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)

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 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?

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.

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 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.

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).)

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.

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.

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).

Fortunately my partner has reality-based beliefs.

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.

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 …

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.

“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.

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.

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

What computer should I use?

If you are travelling a lot, you probably want a computer that is light, not-too expensive, with a good battery life and reasonably robust.  You might want to look at the new generation of netbook computers – these are less powerful than more expensive laptops, but perfectly adequate for writing documents, doing email and surfing the web; and they can cost as little as £200.  The Samsung N220 or the HP Mini 110 are both good options.   The other disadvantage is that they have small keyboards and screens: but you could quite cheaply add a monitor and keyboard to use at home.

If you want something a bit bigger or faster (which you would need if you want to edit photos or video) then you won’t go far wrong with a Dell or an HP laptop.   If money is no object (unlikely for most development workers) then get a solid state disk – they are much less likely to break down in hot and dusty climates.

Should I use Windows?

Most people use Windows, because it is so universal.  You’ll be able to share files easily and get some basic support.  If you go with Windows, then use either Windows XP or Windows 7 (not Windows Vista, which is slow and unreliable).

Lots of people prefer Apple Mac.  Lots of Windows users who try Macs never want to go back.  You can get Microsoft Word and Excel for the Mac, and you can swap files without problems with Windows users.  Most people find Macs easier to use and more reliable than Windows; and the design is beautiful; but they are a bit more expensive than their Windows equivalents.

Most normal people wouldn’t use Linux software: so I’m not recommending it; though if you fancy a walk on the wild side, the latest version of Ubuntu (10.04 – Lucid Lynx) installs very easily and is very easy to use; and of course it is completely free and much more secure than Windows.  It is what I use on my main computer at home.  OpenOffice is a powerful, free alternative to Microsoft Office.  If you are technically minded this might be a good cheap alternative – especially if you want a second computer.

What office software do I need?

For your work lots of people need Microsoft Word and possibly Powerpoint.  The latest version is Office 2010, and this enables you to read files from, and create files that can be read by, earlier versions.  But there is not much new in Office 2007 and Office 2010, so if you already have Office 2003 you can stick with that for now. If you stick with Office 2003  you may want to download and install a compatibility pack which enables you to read documents and spreadsheets created with later versions of Office.  You can get Office for the Mac or the PC; but if you are going to do presentations with a Mac, use Keynote rather than Powerpoint.

If you don’t need Microsoft for work reasons, consider getting OpenOffice instead.  It is free and it works well with people using Microsoft. UPDATE: Cato in the comments points out that OpenOffice for the Mac is called NeoOffice.

How do I stay secure?

Computer viruses are a big problem in developing countries, even more than in rich countries.  Here are four things you should do to stay secure:

• First, you should use registered software, especially Windows. If you use unregistered or pirate software, it won’t update itself automatically to close any security loopholes, and that will leave you vulnerable.
• Second, install a virus checker and keep it up to date.  AVG Free is, er, free, and perfectly adequate.
• Third, don’t use Internet Explorer for surfing the web.  It is very insecure. Use Chrome or Firefox instead. I am using Chrome all the time now because it is so fast.
• Fourth, if you can, choose a Mac or Linux rather than Windows.

Making backups

Everybody using a computer should have backups; and that is even more true if you are living in a developing country where something is more likely to go wrong (e.g. hardware failures because of heat and dust; software failures because of viruses; theft  etc).  Concentrate on backing up your data – documents, photos, music etc, rather than software which you can always install again if you need to.

Ideally you should use the 3-2-1 rule: you should have three copies of everything, on two different types of media (eg hard disk and DVD), of which one should be stored off-site.

I have an external hard drive which I use to back up all my documents, photos and music.  I also make occasional DVDs of important stuff.   Try to buy one that does NOT need an external power supply, because then it is easy to pop into your travel bag. This Freecom drive is 320Gb for £50, which is not bad.  If you use a Mac, set up Time Machine to make backups.

In addition, consider using an online backup service such as dropbox or carbonite.  These services make copies of particular folders on your computer onto a password protected disk online.  They work in the background, copying changed files when your internet connection is available and not otherwise being used  They enable you to get those files back whereever you can get online – very helpful if you are travelling and need to get hold of a file from your computer.

Email

I use GMail for everything.  I’ve got several different email addresses, but they all go in to the same GMail account which I can access anywhere. (You can use free Google Apps to have your own domain name – that looks more professional than using a gmail address.)

A good idea is to use Outlook on your computer, connected to your GMail account.  Here is how. (Use IMAP rather than POP, because that way any change you make in GMail will be made automatically in Outlook, and any change you make in Outlook will be automatically reflected in GMail.)  With this set up, you can work offline (eg on a plane, or when the internet is down) in Outlook, or use Gmail or Outlook to work online.

If you rely entirely on GMail, then you run the risk that you might be locked out one day. This does happen, either because of a cockup at Google, or because your account gets hacked.  Would you be OK permanently losing all the mail you have ever sent and received?  That is probably not as much fun as it sounds.  If you use Outlook connected to your GMail then you’ll have a local copy of everything.  Alternatively, you can use a service like Backupify which makes backup copies of all your online services such as GMail, Facebook and Flickr in case they go down.  I use Thunderbird (made by the same people as Firefox) because I like the fact that all my mail is downloaded in a standard format; but most people are comfortable with Outlook.  I have it installed on a USB stick, so all my mail is backed up on that.

