Owen abroad

Christoph Niemann at the New York Times offers a splendid visual diary of a trip from New York to Berlin. The first image is below. More here.

from the New York Times Abstract City blog

Here is a  really nice animated talk by Dan Pink on what really motivates us.

For those who can’t play the video, he says that monetary incentives work for simple, straightforward tasks, but they don’t work at all well for tasks that require conceptual and creative thinking.  According to him, what motivates people is autonomy, mastery and purpose.

One conclusion I draw from this is that there are probably a lot more people than you might think who would be willing to spend a lot of time and effort helping to make the world a better place by reducing poverty, if we did a better job of enabling them to give their time and abilities.  According to Pink, what will motivate them is the challenge, the opportunity to develop mastery, and the knowledge that they are making a contribution to a purpose they believe in.  Those of us who work in development need to do some more thinking about how we can provide more platforms on which those contributions can be made, rather than just asking people to pay money in taxes or in donations.

In a more satirical vein, if you work in the aid business I think you’ll enjoy the “Hand Relief International” blog. Here’s the latest post, on innovation in development:

Speaking about thinking – I have been thinking about “innovation” a lot lately, as I noticed the word is all the rage these days. The challenge in our sector is how to “integrate innovation” in our language without changing much about the way things work.  … Passing innovation in a world dominated by career professionals with many years in the business and certain ways of doing things is a pretty tall order but then donor’s don’t really want to see much rocking of the boat happening either – that would force them to change their ways, which always makes them uncomfortable – they want to see the word used a lot, and they want to hear the occasional 300-words story about it, that can be put in a neat textbox in a report.

(Thanks to @AIDSPolicyProj for the link to the Dan Pink video)

There was an interesting article in last week’s Economist about the use of prizes to promote innovation. It was supportive of the idea in general, but it seemed to gloss over the economic  arguments.  I think it is a shame that the Economist did not take the opportunity to explain the economics of rewarding innovation, and in particular to explain in economic terms why our current arrangements do not do a good job of creating incentives for innovation that benefits developing countries.

You can think of patents as a kind of prize.  When you invent a new product, the government gives you the right to operate a temporary monopoly. This enables you to charge more than the marginal cost, and the premium is your “prize”. This arrangement has the huge advantage that it links your reward to the amount people are willing to pay for your invention, so it encourages innovations that people actually value.

This kind of prize as a reward for innovation may be fine for a new kind of vacuum cleaner, or for Lady Gaga’s latest album. But it has two big disadvantages which are especially relevant for people who live in developing countries.

First, the use of patents prevents some people from benefiting from the new technology if they are unable to pay the higher price.  If a company develops a drug for heart disease, or a more efficient form of solar panel, the patent will enable them to charge much more than marginal cost for their product. That’s how the inventor gets paid. But the result is that millions of people will not be able to afford that product – though they might be able to afford it at marginal cost. The temporary monopoly results in fewer people benefiting from new technologies than ought to benefit, in the sense that those people would be willing and able to pay the marginal cost.  This is potentially a big welfare cost to society as a whole. It means, for example, that people may die of heart disease because they can’t afford the high price of the drugs, even though they could buy the drug if it were sold at marginal cost; or they can’t use new fertilizers or seed technologies, even though the benefits to them of doing so exceed the cost.

Second, if we reward inventors by granting them temporary monopolies, we only create incentives to develop products for which there are likely to be enough consumers wealthy enough to pay a monopoly price.   Nobody will invent a vaccine against malaria, or a cassava plant that resists mosaic virus, based on the possible rewards they will get from charging high prices to its consumers.  So the patent system is a prize for people who invent cures for baldness, but not a prize for people who invent ways to prevent the spread of malaria.

For these reasons, other incentives, such as prizes, Advance Market Commitments, and similar mechanisms, may be effective either as alternatives or complements to the patent prize of a temporary monopoly, especially for technologies that would have benefits in developing countries.

The Economist quotes Tachi Yamada, the president of Global Health at the Gates Foundation, as suggesting that Advance Market Commitments or prizes may not work well for drugs that require a long time to develop:

Tachi Yamada of the Gates Foundation is a big believer in giving incentive prizes, but gives warning that it can take 15 years or more to bring a new drug to market, and that even AMC’s carrot of $1.5 billion for new vaccines may not be a big enough incentive. No prize could match the $20 billion or so a new blockbuster drug can earn in its lifetime. So, in some cases, says Dr Yamada, “market success is the real prize.”

This seems to reflect the suggestion that is sometimes made that Advance Market Commitments may not be appropriate for for early stage drugs, but the economics of this argument is faulty.

It is clearly true that the reward for bringing to market an early stage medicine, such as an AIDS or malaria vaccine, would need to be higher, both because of the greater uncertainty and risk of failure, and because the rewards are further in the future.  So an AMC for an early stage product would probably need to be larger than for a late stage product that just needs some tweaking for use in developing countries and some investment in bigger production facilities.  But let’s not overstate this.  The median total market size for new chemical entities that pharmaceutical companies actually bring to market is about $3-$4 billion.  Most medicines are not $20 billion blockbusters.  So $3-$4 billion is roughly the market size that the private sector considers sufficient reward to develop new medicines.   We don’t need to match the blockbusters.  An AMC of $4 billion might well be enough to incentivize the development of a malaria vaccine: and let’s not forget that if it turns out not to be enough, it won’t have cost the funders anything.

