by Claire Melamed | Jan 25, 2011 | Economics and development
CJ - Development Visionary?
The West Wing: fictional TV series about liberal American President.
Voices of the Poor: rigorous research project involving over 60,000 people in 60 countries run by the World Bank.
Strange but true: both recommend the building of roads as a key development intervention.
Voices of the Poor, published in 2000, says ‘the lack of basic infrastructure, particularly roads, transport and water are seen as defining characteristics of poverty’ and recommends ‘more emphasis on roads connecting villages to each other and the nearest town’. C.J. Cregg, the fictional (alas!) White House official, in an episode broadcast in 2006, replies rather more succinctly to the Bill Gates-type figure who is offering her $10 billion to spend on making the world a better place, ‘I’d build roads’.
Did anyone listen? According to the OECD database, after rising for three years, aid from OECD donors for transport infrastructure fell in 2001, the year after Voices of the Poor came out. It hit a low in 2003 and started to climb, fell again between 2005 and 2007, and then hit a high in 2008 with over 9 billion dollars going to the sector. I have no idea what lesson you can draw from this – except perhaps that poor people and fictional characters are equally powerless when it comes to influencing how aid is spent.
by Alex Evans | Jan 24, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system, Influence and networks
Over at the Elysee Palace, Nicolas Sarkozy has just finished his press briefing on France’s plans for the G8 and G20 this year. Going through the readout I’ve just received from someone who was in the room, it sounds like there were some pretty hilarious gems.
As, for instance, when Sarko was discussing high food prices and turned to the issue of food export bans. Apparently Sarko doesn’t contest countries’ right to impose such bans, but thinks we need an agreement to avoid unilateral decisions. And he’s asked President Medvedev to lead on this. Presumably this is a different President Medvedev to the one who, er, unilaterally imposed export restrictions on Russian wheat last summer?
Also: the international monetary system is another priority for La France, especially the need to tackle global imbalances. And who’ve they found to lead on this? Er, Germany… yes, that’s the same Germany that refuses to talk about its massive trade surplus. Ahem.
In other news: who who’ll be leading on global governance in the G8 and G20 this year? David Cameron! (No, really, he is.)
Follow more Sarko G20 delights at @FranceG20 on Twitter. Go on, they’ve only got 33 followers – it would be an act of kindness.
by Andy Sumner | Jan 21, 2011 | Africa, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia
Yes, according to the annual survey of US ‘independent watchdog’ Freedom House and carried by Foreign Policy and Voice of America.
Every year the Washington-based organisation, whose findings feed into World Bank governance indicators assesses political rights and civil liberties around the world, and grades countries in accordance with their levels of political freedom.
Freedom House (FH) is not without considerable controversy – visible recently in the Washington Post’s blog.
The data is produced by a set of ‘experts’ (50 analysts and 18 ‘senior-level academic advisors’). However, Freedom House scores are largely used due to a lack of alternatives. The organisation’s ‘Freedom in the World’ surveys like this years have been criticised for using arbitrary classifications, and critics argue their approach is too narrow. For example there is no way to consider the interdependence of human rights (for example, that you need certain education levels for genuine participation in politics). Moreover, is it even possible to reach an objective, comparable measure of something as complex as ‘political freedom’? and produce the ‘map of freedom’.
(more…)
by Claire Melamed | Jan 20, 2011 | Economics and development, UK
The Coalition government, just like the last Labour government, have promised to hit the magic number of 0.7% – that’s the proportion of the UK’s income that will be spent as aid. But the way they spend it might look quite different.
Let’s get textual for a minute. Here are ‘word clouds’ for the coalitions’ business plan for DFID and the last Labour government’s Public Service Agreement for the department (words that are bigger are used more often and vice versa, and if you click on the pictures you’ll get a bigger and clearer version).
Coalition government: DFID Business Plan, 2011-2015
Labour government: DFID PSA agreement, 2007-2010
What does this tell us?
