Tony Blair is my guest on the latest Development Drums. He talks about his Africa Governance Initiative, and more broadly about democracy, leadership, globalization, DFID, and his own future.
You can listen to Development Drums on the website, or you can download it from the website or subscribe (free of charge) in iTunes.
A new edition of the Development Drums podcast is now available online. Malini Mehra from the Center for Social Markets and Alex Evans from the Center on International Cooperation at NYU take a step back and look at the broad sweep of the big development challenges of the 21st century.
Malini Mehra and Alex Evans discuss the big development challenges of the 21st Century in Development Drums 25
Alex Evans and I recently took part in a discussion of the big development issues with a committee of Members of Parliament in the British House of Commons. Alex kicked off that meeting with a magisterial and somewhat pessimistic presentation which set out ten key issues for development, and we took his presentation as our agenda for this discussion on Development Drums.
Malina and Alex are interesting and knowledgeable on a dauntingly wide range of issues, and the podcast covers a lot of ground: the changing distribution of global poverty; demographic change; the financial crisis; oil prices; food prices; feeding the 9 billion; climate change; trade; the changing face of conflict; the global governance deficit; and the implications for UK development policy. Each of these issues really needs an entire episode of Development Drums to be discussed properly, but I thought it was interesting to bring them all together to draw out common issues and ideas.
The following thoughts struck me from the discussion:
First – the importance of resilience which cropped up again and again in the discussion. I think this is possibly the Next Big Thing in development thinking (as if we need more Big Things). The idea is that we should be helping to develop the institutions and assets that ensures that people are resilient to shocks, of which there seem to be likely to be more.
Second – treating shocks as opportunities as well as risks. As Alex points out in the podcast, there was a narrow window after the collapse of Lehman Brothers during which we could have remade the global financial system: but nobody had a plan ready to go. There are going to be more shocks: will the progressive development community be ready to seize the opportunities these represent?
Third – the almost complete failure of global governance. All the issues we discuss relate in some way to the failure to put in place effective global processes and institutions to solve collective action problems such as on trade, climate change, or food supply. As Malini says, we are living in an era not of the G-8 but of G-0. Alex provides an interesting analysis of the problems in the podcast: on the face of it, to my mind, the problems don’t sound insurmountable.
Fourth – the optimism and energy coming from emerging countries such as India and China. Malina both describes and embodies this. But it’s also clear that on many issues – notably trade and climate change – the interests of these increasingly powerful countries are now diverging from those of the less developed countries, and we need to think hard about ensure the interests of the poorest countries are not left behind a grand bargain between the old and new rich countries.
Fifth – development policy isn’t mainly about aid. In a discussion which surveys the big development challenges confronting us, aid hardly gets a mention. Yet most of the development agencies in the world spend most of their time thinking about aid.
How to listen to development drums
You can listen to Development Drums on your computer straight from the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download any episode (from here) to your MP3 player or computer. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store).
As is the Development Drums custom, the podcast plays out with a slightly relevant song. See if you can guess before you get to the end what it’s going to be (there’s a clue hidden in the title of the podcast, Episode 25: Global Development Challenges).
Other development podcasts
I find podcasts a convenient way to keep up to date, especially when I’ve got long plane flights or trips by road; and lots of people listen to them when running on the treadmill in the gym or during their commute.
If you enjoy Development Drums, you may also enjoy the Center for Global Development’s Global Prosperity Wonkcasts, which are a bit shorter than Development Drums. As with Development Drums, you can listen online, subscribe to the feed or subscribe free on iTunes.
The Guardian has also recently started a monthly development podcast. The most recent editions are about “securitisation of aid” (that is, greater focus of aid on fragile states) and on so-called “Land Grabs“. Again, you can subscribe to the feed directly, or get it free on iTunes.
Here’s a complete list of development podcasts:
- Development Drums
- The Center for Global Development Prosperity Wonkcast
- The Guardian Focus Podcast
- Think Before You Give
- BBC Africa Today
- Peterson Perspectives
- PRI: Global Health and Development
- The World Bank Podcasts
- Philanthropy This Week
- PRI: The Changing World
Other economics podcasts
Tim Harford (author, and FT leader writer) has just compiled a list of the best economics podcasts.
