The crusade for women's rights

The issue of women's rights is one that doesn't appear frequently here at China in Africa, but rest assured that such a lack is not for want of concern or interest. My undergraduate thesis centered on women's land rights in Africa - particularly Kenya and Botswana - and examined especially the conflict between customary and statutory laws, and the entitlements women enjoy under each. Somewhere between trying to understand Chinese foreign policy, parsing out the do's and don'ts of foreign aid, and attempting to decipher a U.S. policy towards Africa (a recent undertaking, to be sure), however, I seem to have placed the issue on the back burner.

A recent NYTimes article by Kristof and WuDunn has seemingly lead me back to the cause. As the piece aptly notes, focusing on women and girls may well be the most effective way of combating global poverty and extremism. For instance:

A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.

This, as opposed to circumstances under which men control the assets. It has been found that men often engage in unwise spending, with the poorest families in the world spending approximately 20% of their incomes on a combination of alcohol, prostitution, candy (candy!!), sugary drinks and lavish feasts - and only 2% on the education of their children. For this reason among others, we are seeing a growing number of microfinance projects directed specifically at women. Additionally:

It has long been known that a risk factor for turbulence and violence is the share of a country’s population made up of young people. Now it is emerging that male domination of society is also a risk factor; the reasons aren’t fully understood, but it may be that when women are marginalized the nation takes on the testosterone-laden culture of a military camp or a high-school boys’ locker room.

Indeed, some scholars believe that the reason Muslim countries have been disproportionately affected by terrorism has little to do with Islamic teachings about infidels or violence, and more to do with low levels of female education and participation in the labor force. I haven't yet had the chance to gather my thoughts on the matter, but a cursory glance at global terrorist hubs and their corresponding women's rights (to the extent that we can even call them that), seemingly lends much credence to the claim.

Kristof and WuDunn ultimately argue that women's rights must be brought to the forefront of the international development agenda, as it is women who perhaps represent our best hope in the fight against global poverty. Fight on, sister, fight on.

[Image: BBC]

Show us the money (for health) !!

Namibia-based AIDS activist group, AIDS & Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, has compiled a creative video campaign to bring attention to the seemingly forgotten 2001 pledge made by African leaders to devote 15% of their national budgets to healthcare. Eight years later, nearly all countries have failed to meet this target.

The ARASA video, "Lords of the Bling (Vol. 1)" (funny because it's true, I suppose!) depicts the amount of treatment that could be paid for with the amount of money spent on extravagant purchases and events by the continent's political leaders. The figures are absolutely startling:

[HT: Shashank Bengali]

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

Business Action for Africa recently released a new report on what businesses can do to sustain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) in Africa. The report brings together insights from various business leaders and NGOs, as well as from the likes of Paul Collier, Kofi Annan and Lord Malloch-Brown, among others. Many of the contributions seemingly follow the standard protocol of touting transparency, governance, business environment reforms, effective public-private partnerships, investments in the private sector, and other well-known policy prescriptions. As Richard Laing, Chief Executive of CDC aptly notes:

Much has already been said about the impact of the global downturn on Africa, but a great deal of the talk about solutions has been empty rhetoric full of generalisms that regard Africa as one homogenous place. Any simple prognosis for the continent’s economic future ignores the fact that there are 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa with differing economies and at varying stages of development. It is action, not talk, that is required.

That said, there is one particularly worthwhile analysis, written by Dr. Peter Eigen, Chairman of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Eigen writes:

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When it comes to knowing how the global financial crisis will affect Africa we are all living in the land of the blind. Usually we can rely on the IMF to be the one-eyed man, but the IMF’s growth predictions for 2009 give such a mixture of signals that it is impossible to form a clear overall picture. We do know, however, that 2009 will see a series of difficult social and political changes in Africa: elections, strikes, civil unrest, rising fuel and food prices, and a more challenging environment for exports. Because of Africa’s unique finance and liquidity circumstances, and due to volatile exchange rates and commodities prices, it is safe to assume that the financial crisis will be felt differently in Africa than elsewhere.