Furthermore, just as the firms discount the prize by the risk of failure, the funders should similarly discount the cost.  If there is a 25% chance that no vaccine will be developed (because the technology is uncertain) then firms will discount the “prize” – that is, the value of the committed market – when they make their investment decisions.  But in this case, the expected cost to the funders of a $4 billion pledge is $3 billion, and this is what they should include in their value for money calculation.  That means that even though the nominal amount that has to be promised for an early stage product needs to be higher for a given impact on R&D, to take account of the probability of failure, the expected cost to funders is not higher.

The same point can be put another way.  A high probability of failure makes all investment in R&D less attractive, but it does not make AMCs relatively less attractive than other forms of funding.  When the probability of failure is high, the expected return from each dollar spent encouraging innovation is lower. This is true if that dollar is spent up-front in the form of research grants of the kinds normally given by aid agencies and foundations (since the higher probability of failure reduces the expected benefits of the grant), or in the form of a prize or promised market (since the higher probability of failure reduces the expected benefit to firms, and so reduces the incentive for them to invest in R&D).  The effect is the same either way. Higher probability of failure is clearly bad, but it does not make AMCs relatively less efficient as a way to pay for research for early stage products.

Whether an AMC for an early stage product is good value for money depends ultimately on the value of the product.  If donors were to spend $4 billion buying a malaria vaccine for use in developing countries, it would be a hugely good investment, saving millions of lives a year at a fraction of the price of many other interventions. It would result in huge savings on trying to prevent malaria in other ways, or treat to treat malaria; and the resulting reduction in the burden of malaria would have huge economic benefits for developing countries. Given that there is no question that donors would want to spend at least $4 billion paying for a malaria vaccine to be used across the developing world, it is inefficient for them not to say so right away, and thereby create incentives for private sector investment in accelerating its development.  The risk of poor value for money in aid spending comes not from making the commitment, but from failing to do so.

When Dr Yamada says that “market success is the real prize”, he seems to be missing the point that market success is not a good way of rewarding innovation for developing countries.   If we rely on market success, in the form of a temporary monopoly, to reward innovation then we will exclude half the world’s population from being able to access technologies developed with rich markets in mind, such as drugs against cancer and heart disease, clean energy, new agricultural technologies, or new software.  And “market success” creates no incentive to develop technologies which primarily benefit the world’s poor such as a vaccine against malaria or a variety of cassava that resists the mosaic virus, because inventors know that the people in poor countries cannot afford the monopoly prices that would enable inventors to recover their costs.

This is very cool.  A team of researchers from Development Gateway and AidData have worked with the World Bank to add detailed subnational geographical information to all of the Bank’s active projects in the Africa and Latin America region.  This isn’t just pins in a map showing the country where the money is spent: they have looked through the project documentation to find out as far as possible the geographic coordinates of the actual locations where aid the activities take place.

This video by AidData explains brilliantly what geocoding means, and why its important. Take a look:

Serious kudos to the World Bank, Development Gateway and AidData for doing this work. Geocoding is going to have a huge impact on improving the accountability and effectiveness of aid.  By geocoding these World Bank projects manually, the team has demonstrated that geocoding aid is feasible. As Development Gateway’s Steve Davenport says in the video: “This is not that difficult”.

If the new standards for publishing aid information that are being designed by donors under the International Aid Transparency Initiative include appropriate standards for geo-coding of all aid activities, then it won’t be necessary for these projects to be coded by hand in future.  The people funding the projects would geocode their projects from the outset, and this information would be included in the data feeds, so everyone will have more comprehensive, more accurate and more precise about who is doing what, and where.

If you want more background, aidinfo’s paper Show Me The Money explains how geo-coding, traceability and transaction level details make a powerful combination for improving the effectiveness and accountability of aid.

H/T: my colleagues at aidinfo

Owen on the Swiss-French border

We are back in Addis after backpacking through France, Italy and Switzerland on the Tour de Mont Blanc.  Highly recommended: if you are interested, the details are elsewhere on this site.

I’ve come back buzzing with energy. (Memo to Americans: you guys really need to take more vacation. I reckon they increase my average productivity, aside from the other benefits.)

The normal stream of opinion, lightly diluted with facts, will resume here shortly.

So, what did I miss?

If you read this blog, you might be interested in this job with the good people at Global Integrity. The post is based in Washington DC:

Project Manager – This position will play a key role in managing and supporting almost all of Global Integrity’s fieldwork in the coming years. Alongside other colleagues, this position will help to research and design new fieldwork methodologies and indicators; recruit and manage field teams of journalists and researchers to execute current and future fieldwork projects; perform analysis and quality control over the resultant data and reporting; and design and lead outreach and dissemination activities, including public workshops and capacity building activities. Like all colleagues at Global Integrity, this position will have the creative space to conceive of and lead new and innovative initiatives on a regular basis. We encourage good ideas and risk-taking.

I was in Paris last week for meetings about aid transparency.  At the International Aid Transparency Initiative meeting, signatories and the Steering Committee members agreed a very important step forward.  Donors comprising more than half of global official aid agreed the details of what will be published under phase one of the IATI initiative.

