Figures from the Department for International Development show that over the past five years the UK has handed £1.6 billion to 15 of the world’s poorest countries. But research from campaigning group Transparency International shows that many of these rank highly in its corruption index of 180 countries.

There are several points to make about this:

1. There is no evidence that aid has been subject to corruption
   Transparency International does not claim (pdf) to have found any evidence of corruption in the use of UK aid. The Daily Telegraph report says that that some countries to which the UK gives budget support score poorly on the TI corruption index. But it does not follow that any of that aid is being corrupted and there is no evidence in the TI report that it is.
2. Budget support is no more likely to be subject to corruption than other forms of aid
   A major, multi-donor review of budget support found

   “Corruption is a serious problem in all the study countries, but the country study teams found no clear evidence that budget support funds were, in practice, more affected by corruption than other forms of aid.

   Indeed, the Conservative Party policy review on Globalisation and Global Poverty notes:

   Many oppose Programme Support, and particularly General Budget Support, because of worries about corruption. However, other modes of delivering aid are also prone to corruption.

   The same TI report hightlights extensive corruption in conflict, reconstruction and post-conflict contexts (which are not typically the places to which the UK gives budget support). The report highlights the risk of corruption in tied aid and the risk of bidder collusion in aid tenders (both of which are reduced by budget support).  In other words, in countries in which corruption is high, all aid will be at risk of corruption.  Moving aid from budget support to other forms of aid does not reduce that risk.

3. Giving budget support enables donors to tackle corruption
   Corruption is very bad for a country, especially for the poor.  If donors are serious about corruption, they should be trying to reduce corruption as a whole, and not just protecting their own money. Experience suggests that when donors bypass a country’s budget, procument and auditing processes they are less likely to take an interest in tackling broader corruption. When they are interested, they have no basis on which to get involved, since none of their money is at stake.  If donors want to help to reduce corruption they have to engage with the country’s processes. Budget support not only forces donors to do so, it turns them into legitimate stakeholders in helping to improve those systems.  This engagement helps address corruption in the whole of the government budget, and not just that part financed by foreign aid.
4. Using other forms of aid is a less effective way to reduce corruption
   Again in the same report, Transparency International say that making aid more accountable to donors is less effective at reducing corruption than steps to increase domestic accountability:

   Upward accountability by recipient countries to donors has demonstrated its serious limitations in terms of relevance as well as in its ability to detect corruption. Rather strengthening the accountability of aid toward intended beneficiaries is the most effective way of limiting abuses.

   In other words, Transparency International itself does not believe that replacing aid that is locally accountable with aid that is accountable to donors is a good way to reduce corruption.

5. Budget support improves local accountability and so tackles the broader problem of corruption and financial management
   The Conservative Party policy review observes:

   “if aid is channelled through the government budget and is accompanied by steps to strengthen public financial management, the handling not only of donor funds but of tax revenues is improved. In addition, Budget and Programme Support make it easier for parliaments, the media and electorates to hold government accountable for how aid money alongside tax revenues are spent.”

   Because budget support provides donors with an opportunity to engage in reform of the public finances as a whole, and because it increases rather than reduces local accountability, it is likely that  budget support will result in less corruption in the long run than alternative forms of aid.

6. There is a cost to switching away from budget support
   Switching aid away from budget support to other forms of aid comes at a cost: on balance it reduces the effectiveness of that aid, so reducing the the overall impact on development; and it may reduce the ability of the country concerned to tackle the very problem of corruption that we profess to be concerned about.  The Conservative Party policy review said that:

When donors create parallel structures to deliver aid they can undermine both government ownership of policy and its ability to deliver (by recruiting scarce talent). So where aid can be effectively delivered through government or departmental budgets that is desirable.

In conclusion: donors are right to be concerned about corruption, but there is no reason to think that corruption is reduced, either in aid or in the country as a whole, if donors switch their aid from budget support to other forms of aid. On the other hand there are costs to doing so - in the form of reduced aid effectiveness, which means more people dying, as well as slower progress towards systems that are more accountable and less susceptible to corruption in the future.

So it does not follow that because some countries perform badly on the TI corruption perceptions index, that it is a bad idea to give those countries aid in the form of budget support.  Perhaps that is why the TI report itself explicitly counsels against that kind of reasoning:

Some governments have sought to use corruption scores to determine which countries receive aid and which do not. TI does not encourage the use of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in this way.