–

You’ll have noticed that I am quite focused on staying secure by avoiding viruses and having good backups. This is because  I know too many people who have seen their hard disk fail in a dusty city, or found their computer so comprehensively infected with viruses that there is no option but to wipe the hard disk.   You really want something that you can set up and then forget – which is why online services like dropbox or carbonite are a good idea, but they may not be much good for you if your internet connection is very slow.

In the next installment, I’ll look at software for the non-technical development worker.

What are your answers? Mine are below.

Here are  four big issues likely to affect the environment in which aid agencies work.

1. Climate change.
Funding for both adaptation and mitigation will soon swamp ODA, possibly in the form of resource flows associated with emissions trading.  It may also reduce ODA available for other purposes.  This will shape the destination and nature of development flows, and it will increasingly shape the needs and priorities of developing countries.

Impact: 5/5; probability: 3/5.

2. Technology, especially communications.
Ubiquitous low cost communications technology (especially mobile phones and mobile internet) will change the relationship between citizens and states in developing countries, and will completely alter the landscape for accountability.  The bureaucratic-managerialist model will give way over time to more direct accountability.  Donors and northern civil society will be forced to give up the conceit that some of them have that they represent the interests of the poor.

Impact: 4/5; probability: 4/5.

3. The post-bureaucratic age.
There will be a changing relationship between citizen and bureaucracy in donor countries. Though aid bureaucracies have largely sidestepped the New Public Management reforms, I suspect they will be affected by the next wave of public sector reform. Bureaucracies will increasingly be disintermediated; there will be greater transparency – including access to raw data; increased accountability; and a stronger assumption of citizen involvement and crowdsourcing.

Impact: 4/5; probability: 3/5.

4. Changing role for aid towards support for the most vulnerable.
The extraordinary (and unexpected, to me) rise of cash transfers and safety nets suggests a growing trend towards aid as a flow of resources primarily for the most vulnerable and marginalised who would not be reached by other flows (investment, remittances, domestic revenues).  We may move away from the idea of aid as mechanism to bring about changes in institutions and governance, partly as a result of lack of clear success in this area.  Aid may increasingly be seen primarily as a safety net for vulnerable people, whether as a result of humanitarian crises, conflict, or prolonged marginalisation.  Such a trend would fit with public attitudes to aid, and evidence about what we know aid can achieve.

Impact: 4/5; probability: 3/5.

What are the other candidates for megatrends affecting development?  Philanthrocapitalism? China? The fiscal crisis? State-building fatigue in donor nations?  An economic lift off in Africa? Regional integration?

The Deputy Finance Minister addressed the donor heads before me. In a very dignified way, he delivered the blunt message that the donors are not living up to their commitments in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.  That was the perfect platform for my presentation which argued that aid effectiveness matters, that there are good reasons why the Paris Declaration is not going to bring about more effective aid, and that the donors in Ethiopia should work differently to improve aid effectiveness.

You can view and listen to my presentation by clicking the image below.  This narrated presentation lasts 20 minutes (beware: when you click you’ll start to hear my voice, so don’t do this if you are in a meeting!).

Alternatively you can download the presentation as a pdf here.

The donors seemed to find the ideas in the presentation interesting.  There was little dispute with the analysis that it is very hard to make progress on the Paris agenda as it is currently conceived, though some scepticism that it would be possible, in practice, to change the incentives enough to change behaviour.  There was also some instinct to blame the Ethiopian government for things that don’t work very well.  I didn’t really get the sense that they had taken to heart just how bad things are at the moment.

Please let me know in the comments what you think. Is Paris going to work?

If resources are limited, focus your efforts on making your data open rather than in producing generic “lessons learned” documents (or other knowledge management products) that have little contextual value for practitioners on the ground. In a world where SMS makes it possible to connect with affected communities even in rural areas, those products will sound increasingly hollow.

In our work on aid transparency, we’ve heard a lot of staff of aid agencies insist that aid agencies have to package the data, otherwise it will be no use to anyone.  The charitable interpretation is that they want to make sure that information is useful; less positively, this impulse may come from the desire to avoid difficult questions that may arise from the raw data.

There is an excellent slide show by Chris Taggart at countculture on this latter point: the risk that open data will lead to the exposure of problems and to difficult questions being asked.

I do not have a problem with public authorities using data to present information and analysis that they think is useful and which will help build their reputation.  But they should publish the raw, underlying data as well.  Any services which they provide to information consumers – such as websites – should use the same data, and the same public access interface, as is available to everyone else.  So if someone else wants to set up a different website, telling the story in a different way or mixing it up with data from another source, they can do so.  There is no reason why the authorities should have privileged access to the data: it should be a common, universally accessible layer on which anyone can build their service or tell their story.