More details are on the aidinfo.org blog.  In short, the donors agreed

• Data will be published more quickly, with an agreement that information will be published as soon as possible, and at a minimum, quarterly. More timely information is a top ask of stakeholders in developing countries.
• Data will be published in a common, open format, so that it is readily accessible, comparable and easy to find.
• More detailed aid data will be published, increasing its relevance to users.

None of this is going to be easy for donors. It will require some investment in collecting better information and quality assurance, and it will require a significant change of culture as they move to the assumption that the details of all aid projects will be publicly available automatically.  But we know that the benefits hugely exceed these costs.  So kudos to the donors for taking this important first step on the road to comprehensive aid transparency.

Two particular highlights of the meetings from my point of view were:

• The five country pilots demonstrated the feasibility of automatic electronic data exchange between donors and developing country governments, and for the creation of data in standard IATI format; and
• The developing country representatives at the meeting were clear and vocal in their insistence that donors should publish details of how they are spending aid.

There is a long way to go, and there is a comprehensive work programme for phases 2 and 3 of IATI.  But last week donors took an extremely important first step for which they deserve credit.

Read more on the aidinfo blog.

This is the third post in a series providing non-technical advice about affordable and practical IT for people working in developing countries, especially where internet access is not great.   In the introductory post, I talked about the basic set-up – getting a computer and making sure it is secure and properly backed up, and getting basic office software and email.  In the second post I talked about easy ways to read blogs.

This third post looks at the software on your computer.  It does not deal with online services (such as Gmail or Dropbox) which I’ll cover next time.

Web browser

Many people use Internet Explorer because it is already set up on their computer.  But Google’s Chrome (free) is faster and more secure, and it just works.  I also have Firefox (free) installed, mainly because there are some plugins that I like and which are not yet available for Chrome; but for day-to-day use Firefox is getting too bloated and slow. (The beta version of Firefox 4 seems to be faster.)

Because I use a couple of different computers, I use Xmarks (free plugin for both Chrome and Firefox) to synchronise the web browsers across computers and across browsers. As well as synchronising bookmarks it synchronises passwords and it can even open the same tabs for you when you move from one computer to another.

Player for videos and music

I use VLC media player (free) because it seems to be able to play just about anything I throw at it.  Lots of people like MediaMonkey (free).

Communications:

Skype (free) is very useful for people who travel.  Skype-to-skype calls are free of charge; and you can use Skype to call people in other countries very cheaply (because your call goes over the internet to the destination country and only goes into the telephone network for the last part of the journey).  The latest version of Skype supports 5-way videoconferences; but that isn’t going to work if you are on a dial up connection.

However, for technical reasons that are too boring to explain, Skype can be a pain if you don’t have good bandwidth.  A good alternative is Google Talk (free) – but it does not do conference calls, and you cannot dial out to normal telephone numbers like you can with Skype.

I’ve also heard good things about Oovoo for multi-user videoconferencing.

Podcasts

I love having podcasts to listen to – I subscribe to podcasts ranging from film reviews to politics and technology.  Many mainstream radio servicies, especially the BBC and NPR, are making their programmes available and there are specialist programmes (such as my Development Drums podcast). Podcasts are a great way to keep in touch with what is happening back home: you can listen to them on long plane flights and car journeys, or in the gym.

Many people will already have iTunes (free) installed on their computer and this provides an easy way to download podcasts automatically. And if you have an iPod or an iPhone, you can set them to transfer the downloaded podcasts to your device automatically.  I don’t use iTunes for my podcasts, partly because I don’t like Apple’s attitude to controlling its users.

I use RSSRadio to manage my podcasts – it has really powerful controls (for example, you can decide which directory you want the podcasts to go into, and how many back-episodes you want it to keep).  I then use a utility called SyncBack (free) to keep my MP3 player up to date automatically.

Other people recommend Juice (formerly iPodder) or MediaMonkey for downloading podcasts.  A new option which is growing in popularity is DoubleTwist – particularly valuable for people with Android phones.

Twitter

If you like Twitter, you’ll like Tweetdeck (free) which makes the flow of your twitter feed manageable.  I find this much easier than using the website.

Faster downloading & file sharing

In developing countries, downloading from the internet can be slow. It can also be irritating if the download breaks half way and you need to start again from the beginning. Free Download Manager (er, free) can help you with this.

Proxy service

Another way to overcome a slow internet connection is to use a proxy service such as OnSpeed. These typically charge a fee. You set up your computer so that you get your information via this service, which get the data on your behalf and compress it before sending it to your computer.

These services can also be useful for getting round blocks imposed by some countries on access to particular websites.

Utilities

For compressing and uncompressing files: 7-Zip (free)

For managing photos: Picasa (free)- this is both a website for storing photos, and photo management software you can install on your computer.

Privacy and cleaning computers (important to avoid identity theft): C-Cleaner (free)

Turn your computer into a wifi hotspot: Connectify (free, but Windows 7 only)

Next time, I’ll look at online services relevant to development workers.

Aid sceptics like to say that the west has spent trillions of more than a trillion dollars on aid to Africa since independence. See for example Dambisa Moyo in the Wall Street Journal or The Catholic Herald.  Bill Easterly makes the same claim on page 4 of The White Man’s Burden. This claim is often made by people who argue that aid does not work.

