How To Spend It

• October 11th, 2008  Add comment

I’ve never liked the name of the FT’s lifestyle section, “How To Spend It“.  But with financial markets as they are now, it seems particularly ludicrous.  How to spend what, exactly?

Sitting in the airport lounge in Washington DC today, I was a bit surprised to find a “bonus issue” of How To Spend It in today’s paper.

I expect that there are lots of investors whose main concerns today include “whether the perfect sound system exists”, “the demure allure of autumn’s flattering longer skirts” (the Cavalli skirt is a snip at £3000), and “whether corporate gifts can ever truly be objects of desire”.

The cult of sustainability

• October 11th, 2008  (2) Comments

Alanna Shaikh complains about the use and abuse of “sustainability” in development:

I also hate this word because it so many things to so many different people.

I am also uncomfortable about the notion of sustainability, but for slightly different reasons.

There seems to be a consensus that development assistance is only politically defensible if we assert that it is temporary.  Our objective, we say, is to put ourselves out of work by creating conditions in which countries do not need our help.   This leads to a cult of sustainability which is problematic for at least 3 reasons.

First, it leads us to choose interventions that are (or appear to be) time-limited even when there are more effective alternatives available.  Some very effective development interventions can only be sustained in the poorest countries as long as donors are prepared to support them for many years to come - such as vaccination campaigns, increasing schooling or tariff reform.  As a result, aid agencies tend to prefer short-term interventions over more effective but longer term partnership.

Second, it leads us to design interventions badly.   For example, donors have pressed governments to introduce user charges (for health care, or schools) so that they can project an end to aid financing.  But user charges reduces access to those services for the very poor, so reducing the benefits of the intervention and excluding the group that most needs the help.   

Third, it pushes donors to over-claim the effects of what they can do.  Staff in development agencies feel the need to claim that each aid programme is “transformational” or at least “catalytic” and every project description describes how it will accelerate economic growth and development.  I’m doubtful, myself, that there is all that much we can do to make countries develop faster.  But there is a lot that we can do to help people to live better lives while that process is taking place.  But the cult of sustainability makes such interventions illegitimate. 

Nonetheless, I understand why developing countries and donors are keen to see an end to the aid relationship. At its worst, it can corrode accountability and create dependence that all of us want to see ended.

These thoughts may seem contradictory.  I reconcile them by believing that the richest people in the world have a duty to support the poorest people in the world - whether they are in the same country or not - as a matter of social justice rather than charity.  This is a principle that we accept within our own countries - few of us think that we should aim to exit altogether from national insurance, state pensions or unemployment benefits in our own countries.  The same principle should apply globally: there will always be people who are relatively rich and people who are relatively poor, and we should be aiming to evolve institutions which are effective at transferring income from the best off to the wost off around the world.  And we will be doing that for the foreseeable future.

DFID starts to blog

• October 8th, 2008  (4) Comments

The UK Department for International Development has started a group blog.  This is great news for those of us who believe that it has a good story to tell.

DfID has a very good reputation abroad, but hardly anybody in the UK knows anything about it, or appreciates how much DfID contributes to positive perceptions of Britain.  I hope this blog will help tell the story in a very direct and personal way.

I used to blog when I worked at DFID, but that was before the government had guidelines about blogging. Let’s hope that the Government will be willing to accept that there will be some uncomfortable moments but that the benefits hugely outweigh the risks.

Top tips for basic computer users

• October 6th, 2008  Add comment

I know a few people who would benefit from reading: David Pogue’s Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User.

As usual, don’t neglect the comments which include some other top tips.

Sadly, most of the people who would benefit from these tips don’t read blogs, so they won’t be reading this.

Which countries in Africa are the best governed?

• October 6th, 2008  Add comment

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance was published today.  It ranks African governments in five dimensions (safety and security, rule of law & transparency, participation & human rights, sustainable economic opportunity, and human development) and then puts these together to arrive at an overall ranking.

Mauritius comes top again this year; and the top 5 countries (Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana and South Africa) are unchanged. 