Andy Sumner has published a new paper which argues that the global poverty problem has changed because the countries in which most of the world’s poor liver are no longer classified as low-income countries (LICs). In 1990, about 93 per cent of the world’s poor people lived in LICs. Today, there are still about 1.3 billion poor people, but about three-quarters of them live in what are now classified as middle-income countries.
This shift has profound implications for development policy. It highlights the importance of ensuring that growth reduces poverty. It raises questions for the allocation of traditional aid, and about the legitimacy and effectiveness of intervention by outsiders to influence the distribution of income within other countries.
In a new episode of Development Drums, I discuss these issues with Andy Sumner and Claire Melamed (Head of the Growth and Equity Programme at ODI). We discuss what the new data tell us, and what it means for aid and development policy.
You can listen to Development Drums on your computer at the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download it (from here) to your MP3 player. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store).
Peter Gill's new book, Famine and Foreigners
Peter Gill talks on the latest Development Drums podcast about his new book, Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid.
The Ethiopian famine of 25 years ago killed more than 600,000 people. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicenter of the famine in 1984 and he returned at the time of Live Aid to research the definitive account of the disaster, A Year in the Death of Africa .
Twenty five years later, Peter Gill has returned to Ethiopia to tell the story of what has happened since then in Ethiopia. His book draws on interviews with leading Ethiopians and with foreign aid officials. He interviewed Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the leading development economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs. Most important of all, Gill has traveled throughout the country and interviewed many of Ethiopia’s citizens.
In this edition of Development Drums, I ask Peter to recall what happened in the famine of 1984, and how Ethiopia has changed in the quarter of a century that followed.
You can listen to Development Drums on your computer at the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download it (from here) to your MP3 player. You can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store).
In the latest Development Drums podcast, Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman talk about their book Enough: Why The World’s Poorest Starve In An Age of Plenty.
I found it interesting that these two Wall Street Journal journalists lay the blame so comprehensively at the policies and behaviour of industrialised-country governments.
You can listen to Development Drums on your computer at the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download it (from here) to your MP3 player. You can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store). You can also join the Development Drums facebook group to put your questions to future guests.
The next guest on Development Drums will be Peter Gill, who will be talking about his new book Famine and Foreigners, a return to Ethiopia 25 years after the 1980s famine documented in his book A Year in The Death of Africa.
Rachel Glennerster - Poverty Action Lab
You may have heard talk about randomized evaluation as a way to understand the impact of development programmes.
In the first of a new series of the Development Drums podcast, Rachel Glennerster, the Executive Director of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, explains what we can learn from randomization. She explains why randomization is an important tool in rigorous evaluation, and why it should be an important part of our evaluation toolkit. She also addresses the main objections to randomisation.
You can listen to Development Drums on your computer at the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download it (from here) to your MP3 player to listen to in the gym or on the train. You can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes, free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store). You can also join the Development Drums facebook group to put your questions to future guests.
In the next edition of Development Drums I shall be talking to Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman about their book, Enough: Why The World’s Poor Starve In An Age of Plenty.
Daniel Kaufmann and Mushtaq Khan talk about corruption in the latest edition of Development Drums.
Though they come from quite different points of view, there is quite a lot of convergence between them. They agree that there is much more corruption in poor countries than in rich countries; that nobody should put too much faith in econometrics to decide whether corruption is a reason that poor countries remain poor; and that you do not fight corruption by fighting corruption. But whereas Daniel Kaufmann believes that you have to tackle corruption to create the conditions for markets to work and to to create economic growth and prosperity, Mushtaq Khan believes that you should focus on policies to promote growth and that a certain amount of corruption is an inevitable (albeit undesirable) corolloray of the transition to a capitalist economy. I hope you find the discussion between them as interesting as I did.
What strikes me about all this is that this is a topic on which there is a serious gap between mainstream public opinion and the opinion of many (but by no means all) development “experts”. Most people believe that corruption is a one of the most important reasons why poor countries remain poor; and yet a lot of people working in development seem to be willing to tolerate some corruption as an inevitable fact of life in poor countries. My view is that this is a topic on which we need to see much more convergence of thinking, based on sound evidence and analysis, and that this is an important step if the development business is to regain and retain the trust of the people paying for development assistance.