Eigen's acknowledgment of the uncertain is quite refreshing; for as much as we think we may know about Africa's future trajectory and development needs, there is indeed that much more than we don't. Eigen is also particularly prudent in his discussions of EITI - the very organization of which he is Chairman: "The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has long been held up as a shining example of how multi-stakeholder initiatives can address these kinds of challenges. But much of this praise has been premature. The initiative is still young." Such rhetoric comes in stark contrast to others in the development field who proclaim with overwhelming conclusiveness the merits of their formulaic approaches to poverty alleviation/aid/whatever, embryonic though these approaches may still be. Every now and again it's nice to be reminded that there are people in the field who are guided not by grandiose visions but by practical, thought-out solutions to given problems. Thank you, Mr. Eigen

In any event, do read the report; it will surely be worth your while.

Development in dangerous places (aka a symposium on Paul Collier and his policies)

In the July/August issue of Boston Review one can find Paul Collier's essay on development in dangerous places (which appears to be a fantastic cut-and-paste exercise from both The Bottom Billion and Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places), along with a host of commentary from the likes of William Easterly, Nancy Birdsall and Larry Diamond, among others.

Easterly for one is not particularly pleased, neither with Collier's policy prescriptions nor the means by which he arrives at them:

I have been troubled by Paul Collier’s research and policy advocacy for some time. In this essay he goes even further in directions I argued were dangerous in his previous work. Collier wants to de facto recolonize the “bottom billion,” and he justifies his position with research that is based on one logical fallacy, one mistaken assumption, and a multitude of fatally flawed statistical exercises.

[...] Collier’s convoluted stories are made up after the fact to fit whatever random collection of data points he is working with at the moment. So the specious rationalizations keep changing—too bad for those who took the precise recommendations in The Bottom Billion as gospel.

Larry Diamond adopts a more cautionary tone, stressing the salience of governance as a key to development:

None of these endemically poor countries can climb out of misery without better governance. Collier appreciates this, but he does not fully grasp the vital distinction between Asia’s developmental dictatorships and Africa’s dictatorial disasters. The classic authoritarian Asian tigers—Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia—all had near-death experiences with communism that led them to realize it was time to “develop or die. [...] Whatever their other faults, all of these countries’ ruling elites (and later the regimes in China and Vietnam) came to identify their own political interests with generating the public goods necessary for transformative development.

I strongly endorse Collier’s appeal for a much more serious and sustained international commitment to reinforce or guarantee security and peace in the world’s most fragile and miserable states. [...] However, I cannot go along with Collier’s suggestion that we implicitly threaten to tolerate a military coup against a civilian leader who has stolen an election. How would that have made Kenya or Nigeria better off? [...] The answer to any unconstitutional seizure of power—whether by a civilian in a rigged election or a soldier in a coup—is cutting off international aid; targeted sanctions against the overseas personal assets and travel options of the power-usurper, his family, and supporters; and a credible threat of indictment and prosecution by the International Criminal Court for predatory corruption, which should be made a crime against humanity—for that is surely what it is.

Much more commentary, criticism and insights may be found at the Boston Review link.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]

PS. Don't call Collier's policies colonialist...

Noteworthy…. the aid edition

Via Mo'Modernity Mo'problems the newest 'twinning' aid initiative: toilet aid

Broadband has arrived in East Africa. The 2,790 mile East Africa Marine System underwater cable connected Mombassa with Fujairah in the UAE on 12 June and is expected to become fully operational within three months. A great map of the cable (as well as others) can be found here

Education and ... football for all?

Blood and Milk's Alanna has a great post on what aid workers can learn from missionaries (note: this has nothing to do with converting people!)

mHealth data from the Humanitarian Technology Challenge

Via UN Dispatch, Matthew Cordell writes:

Ken Banks, the brilliant creator of FrontlineSMS is now delivering a Lawrence-Lessig-style presentation at the Humanitarian Tech Challenge.  It's all interesting and worth comment, but right now he's talking about a friend of his who took "a laptop and 100 used cell phones" to St. Gabriel's Hospital in Malawi.