There is a particular challenge in publishing foreign assistance: the consumers of information want information from many different donor agencies and international organisations.  In most cases, citizens in developing countries don’t want to know what a particular organisation is up to everywhere; they want to know what all organisations are up to in a particular place or on a particular topic.  So information intermediaries serving these users need some way to pull together data from many different sources, and turn it into a single stream of comparable, consistent and coherent data.  To a large extent information intermediaries could  do this automatically, if the organisations publish enough detail about their activities to enable the data to be compared; but to some extent it requires that data is deliberately classified and structured to enable this kind of mash up.   A good example is the ability to trace aid from one organisation to another: a lot of aid passes through many organisations before it arrives at its intended beneficiary, and even if every organisation is transparent about all its spending, there is no direct way to track the aid through this chain.  That would need an agreed way of tagging the data so that we can all see how money flows through the system.

So for me, the key messages are:

a. publish the raw data, either instead of or alongside the information and analysis (and sometimes spin)

b. to the extent necessary, agree a minimal set of standards for the way the data are structured and the detail it contains to enable users easily to mix and mash the data so that they can use it. The International Aid Transparency Initiative has the potential to do this.

c.  Aid agencies should not feel that they themselves have to meet the needs of information consumers; they should provide financial support to information intermediaries who will access this data, mix it with other data, and provide locally useful and relevant information which meet a wide range of needs.   The more the donors make detailed, raw data easily available in a consistent format, the less financial support they will need to provide to information intermediaries enable them to use it.

What is striking about the class of poverty professionals (of whom I am one) is that the good living (granted, not at the billionaire or millionaire level, but pretty good nevertheless) is made through the very process of analyzing, writing, recommending on poverty. To me, at least, this is discomforting and disconcerting. I feel slightly ashamed within myself when I turn up to a poverty conference (perhaps even one where I am the keynote speaker), having flown business class, staying in an expensive hotel and (sometimes) being paid handsomely for attending. I recall many years ago, when I was in my twenties, telling the anthropologist Mary Douglas about how I was starting to do consulting for the World Bank on poverty issues, and how important it was to do this work. “And it’s not too bad for one’s own poverty either, is it?” came her worldly, knowing, reply. The seeds of discomfort sown by that comment have germinated and taken root, and now won’t let go.

Ravi suggests that everyone working in development should reconnect with poverty through a poverty immersion:

each poverty professional should engage in an “exposure” to poverty (also known as “immersions”) every 12 to 18 months. I do not mean by this rural sector missions for aid agency officials, nor the running of training workshops by NGO staff. What I mean is well captured by Eyben (2004); these are exercises that “are designed for visitors to stay for a period of several days, living with their hosts as participants, as well as observers, in their daily lives. They are distinct from project monitoring or highly structured ‘red carpet’ trips when officials make brief visits to a village or an urban slum….”

A friend of mine from DFID did this recently and came back saying how valuable it was.  I am in favour of immersions, though I don’t think it gets close to addressing the problem that Ravi is grappling with.

This reminds me that in March 2008, the Conservative development spokesman (and, since yesterday, the UK Secretary of State for International Development) announced that all DFID staff would be required to undertake a week-long immersion living in a poorer community. Andrew Mitchell said:

These immersions will serve as a valuable ‘reality check’ from the usual round of meetings, paperwork and spreadsheets. It will help keep everyone at DfID focused on their core mission: serving and helping poor people to work their way, sustainably, out of poverty.

I hope that they will implement this proposal now that they are in Government, and I hope DFID’s new Ministers will consider doing an immersion themselves, perhaps during the summer recess.

(via Suvojit)

But Bill Easterly’s post got me thinking. One great thing about the iPad (and the iPhone, etc) is the way it works as a platform for apps.

It is easy to write an app for the iPad or iPhone.  The platform takes care of the complicated stuff – accessing the internet, accepting user input, drawing on the screen – leaving the application developer to focus on the specific functions of the application itself.

Wouldn’t it be good to have a common “platform” in development, on which specific “applications” could be run?   The back office stuff – accounting, auditing, public financial management, rigorous evaluation, human resource management, management of building and vehicles and other resources, information technology, knowledge management and sharing – could all be provided centrally, avoiding duplication and costs.  Specific aid programmes could be run as “apps” on that platform.

We are a long way from that now.  There are 9 separate Oxfams running projects in Ethiopia.  Four of them have offices in Addis Ababa (GB, US, Canada, Spain) and another five run projects in Ethiopia out of offices in other countries.  That’s just Oxfam.  Save the Children has – I think – seven offices in Ethiopia.  That’s before you start with the official donors, each with their own infrastructure, and galaxy of expat staff, offices, drivers, accountants, press officers, and gardeners.  There is no reason for all those functions to be duplicated everywhere.

Aid agencies are on a journey from being primarily administrative organisations – specialists in project management – into knowledge-based organisations.   They should be purveyors of ideas, analysis, evidence and influence, within developing countries, international institutions, and industrialised countries.  To do this, they need to focus more of their resources and management capacity on their core business.  One way to do this would be for them to cut those administrative costs by using a common, shared platform. They can then focus on the apps that go on top.

A shared development platform would reduce costs and waste, and increase the scope for innovation, flexibility and diversity, and it would enable aid agencies to focus on their real value added.  So will it happen? I doubt it.