Across the table as a whole,mMore than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa – 31 out of 48 – have recorded an improvement, with the biggest improvement overall in Liberia.

I was encouraged to see that the most progress has been made across the continent in the category of “Participation and Human Rights”, with improvements in 29 out of 48 countries.

Regionally, every region except one - the Horn of Africa - has seen an improvement overall.

The countries at the bottom seem stuck there, however.  Of the bottom 10 countries, 8 saw no improvement compared to last year.

How the financial crisis affects Ethiopia

• October 6th, 2008  Add comment

The BBC sub-editor picked an angle, with the headline Prudence pays off in Ethiopia and the teaser:

With the financial turmoil affecting many of the world’s economies, Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa considers how Ethiopia and other parts of Africa may escape the worst of the credit crisis.

But that headline does not seem to be consistent with the rest of the article which goes more like this:

Over the past few years, Ethiopia has been having something of a boom of its own, and Addis Ababa is littered with building sites.

But a lot of these ambitious construction projects seem to have got stuck halfway. Some may have run out of cement, but others, even more of them, have probably run out of money.

… In all of this, the only money coming in from outside that is a significant flow in most African countries might be remittances from workers overseas.

I think the financial difficulties might hit Ethiopia, and other African countries, pretty hard; especially if remittances dry up, investment (such as it is) falters, and rich countries become more protectionist and less likely to give aid.

Foreign aid - last in, first out

• October 6th, 2008  (2) Comments

There has been a lot of discussion about the debate between the candidates for Vice President, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, focusing on the lack of a train smash. But there was one important policy adjustment which has had very little attention. Joe Biden gave this answer:

IFILL: … I want to get — try to get you both to answer a question that neither of your principals quite answered when my colleague, Jim Lehrer, asked it last week, starting with you, Sen. Biden. What promises — given the events of the week, the bailout plan, all of this, what promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you’re not going to be able to keep?

BIDEN: Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We’ll probably have to slow that down. We also are going to make sure that we do not go forward with the tax cut proposals of the administration — of John McCain …

So “the one thing” that can be put on hold is Obama’s previous commitment to double foreign aid? 

It isn’t clear how this fits with Obama’s sponsorship of the Global Poverty Act, which would require the next President of the United States:

to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the U.S. foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.”

According to Obama’s website:

With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces,” said Senator Obama. “It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking water. As we strive to rebuild America’s standing in the world, this important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in the developing world. Our commitment to the global economy must extend beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing corporate profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere

Growth blog launched

• September 30th, 2008  Add comment

Growth Commission Blog

We are launching the Commission on Growth and Development BLOG (The Growth Blog) today, while unprecedented changes in the financial markets are underway. These changes have the potential to reconfigure financial systems and manner not seen since the 1930s.

I found the Growth Commission Report strangely disappointing.  Let’s hope the blog is better.

Second episode of development podcast

• September 20th, 2008  (2) Comments

The second episode of Development Drums is at http://developmentdrums.org.  You can also subscribe on iTunes here.

Professor Adrian Wood and Peter daCosta joined me to discuss whether donors should cap aid to Africa; the power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe; the Care International paper criticising wasted aid; and the new Doing Business survey.

I would say that this episode is 50% better than the first episode.  It works better having two guests rather than one; we kept the discussion of each topic shorter; and the sound quality is a better.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the length. This episode is 50 minutes, which is too long for many people (and it results in a very long download, unless I degrade the sound quality even more).  But I like the fact that we are not constrained like a radio or TV show to limit the experts to talking in sound-bites, so we can have a real and substantive discussion.   I think I’ll try to bring the next one down to 40 minutes next time.

By the way - it is great fun recording and producing this.  This week was much quicker and easier because I’m getting used to the software.

Please let me know if you have suggestions for future topics or guests, and feedback on the podcast so we can make it better next time.

Donate to Planned Parenthood in the name of Sarah Palin

• September 18th, 2008  Add comment

I know this is all very immature, but I thought this was a funny idea (via):

when you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You’ll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate–Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular “Donate Online”