That small amount of equipment served 250,000 people, saved $3500 in fuel costs and saved 1,000 hours in travel time. Incredible.

The Humanitarian Technology Challenge is a partnership between the IEEE and the UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, and seeks to define and develop sustainable solutions to humanitarian challenges in the developing world. These solutions should be able to be implemented locally and "within the environment, cultural, structural, political, and socio-economic conditions where they will be developed."

Sachs and Easterly on African aid (what else?)

In a recent VoxEU column, Jeffrey Sachs writes:

Africa's differences with other regions lie not in aid, but in circumstances and history. Unlike South Asia, for example, Africa has not yet had a Green Revolution of higher food yields, the formative event of India's economic takeoff from the late 1960s. India is a civilisation of great river systems and large-scale irrigation, thanks to the Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt and the annual monsoon rains. Africa is a continent of rain-fed (non-irrigation) agriculture. The original Green Revolution, in which India's food output per land area rose markedly, came in the irrigated systems of Asia, not the rain-fed systems of Africa.

US aid heavily subsidised India's Green Revolution while World Bank opposition to aid for African agriculture from the 1980s until recently played an opposite and adverse role, holding back a similar breakthrough for Africa. It was the absence of aid for African agriculture rather than its presence that cost Africa mightily. And one can go on. Africa's tropical disease burden, heavy concentration of landlocked countries, decline of aid for infrastructure during the 1980s and 1990s, and misguided attempts by Africa's creditors to collect debt servicing under "structural adjustment programs" during the 1980s and 1990s all played their part.

To which Bill Easterly, in a column published the following day, responds:

Isn’t rapidly growing India also in the tropics? Yes, but they have snowmelt-fed irrigation instead of rain-fed agriculture. Isn’t rich Singapore also in the tropics? Yes, but they are coastal instead of landlocked. Don’t Latin America and Asia also have tropical diseases like malaria, just like Africa? Yes, but they have a better kind of mosquito. So a region will be poor if they are tropical, if rainfed, iflandlocked, and if they have the wrong mosquitoes – which, yes, fits many African countries. The reason for Occam’s Razor is that with enough Ifs, Buts, and Excepts you can fit any theory to any set of facts. [...]

The other problem with Sachs’ geography story is that it has already been refuted by other economists. The consensus among several prominent academic papers is that destructive governments rather than destructive geography explain the poverty of nations. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2006), Easterly and Levine (2003), and Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi (2004) all tested the geography story against the institutions story and came down on the side of institutions.

Geography may have had some influence on history, but through institutions – good government spread along lines of migration and communication through most temperate regions more easily than it did to tropical regions. The latter were also victims of colonialism (and in Africa’s case, the slave trade as well, which goes some way to explain bad government in Africa today).

So Robert Mugabe was a lot worse for Zimbabwe than the Anopheles mosquito. Corruption is more fatal for oil-rich Nigeria and Angola than latitude. Health is determined more by public actions against disease than by species of parasite. Other factors that Sachs mentions, such as illiteracy and poor infrastructure, are also symptoms of bad government services.

Further great insights into the ongoing Sachs-Easterly debate can be found here (PSD blog),  here (HuffPo), and here (Texas in Africa). You can link to Easterly's blog here and follow Sachs here.

The easiest, most obvious way to help poor people

Give them money.

No, seriously, give them money. 

Aid Watch's Laura Freschi has a brilliant post on the innovative (though arguably really, truly obvious) aid approach taken by Oxfam GB and Concern WorldWide after the horrible flash floods that swept through the Western Province of Zambia in 2007. People lost their homes, livestock, and crops - in short, their livelihoods. Yet where USAID sent $280,000 worth of seeds and fertilizer, training for farmers, and emergency supplies, Oxfam and Concern Worldwide gave every affected family from $20 to $50 monthly, with absolutely no conditions:

An evaluation found that common fears about cash transfers—that the cash infusion will cause inflation in the market, that the money will be squandered, or that men will take control of the money—were unrealized.