I have worked as a civil servant very closely with politicians of all parties, and my impression of them is much more positive.  There have been many politicians that I have not agreed with, but have found to be principled, hard-working, and genuinely committed to the pursuit of public good.  I’ve seen a few wrong ‘uns too; but most of those have been exposed in time.  There are many politicians who I admire and respect, and I’m sorry to see some of them leave the House of Commons.  Politics will be worse for the loss of people like Tony Wright, James Purnell and Bob Marshall Andrews for Labour, John Maples and Ann Widdecombe for the Tories, Matthew Taylor from the Liberal Democrats, and Clare Short, all of whom decided not to contest the 2010 election.

Though I am not a Liberal Democrat supporter, for me the biggest loss to the House of Commons came with the defeat of Dr Evan Harris in Oxford West and Abingdon.  He has consistently stood up for sound science, and evidence-based policy.  He has been the most consistent voice in support of secularism and free expression.  He has advocated disentangling the church from the state, and for remaining respectful of religion while resisting the idea that it should be immune from criticism or ridicule.   We need more people like him in Parliament, and I hope that he will soon return. (This is no reflection at all on Nicola Blackwood, who defeated him, whom I do not know at all.)

It is extraordinary how much resistance there is within development agencies to rigorous evaluation of development interventions.

The Clock Tower of the House of Commons within which Big Ben, a bell, resides

Since there will be a lot of politics on our TV screens in the next 48 hours, I should like to take this opportunity to issue some timely pedantic reminders:

• England, not the House of Commons, is the “Mother of Parliaments“
• “Big Ben” is a bell which is found in the clock tower of the House of Commons. The clock tower is not Big Ben, nor contrary to the opinion of faux pedants is it “St Stephens Tower”.
• There are no “keys to Number 10″.  The front door of Number 10 Downing Street has no lock. Nor are there any “books” containing the nation’s finances to be given to incoming Ministers.
• If Mr Brown goes to Buckingham Palace he will have “an audience of the Queen”, not “an audience with the Queen”
• The side of the House of Commons where the MPs supporting the Government sit are the “Treasury Benches”, not the “Government benches”
• Anybody “measuring the curtains at Number 10″ will be examining the curtains for the flat occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Prime Minister Blair, and subsequently Prime Minister Brown, used the larger flat above Number 11 Downing Street.

Update: 6 May.  For the record, here is St Stephen’s Tower:

St Stephen's tower

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.

VirtualEconomics is an unusual blog because it is maintained by someone in the front line of designing and delivering an substantial aid programme in one of the big bilateral donor agencies: Matt is the head of economics for the UK aid program in India.

Matt is interested in how to get feedback from the people who are the intended beneficiaries of aid:

New technologies for crowd-sourcing significantly bring down the transactions costs for collecting and ‘mashing’ data from many stakeholders. Examples include SMS-based systems (e.g. Ushahidi’s crisis reporting), smart-phone systems (e.g. Kenyan crop insurance) and web-based systems (e.g. eMoksha’s Fix Our City). What other examples are there?

So a question for us all to consider, how would you go about designing a simple platform for the Papua New Guinea public to provide reliable feedback on whether kids have received their textbooks? What’s the best solution?

As well as Ushahidi, another promising approach is Daraja in Tanzania which is going to use SMS messaging to provide feedback about which water points are working (full disclosure: I am on the board of Twaweza which is a partner of Daraja).

With changing technology and attitudes, we seem to be on the brink of a revolution in getting information from prospective benefiaries of aid.  Do you know of any existing, working programs like, or promising new approaches?

I’ve closed the comments here: if you have suggestions, please add them to Matt’s post.

The idea was discussed on twitter and on the blogs (including Aid Watch, Aid Thoughts, Tales from the Hood, Amanda Maculec, Siena Anstis, Texas in Africa, and Project Diaspora).  A fuller list of reactions is here.   Christopher Fabian explains what happened next:

Within a day a development concept has been aired.  It has been discussed. Literature has been created around it. Sources cited. Histories referenced. A community built.

Real-time input, from “the field” has just become an actor in “aid/charity/development.”  Voices from places which otherwise would never be represented spoke.  People in “the place” (“Africa”) where the “aid” was going got to weigh in.  Experts who had not met each other were able to share experience, synthesize and create new literature on giving, aid, and development theory.

And it happened in a few hours.

I don’t know what the t-shirt guy will do. I don’t know what his motivations are. It doesn’t really matter, because I have just seen the avalanche start.

Imagine if a large organization could put out its project plans in a way that was as appealing to comment on as this.

Imagine if there was the same transparancy and accountability of ideas in development.

Imagine if there was the same involvement of donors and implementers – and (watch out!) the beneficiaries of projects.

Imagine if we could actually ask people in the developing world what they thought of projects before we started them.

And most importantly, perhaps, imagine if we could fail quickly enough at the beginning of a project to not pour in the resources, ego, and time that sometimes gives otherwise bad ideas an unstoppable, zombie-like momentum.

But wait.  We can.  And it just happened, right in front of you.

This is indeed pretty interesting: it is the first time that the appraisal an aid project has been crowd-sourced.

It would be even better, of course, if some of the intended beneficiaries had a say.

