Not for the first time, and why we might foul it up again

Owen Barder is keeping a nice list of major public figures’ claims that “For the first time ever, we have a real opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation.” in the words of World Bank president, Jim Kim, the latest to so pronounce. The list goes right back to Woodrow Wilson addressing the League of Nations in 1919. Obviously previous generations have not lived up to such lofty aspirations. Why not? And why should we be any different? I present some wild speculation …

Back in 1919, perhaps for the first time, the western powers could say they truly knew most of the world. The major features had been well mapped, and many distant peoples had been ‘civilized’ (aka colonised by racist imperialists). The sun never set on the British Empire and the industrial revolution had made some Americans fabulously wealthy. There were a lot of poor people in the world, but not so many, and Westerners had a surfeit of confidence as to their capacity to achieve great things. Moreover, in a world before the widespread existence of welfare states, it is possible they were not aiming that high.

What happened? Two major changes. Developing countries won their independence from the colonial yoke. This hugely increased their welfare in one important dimension (political freedom), but possibly impeded progress on technocratic goals such as raising average incomes due, in part, to the need to first concentrate on building the capacity of those new states. One signal success, nonetheless, does stand out: the drastic decline in infant and maternal mortality rates. So while economic development was stalling in many countries, populations were exploding. Suddenly it became a lot harder to eliminate poverty.

Fast forward to 2013 and we have passed an important inflexion point: now the number of desperately poor people in the world is declining in absolute terms, and not just in China. The zero goals some people are suggesting should follow the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015 appear tantalisingly in reach.

So why might we fail again? What new issue might once again expose our hubris? I give you two words: climate change.

South-south cooperation and the embarrassment factor

This just occurred to me. South-south cooperation can be more politically palatable to developing countries than the patronising tone that can come with technical advice from traditional aid givers. That’s old news. But what about further down the food chain? A big problem around here is that lots of civil servants cannot be a***ed to do their jobs properly, and require their palms to be greased before they will consider rousing themselves from today’s newspaper. Will they respond any better to technical advisers from slightly richer countries who are nonetheless seem in some ways as ‘one of us’? In short can officials be embarrassed into action by an apparent friend who is aghast at their lack of enterprise? Or will the inevitable divide between expatriate technical adviser and local staff prove more powerful?

Admitting it’s not good enough

The call to be open about failure in development projects has much to be said about it, as I have blogged before. But between success and failure there is a middle ground in which many conservation and development projects cluster. Sometimes acceptance of this result is appropriate; it may not be appropriate to expect rich country levels of achievement in some of the poorest countries. And such compromise is de rigeur in any policy processes, whatever a country’s level of economic development.

But when it comes to project implementation I think that too often we are too ready to accept this half-baked mediocrity, write up our ‘success’ reports and move on. Unfortunately short term papering over of the cracks can lead to long term failure, although by that point usually the main protagonists have long since moved on. Many times this takes the form of an initially successful project that has been poorly scaled up into a programme that grinds on for years based on its initial fanfare, before eventually donors get tired off the lack of progress and pull the plug, often one at a time so it limps on for quite a while with ever-diminishing financial support. My guess is that this kind of failure rarely even gets noticed as anything other than a sense of regret amongst those who were involved that so much early promise should amount to so little in the end.

But sometimes the failure can be more dramatic, such as the drastic short-comings both morally and militarily that have been brutally exposed in the Malian army over the last 12 months, despite years of capacity building from the US previously. Todd Moss laments the tendency to see those policies and results through rose-tinted glasses. I’m no military man, but allow me to guess a little at what might have happened: the junior officers on the ground would have reported the good start they made whilst making their reservations clear that there was a long way to go. These reservations were subsequently air-brushed out by senior officials and politicians keen to declare success and move on. Doh!

The even bigger difficulty occurs when that conversation needs to take place across the cultural boundary. How do you tell the local partner that while their efforts are nice and appreciated they do not, ultimately, deliver on the requirements? That technically their output is lacking a necessary level of sophistication? Arrogance does not become one, and us oh-so-enlightened Westerners are guilty of that far too often. Smooth diplomacy, however, can only get you so far: either you need to accept the product delivered with all its flaws, or you need to risk giving offence in pushing for improvements, whoever is tasked with delivering them.

