Aid Thoughts

Digesting the difficult decisions of development

Archive for September, 2009

A modest proposal for climate change and immigration

Sep 29

Posted by Matt in Africa, Development, Political Economy | 3 Comments

comb2

Finding resources in a post-global warming Africa will be even more difficult

There is a general consensus that, however severe the eventual impact will be, it is much of the developing world that stands to lose the most from climate change. Increasing temperatures result in more unpredictable and volatile weather as well as greater levels of desertification and disease. Many believe that Africans will be the worst sufferers, despite the fact that they contribute the least to global emissions.

I am currently not optimistic about suggestions that we should pay developing countries to adapt to their worsened environments or to transition their economies into ones that are less carbon-intensive (read: slower-growing). When it comes to adaptation funds, given the extremely low level of government capacity in some of these countries and the general lack of aid effectiveness,what are the chances that these transfers will actually be used for their intended purpose? It’s far more likely that the funds will just act as a payout: reparations for making the lives of the poor worse off. Chris Berg makes a compelling case against cash-for-climate in this article:

Climate aid is just another illustration of what the economist William Easterly calls development paternalism: a belief well-paid international experts, equipped with enough power and resources, should take the third world’s destiny under their benevolent wings.

When I started a post in Malawi several years ago, I spent my first day on a long drive from the south of the country to the capital, Lilongwe. I had arrived in the middle of Malawi’s dry season, when the terrain is orange, dusty and sparsely vegetated. This was my first developing country experience and, overwhelmed by this barren landscape, my immediate thoughts were: this place is a hell-hole that will never be developed, what we need to do is fly in helicopters and move everyone to a place they can live a decent life.

It wasn’t long before I was laughing at my brash, knee-jerk reaction but that isn’t to say that the policy prescription was completely crazy. Many sub-Saharan countries like Malawi are facing both internal and external climate pressures: depleted soil, extreme deforestation, volatile rainfall, and now the looming threat of rising temperatures. In some of the worst-hit, least hospitable locations, is it really reasonable that people must be stuck in such environments, just because they were unlucky enough to be born there?

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A question for the health bloggers

Sep 25

Posted by Matt in Research | 5 Comments

The biggest news of the week in health is the emergence of a partially-effective vaccination against HIV, which in the study prevented an extra 30% of the treatment group from contracting the virus. There are many questions and caveats: the trial involved a population with a comparitively low incidence rate (relative to say, sub-Saharan Africa). It’s also unclear why this vaccine would only be partially effective and whether or not it would work against different strains of the virus. One sentence I’m seeing quite often is jumping out at me:

The vaccine lowered the rate of infection by 31.2% — too little to be considered for licensing.

That’s from the Global Health Blog (with emphasis added).

My question is this: why is is 32% too low for a roll out of the vaccine? Is this purely the result of a cost-effectiveness argument, or is there some basic threshold a vaccine must pass to be considered viable? The global health community is in the process of pushing for a greater number of circumcisions in sub-Saharan Africa and now in the US, based on the similarly limited efficacy rate of 50% (something I’ve questioned before). Is the difference here just the cost, or is the context?

The Contents of my Brain on a Friday (A Short Post)

Sep 25

Posted by Ranil Dissanayake in Africa, Development | No Comments

1) The Roving Bandit recently posted this graphic (via Ryan Briggs) on his website:

Boom.

Boom.

Anyone familiar with Iliffe’s history of the continent, Africans, won’t be particularly surprised at this. It is quite an exciting prospect though: historically Africa’s internal transport links, internal trade and specialization were limited by the sparse population. It might also  be that the development of agrarian capitalism has also been limited by low densities of population. As Lee points out, we need to disaggregate further down than ‘Africa’ to individual countries and even districts, but this could be quite significant.

Of course, the counter-argument is that population densities have been increasing for a while without accompanying economic transformation. Perhaps the impact is mediated by other, missing, factors; perhaps densities need to cross a threshold in a specifically locally distributed manner to have an effect; or maybe they just don’t matter that much.

2) I came across this bio of Chea Mony through the Grauniad’s Achievements in International Development Awards. He’s a labour activist who, according to this short bio, has achieved pretty remarkable improvements in the standard of living for Cambodian textiles workers.

This is a topic close to my heart (and was the subject of my postgrad thesis). I’m a firm believer that responsible collective action by labour can alleviate the harsher aspects of the transition to capitalism, which is something labour tends to have a mixed experience of: better wages accompanied by terrible conditions.

Do any readers know anything about Mony, or know where I can learn more? I’d be particularly grateful for a heads up on any academic or semi-academic studies of the union movement itself.

3) Through Bill Easterly’s Twitter feed, I came across this article. The article itself isn’t very insightful, though the headline is great. It includes a line in it, though, that did make me think:

…bad ideas have the tendency of contaminating good ones faster than the good ones can cleanse the bad…

Is this true, or does it just seem that way because we notice and shout about the bad ideas?

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African or African’t?