Subjecting projects to scrutiny by this particular crowd is not ideal: for who are the people doing the scrutiny?  The kind of people who comment on twitter and on blogs are not the intended beneficiaries. They are not even typical experienced aid workers (most of the people I know working hard in the field don’t have access to, or time for, twitter and blogs.)

Though on this occasion, the consensus in the crowd was pretty clear that this was a misconceived project.

For all that this is not the ideal crowd to provide scrutiny, it is better than making decisions wholly in private.  This invites the question: why aren’t all aid projects subject to this kind of scrutiny, before anyone spends any money on them?

I’ve been playing with it this morning and I find it captivating. Perhaps that just shows that I’m a data geek.

Gapminder on my PC

This is a great example of intermediaries (in this case, Google) creating applications that people can actually use, based on raw data published by government.  Governments and international institutions could never do something like this.  That is why they should focus on liberating the data, in a free, open, standardised way, so that more applications like this can be developed.

• First, I was talking on Thursday evening with a donor agency official in Tanzania, who was explaining to me that her agency gives budget support in order to exercise policy influence with the government of Tanzania
• Second, in the context of Cash on Delivery aid, several people have argued that the whole concept is flawed because it relies on the idea that a promise of more aid will create incentives for developing country governments, and this is unlikely to be true.

I think it is worth establishing two points about the use of aid to create incentives. First, donors are almost never able to use aid to create incentives that work for developing countries, and they probably should not try.  Second, I am in favour of piloting Cash on Delivery aid, not because I think it will create stronger incentives in developing countries, but rather because I think it will create better incentives for donors (and it might at the margin increase the accountability of developing countries to domestic stakeholders).

Why donors cannot create effective incentives through aid

It sounds straightforward to say that if a donor offers a lot of money for a developing country to change a policy or achieve a particular outcome, this should, at the margin, have some effect on incentives within the developing country and so increase the likelihood that this policy change will occur or the outcome be achieved.  People respond to incentives, right?

Yet there is a mountain of empirical evidence that aid conditionality does not work. (Check the references at the bottom of this post for details.)  There are two good reasons why donors cannot create effective incentives for developing countries.

First, donors do not make credible threats. Most donors have an organizational imperative to get the money out of the door.  Aid agency staff want to sustain their bureaucratic status by managing large budgets.  They do not, in practice, withdraw aid when developing countries do not comply with conditions.  Officials in the governments of developing countries know that donors rarely stop aid – indeed, it is much more likely that aid will not be disbursed because of donor maladministration. The Government of Kenya was able to include the same promise to reform agricultural policy in five successive World Bank loan agreements over fifteen years: the condition was never met, and the aid was always disbursed. If the threat is not credible, it creates no incentive.  Svensson (2000) set out the argument and the evidence in detail.

Second, the incentive created by aid is not strong enough to influence decisions of government officials.   Aid is used to deliver services within the developing country, and that has only a very indirect impact on the interests of a minister or senior official.  After all, most aid does not end up in the minister’s personal bank account.  Of course, other things being equal, most ministers and officials want to see their fellow citizens better off.  They might also calculate that more aid which improves service delivery will make them more popular and so more likely to hold on to office.  But these benefits are often much less direct and immediate than the political costs to them of reform.  A politician is not going to take on vested interests and risk being ousted from office just to increase the number of wells being dug in a rural area.  In other words, people do respond to incentives, but aid is not as big an incentive as you might think.

Consider the choices made by ministers in industrialized countries.  They too want to improve the economy, increase spending and improve public services for their citizens, for the same reasons as politicians in developing countries.  But they are constrained from implementing sensible economic reforms, or raising more money in taxes, by powerful vested interests. Responding rationally to the incentives they face, they choose carefully which vested interests they are willing to confront at any given time; and that means compromising on the services they can deliver and the amount of economic growth they can bring about.  The prospect of faster growth and better services does not lead them to make suicide runs at reforming agricultural subsidies, removing trade tariffs or increased taxes on the super-rich.  Developing country ministers are no different.  Rational ministers will not risk being ejected from office just to bring more aid to the country.

This is why conditionality based on cutting aid does not work, and it is why it is a great mistake for development agencies to allow their success to be measured in terms of the amount of policy reform they have brought about.  Aid works because it pays for essential services, not because it brings about policy change.

I am not sure that industrialised countries could not create meaningful incentives for politicians in developing countries: but I believe it would be much more effective to impose travel restrictions and visa bans, to uninvite Ministers from key conferences, or to sequestrate money accumulated in Swiss bank accounts, than to cut off aid.  These approaches would have the added advantage that they wouldn’t leave the poor to starve.

Incentives and Cash on Delivery

If I don’t believe that developing countries will respond very much, if at all, to aid-based incentives, why do I support Cash on Delivery aid?

Some have argued that this is a show stopping argument against Cash on Delivery.  Tom Harrison says that “the biggest issue with ‘cash on delivery’ is that it assumes that where governments do not provide key public services it is because they lack the incentive to do so rather than because they lack the capacity to do so”.  I agree with him that it would be a mistake to think that we can create incentives for developing countries to deliver key services; but I disagree that this is the assumption on which Cash on Delivery is based. And in a well-argued paper, Ngaire Woods and Paolo de Renzio criticize the idea of Cash on Delivery Aid, partly on the basis that “external actors may have limited leverage on domestic political realities and accountability”.  I entirely agree with them about this.