Where do I come down? I guess somewhere in between. Corruption is clearly a very serious problem which robs the poor most of all, and deprives millions of people of access to service and of the opportunity to earn a living. In some countries, it is a major obstacle to economic growth (I think Nigeria is such a country). But there are many different causes of poverty, and there are some poor countries that have very little corruption (Ethiopia, where I live, is such a country). And there are striking examples across history of countries that have experienced rapid industrialisation despite having quite high levels of corruption at the time (including Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan) – in many cases, corruption is something that is tackled after the establishment of an industrialised capitalist economy with a strong middle class, not before.
I do think that many people working in development are too complacent about corruption. The poor, like all of us, have dreams of a better life, and they are not helped by a poverty of aspiration on our part.
There are some countries – such as Nigeria – in which corruption is clearly a major obstacle to investment and growth. There are other countries – such as Ethiopia – in which there is very little corruption which are nonetheless very poor, so it cannot be the case that eliminating corruption is the main driver of development. And a lot of industrialized countries had long periods of rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption – which in many cases they sorted out after they became rich, not as a pre-requisite to growth.
Alison Evans, the new Director of ODI, stepped in to my seat to present the latest edition of the Development Drums podcast. She interviewed me and Roger Riddell about my paper, Beyond Planning. Thanks to all the folks at ODI for collaborating with me on this.
The next two episodes in the pipeline are Mushtaq Khan and Daniel Kaufmann talking about corruption; and Rachel Glennerster talking about evaluation of what works in aid.
Good news: the Center for Global Development has started a new podcast series, the Global Prosperity Wonkcast.
In this first episode, host Lawrence Macdonald talks to Todd Moss about his new paper, Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution. Todd proposes ways for the citizens to have more oversight of Ghana’s oil revenue, and to contain oil-induced patronage, by distributing the benefits of oil directly to the citizens.
The podcast lasts about 20 minutes, and you cou listen directly on line or subscribe on iTunes.
As you would expect from CGD, this first episode sugests that the wonkcasts will be essential listening. CGD has a knack of addressing important developing issues in interesting and innovative ways, and basing its ideas on thorough research and evidence.
And if CGD’s wonkcast doesn’t satisfy your entire appetite for podcasts on development, there is always Development Drums.
Ryan Briggs has a good round up of development-related podcasts
Fall classes have started again so my time on the DC metro has increased greatly. The commuting has meant that I’ve been blowing through podcasts at an alarming rate, and I’ve come across a few that are worth sharing. These links are to the webpages of the podcasts, but all of them can be found in iTunes as well.
I’m inordinately proud of the latest two episodes of my development podcast, Development Drums.
In Episode 17, Todd Moss (Center for Global Development) and Chris Blattman (Yale, and blogger) join me to talk about President Obama President Obama’s speech in Ghana about US policy towards Africa.
In Episode 16, FT World Trade Editor Alan Beattie talks about his new book, False Economy. We are joined by Professor Robert Wade. This podcast considers why some countries have grown faster than others, and considers the role of industrial and trade policies.
You can get Development Drums free from iTunes (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store), or you can download episodes from the website (http://developmentdrums.org).
I would welcome your feedback via the Development Drums website, or in the Facebook Group for Development Drums. (I’ve switched off comments here).
Many thanks to my father, Brian Barder, who organises the sound recording in London.
Peter Singer has been described by the New Yorker magazine as the world’s most famous living philosopher. In his new book, The Life You Can Save, he argues that people in rich countries have a moral duty to give money to help people in extreme poverty in developing countries.
His argument is compelling. As summarised on the accompanying website, it is this:
If we could easily save the life of a child, we would. For example, if we saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all we had to do to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, we would do so. The fact that we would get wet, or ruin a good pair of shoes, doesn’t really count when it comes to saving a child’s life.
UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 27,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary. (You are not sure if you are in that category? When did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If the answer is “within the past week” then you are spending money on luxuries while children die from malnutrition or diseases that we know how to prevent or cure.)
I find this argument compelling, though it leads to the unsettling conclusion that almost all of us should be doing more than we are already to give up part of our income to help people in developing countries. (Basically: if you are buying mineral water in a country where it is safe to drink water out of the tap, you should give that money to a charity that will use it to reduce poverty instead.)