Sep 24

Posted by Matt in Africa | 5 Comments

Via Cashewman I ran across this rather striking ad by Christian Aid about the ramifications of climate change for the developing world:

christianaid_iceberg_medres

It’s a magnificent-looking poster, but does it make much sense? Does the waterline represent the poverty line, or just the line for sub-saharan Africa? If the latter, wouldn’t being under-water protect them from being melted? Or is being under water being in poverty? And shouldn’t the iceberg be melting, not just sinking?

I’m inspired. I think we need more ocean-themed Africa imagery, but the above ad makes Africa too much of a passive figure.  In a moment of pure genius I altered the cover a of a heavy-metal album (can you guess which one?) to come up with this more positive, empowering image, with a heavy slice of Herman Melville thrown in for good measure:

efrica

What do you think? Too much?

Apparently, Not Everybody Gets This…

Sep 23

Posted by Ranil Dissanayake in History, Political Economy | 1 Comment

In addition to having an *awesome* beard, Marx also understood what makes capitalism so dynamic.

In addition to having an *awesome* beard, Marx also understood what makes capitalism so dynamic.

Markets (even free markets) are not the same thing as capitalism.

Yet constantly people, even economists (who should really know better), conflate the terms. They’ll start a sentence by saying ‘capitalism has been promoted throughout Africa…’ and end it talking about ‘… despite extensive market liberalization, poverty reduction remains slow’ as if they are still talking about the same thing.

Entrepreneurship is not the same thing as capitalism.

I’ve often heard people say ‘Africa is one of the most capitalist places I’ve been to – everywhere I went someone was trying to sell me something!’ More news – that’s commerce and entrepreneurship. Neither of those things are the same as capitalism.

The existence of private property is also not sufficient to indicate capitalism.

Private property exists in almost every form of economic organization beyond the most primitive economies. Capitalism isn’t defined by private property either.

Most people understand there is an economic form called ‘capitalism’ which is distinct from and more dynamic than other economic forms. However, they define capitalism against a limited sample of comparators. Most people conceive of only two types of economic organization in any detail: capitalism and socialism (in its extreme form, communism). This is partly a product of the era in which we have grown up. The Cold War and the conflict between Capitalism and Communism so defined modern international relations until recently that the end of this conflict prompted Francis Fukuyama to declare ‘The End of History’, with the triumph of Capitalism (and liberal democracy) representing the end of modern development.

Thus, most observers define capitalism not by its most individual characteristics, but by those that best set it apart from communism: free markets, unfettered entrepreneurship (in the sense of freedom to pursue economic self-realisation) and the existence of private property. This has had serious effects on our ability to diagnose and define policy in less-developed countries. Economic policies attempt to manipulate or take advantage the underlying laws of motion of an economic system; if we have misunderstood that system, our policies may not have their intended effects.

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Awards of the day

Sep 22

Posted by Matt in Africa, Aid, Development, Economics, Political Economy | No Comments

Worst unintended consequences: Scholarships for virgins in Sierra Leone. Turns out many of the girls were raped and impregnated as punishment for receiving the exclusive scholarships. [From AFRICA IS A COUNTRY]

Runner-up for unintended consequences #1: Egypt’s indefensible, blatantly political extermination of its pig population comes back to bite it when they discover that there be no more pigs to eat all their garbage. [Global Health Blog]

Runner-up for unintended consequences #2: Think twice before you fund an orphanage in Eeeefrica. [GIANE]

Worst paper headline, ever: We can’t abandon Africa to cannibalism and genocide [WR]

Best joke about to the worst paper headline: “We can’t abandon West Virginia to feuds and incest.”

Strangest political Tweeter ever: Is Paul Kagame really on twitter? .

Yucky feeling deep down inside award: The murmurs are growing louder – is microfinance really just a fad?

Special late assignment award: the IMF reviews Dead Aid

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Takeoff for Tuberculosis!

Sep 21

Posted by Matt in Africa, Aid | 5 Comments

Paying for global health using voluntary air ticket contributions? Surely you can't be serious.

Paying for global health using voluntary airline ticket contributions? Surely you can't be serious.

According to Mike Smith at the Global Health blog (and Time), an initiative being supported by Bill Clinton, the World Bank and the UN will soon have airlines asking for voluntary contributions towards international health projects:

Starting next January, whenever you buy an airline ticket at a travel agency or online, there’ll be a new question to answer before you hand over your credit card: Would you be willing to donate $2 to help fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa?

Would it not make more sense to, oh I don’t know, doing away with the flying in of development workers and consultants on business class tickets, and use the saved money to help fund the health sector?

Sure, there are potentialyl negative incentive effects, but I’m doubtful they are that large. Chris Blattman’s blog had a huge debate about this a few months ago. Colour me cynical, but I’d be surprised if the money earned from voluntary contributions would come even close to the amount you’d save by cutting back on travel expenses.

Earlier NYtimes article about the scheme here.