Though the point is often made, it it isn’t true. According to OECD DAC statistics, since aid began in the 1960s donors have given a grand total of $502 billion to sub-Saharan Africa, which is worth about $866 billion in today’s prices. (Table 29; excludes debt relief.)

This is not trillions of dollars – not even one trillion dollars.

The G-20 countries have, over the whole history of aid, given less aid to sub-Saharan Africa than they spent on fiscal stimulus in the single year of 2009.

(This fact comes from my recent article, An Open Letter to Aid Skeptics, in the latest edition of the Center for International Relations Forum journal (pdf).)

Hadley Freeman in the Guardian has rumbled my black jeans delusion:

Black button-down shirts are basically the upper-body equivalent of black jeans, which were discussed on this page a few weeks ago. Just as some misguided men think the black gives the jeans a smack of formality while the denim gives the black a hint of youthful cool (both beliefs = wrongness), so too Hansen and Shearer seem to think the black gives their shirts some suave sleekness, while the buttons retain the formality. Again, wrong and wrong.

Rats. Need plan B.

… is here.  Simon’s stuff is always well worth reading – he has an enviable ability to synthesize ideas from across disciplines, and explain them with a coherent narrative.

Will Ross has a nice piece on BBC Radio 4 Today this morning in which he goes to Lalibela, a small, quite remote, mountain-top town in Northern Ethiopia, and interviews the kids there about the World Cup. They know all about the players and are so excited about the World Cup.

The developing world may seem far away (I’m in a very modern hotel in Madrid at the moment) so I was glad to be reminded that people all over the world have much more in common than our differences – we all share very similar worries, loves, interests and excitement.

Today’s Guardian newspaper has an article about Robert Owen, after whom I was named:

the Scottish parliament spent part of yesterday debating whether Robert Owen’s face should appear on Scottish banknotes. The explanation, as those who know the history of the school reform and co-operative movements will realise, is that Owen’s enlightened management principles at his mill at New Lanark on the Clyde made it both a milestone in British social reform and an enduring embodiment of how workplaces and businesses could still, even today, be more progressively organised.

Robert Owen’s principles underpin the principles of the cooperative movement which continues today.

Incidentally, one of Robert Owen’s remarks, of which I am particularly fond, was this:

All religions are based on the same absurd imagination, that make man a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic; or a miserable hypocrite.

(though sadly, he became a bit of a whacko spiritualist himself later in life).

Welcome to my world:

Fortunately my partner has reality-based beliefs.

Two interesting new articles start with the premise that the aid system needs to be overhauled, and then reach radically different conclusions about what this means in practice.

First up, Roger Riddell says we need a radical rethink of foreign aid:

The gap between what it does and what it could do is widening fast. … The central problem of the aid system is that there is no system.  … Almost since official aid was first given, politicians have both warned of aid’s systemic problems and proposed alternatives. These include raising aid funds through an automatic compulsory mechanism based on the ability to pay; pooling aid resources and allocating them on the basis of need; and, if there are grounds for believing that the recipient government is unable or unwilling to use the aid funds transparently, “ring-fencing” the aid in a fund to be administered independently.

Most of these good ideas have been eclipsed by the focus on increasing aid levels. A common response to anyone advocating these solutions to aid’s systemic problems is the counter-argument that they are part of the very nature of the aid system, and that it is naive to suggest that it can be changed. They warn that if governments are unable to decide for themselves how to give aid and then check on its use, then they simply won’t provide it.

There are two ways to respond to these arguments. One is to point out that that aid’s systemic problems are getting worse and fast and frustrating progress on the core objective of ending extreme poverty. Resolving key systemic problems would probably have a greater effect on extreme poverty than expanding the amount of aid given. The other is to draw attention to high-level discussions where the sorts of changes needed to fix aid are being presented as politically viable.

The authors of Philanthrocapitalism, Mike Green and Matt Bishop, also think that the aid system needs reform, but they have a very different view of the direction of travel:

Like it or not, we have to find new ways of making the aid money go further and find new ways of financing development that do not depend on the political will of a few rich countries. Philanthrocapitalism, by tapping the expertise, creativity, money and other resources of the private sector, has to be central to a new development strategy. First, to pilot and test ideas to make aid smarter and more effective. Second, to leverage more private capital – full for-profit, ethical investment and donations – to fill the gap.

As we have argued before, this means thinking about aid not as the exclusive preserve of government but as a partnership with philanthrocapitalists, rich and less rich alike. This challenge is urgent and the rich countries are being slow to take it up - Britain’s new government, in particular, seems set on business as usual (although there are plenty of disgruntled voices on the right who would like to see an axe taken to the aid budget).

Both arguments start from the view that the challenges to aid are the result of political pressures in donor countries.  Roger Riddell argues for a more centralised, technocratic aid system which can be isolated from undue political influences.  Mike and Matt want to see much greater involvement from a range of other actors, especially the big philanthropic foundations.

I think they are both partly right, and both partly wrong.