Chris Blattman has this graph

What I find interesting about this work is that from premises which sound intuitively plausible, Chris and Bernd then arrive at policy conclusions that are initially counterintuitive:

• anti-insurgency measures (eg increasing military spending by the government) may increase child soldiering (because it increases the size of army needed by a rebel commander)
• measures to reduce child labour may increase child soldiering (because it reduces alternative options for children)
• increased educational and economic opportunities for children will only reduce child soldiering if those opportunities increase faster for children than for adults
• a good strategy to reduce child soldiering would include “abduction training” - teaching children how to resist indoctrination and to escape if captured (rather as Japanese children learn to deal with earthquakes)

Chris calls himself a political scientist, rather than an economist. But I think this is exactly the sort of work that economists, at their best, should be doing.  This work is a fascinating combination of insights into human motivation and incentives, and the use of quantitative techniques to test whether those ideas correspond to the world we observe.

The headline - “A heart rending dispatch from Ethiopia” - seemed promising.  Could it be that the Daily Mail is taking an interest in the challenges being faced by 80 million people here in Ethiopia?   Heaven knows, it would be about time.  About 5 million people here need emergency assistance, and about 75,000 children are suffering with severe acute malnutrition.  Approximately 73% of the female population undergoes female genital mutilation. Only 22% of the population has access to an improved water supply, and only 13% of the population has access to adequate sanitation services (less in rural areas).  Only 46% of girls in Ethiopia go to primary school, and fewer than 25% go to secondary school (these numbers are a huge improvement on the figures only a few years ago).

And the situation today is dire. Less than a year ago, a quintal of teff (a type of grain from which people make injera, a staple food) cost about 350 birr; today it has spiralled to to over 1,100 birr for the same amount, which is about what you need to feed a family for a month.

But none of that worries Liz Jones of the Daily Mail:

What I will remember most about my trip to Ethiopia is the sight of the grain market, held just outside the small town of Hossana - human population 70,000; equine population 91,040.  Mules - half donkey, half horse - are used for the terrible task of carrying grain because they are bigger and stronger than donkeys.

She is in a country in which children are dying of malnutrition and what she will remember most is the mules?

I’ve been vegetarian since I was a teenager,  so I count myself as someone who takes the rights of animals seriously, but I cannot begin to understand how Ms Jones can think that, of all the insults to dignity and humanity facing this country, the plight of donkeys could feature anywhere in the top ten.  But Ms Jones ranks donkeys right up there with Ethiopian children:

I tried to imagine how I would treat a donkey if I had seven mouths to feed, and I hope I would still have a vestige of compassion. But if my children were starving, I cannot be sure that that would be the case. No one can.

I don’t have children or a mule, but I am pretty sure that if I did, I’d put my children first. And I’d be keen to prosecute anyone who took a different view.

Almost every day here, I see women hauling huge loads of firewood on their backs from the outskirts of the city, to bring fuel for their family. A few are lucky enough to have a donkey to bear the load.  Ms Jones of the Daily Mail does not approve:

The owner explains that she has been walking with her donkey since 7am; it is nearly 5pm, and the sun is still beating down relentlessly. I ask why she has not taken the load from her donkey’s back, and she replies that she would not have the strength to lift the sacks back on to her donkey again.  Can she not let the donkey rest? The woman shakes her head. She has to hurry, to be home before 6.30pm, so that she can take part in a religious feast.

Ms Jones suggests you might want to give money to a charity to help the mules (and, almost unbelievably, to “educate owners in better animal care,
preventing problems from reoccurring”).

Alternatively, you might want to give money to a charity to help the people. You can donate to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) here, or Save the Children here.

In one of DFID’s splendid new blogs, Howard Taylor, Head of DFID Ethiopia , emphasizes the need for greater agricultural production:

In the long-term, development assistance needs to prioritise agricultural growth and productivty, if we’re to make sure that in years to come everyone, no matter where they live, has enough to eat. In a nutshell, that’s what World Food Day is all about.

Today is a good day to remember Amartya Sen’s book Poverty and Famines, which was written partly about the the Ethiopian famine of 1972-74, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.  It begins with this profound observation:

Starvation is characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough to eat. While the latter can be a cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes.

This is a thought of enormous importance.  For most of the 967 million people who are hungry, the problem is NOT that there is not enough food, it is that they are too poor to buy it.