At this point budget strictures can come into play. Few project designs incorporate budget for doing anything twice (although a contingencies budget can help). So as well as having the courage to reveal the hard truths to local partners one faces the challenge of finding the budget and/or fessing up to the donor how you stumbled. Little wonder then that many project managers opt for the easy way out. A little less neo-colonialism, may come at the cost of a lot less development. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess which outcome the target beneficiaries would prefer.

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Before I get deluged in a pile of hate mail, I should point out the big but in this. There is obviously a huge slippery slope starting with robust and honest assessment of technical quality of local partner outputs and descending to rampant neo-colonialism, and at the bottom of which one is likely to find the target beneficiaries having very different views. Alternatively you can just call the bottom of the slope charter cities, on which it seems the jury is still out, and will almost certainly stay out, until one is actually attempted.

I should also like to add that such eventualities as I describe above are not the rule. Many times I have seen excellent outputs produced by local partners. But neither, unfortunately, it is as rare an exception round here as one would like, especially when dealing with quasi-governmental institutions who do not have a meritocratic culture.

Not smart politics

A lot of times development and conservation struggle to get much political and media traction, and are thus starved of the oxygen of publicity. At other times, though, I wonder whether certain issues wouldn’t be best off in the shadows. This is not a call to depoliticize development into a purely technocratic discipline, for many of the most critical issues in aid are deeply political, and little progress can be achieved without political engagement.

But when big international politicians wade into issues quiet, nuanced discussions can all too easily get out shouted by megaphone pronouncements. A recent historical example concerns Zimbabwe; for every time the likes of Bush, Blair or Brown, likely as not driven as much by domestic political calculations, opened their mouths on economic and political mess that ZANU-PF had created, it made it all the easier for Mugabe et al to frame their arguments in the context of oppressed masses throwing off the colonial yoke. Many Zimbabweans, even if they agreed with what was being said, had no wish to hear such tickings-off from the ex-colonial master and their allies.

I fear the same thing might happen now with Gordon Brown’s call to action on the plight of women in Pakistan. It’s hard to disagree with Brown’s aims; the fate of Malala Yousafzai was a dramatic illustration of the challenges faced by women and girls in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I cannot see how improving their situation would not make life a whole lot better there, ultimately including for men and boys too, such is the multiplier effect in development of investing in education for girls. But I am far from convinced that there is a practical straight line from Gordon Brown’s intervention to the outcomes he seeks.

Security clearly continues to be a major concern in that part of the world. From what I understand, improved development outcomes could certainly help in the battle with the Taliban and other jihadists for local hearts and minds. But the pay off from investing in girls’ education will accrue over time, while security concerns are immediate. More to the point, girls’ education is a central battleground in the ‘clash of civilizations’ there. So it seems to me more than possible that promoting girls’ education could actually worsen security concerns, potentially making life overall worse for women and girls rather than better. At the end of the day it is the job of politicians to weigh up such trade-offs, and I know too little about the local situation there to do anything other than ask these questions. But did Mr Brown, his team, and allies such as Avaaz, ask themselves such questions before they picked up the megaphone?

The return of guilt money

There is a view of  international development aid that holds it is (at least partly) payments of guilt money by countries who grew rich subjugating and then exploiting their less technologically advanced brethren who now bear the moniker ‘developing countries’. I do not particularly ascribe to that point of view for a number of reasons:

• The principle behind the legal statute of limitations. Much of Europe was at one time part of the Roman empire, should Britain and others be seeking reparations from Italy? (Just think of the compound interest that might be due on that!) The latter day empires were only the last in a series which all followed the same overtly nationalistic / racist approach to other societies.
• The European colonial empires were creatures of their time. The British empire appears to have been no worse than its competitors, and may, from time to time, even have operated more benignly towards it foreign subjects than other empires.
• It does not appear necessary to once have had an empire in order to now be rich, see for example Sweden. Ergo it does not follow that  Britain’s current wealth is necessarily a direct product of empire, which in fact mostly spent itself defeating Nazism. (Indeed, come 1945 Britain was substantially indebted to one particular ex-colony who, 200 years earlier, had refused to pay for another war Britain had fought on their behalf.)
• My family’s ancestry is decidedly humble; we ourselves certainly did not get rich subjugating foreign lands. Even the amazing education I received was substantially funded by endowments originating somewhat further back in history than the British empire.