Roger Riddell is right to say that the systemic problems of aid are the result of politics; and he is right to disagree with the pessimistic idea that these problems are insurmountable.  But he wants to address these problems but putting the aid system at arm’s length.  I don’t think this is a viable solution: it wishes the problem away.  It is like saying that we can solve the global climate change problem by handing over control of energy policy to an international panel of wise people.  The politics matters, and we can’t make them go away by asking technicians to give us the answer; so we have to figure out how to change the politics.

The aid system today is characterised by aid institutions (official aid agencies, international organisations and charities) trying to mediate between the preferences of the people who give them money and their view of the interests of people in developing countries.  Aid agency staff typically want to do as much as they can for people in developing countries: if you ask most aid agency staff who their “client” is, they will tell you it is the world’s poor, not their own taxpayer. But they feel they can’t do many of the things they would like to do (such as improve the allocation of aid, reduce conditionality, make long-term commitments, scale back paperwork and process, focus more sharply, untie aid etc) because they have to take account of the preferences of the people whose money they are spending.  They see themselves as a firewall, serving the interests of the poor by protecting the aid programme as best they can from what they consider ill-informed or selfish wishes of their taxpayers. This behaviour is not confined to official donor agencies: many NGOs say one thing to their supporters, and do something quite different (think, for example, of the difference between what Kiva actually does and what most people think that it does).   In my view, trying to deliver effective aid despite public opinion  is fundamentally misconceived and unsustainable; this model is beginning to fray at the edges, and could well fall apart.

The alternative approach is for aid agencies to recognize that the public wants to see aid used as effectively as possible; and to build an informed conversation about how that can be achieved.  The stakeholders see the issues from different perspectives: for example, the public sees the benefits of spreading its aid across many countries and sectors, while aid agency staff see the ineffective duplication this creates.  The solution to this is to share information and build a common view, not to try to disempower the public.  If the aid bureaucracies believe that long-term commitments of aid to strengthen national systems is more effective in the long run than the series of smaller ad hoc projects that the public seems to prefer, then they should  produce the analysis and evidence and persuade their stakeholders.   Both Roger and I believe that more aid should be given to the poorest countries; he believes that this decision should be taken out of the political process, while I believe we have to win the public round by explaining why that would be better.

In the long run, public opinion will determine how much aid is given, to whom, and by what means: we cannot and should not try to sidestep the argument by putting the administration of aid beyond the reach of public opinion.  The only sustainable way to make aid more effective is to change the political pressures by producing persuasive evidence and analysis.   If Roger’s approach is to insulate aid from political pressure, my approach would be work to align those political pressures with more effective aid by making aid more transparent and accountable.

By contrast, Mike Green and Matt Bishop want to improve aid, and attract more resources, by making more use of the expertise and money of the private sector.  I agree with them that there is huge potential for the growing diversity in the aid system to improve the effectiveness of development system, if different organisations focus on the contributions that they can make.  Foundations could act like venture capitalists: taking bigger risks but leaving long-term financing of scaled up successes to official aid donors. Private aid could focus on achieving community and individual level results. Specialised global organizations could provide particular expertise not available through generalist support. The diversity of official donors could provide innovation rather than a monoculture of ideas. Official aid agencies could focus on long term funding and resource transfer, and support for institutional change.

Unfortunately it is not clear that all these different actors really are focusing on their strengths, and there is nothing in the aid system that pushes them to do so.  The foundations do not display the higher risk appetite that we would expect them to have (despite their rhetoric).  The approach of official aid agencies to the division of labour does not appear to be intended to drive specialisation (from which the benefit of division of labour derives) but simply to limit spread.   Diversity of approaches and innovation are essential, but this must be accompanied by mechanisms which kill off bad innovations and take good ideas to scale; otherwise the effect is simply to add to costs and fragment systems.

In their book, Philanthrocapitalism, Mike Green and Matt Bishop give several examples in which philanthropic foundations have made significant and worthwhile contributions. The role of the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting the Green Revolution is a compelling example.  But from these successes they extrapolate a wildly rose-tinted view of the work of foundations.  As with official aid, there are successes and failures; there are good practices and bad.

My impression is that, at their worst, foundations are much less effective, and behave even worse than official donors.  For example, I have seen:

• massive unpredictability and volatility of foundation grants; many foundations make grants worth 5% of their capital asset value each year, which is the minimum imposed on them by US tax authorities.   In years when asset prices are volatile, many foundations pass on this volatility to grantees – they do not (as they could, if they chose) use their capital to smooth out the grant-giving and make it more predictable and stable.  In 2009 I know of some foundations which imposed in-year cuts exceeding 25% on their grantees, leading to cuts in services and imposing huge costs in developing countries just at the time when the world economic crisis created needs for additional funding;
• reinventing the wheel and failure to learn – it is one of the advantages of foundations that they can be innovative and unconventional; unfortunately, both the benefactors and staff of many foundations suffer from an inflated sense of their own abilities, and foundations often repeat basic mistakes that have been made for many years, rather than building on the experience and wisdom of organisations that have made these mistakes before;
• capriciousness and personality-driven priorities – both the staff and benefactors of foundations get ideas into their heads from which they cannot be dissuaded.  There are many examples of ludicrous decisions and instructions from foundation staff to grantees based on nothing more than their prejudices or personal preferences.