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The dog with two bones

Sep 18

Posted by Matt in Aid, Development, Economics, Elections, Governance, Political Economy | 3 Comments

Ian Birrell of the Independent asks a question that’s worth a ponder: why do the British give money to repressive countries?

Why, he asks, is Britain handing out so much aid to [Rwanda] when its ruler is fighting a proxy war in the Congo; when its elites are getting rich on stolen minerals; when democracy is a sham and dissent is stifled?

And aid flows into Uganda, where Yoweri Museveni’s regime has been accused of torture and repression. Britain increased total aid to Ethiopia even after Meles Zenawi, another poster boy for this supposed new wave of African leaders, oversaw a brutal clampdown following a blatantly rigged election and waged war on Somalia. A strange paradox seems to be emerging: the more money spent on aid, the less chance of criticism.

Birrell also highlight’s DFID’s growing power in Anglo-African relations:

The most outrageous example was in Kenya, where Dfid officials tried to prevent the British ambassador from speaking out against obscene corruption. Only last week I heard of a senior minister who, told he was signing agreements with one of Kenya’s most corrupt politicians, glibly replied that he was less interested in the man’s record than the desire to get children into education. Little wonder Kenya remains plagued by corruption.

The problem is that out of the many reasons we give aid, the only two that are (arguably) unselfish often conflict with each other:

  1. giving aid to hammer away at poverty and inspire economic growth and
  2. giving aid to incentivise governments to stay free, accountable and democratic.

Does our pursuit of poverty reduction collide with our preference for a free and democratic world (the titular two bones)? We’d like our decisions to be clear-cut: When governments are both repressive and bad at governing (or free and follow good policies) the decision is pretty easy.

However, when we’re dealing with countries that are relatively free but still have incompetent governments or those that are repressive yet follow good development/economic policies, our decisions will be marked with flecks of grey.

Sometimes I feel like I’m closer to the “give effective aid even if it gives you icky feelings” camp. Effective governments are arguably more important than free ones – Robert Mugabe’s economic policies did far more damage to Zimbabwe than his brutal methods of staying in power.

On the other hand, it does feel particularly icky to look the other way when successful governments begin to look more authoritarian, as they have in Uganda, Rwanda (and as donors in Malawi often did while I was there).

What do you think?

So fresh and so clean

Sep 18

Posted by Matt in Africa, Aid | 1 Comment

From Solar Africa, I learned of the Global Soap Project:

He arrived in the U.S. from Africa 15 years ago and was staying at a hotel in Philadelphia, when he noticed that the cleaning crew would replace the bathroom soap each day, even if the bars were only slightly used.

The ‘he’ in question, Ugandan Derreck Kayongo, thought of of a use for all the discarded soap:

Mr. Kayongo, a field coordinator for Atlanta-based relief agency CARE International, this year launched an effort to collect used bars of hotel soap and recycle them for use in refugee camps in Uganda. He sees it as a way to fight the spread of disease and allow U.S. hotels to help Africa while also reducing the amount of trash they are paying to have hauled away to landfills.

Kayongo plans to recycle the soap using hired labour Uganda. Those whole venture is innovative, but I can’t help but wonder, even if the soap is free, is shipping discarded soap from the US really cost-effective, given that there are plenty of domestic producers? Why not take the amount of money being used for lugging tons of soap across the Atlantic and just use it to buy soap locally?

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We Can Work It Out! We Can Work It Out!

Sep 15

Posted by Ranil Dissanayake in Governance, History, Political Economy | 1 Comment

Do we think as one, or are we just joined by circumstance?

Do we think as one, or are we just joined by circumstance?

I recently posted a rambling trail of thoughts about the difficulty of state building in much of Africa. It was a generally bleak assessment: historical circumstances have made state-building difficult due in large part to the historical importance and continuing primacy of sub-national forms of identity. I also suggested that without a strong national identity and state, it’s difficult to transform the economy in the ways needed to develop rapidly.

Having said this, there are examples of countries and leaders within Africa who have explicitly pursued nation-building with some success, and its worth looking at these examples to see what kind of impact this has had on development. The two examples I am most familiar with are Malawi under Hastings ‘Kamuzu’ Banda and Tanzania under Julius Nyerere (Kenneth Kaunda also sought to rule Zambia using the ideology of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’, but I’m less familiar with the ins-and-outs of Zambian history).

What’s most interesting about these examples is how they pursued nation-building policies and why they haven’t gone on to more rapid development than the rest of Africa if state- and nation-building really is important

Nation building in Malawi and Tanzania took similar forms, but through rather different methods. Unity of state and nation was a key ideological component of Hastings Banda’s vision for Malawi in the thirty-odd years he was Life President, and he pursued it vigorously. As a national language, he selected the language spoken by the Chewa, which at the time was considered simply to be a dialect of Chinyanja. Giving it the name ‘Chichewa’, in 1968 the Government began an aggressive campaign suppressing other languages. Books published in Chitumbuka, Chiyao and Chilomwe were suppressed and banned; all instruction was given in Chichewa and English; and there was even a national ‘Chichewa Development Board’.

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