So whilst I am sure it would be nonsensical to suggest that the current division of wealth around the world was not at least partly shaped by the experiences of empire, I surmise that much of that wealth was subsequently derived from how individual people and societies took advantage of simple and peaceful business opportunities that were presented to them rather than as a direct result of plunder.

All of which is a rather long preamble to arrive at the observation that this case of affairs may not apply for much longer. Already, in international climate change negotiations, it has been suggested (and accepted in principle by many) that developed nations should pay developing nations for the costs of adapting to global change almost wholly caused by rich countries (and now being exacerbated by the newly rich). This strikes me as only just the beginning.

The film The Age of Stupid was so titled because we are the first civilization in history to be able to see environmental catastrophe coming, and yet are still doing virtually nothing about it. I am somewhat more optimistic that we will come to our senses before, as the film implies, we wipe ourselves out with our own stupidity. But many climate scientists now gloomily predict that significant global climate change is inevitable; coral reefs and polar bears will be consigned to history, and many of the poorest countries in the world, e.g. low-lying island states, are expected to suffer the most.

Who then will be to blame? It is not too great a stretch of the imagination to envision astronomical claims for compensation being laid at the door of polluting businesses. Whether American or other courts would force them to pay up is quite another issue. But the real climate-gate, when it hits, won’t be just about a few emails hacked from a university computer system, and the claimants will have real moral force on their side.

What happened to the power in empowerment?

I’ve just been listening to the latest but one Development Drums podcast, in which Andrea Cornwall and Prue Clarke discuss with Owen Barder where now for the gender movement in development. At one point Andrea Cornwall queries what happened to the power empowerment, accurately critiquing much of what goes by the name of empowerment in development as being almost entirely emasculated of any real shifts of actual power.

Professor Cornwall suggests that the bureaucratic nature of Big Aid is the culprit, that bureaucracies have trouble grappling with such issues. It is certainly in the nature of big bureaucracies to hoard power, but I would be inclined to point the finger elsewhere. Towards the end of the podcast, the discussion veers closer to my diagnosis without ever quite coming out and saying it. As for me, j’accuse the locus of international aid that puts it firmly within the diplomatic sphere.

Back when aid began as a quasi expiation of post-colonial guilt, I imagine it made sense to empower the newly independent governing states just launched. Then in the 1970s and 80s when aid focused a lot on capital inputs, new roads, tractors and power stations to go with those shiny new industrial policies the state to state model would have still been the most appropriate. But in the 21st century, when much western aid focuses instead on softer concerns like governance and participation, and service delivery in sectors such as health and education which aim to boost human capacity, such a model seems utterly out-dated.

Alas, most bilateral aid agencies are either part of the donor country’s foreign ministry or clearly subsidiary to said ministry, whilst the multi-lateral agencies are all ultimately controlled by diplomats. Indeed, donor country governments often justify aid budgets to their electorates in terms of self-interest and improving relations with international partners, i.e. that some quid pro quo may at some point be asked for and given. The US appears only to be one of the most brazen in its demand that every donation be prominently stamped as a gift from the American people, with humanitarian philanthropy apparently a poor second in political motivations for international giving amongst most donor governments. When the act of giving – those high profile pledges of funds – gains far more attention than any actual outcomes of giving, is it any wonder that aid agencies struggle to deliver meaningful development?