We should be cautious about pursuing a policy focused on increasing food production.  Our goal should be to increase the incomes and wealth of those who currently live in hunger and other forms of extreme poverty, so that they can exercise entitlement to the food and other things they need.  Increasing agricultural productivity is one way to improve the incomes of the rural poor, but it is not necessarily the best way, and so it may not be the way of reducing hunger.

Update: more here.

A book must be the biggest act of presumption it is possible to commit. If you’re a white westerner writing about Africa, that arrogance reaches dizzying levels. What gives a spoilt bourgeois, who didn’t even grow up there, the right to interpret the continent for the world?

The only answer can be: I have devoted years on the continent to listening and learning; I have done my homework as conscientiously as I know how; and it’s just possible, because I have spent so much time learning to write accessibly about foreign cultures, that I may be able to serve as a bridge between two cultural viewpoints.

… I realised that my conversations with aspirant writers, and there have been dozens, had one thing in common: they all involved the male of the species. Africa is full of female reporters who tramp through Darfur’s refugee camps and grit their teeth during Mogadishu firefights. Yet not one of these indomitable females has ever called me for the Quick Guide to Successful African Book Writing. I think I know the reason. It’s the same one that ensured I tried my hand at being an author only after 16 years of journalism. Women probably see an Africa book as featuring Africa first, their own exploits second. They fear they know too little, have nothing original to say. Even in this neo-feminist era, they have a sneaking suspicion they are not worthy.

(Via Chris).

Which reminds me of the timeless How To Write About Africa. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

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.

The lack of rain in the main February to April wet season has left at least 75,000 Ethiopian children under age five at risk from malnutrition, OCHA said. …

The United Nations appealed in June for 325.2 million dollars mainly for drought victims . Only 52 percent of the appeal has been met.

I don’t understand how this can happen. We presumably knew - or could have known - in April that the short rains had failed, and that there would be hunger in southern Ethiopia. So how is it that we find ourselves in September - at least 4 full months later - and we’ve only raised half the money we need to prevent people from dying of hunger?

I am told that the food shortages were accurately predicted by the experts as early as May. But this predictions don’t translate into political pressure, and thus funding, until there are pictures on TV of children with distended bellies and flies on their face.

So the question for the future is: how can we translate warnings about food shortages into a flow of the necessary resources without having to wait for people to start to die?

This is scarily accurate.

CNN’s “Inside Africa” show this week covers three stories: the migration of wildebeest in the Masai Mara, gorillas in northern Congo, and a white man kayaking around Madagascar.

This is the entrance to a tiny 13th Century Rock Church in Tigray, called Abuna Yemata Guh. And yes, that’s a narrow ledge you have to walk along, with a 200 metre vertical drop to your left, at the end of a terrifying ascent up the side of a cliff to get there.

The dangerous climb is rewarded with an extraordinary church, carved into the rock, with glorious paintings.

More photos here or as a slideshow.

The GM ban has three adverse effects. It has retarded productivity in European agriculture; grain production could be increased by about 15% were the ban lifted. More subtly, because Europe is out of the market for GM technology, the pace of research has slowed. GM research takes a long time to come to fruition, and its core benefit - the permanent reduction of global food prices - cannot fully be captured through patents. European governments should be funding this research, but it is entirely reliant on the private sector. Private money for research depends on the prospect of sales, so the ban has not only blocked public research - it has reduced private research. …

…. It is conventional to say that Africa needs a green revolution. The reality is that the green revolution was based on chemical fertilisers, and even when fertiliser was cheap, Africa did not adopt it. With the rise in fertiliser costs as a byproduct of high energy prices, any green revolution will perforce not be chemical. What African agriculture needs is a biological revolution. This is what GM offers, if only sufficient money is put into research. There has as yet been no work on the crops specific to the region, such as cassava and yams.

Mainstream scientists have responded to Priince Charles that GM offers the opportunity to redistribute wealth to feed the poor. With the right investments in technology, Africa could not only feed itself, it could be a major food producer for the rest of the world. GM corn in Africa produces four times as much corn per acre (and the corn can be protected from witchweed, unlike the previous varieties).

Awke Tiruneh and his wife Emaye Beyene are not the only couple who are faintly bemused. They are pleased with their two lightbulbs, one in the main room and a second in the kitchen annexe of their pristine mud hut, and with the radio that everybody in Rema tunes to get music, not news. But they say they don’t want anything else.