1. Transparency is in, Effectiveness is out
‘Transparency’ features large in the Coalition’s business plan. DFID has promised to give all of us who pay for it more information about how aid is spent. The idea is that the exposure will force ministers and civil servants to make sure that what they’re doing has a clear impact, immediately visible to taxpayers. The last government took quite a different approach. ‘Effectiveness’,was the instrument of choice for making aid better. This is about improving aid by improving the relationships surrounding aid – chiefly between the governments who give aid and and those who receive it. Of course the two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive – the new USAID strategy, for example, promises both.
2. Aid is up, development is down
Look at the different sizes of the words ‘aid’ and ‘development’ in the two word clouds. The coalition is all about measuring the direct results of the UK’s aid – numbers of children in school, numbers of anti-malarial bednets bought and so on. The last Labour government took the approach that it is almost impossible to isolate the impact of aid from one country on the complex process of development. Assessment was based on overall development progress, measured using the Millennium Development Goal indicators in DFID’s priority countries, with the clear acknowledgment that only a part of this would be down to DFID. It’s hard to see how these two approaches can be reconciled, so this might turn out to be one of the biggest differences between the two administrations. Watch this space.
3. Bilateral is hot, multilateral is not (for now)
This doesn’t come across so strongly in the word cloud (except perhaps in the fact that the word ‘UN’ appears in the PSA but not in the Business Plan). But it’s clear from reading the documents that the last government strongly favoured a multilateral approach to most of the key problems identified, while the coalition is more focused on the UK’s bilateral programme and how the UK can achieve results this way. This may change – given the commitment in the last Comprehensive Spending review to shrink its administrative costs it’s hard to see how DFID can spend its way to 0.7 without channelling more money through institutions like the World Bank.
What does all this mean? Let’s not go too far with the A level English Literature approach – the real changes will come out over the years to come, as the coalitions’ approach evolves. But they are pretty pictures, and they give some clues about where DFID is headed, at least.
by David Steven | Jan 20, 2011 | South Asia
Most of us, I think, have an utterly skewed view of the impact of terrorism – weighted heavily towards (very rare) attacks on Western cities or the murder of high-profile figures, such as Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab. In reality, however, it is the poor and marginalised, in countries like Pakistan, who bear the brunt of terrorist violence.
As a corrective – and to ruin your morning – consider this attack on a school, using the novel tactic of a horse-drawn cart-bomb:
A bypasser was killed and 17 persons, including six boys and three girl students, were injured in a remote-controlled bomb explosion outside a private school here on Wednesday.
A bomb disposal unit official, Malik Shafqat, said a device containg five kilogrammes of explosives had been planted in a horse-drawn cart near the graveyard outside the Shah Faisal Public School in Nauthia Jadeed.
The device exploded when the students had just started reaching the school in the morning. The explosion was so loud that it was heard all over the city. The cart-owner was arrested and was being interrogated, a senior police official said.
Rescue teams and volunteers rushed to the spot soon after the explosion and the injured were rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital. Doctors said one body and 17 injured people had been brought to the hospital. They said the condition of two injured was serious.
The slain person was identified as Umar Aziz, son of Abdul Aziz, resident of Bara Gate. He was a bypasser caught in the explosion.
The injured included Jamshed Khan, Taimur Khan, Yousaf Khan, Ishaq Khan, Rutba, Remeen, Sidra Ishaq, Iqra Ishaq, Badshah Khan, Tahira, Nigah, Rizwanullah, Naveed, Safeena Riyaz, Sana, Shahzeb and Abdur Rahman.
Spend a second, at least, reading those names, because they’ll almost certainly never be seen in print again. These victims of terrorism are almost completely anonymous, and the families of the deceased receive little or no support, neither do the injured who lose their livelihoods.
This – by the way – is part of a systematic campaign to target Peshawar’s schools. There have been three other attacks in just the past month. Imagine the reaction if that were to happen in Birmingham, UK, or Birmingham, Alabama.