Coming back to the challenge of empowerment, the problem, as I see it, is that as soon as you define aid as a government to government transfer, your capacity to achieve any significant transfers of power are almost negligible. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas, and the prestige of a presidential jet, alas, nearly always appears to be higher priority than the provision of clean drinking water to a developing country’s people.

I suppose there is an argument which says that all the official government aid is a bribe to provide cover to the funding given directly to civil society groups which otherwise are liable to get painted as nefarious agents of foreign powers or other euphemisms of the dictatorati. Working as I do in community conservation, I try to remember – as I lament all the money wasted through largely ineffectual official bilateral and multilateral projects in this sector – that without such colossal greasing of the wheels it is extremely unlikely our small NGO would have ever even got off the ground. But, if that is the case, it would be nice to see rather more honesty about the processes and what they are expected to achieve. Channel money for empowerment and governance initiatives primarily through NGOs and other civil society groups, accept that official state aid will be primarily be spent on salaries and physical assets, and seek to work with that flow rather than against it. Whatever you do, please do not ever pretend that sending some senior officials on the next foreign junket (aka international workshop on governance best practice) is even remotely empowering for anyone who actually needs empowering.

You never know, we might just succeed in empowering the empowerment movement …

Homosexuality and development aid

A cynic might suggest that this threat by David Cameron is a ploy to wriggle out of the 0.7% GDP promise on the UK’s aid budget. (See here and here for my thoughts on this commitment.)

However, I was intrigued by this quote from Uganda Radio Network journalist, Charles Odongpho:

“I welcome any move to pressure our government to be respectful of democratic values and human rights but speaking as a Ugandan I think we have much more important issues to deal with than the rights of homosexuals.”

One could equally retort that given all the challenges facing developing countries such as Uganda, legislating to ban relations between members of the same sex should be the least of their worries.

Having foisted homophobia on Africa 150 years ago through the work of our missionaries it is perhaps appropriate that Britain plays an active role in trying to roll it back. As Odongpho goes on to say:

“This is your money and you know where you want to put it”

On the other hand, attitudes to homosexuality, highlight the clash of cultures challenge that we face in trying to actively develop poorer countries. Homophobia does genuinely appear to be an attitude commanding substantial popular support in many developing countries. Unlike the gender issue there is not even much of an economic argument to be had in favour of gay rights.*

Nonetheless, locking people up for engaging in consensual sex with other adults offends many Britons, and it is indeed our government’s money to dispense with as it sees fit. Like the fox-hunting debate of a few years ago in the UK, I think there might be more important issues on which to engage, but by my liberal values, both issues are simple moral questions, and on both counts the reactionaries are just wrong. If I were the UK prime minister I do not think I would have picked this fight, but now that Cameron has picked it, I find myself unable to disagree with him.

UPDATE: See the strong response from local activists here and then my refined thoughts here.

* On the basis that as a hidden characteristic sexual orientation does not greatly determine career prospects.

Now the boot’s on the other foot

Rioting Brits have arguably lit bigger flames in the blogo- and twitter-spheres than they ever did in the real world. Certainly other development bloggers have seen fit to comment and draw parallels so I shall make no further apology for contributing my own tuppence worth. Some random reflections below:

Was David Cameron channelling Bashar al-Assad?

The various descriptions by British politicians of all stripes of these riots as nothing more than wanton criminality sounded eerily like any number of dictators from the Middle East and Africa. Ominous threats to crack down on the use of social media sounded deeply hypocritical from a government that has only recently supported their use to energise protests across the Arab Spring.

Two key differences: Britons enjoy the right of peaceful protest which too many oppressed countries honour only in the breach, and the rioters had no discernable political platform, being apparently more interested in looting expensively branded footwear and mugging a blameless Malaysian student than advancing any political message.

Beware the mob

Just because the rioters had no explicit political aim to promote does not mean there is no political problem. As the Economist points out, these riots are a manifestation of deep structural problems within British society, and an underclass with little stake in the modern social order.

The Roman governing classes feared the mob like no other political force. It remains a latent threat in all modern societies. We can be thankful that good policing is generally able to keep a lid on things, but when cracks suddenly and unexpectedly widen, whatever the trigger, the mob may spill forth.