Of course, official aid agencies also suffer from these problems to some extent.  But they also benefit from a degree of public accountability which puts them under pressure to be more effective.  I think Matt Bishop and Mike Green underestimate the problems that foundations suffer as a result of their lack of accountability.  In many cases benefactors became rich in markets; and they often trusted their instincts. But when they got a judgement wrong they were soon punished by the market, and they were able to change course.  Now that they are philanthropists, they do not have any such feedback.  When they make the wrong decision, everyone is too afraid to tell them, for fear of losing the opportunity to apply for the next grant.  There is no mechanism for identifying and rewarding their most effective staff; nothing that forces foundations to concentrate on what they are really good at.

In many ways we have the worst of all worlds: with some notable exceptions, foundations do not in practice take enough advantage of the opportunities that their lack of accountability give them (for example, taking bigger risks, or supporting unpopular causes) but they do suffer from the weaknesses that lack of accountability imposes on them.

So I think Mike and Matt are right to say that development relationships should not be the exclusive preserve of government, and that is should increasingly be an effective partnership with philanthrocapitalists, NGOs, private sector organisations and individuals.  But without some more effective governance arrangements in the aid system, we will not reap the potential benefits of this partnership.  We need stronger pressures for the different partners to make their specific contributions effectively, which in turn demands greater transparency and stronger accountability for all organisations.

Both articles start from the premise that the aid system needs to be improved; on this I think we all agree.  But Roger’s solution – putting aid beyond politics – is unlikely to be effective, and is undemocratic.  If we believe that politics constrains effective aid decisions, we should square up to trying to change the politics, not trying to insulate ourselves from it.  And Mike and Matt’s answer – passing the baton to very rich Americans – is no answer either.  These stakeholders certainly have a contribution to make, but to be effective their contribution must be part of a system that is likely to get the best from all partners working together, and holds everyone to account; otherwise we risk having all the disadvantages of the free market with none of the benefits of market discipline.

Disclosure: the organisation for which I work receives grants from the Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation.

Every time I add a new blog post, several hundred people now receive it automatically by email.  (If you would like email updates in future, just type your email address into the box at the top right of the page.  You can also remove yourself from the list at any time in exactly the same way.)

It isn’t surprising that people prefer to have blog posts come to them, rather than to have to make the effort to visit every blog they want to read.  This is especially true if you have low bandwidth or if internet access is expensive, as is often the case in developing countries. I guess that’s why some people like the email option.  But most blogs do not offer email subscriptions; and if you follow several blogs you might find it a bit of a pain to have your email clogged up with this stuff.

So you don’t to want to visit each blog individually, and you can’t or don’t want to get them all by email.   Not everyone knows that there are some good solutions to this problem, especially if they are not all that interested in technology. So here’s a quick guide to how to read blogs and other websites easily.

I read over 250 blogs regularly, because I find them informative, entertaining and interesting.  I get more diversity of opinion and ideas from those 250 blogs than from reading one or two newspapers; and often you get the chance to learn from real experts in their fields, without the casual mistakes, prejudices and dumbing down that you get when those views are intermediated by lazy journalists.

But I don’t want to visit 250 websites each morning. Nor do I want all that stuff arriving in my email each day.  I don’t want to read everything that they all write: I want to skip through the headlines, or a brief summary of each article, so that I can see which ones I want to read properly.

Fortunately there is a wonderful behind-the-scenes feature of almost every blog – and many other websites – called RSS.  I’ll spare you the technical details, but this stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and it means that you can pull the contents of a blog or website to another place.  And that in turn means you can get all the blogs you want to read in one place.

The simplest and most widely-used solution is Google Reader.   This is a website which lets you read blogs, rather like Hotmail or GMail lets you read your mail. You tell Google Reader the addresses of all the blogs you want to read, and it pulls all the posts to one place.   It looks a bit like an email programme: you can easily see what’s new, and skip through the headings until you find something that looks interesting.  When a blog post is new and unread it shows up in bold.

As well as blogs, you can subscribe to the feeds of other websites, such as the BBC Africa News or DFID Press Releases.   You can even set up a Google Alert for a specialist subject – such as your own name! – and have that appear among your feeds.  You can have all your friends’ Facebook statuses in a feed.  This means that you can decide what you are interested in, all over the net, and bring it all together in one place.

You can put the blogs in folders – mine are grouped into “Africa”, “Development”, “Technology” and so on.  Some people put their “must read” feeds into one folder, which they look at each day,  and their occasional reading in another folder for when they want to do some browsing.

However, Google Reader is an online website, and that may not be ideal for you if your internet connection is slow, or if you are on a plane.  One solution to this is Google Gears, which is a way to access Google services like Google Mail and Google Reader if you are not online.  I have found Gears a bit unreliable in the past, so it is not my preferred solution.

There are many other ways to have your computer fetch the information from these feeds when you are online.  (These programmes are technically called aggregators or feed readers.) Some of them can be set to download the content to your computer so that you can read it later offline, like you can with your email.

If you have Outlook 2007, then you have a feed reader right in front of you.  You can tell Outlook which RSS feeds you want to read and they will appear in a separate folder underneath your Inbox.  To use this, you can go to the Tools menu, choose Account settings, then RSS feeds.  Paste in the address from the blog or website you want to subscribe to.  (Use Ctrl+V to paste into the box).  Apparently you can also add feeds to Outlook automatically from Internet Explorer.

