems - but I made it two minutes before the lecture was due to start.

In a stimulating and sometimes amusing lecture, covering a wide range of recent material published by the World Bank, NEPAD and others on the relationship between education and development, Kenneth King made four main points:

• 'the informal sector is dead.' Micro and small enterprises is a much better term because it also includes farms
• there is a need to re-conceptualize the links between poverty, education and growth. Universal primary education for all is no longer viewed as the panacea for development
• the role of higher education is changing and there is a growing recognition that it is of importance to development as part of 'education for dynamic economies'
• Is Africa going to continue living off welfare?

In his lecture, he also emphasized the role of the knowledge economy, knowledge institutes and knowledge infrastructures, arguing that the difference between the development of Ghana and Korea in the last 50 years could be due to the fact Korea has placed much more emphasis on knowledge in its development. He also made some very interesting comments of the role of China in development aid with a new policy in January 2006. There was no time to expand on this but I was intrigued...

This is, after all, only my interpretation of the lecture but you can go to the source instead which is, I think, '2005: The year of development that was to change the world? A review from the angle of education' which you can find in the latest issue of Norrag News. This issue contains some very interesting (long and short) articles related to development and higher education.

In the information-for-development sector, Kenneth King is best know for his influential book with Simon McGrath Knowledge for development? Comparing British, Swedish, Japanese and World Bank aid, published by Zed Books in 2004. I also got the impression that Professor King is, rightly, an afficionado of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency...

After this interesting lecture, I went round to IICD where Joitske - the only reader of this blog! - kindly spent her lunch break showing me how I can use bloglines and delicious. Social bookmarking here I come! So, after this very stimulating and useful morning in The Hague, I caught the train to Amsterdam to go back to the office...