What did people buy with the money? The list includes maize, beans, salt, cooking oil, meat, vegetables, clothes and blankets, paraffin, transport, soap and body lotion, and lots of other mundane household items. They also loaned it to friends, used it to pay back debts, purchased health care, education and transport, and rebuilt their homes. Only a very small fraction of the money (less than .5%) was spent on “unproductive” items, like liquor for the men.

Huh, go figure: poor people are capable of determining the depth and breadth of their particular needs! Shock horror! Who would have thought? And why didn't anyone discover this sooner?! *sigh* 

Of course such cash transfers remain laden with concerns as those noted above and others, among them targeting the right people and equipping individuals with the knowledge to truly capitalize on the funds given to them. Regardless, such cash transfer programs appear to be the logical way to help people who have lost their livelihoods regain control once again. As Freschi writes:

With the cash transfers, the people can decide for themselves how to meet their most urgent needs. This gives people who have lost their livelihoods, belongings or loved ones a new feeling of control over their lives, builds money-management skills, and restores to them their power to make economic decisions. If you were in their shoes, which would you prefer?

You go, girl.

A new UN publication - Governing Women: Women's Political Effectiveness in Contexts of Democratization and Governance Reform - is out and looks quite interesting. Using case studies from around the world (actually, all the case studies are taken from the global South), the essays in the report consider the conditions for effective connections between women in civil society and women in politics for the evolution of political party platforms responsive to women's interests, for local government arrangements that enable women to engage effectively, and for accountability mechanisms that answer to women. 

An interesting read for those interested in good governance and women's rights. 

Declining world freedom

This year's Freedom House annual Freedom of the World Report, released on 12 January, offers a somber accounting of a general worldwide decline in freedom of association and expression, and decreased respect for the rule of law. The decline is most pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union. 

The report offers telling regional breakdowns of 'free,' 'partly free' and 'not free' countries. In the Americas, for instance, there are 25 free countries, 9 partly free, and 1 not free country. In Central and Eastern Europe there are 13 free countries, 8 partly free and 7 not free countries. In the Middle East and North Africa there is 1 (!) free country, 6 partly free countries and 11 not free countries. In sub-Saharan Africa there are 10 free countries, 23 partly free and 15 not free countries, respectively. 

Not surprisingly, North Korea was cited as the least free country on earth, while Finland topped the list as the most free and respectful of individual rights. 

A billion hungry people

Before the global economic meltdown, soaring food prices and rising hunger dominated development debates. The economic crisis rages on, but so does the food crisis. Although food prices fell in the final months of 2008, they remain well above the long-term trend and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future:

What does this mean in practice? A near 1 billion people - 1 in 6 of the world's population - goes hungry.

An Oxfam paper released today -  "A Billion Hungry People" - considers some of the ways in which governments and aid agencies can address this growing problem. Read the paper for more detailed recommendations, but in a nutshell: improving hunger early warning systems; more and better development assistance; food reserves; an enabling environment for private businesses and citizens (e.g. access to credit, technical assistance); social protection programs; and counterproductive rich country programs such as biofuel subsidies.

Advice to Obama's Africa team

In the GlobalPost (a fantastic global news site), Todd Moss writes:

 The world has colossal expectations for incoming President Barack Obama and for changes in U.S. foreign policy.  However, the new administration’s approach to Africa will almost certainly be marked more by continuity than change.  And that’s good news for Africa — and America. 
 
Policy continuity is likely because the fundamental interests of the United States in Africa remain the same, regardless of the party in power.  American interests are to support African initiatives to end conflict and fight terrorism, to address the continent’s enormous health challenges and to expand democracy and economic opportunity.  These interests are broad and, if anything, growing in importance to American security and prosperity. 
 
But the principal reason not to expect radical new directions from the Obama team is that President George Bush is leaving behind a strong Africa legacy.  To the surprise of many, Bush elevated Africa within the U.S. foreign policy arena.  Rather than shy away from the continent’s problems, he launched several major new initiatives that recognized Africa’s significance to America.  The aid budget to Africa more than tripled on his watch and the pipeline has been sufficiently filled to put the U.S. well on its way to meet President Bush’s pledge to double aid to Africa again by 2010. 
 