Rarefied discussions of opportunity costs and other economic theory may provide us an intellectual handle with which to attempt to understand the social dynamics of rioting, but would be unrecognisable by the rioters themselves, presumably earning the same scorn that they have shown for many other social norms that we take for granted.

Social and material inequality lay at the root of any riot, whether political or purely criminal. It is a timely reminder that whatever the laws might say about inviolability of property rights and the challenges of designing taxation regimes to attract increasingly footloose multinational corporations, that all societies must address fundamental issues of equity and opportunity else, eventually, the mob will over take us.

Poverty and inequality tend to be much more readily apparent in developing countries, where the veneer of upper and middle classes is much thinner. I think many developing country leaders are acutely aware of this; populist politicians and policy-making are more prevalent here for a reason!

Not so saintly now, eh?

Talking to a friend here I was shocked at quite how shocked they were at the riots. Not that I wasn’t shocked myself, but my friend was shocked that even any such underclass existed in Britain. She alleged that whilst American popular culture (mainly TV and cinema) is often prepared to show the warts and all side of American life, British cultural exports tend to be rather more sanitised. The evidence advanced for this boiled down to the less than convincing Law and Order TV series versus the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances. I think this apparent contrast has rather more to do with consumption choices (both by the viewer and TV channels’ purchasing policies) than any conscious effort to portray Britain as a quaint land of tea and scones with the vicar.

Nonetheless, I was disturbed at the implications of this view of Britain. I expect some schadenfreude from developing country officials used to being lectured at by DFID et al, but that it should extend more widely was particularly disappointing. Perhaps I just shouldn’t be quite so naïve …

Someone still wants our politicians, though

Depressing in a similar but opposite way was this bit of Tanzanian graffiti seen by Swahili Street:

Better the colonial, than the native born kleptocrat.

This is no time to go getting misty eyed about the colonial experience, which was constructed atop a fundamentally racist world view, and lumbered us Brits with the challenge of having to face down riots both at home and abroad. Nonetheless it is an instructive reminder to the new governing classes. If your father was dirt poor, and you are still dirt poor, and when the establishment permits someone to grab your land from under your nose, does the skin colour of your rulers matter?

Serengeti dodges the bullet

Good news over the weekend. The trunk road that the Tanzanian government proposed to push through the northern part of the world famous Serengeti National Park will not now go ahead as originally planned.

The road that wasn’t and the wildebeest migration (map by FZS).

I had refrained from commenting on this whilst it was a live issue for two reasons: (a) because I didn’t understand the details and heard enough contrasting tales about it that I felt it would be inappropriate to comment, and (b) lest I inadvertently make things worse. Alas, some wildlife ecologists did not feel able to bite their tongue:

"[President] Kikwete’s spiteful attitude towards the World Heritage site and his strange determination to drive a road through Serengeti make him look increasingly old-fashioned and vindictive." (Prof Andrew Dobson, quoted here)

Now I personally much like the practice in science to call a spade a spade, but I fail to detect what is scientific about describing the President of a country you want to change direction as spiteful, old-fashioned and vindictive. Putting my best scientific hat on, I might describe that as stupid. From what I understand, the underlying motivations for the proposed road were all political, involving different factions within Tanzania’s ruling party, so a political savvy response was required, not something that smacked of neo-colonialism in an ex-colony where sensitivities, are, not surprisingly, sensitive!

What behind-the-scenes lobbying went on, I do not know, but it seems to have been rather more effective than Dobson’s bone-headed intervention. Unfortunately, that is not the end of it. I hear from reliable sources that the whole episode has left a rather sour taste in the mouth of President Kikwete. (Who’d have guessed it?) A president who was reportedly once an enthusiastic supporter of conservation is now far from well-disposed to the sector. One immediate consequence: Kikwete demanded the last minute withdrawal of an application for World Heritage Site for the forests in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains (a global biodiversity hotspot), an application that had been 14 years in the making (see here).