I prefer not to use Outlook for reading blogs, however.  I use FeedDemon instead, which is a free download. This is very easy to use, and it has the neat feature that it synchronises with Google Reader. So if I add a new subscription to Google Reader, it is automatically added to FeedDemon.  If I have read something in FeedDemon, it is marked as read in Google Reader.

There are other feed readers, such as SharpReader.  (I use FeedDemon because of its synchronisation with Google Reader.)

If your office does not let you install new software, you may be stuck with Outlook (if you have Outlook 2007) or an online service like Google Reader.

Which blogs should you be reading?  If you are in to development you may be interested in my list of the best development blogs – look at the suggestions in the comments, which include some important omissions from my original post.  There is a longer list of what I am reading down the right hand side of my blog page.

How do you get started? Adding subscriptions manually is a bit of a bore at first.  Fortunately there is a way to share subscription lists.  To get you started, here are twenty two key development-related blogs in the form of an OPML file.  Right click the link and download this file to your computer, and save it to your desktop. Then in Google Reader or Feed Demon you can import this  file and it will automatically add these blogs to your subscriptions. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t like them or if you find this too much).  I can’t see a way to import an OPML file into Outlook, unfortunately. ** UPDATE: See the comments for how do to this in Outlook. **

The key point of all this is that there is a way to subscribe to blogs and websites, so that all the information you are interested in comes to you in one place, whether from blogs, newspapers, website, facebook or even search.  This makes it really easy for you to see what is happening all over the world as you drink your morning coffee.

And if all that sounds terribly complicated, don’t forget you can get this blog by email by putting your address into the box on the top right of the page – or, if you must, send me an email and I’ll add you manually.

Happy reading …

People sometimes ask me to write more about political situation in Ethiopia (eg in a comment yesterday on my website).

This has caused me to consider why I don’t write much about Ethiopian politics.  I decided that there are two reasons, which shed a little light on my attitude to our relationship with developing countries, so I thought I would share my thinking here.

First, why would anyone be interested in my opinions about Ethiopian politics?

Suppose a recent immigrant to your country, who barely spoke your language, had visited only some of your towns, and knew well only a few of your fellow citizens, were to position himself as an expert in your political system.  How much notice would you take?

Why do you want your analysis of Ethiopian politics to be intermediated by a European? Isn’t that a little bit, well, racist?

Ethiopians have a sophisticated political culture.   They are justly proud of their long and deep social and religious traditions. Here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia gather in coffee shops or bars and talk endlessly about politics, culture and society.  They consume a vast array of newspapers, some of which are openly critical of the government, with their machiatos.  There is a lively debate online, both among resident Ethiopians and the diaspora.

The discourse among “ordinary” Ethiopians about politics, history, and human rights is far more sophisticated and well-informed than you would hear in a London pub about British politics. (With the possible exception of the Red Lion on Whitehall …)

I first came to Ethiopia 28 years ago (extraordinary as that seems) and I have seen many changes in this country, almost all for the better, some of which I try to chronicle here.  But my Amharic is limited – certainly not good enough to have a conversation about political rights or ethnic diversity.  I have good Ethiopian friends, but I don’t think their views are representative of anything other than a small urban elite.

If people were really interested in Ethiopian politics, they could easily find out more from the real experts by listening to Ethiopians themselves.  There is a huge range of opinion, grounded in a strong sense of history and a much more profound understand the nuances and the diversity in this enormous country.

People who want to know what western observers think are not giving enough weight to the views of Ethiopians themselves. I think that is  unconscious racism. Just because I’m a white guy with a laptop should not privilege my opinion over that of Ethiopians themselves.

So the first reason I don’t write about Ethiopian politics is that Ethiopians can, and do, speak for themselves, and with much more knowledge, and much more at stake, than me.  They don’t need me to act as an intermediary.

You are probably thinking: since when did not knowing anything about a subject prevent this guy from expressing an opinion about it?  That can’t be what holds him back.

There is a second reason I don’t write much about Ethiopian politics. I want to focus mainly on holding my own government and society to account for our impact on the world.

Our choices make a huge difference to the lives of people in developing countries.  Our policies on trade and corruption affect their economic development; our approach to financial markets and the environment spill over into the lives of people we have never met.  If we choose to use it, we have the power to lift people out of poverty by giving more aid, and managing it better.

These issues interest me most because they are properly mine to help fix.  As a citizen of Europe, it is my responsibility to demand that we open our markets to trade from developing countries; that we stop our firms paying bribes and selling weapons to corrupt governments; that we share our technologies; that we stop polluting the planet and compensate the world’s poor for the damage we have already done to their livelihoods; and that we restore stability to financial markets.  It is my responsibility to argue that we should increase our aid programme from tiny levels today and that we spend that money better.

What the Ethiopian government does is hugely important for the future of Ethiopia.  Of course I have opinions about the choices they are making. But I do not want to spend my time complaining about someone else’s government when there is so much to fix about my own.  It is too tempting to blame the victims, instead of getting our own house in order.

So there are two reasons why I don’t talk much about Ethiopian politics.  First, I think we should pay more attention to Ethiopians, and not require their politics to be intermediated by privileged but ignorant outsiders.  Second, while industrialized countries continue to make choices which help to consign a billion people to deep and grinding poverty, my priority is to try to sort that out.