I spoke to Peter Singer about his book on Development Drums. His message is important, and I hope you’ll listen.
In the latest episode of Development Drums, Matthew Bishop and Mike Green talk about their book, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World and Why We Should Let Them
Development Drums 14 is here. You can also download Development Drums free using iTunes: search for ‘Development Drums’ in iTunes or click this link.
I would welcome your feedback via the Development Drums website, or in the Facebook Group for Development Drums.
In the latest edition of Development Drums, Andrew Mitchell MP talks about the policy of the British Conservative party on international development. If the Conservatives win the next General Election, Mr Mitchell is set to become the Cabinet Minister responsible for international development.
You can subscribe to Development Drums (free) in iTunes – or you can downoad it here:
http://developmentdrums.org
I went to London for the DFID conference on 9 and 10 March on “Securing Our Common Future”.
The latest Development Drums – a podcast about development issues – includes an interview with DFID Permanent Secretary Minouche Shafik and a discussion about the Conference with Nancy Birdsall and Simon Maxwell.
Paul Collier, one of today’s most influential development thinkers, talks about his new book, Wars, Guns and Votes on the new edition of Development Drums. He also talks about his previous bestselling book, The Bottom Billion.
The latest edition of Development Drums is now online. I fear it may not be of universal interest. The Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, and the Director of the Development Cooperation Directorate of the OECD, talk about whether donors are living up to their promises, and the next steps on aid effectiveness.
I was planning to record another episode today, but the internet connection here in Addis wasn’t good enough. I’ll try again soon – and please let me know if there is someone in particular you want me to have on.
If you have an iPod and iTunes, the easiest way to listen to Development Drums is to go to iTunes on your computer, go to the Apple store, go to podcasts and search for Development Drums. (It is free, of course). Then if you subscribe, iTunes will in future download new episodes as they are released.
A new book The Trouble with Aid: Why Less Could Mean More for Africa
In the latest edition of the Development Drums podcast, I talk to Jonathan about his book. He explains why he thinks that we need to take a more complete view of the positive and negative impacts of aid, and he disagrees with my view that aid can be made to work better.
On his first day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy — known to critics as the global gag rule. It prevents the US government from giving money to organizations that provide counseling and referral for abortion, lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country, or perform abortions except in cases of a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest (even if those activities are funded by somebody else).
On Development Drums this week, we heard about the impact of the global gag rule on women in Africa, in an interview with Dana Hovig from Marie Stopes International. (Full disclosure: my partner works for MSI.) My expert guests were sceptical that Barack Obama would give priority to reversing the global gag rule any time soon.
But this weekend, we have heard that Obama is preparing to reverse some key decisions that President Bush took using executive authority, including on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling and – according to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Bloomberg – the global gag rule:
President-elect Barack Obama will reverse U.S. family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education, a public-health adviser said. Obama “is committed to looking at all this and changing the policies so that family-planning services — both in the U.S. and the developing world — reflect what works, what helps prevent unintended pregnancy, reduce maternal and infant mortality, prevent the spread of disease,” Wood said.
These seems like a good time to raise the profile of this important issue, to make sure that reversing the global gag rule is on the list of decisions for President Obama to take in his first day in office. The Center for Reproductive Rights has written to Barack Obama calling for the repeal of the global gag rule. Now is the time to make as much noise as possible about this to generate political support for an early decision to reverse this policy.
For more information about the global gag rule, listen to the interview with Dana Hovig in Episode 6 of Development Drums (about 30 minutes in to the podcast).
There are two new episodes of the Development Drums podcast now online.
Episode 4 with Shanta Devarajan discusses the impact on developing countries of the financial crisis; latest developments in the food crisis; the award of the Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa. Sheila Page discusses moves towards a Free Trade Area from Cairo to Cape Town.
And there is a special extra edition of Development Drums about currente events in the Eastern Congo. Patrick Smith of Africa Confidential explains the background to the crisis.
You can use this link to subscribe to Development Drums:
If you use iTunes, you can search for Development Drums in the iTunes store (it’s free), or use this link:
Some rights reserved