I don’t believe that most developing countries need incentives to deliver better education for their children, better health care or access to safe water.  I think in many cases that what they need is money.   The problem is that donors won’t give that money without a whole rash of conditions, milestones, benchmarks, policy dialogues, missions, evaluations and reports.  Donors are forced to impose all that paraphernalia because they need to demonstrate to their taxpayers that the money has achieved something. It makes aid costly for developing countries, and highly unpredictable. I believe that Cash on Delivery can cut through all that: by providing money on the basis of results, donors can put more money into countries that are willing and able to deliver more and better services, without imposing hassle on either donor or recipient.

The promise of Cash on Delivery might – just might – nuance the political incentives in developing countries a little.  If the media, parliamentarians and civil society know that cash is available for any country that delivers better outcomes, that may help them to put pressure on their government to do a better job.  The government will not be able to hide behind the old excuses of lack of money or the pernicious impact of donor conditions and foreign interference. They will have to explain to their own citizens why they have not been able to do more.

Furthermore, it is possible that I’m wrong, and that in some cases Cash on Delivery aid will provide a modest incentive for some countries.  Some of my friends think it might help, and I’ve never heard anyone make a convincing case that it would do any harm.

Conclusion

I think a reasonable position to take is:

1. Donors cannot, in practice, create incentives for developing countries through the promise of aid. That is why aid conditionality does not work.
2. It is absurd to measure the success of aid by the policy change it brings about. We should measure aid’s success by the services which are provided.
3. Cash on Delivery does not depend on the assumption that developing countries need incentives to provide key services.  There are good reasons for testing the idea even if you do not believe that incentives are needed or would work.

References:

Killick, T., (1998), Aid and the Political Economy of Policy Change, Routledge, London and New York.

Collier, Paul. (1997). “The Failure of Conditionality.” In Catherine Gwin and Joan Nelson, eds., Perspectives on Aid and Development. Policy Essay 22. Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council.

Devarajan, Shantayanan, David Dollar, and Torgny Holmgren. (2001). Aid and Reform in Africa. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Nelson, J.M., (1996), “Promoting Policy Reforms: The Twilight of Conditionality?”, World Development, Volume 25 Number 9, September.

Svensson, Jakob, (2000). “When is foreign aid policy credible? Aid dependence and conditionality,” Journal of Development Economics

That question goes to the heart of one of the most controversial debates in global health: Is humanity better served by waging wars on individual diseases, like polio? Or is it better to pursue a broader set of health goals simultaneously—improving hygiene, expanding immunizations, providing clean drinking water—that don’t eliminate any one disease, but might improve the overall health of people in developing countries?

The new plan integrates both approaches. It’s an acknowledgment, bred by last summer’s outbreak, that disease-specific wars can succeed only if they also strengthen the overall health system in poor countries.

We already knew that, right? The big philanthropic foundations pride themselves on trying new approaches, and not being constrained by conventional thinking. Great. But it is a pity when they have to reinvent the wheel themselves.

We understand that all the main parties are committed to increasing aid to 0.7% of GDP, with some relatively minor differences about how that would be used.  But if we are serious about development, we need to look beyond aid to address the circumstances in which developing countries are trying to establish economic growth and political stability.  Our other policies – for example, on trade, climate change or immigration – make a huge difference to how quickly poor countries can develop.  Will you, as Prime Minister, be willing to make changes to UK policies which are against the immediate interests of a group of UK citizens – for example, arms exporters or pharmaceutical firms – but which support our collective longer term interest in seeing a fairer, safer and more prosperous world?  If so, what concessions would you make?

The development policy discussion in the UK has focused too much on aid.  As I’ve argued here today, aid is important, because it helps to improve people’s lives while their countries are developing.  But I don’t think aid is the most important factor in accelerating development – for that it is much more important whether we adopt fair global polices on climate change, trade, agriculture, immigration, intellectual property, conflict, corruption and international governance.

The manifestos are largely quiet on how the political parties would address these issues, and they have not yet been pushed to address it.  I think this is because so many people who work in development are dependent for their income on aid, so they tend to judge parties’ policies by their willingness to increase it.  A worthy and notable exception is Alison Evans at ODI, who is always smart, who picks this up in her recent blog post on development in the election:

.. a crucial question is whether there is any a wider read-across from the manifestos to the international development agenda?  Development is not only about aid and there is a danger that the allure of the 0.7 debate can and will detract from a much wider set of policy concerns that impact on the prospects for growth and prosperity in developing countries.  Each of the manifestos cover growth, trade, immigration, security and climate change – all  areas in which the debate about international development policy and global poverty reduction is increasingly engaged – but  none of them spell out in any detail what this means for the way their governments would work on these agendas or how the funding would work. Where is the coherence between policies and between policies and implementation?