That said, if anyone wants to buy me a beer here in Addis, I’ll be happy to spend the night shooting the breeze about what is going on in Ethiopia and the wider world. Let’s put the world to rights.

A new Oxfam paper, written by the excellent Jasmine Burnley, looks at 21st Century aid. Here is a good summary paragraph:

“We are now at a crossroads. On the one side, is politically motivated or ineffective aid – much of which still exists today. On the other, and looking to the future, is aid fit for the 21st century. Twenty-first  century aid is liberated from rich countries’ political incentives and is targeted at delivering outcomes  n poverty reduction. Twenty-first century aid innovates and catalyses developing country economies, and is given in increasing amounts directly to government budgets to help them support small-holder  farmers, build vital infrastructure, and provide essential public services for all, such as health care and education. Twenty-first century aid is transparent and predictable. It empowers citizens to hold governments to account, and helps them take part in decisions that affect their lives. In recent years we have seen more of this good 21st century aid but we need to see a lot more still, and soon.”

There is a lot to like in this paper:

• the combination of making the case for more aid, and for making improvements in how it is delivered;
• the emphasis on making aid more predictable, transparent and accountable
• the focus on helping to support the evolution of effective institutions, particularly state institutions
• a whole chapter devoted to addressing the critics of aid
• the call for developing countries to do more to end corruption and increase transparency and freedom of expression
• a clear case for giving more aid to reach the Millennium Development Goals.

It is an interesting straw in the wind that the paper does not dwell on the Paris and Accra agendas for aid effectiveness. I see this as growing recognition that while the objectives of of those declarations are laudable, the top-heavy, committee-led process for achieving them is unworkable and ineffctive.  I wonder if transparency and accountabilty would have featured so much in a paper written even one or two years ago.

Yes, and …

Writing a paper about everything in development would have been an impossible task, even for someone as talented as Jasmine.  So when I say that there are points I would have liked to see made more prominently, or done differently, I do not mean this as a criticism of the paper, but rather some nuances and reflections that I would like to add.

First, there is only a brief acknowledgement (p15) of the importance for development of policies other than aid.  My view is increasingly that the most important levers for industrialised countries to help accelerate development are changes in policy (eg trade, climate change, migration, intellectual property, corruption); and that contribution of aid is likely to be modest.  Even so, I think aid makes a huge difference to improving people’s lives while development is happening, and that this is reason enough to increase and improve it.

Second, I would have been interested in some reflections on how the role of aid should change in the face of broader changes.  What are the implications for the way we use aid of of the rise of philanthropic foundations?  What difference is made by the emergence of new donors such as China?  What is the role of business, corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurs?  How does aid fit with other financial flows, including remittances and direct investment?  My own view is that we should focus aid more sharply on reaching the parts that other flows won’t reach: the poorest countries, the chronic poor and marginalised within those countries, and investments with no immediate financial return, but the paper could have put aid more clearly into this context.

Third, I think those of us who want to see more and better aid should recognise more explicitly the serious challenges that the aid system now faces.  As Duncan Green says “the pro-aid camp is fearful of giving fuel to the enemy if it acknowledges the failings of aid.”   The paper suffers from a certain amount of self-censorship of this kind.  There are scattered references to the problems,  such as this:

“Aid that does not work to alleviate poverty and inequality – aid that is driven by geopolitical interests,  which is too often squandered on expensive consultants or which spawns parallel government structures accountable to donors and not citizens – is unlikely to succeed.”

I would have liked a more thorough examination of these (and other) problems. We have to acknowledge that some of these problems are getting worse, not better. (In places it reminded me of the way that some politicians appear on TV when things are going badly wrong, with a talking point that says “things are pretty good, though of course we could do even better; but we really need to get our message across better”.)

On his blog, Duncan Green makes much of the point that this paper sets out the case both for increasing aid and for making it work better.  I don’t think this is as unusual as he suggests (“More and better aid” was one of the demands of Make Poverty History, for example).  But I do agree with him, and with Jasmine, that this is the right position.

Despite those quibbles, I thought this was a very good paper. It explains the debate about aid clearly, and it sets out very well coherent and plausible agenda for why aid should be increased, and how it should be improved.  But I’m not sure who Oxfam thinks will read it, and unfortunately I doubt if it will change anybody’s mind in either direction.

I’ve been gratified by the number of people who have contacted me (by email, twitter and on facebook) to say how much they liked one of the slides in my recent presentation on aid effectiveness.

The slide borrows a format from Wired Magazine – it shows what I think is expired, tired and wired in foreign aid.

Of course, some of this is a bit exaggerated but I think it makes the point.   As I argue in the presentation (you can click it then jump forward to slide 20), the items in the Wired column aim to put  power in the hands of citizens in developing countries, and to enable them to put pressure to improve the services they get and the way that the aid system works.

Further suggestions please in the comments below, preferably in the Wired | Tired | Expired format.

Most of the people who read this blog are interested in development rather than computers. Many of you live in developing countries, where the internet can be slow and expensive, and computer support can be difficult. So I thought it might be useful to give you some non-technical suggestions for how to manage if you live somewhere where the computer facilities are rather basic.

In this first post in a series, I’ll look at the basic set up.

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