If it really was a case of exchanging a paper park designation for an actual road then it would seem to be an all round good deal, but I’m not aware of anyone who has suggested this was a ‘trade’, and a more carefully designed campaign might have headed off the road without losing the WHS application.

Fi-Fa-Fo-Fum I smell the blood of an Englishman

All’s fair in love and war, but rarely on a football pitch (from what the managers say), and definitely not when it comes to the power politics of the international game. We English may have invented the game (or at least codified it) and have the most popular league in the world, but we are apparently isolated within FIFA.

As I have followed the news of the various recent shenanigans at FIFA, I have been struck by the many uncomfortable parallels with the diplomatic games that go on in the development arena. The English FA may have stood by strong principles, but that counts for little in this game, and they displayed all the diplomatic finesse of a development newbie.

I feel for them, but any development veteran would have told you that fine principles only count with the great unwashed masses. FA’s audience at FIFA were not ordinary football fans – who almost certainly would not have voted for a World Cup in Qatar! – but fellow power brokers, for whom principles are like choosing which tie to wear in the morning; you pick the one that best suits your needs today. Indeed let’s just look at the roll call of the countries that lined up to denounce the FA’s call for the delay to elections: DRC, Haiti, Benin, Fiji and Cyprus, exemplars, one and all, of the highest possible standards of probity, I’m sure. More to the point, they and many others all know which side their bread is buttered on, and many will be sitting atop their own little pyramids of patronage such that they depend on a continued supply of goodies to maintain their own position. Standing by principles won’t get you very far with them.

Any rate, as with multinational development institutions, the British have some anachronistic and frankly indefensible privileges. FIFA should no more automatically have a British vice-president than the Managing Director of the IMF should have to be a European. In Britain we love nothing more than to mock a privileged public school boy, and yet internationally we hang on to every privilege we can get. It’s not terribly surprising that we get labelled arrogant. Refusing to do any deals can come across as quite insufferable even if it is all done with the best intentions, and the ghosts of colonialism can take a long time to die.

I have some words of comfort for the FA, though: just because you may be arrogant or suffering a bad case of sour grapes, does not mean you are not right. When people make such non-arguments as: “We are ill at ease with people who wield unfounded accusations – he who accuses must provide evidence,” or “FIFA belongs to 208 national associations and not to one association, we must not seek solutions through the media or a Parliament in any third country,” then you know that the only thing they object to is the threatened interruption to their cosy status quo. One regularly hears similar non-arguments from grossly overpaid parliamentarians in Kenya, or indeed from Paul Kagame; their only premise is that they have some spurious reason for objecting to you making the argument, but no actual counter-argument. It’s a cheap trick and I know just how immensely frustrating it can be trying to engage with people whose only goal is to deny you the standing to speak in the first place. It’s like, in the West, being accused of racism; even though the accusation may have not a shred of truth it cuts so deeply that one struggles to defend oneself of it.

And whilst on the face of it, there may be a lot of blustering self-righteousness, the reason that they are objecting to your apparent recourse to the court of public opinion rather than following the ‘proper channels’ is that it is exactly precisely that court that they fear. They fear the great unwashed masses. They also fear the paymasters – the donors in the development space, FIFA’s sponsors in the football space – who are also listening to that court. Just as no donor likes to pull out entirely from a country it has supported strongly – the dilemma currently faced by DFID in Malawi – sponsors won’t be in a hurry to walk away from a brand as magnetic as the footie World Cup, but they will be exerting plenty of behind the scenes pressure. And like so many dodgy dictators, Blatter, I suspect, craves respectability; travel bans / evaporating dinner invitations can be more powerful than you might imagine; the social slight is not to be under-estimated!

Of course, I know nothing about the real ins and outs of football diplomacy, but from afar the landscape does appear to have a very familiar tinge. Perhaps the FA’s top echelons could do with a poverty immersion? Conversely, anyone contemplating a career in conservation or development should consider for a moment whether they’re ready for this kind of thing. It can be an ugly place down at the coal face.