This is exactly the right question to ask (it is a pity that the post is entitled: “main parties pledge 0.7% for aid but how will it be spent?”). We have been assured that the three largest parties are committed to retaining DFID as a separate government department, with its own Cabinet Minister, and with a budget that rises to meet the UK’s commitment to increase aid to 0.7% of GDP.  But if they are serious about development then DFID will also need to have an important role right across the government, ensuring that the UK’s interests in development are taken into account when the government considers other policies from immigration to climate change.  That does not mean that the development interests should always trump the UK’s other national interests, but they should be considered and there will often be ways to adjust the details of the policy in a way that costs us little but has a huge impact on the developing world.

If we want to help to accelerate development, then some of the time we will need to put the UK’s broad, long-term interest in  building a safer, more equal and prosperous world ahead of the UK’s narrower and short-term commercial or political interests.  The most important international development question for the UK election should be: which of the political parties is willing to do that?

Rich countries have many reasons for wanting to help poor countries. The main three British political parties speak in their manifestos of Britain’s obligations to the developing world (Lib Dems); moral duty, common interest and poverty emergency (Lab); and enlightened self interest and commitment (Cons).  The combination of motives – moral concern for others and self-interest – is a strength of the development cause, not a handicap.

These motives translate into two broad classes of objectives for development policy:

• One view is that development assistance should help to accelerate economic and institutional change in developing countries. The idea is that temporary support from outside can be a catalyst for permanent changes in developing countries. As economic growth takes off, developing countries will no longer need our help.  This view is attractive both to donors, who do not want to go on giving aid for ever, and for recipient countries who do not want to continue to be aid dependent.  For shorthand we will call this the transformation objective of development assistance.
• Another view is that development assistance can improve people’s lives today. This is most obvious in the case of humanitarian relief, for which the objective is to provide food and shelter; but more generally a lot of aid is used to send children to school or provide basic health care.  On this view, the development process is long and hard, and one role for outsiders is to enable people to live better lives while this process is happening in their country. Let’s call this the solidarity objective of development assistance.

It is entirely reasonable for countries, organizations and individuals to care deeply about both the transformation and the solidarity objective, and they can coherently pursue both objectives at the same time.

From time to time, people try to make connections between these objectives, positive and negative.

The claim of a positive connection is the idea that spending money on health and education is an investment in the human capital of a country, and that this will, in time, lead to faster economic growth.  Some point to significant investments in education in fast-growing Asian economies as evidence that education spending will promote growth.  Others say that improving health will lead to a demographic transition, in which falling infant mortality leads to smaller family sizes and greater investment in each child.  Both of these stories are appealing, though unfortunately neither is very well supported by the evidence.

The possibility of a negative connection is that the things that donors do to support people in developing countries as a matter of solidarity may actually slow down the political, social, institutional and economic changes that the country needs for transformation.  It may sustain unaccountable governments in power; undermine the social contract between citizen and state; hollow out fragile government institutions; cause appreciation of the real exchange rate and so choke off exports; or create a culture of dependency that dims demand for social change.  Again, the empirical evidence for these (quite plausible) ideas is pretty thin (pace the claims of Dambisa Moyo).

Are we using the right tools to pursue our two types of objective: tying to catalyze transformation, and at the same time to help people live better lives?   I think we are focusing too much on aid and not enough on development policies.

It is quite straightforward to see that aid can help meet solidarity objectives.  It is used to provide clean water and food, and to finance public services such as health and education.  There is quite good evidence that it is effective, though there is much more to learn about how to do it better.

It is much less clear that aid achieves our transformation objectives. The statistical evidence linking aid to economic growth is, at best, uncertain (see The Anarchy of Numbers by David Roodman).  This does not mean that there is no relationship – it is much harder to demonstrate a statistical connection when there are few countries to observe, and so many factors as well as aid that are likely to affect whether a country achieves economic lift-off.  We can think of aid being to growth what venture capital is to start-ups: many investments will fail, but the huge benefits from the few that succeed may make the losses worthwhile.

I personally have my doubts that aid makes much difference to the prospects for economic and social transformation.  Countries change from within, through long, slow, organic processes, and it is hard to see how money and advice from outside can make much of a difference to that.  Consider our own history, and the decades and centuries that it has taken us so far to construct our social and political institutions.

If we are serious about promoting transformation, we need to look beyond aid to how we can change the environment in which developing countries are struggling to change their economic, social and political institutions. Transformation is much likely to take root if we create conditions in which it is likely to succeed.

What are the development policies that might contribute to this?

