Aid transparency campaign group Publish What You Fund will welcome a new managing director in June.   He is David Hall-Matthews, an academic focused on international development and inequality issues and leader of a pressure group promoting social liberalism within the U.K. Liberal Democratic Party.   Outgoing chief Karin Christiansen, meanwhile, has announced she will sit on the Publish What You Fund’s board.   Read more development...

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U.S. President Barack Obama is set to unveil a new alliance that promises to increase private sector investment in agriculture Friday (May 18), hours before the much-anticipated G-8 summit starts.   Forty-five companies are expected to comprise The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, The New York Times reports. These companies are involved in different sectors and are expected to invest up to $3.5 billion in the new food security initiative G-8 leaders are set to di...

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  The Food and Agriculture Organization will discuss today, May 18, a trust fund that is designed to fight hunger in the Near East.   The Near East per FAO’s operational coverage comprises 19 nations in the Middle East and Africa. Although most of these countries are middle- and high-income economies — only Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen are low-income — the region, FAO notes, faces several challenges that need to be addressed, including increasing w...

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France names its first development minister following Francois Hollande’s victory over Nicolas Sarkozy this May: A finance specialist with little development background.   French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault appointed Pascal Canfin as junior minister for development, the first person to take the seat under the new title. The position was formerly called junior minister for cooperation, and many see the renaming as a reflection of the new government’s plan of a...

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