More significant than the money, however, have been new innovations.  The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) are only the most prominent of a multitude of new-style foreign aid programs that also include new ways to combat malaria, promote education and tackle neglected tropical diseases. 
 
Other American investments in Africa include training 40,000 peacekeepers, providing 100% debt relief for the poorest countries and helping to promote economic growth by catalyzing more than a dozen new Africa-focused private equity funds. 
 
In an era where every U.S. government building is a potential terrorist target (and the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania showed that Africa is a key battleground ), the United States opted not to withdraw but rather to build bigger and stronger embassies across Africa—a visible signal of America’s long-term commitment. 
 
In fact, the past eight years have been game-changing for US-Africa relations. A decade ago, Washington was still arguing about whether foreign aid was a waste or not and whether the U.S. had any real interests in Africa.  Today, the discussion is about how to innovate, build partnerships, and fix our aid system. It is thus no coincidence that the United States continues to be more popular in Africa than anywhere else.
 
All this gives President Obama a strong foundation for his Africa policy.  Yet the challenges going forward are nonetheless enormous [...]

See here for the rest of the story, including a list of five things the Obama administration will have to do vis-a-vis Africa.

New challenges in the world food crisis

Escalating hunger in African cities is forcing aid agencies accustomed to tackling food shortages in rural areas to scramble for strategies to address the more complex hunger problems in sprawling slums.

The United Nations World Food Program, the world's largest food-aid group, has plenty of experience trucking food into rural Africa, responding to shortages sparked by drought, famine and war. But in urban areas -- where, despite widespread poverty, hunger wasn't a significant issue until recently -- the hurdles are different.

In the vast and crowded slums, with many unnamed streets and dwellings without running water or electricity, it is difficult to identify who's most in need of help. Simply handing out food can disrupt cities' informal markets, cutting into the livelihoods of those who earn a few dollars each day selling peanuts or fresh fish, or of small farmers who haul their produce to the city.

The WFP, which usually takes the lead on aid in coordination with smaller organizations, began considering new tactics last year when it saw an urban hunger crisis developing in Africa.

For the full story, see the WSJ

Alignment, that really isn’t

"Harmonization" and "alignment" have been key catch-phrases in the international aid community for quite some time, gaining particular salience in 2005 with the signing of the Paris Declaration. The main idea is that multilateral and bilateral donors will somehow align their operational policies, procedures and practices with existing poverty reduction strategies (or other development frameworks) in recipient countries, thereby avoiding unnecessary overlaps and rendering aid overall more effective. This push for harmonization is especially pronounced with respect to the MDGs.

Yet in the run-up to the 2008 Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness it seems that little progress has been made towards such alignment, at least among the major multilateral aid organizations. In today's Vox column OECD's Helmut Reisen presents the following table:

Table 1 Unclear institutional assignment to the MDGs

Selected multilaterals working on the Millennium Development Goals
MDG / Thematic area	Main multilaterals	Other multilaterals with a role
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger	UNDP, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, IFAD, EC, FAO, WFP	CGIAR, IADB
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education	World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO	UNFPA, UNRWA
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women	UNDP, World Bank, UNIFEM, UNICEF	UNFPA
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality	WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF	World Bank, WFP, UNRWA
MDG 5: Improve maternal health	WHO, UNFPA	World Bank, WFP
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases	UNAIDS, World Bank, WHO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF	UNIFEM
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability	UN Habitat, World Bank, AsDB, UNDP	CGIAR, UNIDO
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development	World Bank, EU, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, UNCTAD	UNDP
Human rights	OHCHR	UNIFEM
Conflicts and humanitarian emergencies	UNCHR, OCHA, ECHO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO	UNDP

Source: OECD Development Centre, "Financing Development: Whose Ownership?", Paris, 2008, Chapter 2.

As Jonathan Dingel writes: "When everyone is responsible, no one is."