1. Trade policy – As well as duty-free, quote-free access for all developing countries to our markets, we have to dismantle the complex rules – such as rules of origin and phyto-sanitary standards – which make exports complicated.
2. Agriculture policy – We have to stop dumping subsidized agricultural over production abroad, especially as our aid conditions prevent developing countries from competing with us. We also have to stop using food aid as a welfare system for European and American farmers.
3. Climate change – If anthropogenic global warming is a reality, as is the consensus among scientists, then the harm we are doing to developing countries through climate change will become one of the most important obstacles to development.  Probably the most important thing we can do to accelerate development is to stop our own carbon emissions.
4. Conflict – We make and sell the guns that are used in conflicts in developing countries.  We buy the oil and minerals over which groups are fighting.  We sustain the unaccountable leaders in pursuit of our geo-strategic interests.   If we were serious about development, we would by now have stopped the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda – it would be a simple matter for a well-resourced army.
5. Immigration – In the 18^th Century, a third of Europeans moved to America, to the benefit of both continents.  In the 20^th and 21^st century we have introduced historically unprecedented restrictions on the movement of people – notwithstanding our rhetoric about globalization. These restrictions may be the single most important factor which explains why poor countries have not been able to converge on rich countries.
6. Intellectual property – Another constraint on the ability of developing countries to close the gap is that there are historically unprecedented constraints on their ability to appropriate technologies. For centuries, new agricultural techniques such as crop rotation spread through word of mouth.  During the industrial revolution, America and Europe were able to use technologies from Britain.  When Henry Ford invented the assembly line, the idea was rapidly adopted everywhere.  But today’s technologies – from business software to pharmaceuticals and biotechnology – are protected by patents that make it impossible for other countries to adopt.
7. Corruption – We often think of corruption as a problem of developing countries, but this ignores the fact that the money for corruption comes from, and often returns to, industrialised countries.  Rich western companies pay bribes, in return for access to contracts or minerals.  To his eternal credit, President Jimmy Carter introduced the Foreign Corrupt Practises Act, which made it harder for American companies to pay bribes abroad. But there is much more we could do, if we were prepared to take on the vested interests of our own multinational companies, to reduce corruption in developing countries.
8. International governance – In our own nations, we have long ago dropped the property qualification for representation; but internationally we do not think that it is strange that representation in our main institutions is based on wealth and power.  This matters because again and again, the interests of developing nations are ignored, or treated only as a footnote.  From banking secrecy to internet peering arrangement, the rules of the game are set by the wealthy in their own interests. Changes to these practices which would be irrelevant to most of us, but could make a huge difference to the prospects for development, are resisted by powerful vested interests from industrialized countries.

It is entirely reasonable that industrialized countries want both to promote transformation in developing countries, and to help people there to live better lives while that process is taking place.  Aid has been proven to be an effective instrument for meeting our solidarity objective, but it is far less clear that it is a significant driver of transformative change.  Our political rhetoric focuses on the idea that development policies should promote transformation.  Yet it seems unlikely that aid is the most useful tool we have for achieving this.  If we are serious about transformation we should invest  more time and effort in creating the global environment in which economic and social change are more likely to succeed, by changing our policies and behaviours on issues like trade, agricultural policies and immigration.

Many people who work in development are directly or indirectly dependent on aid. Government development agencies gain their bureaucratic position from the size of their budget.  International NGOs get a lot of their money from aid budgets or from private charitable giving.  Partly as a result, the debate about development too often shifts to aid: whether it works, how much is given and by what means.  These are important questions, but primarily for the important goal of helping people in developing countries to live better lives while they are waiting for, and helping to build, a more prosperous and fair society.  If we are serious about accelerating the transformation, it is our development policies, not aid policy, that we should be discussing.

Not only has the World Bank made this data available, it has created interfaces that enable programmers to access the data automatically (in technical language, they are providing an API).  That in turn means that individuals and organisations can create programmes, websites or visualizations that use the data and enable them to mash it up with other information.

This data does not yet included detailed World Bank project data.  But the World Bank is part of the International Aid Transparency Initiative, IATI, through which 18 donors are working together to put detailed aid data online.  When that is up and running, it will be possible to access aid data in the same way as the development information being put online by the World Bank today.

This is a huge step forward for open access to development data.  Well done the World Bank.

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.

It is hard to overstate the damage recently done by leaders who thought they knew more about the world than they did – the managers and financiers who destroyed great businesses in the pursuit of shareholder value; the architects and planners who believed that cities could be drawn on a blank sheet of paper; and the politicians who believed they could improve public services by the imposition of targets. They failed to acknowledge of the complexity of the systems for which they were responsible and the multiple needs of the individuals who operated them. …

Politicians imagined they could reconstruct the Middle East on the basis of an American model of lightly regulated capitalism and liberal democracy, although they had not the slightest knowledge or understanding of the societies they sought to remodel. The banking executives supposed they were in control of large institutions, when in reality the floors beneath them were occupied by a rabble of self-interested individuals determined to evade any controls on their activities. Financiers believed that models they did not understand enabled them to manage risks they did not understand, attaching to securities they did not understand. That is how the UK and US entered this decade with foreign policy in tatters, a financial system close to meltdown and a fiscal policy in disarray.

Successful decision-making is more limited in aspiration, more modest in its beliefs about its knowledge of the world, more responsive to the reactions of others, more sensitive to the complexity of the systems with which it engages. Complex goals are generally best achieved obliquely.

We should think about this both in the context of the way donors try to “redesign” the political and economic process in countries they know almost nothing about, and in the context of trying to reform the aid system, where grand design is unlikely to succeed.

This evening here in Addis Ababa I bumped into the owner of one of the big flower-exporting businesses.  He was looking pensive.  Unseasonal rain had damaged part of his crop, and now he is unable to get his roses into European markets.  A whole container had had to be destroyed because there was nowhere for them to go.  On the back of an envelope, he calculated that the blockage of rose exports is costing Ethiopia about €200k a day. This may not sound very much but it is a big chunk of the export earnings of a poor nation.