“When they have more money, they don’t know what to do with it in Rema,” says Samson Tsegaye, country director of the Solar Power Foundation. “They are happy. They don’t need a Mercedes or a television. When they have money, the men are always going to the bar.

The idea that the people of Rema “don’t want anything else” seems improbable to me. I am all for looking at consumerism with a sceptical eye; but there is a world of difference between conspicuous consumption and having enough money to send your children to school, or to afford health care, or to have what you need to cope with the failure of the harvest. And why shouldn’t the people of Rema have a television if they want one? Does the country director of a western NGO really speak for them?

Major operators such as Difid, the British government arm, and USAid play a cat-and-mouse game with the government (GoE) because Meles is sensitive about external pressures in an environment in which domestic critics are almost silenced and expatriate websites blocked. Yet donor aid contributes at least 20% of GNP to a precarious economy, so cash can’t be turned away.

Donors are aware of their power and responsibility. With the Ethiopian opposition parties in disarray (1) they are the only real curb on Meles. Big-time donors (the World Bank via the International Development Association, UNDP, the US, the UK, international NGOs) work through GoE to agreed MDG objectives set out in the government’s plan for accelerated and sustained development to end poverty (PASDEP). Cash goes to approved projects administered by Ethiopians.

I do wonder about the role donors should play when the domestic political opposition does not exist or, as in this case, is in disarray. It is tempting for donors to step in to the gap and provide the necessary checks and balances. But in the end this undermines the space for parliament and opposition parties to hold the government to account.

So my view is that donors should avoid playing this role: not because I don’t think it is important to hold governments to account but because I do.

launched Google News in English for Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe,
Namibia, Ghana, Uganda and Botswana allowing users to search and view news in
localized editions, and helping dozens of African news sites make their stories
available to users worldwide.

Google News Ethiopia is here: http://news.google.com.et/

Simply put, the nation, in which 85% of people toil as small farmers, has reached a point where it can’t easily grow enough food to meet its needs. Although agricultural production has increased overall, it has declined per capita, according to the World Bank.

This is a complete pile of piffle. Overpopulation is not the problem:

• Population density is about 70 people per km2 in Ethiopia. That may seem a lot - it is about twice the density of the US. But Nigeria has a population density of 142 p/km2; China 138 p/km2; Sri Lanka 316 p/km2; Rwanda 343 p/km2; South Korea 498 p/km2. There is no famine in any of those countries. So why is 70 people per square km too many in Ethiopia?
• There was famine in Ethiopia in both the 1970s and 1980s, when the population was one third and one half, respectively, of the population today.
• Of Ethiopia’s 113 million hectares, less than 5% is currently irrigated. Ethiopia is the water tower of East Africa, with huge natural resources. But it is one of the lowest ranked countries in the world in the use of irrigation, fertilizers, modified seeds, tractors and other technologies that would multiply agricultural production.

The problem in Ethiopia’s agriculture is not shortage of land relative to the size of the population but shortage of resources, especially money and appropriate technology.

You have to wonder at lazy journalism like this. Is there a whiff of racism in the knee-jerk assumption that Ethiopia’s problem is that there are “too many of them”?

I’ll be in Africa until the end of August, with irregular access to e-mail. No doubt I will still neurotically check my messages, but I may only be able to respond to pressing issues. I’ll try to get back to all as soon as possible.

I won’t tell you who it is from but he is a well-known development blogger.

Better examples gratefully received in the comments.

In addition to disputed presidential elections in Zimbabwe and Kenya, where longtime incumbents refused to cede power after their opponents declared victory at the polls, last year’s ruling party victory in Nigeria was widely condemned as flawed. Uganda’s president changed the country’s constitution to stay in power. Ethiopian government forces killed about 200 opposition supporters after a 2005 vote.

Though there have been democratic success stories, such as Ghana and Sierra Leone, some see the coming years as a crucial period in determining whether much of Africa will move forward in embracing democracy.

“The continent right now seems caught in the middle between the good cases and bad cases,” said Chris Fomunyoh, senior associate for Africa at the National Democratic Institute, which promotes democratic reform around the world.

Sadly, this seems rather plausible. For several decades there have been shining beacons of hope across Africa, but sadly many of them appear to burn brightly for a few years and then fade. (Remember Cote d’Ivoire - stable and relatively prosperous for decades before it descended into internal conflict?).

I’d be interested to see actual data, though. I suspect that the trend is upwards, even if there are disappointments on the way.