A tragic law of global poverty is that the efforts of many well-meaning and accomplished people somehow get sucked down into meaningless activities and empty rhetoric.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an oped by uber-heavyweights Madeline Albright and Colin Powell about how we should not forget about the world’s poor during the crisis. Their solution – another summit! Addressing the previously unappreciated shortage of summits by the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G-7, the G-20, U2, and Bob Geldof, there is a two day summit starting today of something called the Initiative for Global Development (IGD) National Summit 2009 in Washington DC.
The closest thing to novelty about this summit is that the IGD includes (and was started by) leading business executives, some of whom apparently want to learn from diplomats and aid bureaucrats how to make compassionate statements about global poverty with no content. So Carly Fiorina on the IGD website proclaims “Reducing global poverty is in our nation’s best interest, and a sustained collaboration between the private sector and the government is needed in this regard.” (Presumably she had to be a tad more specific to get things done at HP.)
The IGD has been around since 2003, and includes a lineup of really big names from the worlds of business, government, and aid. Chairpersons Albright and Powell were able to distill all of this experience and talent in their signature Journal oped yesterday into new ideas like “we have to focus our efforts where they can have maximum impact, and draw on the strengths of the public and private sectors alike.”
(Maybe we should subject this statement to the NOT test for meaningful content we discussed in a previous blog post: Briefly consider whether there is anyone arguing “we need to focus our efforts where they can have MINIMUM impact, and draw on the WEAKNESSES of the public and private sectors alike.”)
The IGD helpfully provided Aid Watch some background materials on the 2009 Summit, which has the subtitle “Business leaders advance a bold strategy to reduce global poverty.” They acknowledge the critical need for foreign aid reform, so “Congress and the administration should work together to define a coherent strategy for U.S. foreign assistance and streamline its implementation.” (Reader exercise: apply the NOT test to this statement.) They only get a bit more specific when they endorse the ritual call for a doubling of foreign aid.
Something that sounds slightly more promising is that the IGD summit invited some 20 African CEOs of private businesses. Let’s hope they can get the things that real businessmen want, new deals and investments, in return for being subjected to two days of summiteering. Maybe a few CEOs at IGD are starting to get a glimmer of insight – business leaders should not imitate aid bureaucrats, it should be the other way around.
6 Comments
SS says…
Good Article Dr. Easterly Read Further – FOREIGN AID AFRAUD!!!
After 28 years in the international aid bureaucracies and overseas as an economist an honest man or women must, as I did, come to the inexorable conclusion that the whole official aid undertaking is a huge fraud meant to throw a fig leaf over the desire of the West to dominate and pillage the developing countries.
Treaties to open borders, protect property, indebt and assure the continued provision of low cost labor and natural resources are at the heart of these pious conferences and undertakings of the World Bank, IMF and what are referred to as the bilateral donors. Many sincere young people working for the NGOs at low pay unwittingly serve as the armies of this new domination.
It would take a good part of the 28 years I have spent to demonstrate this to you by which time you would certainly ask for some relief from this wail of misery. InsteadI I suggest you start by reading Joseph Stiglitz books on the World Bank and IMF: Globalization and its Discontents or The Rebel Within. Stiglitz in addition to a Nobel prize in economics was chief economist at the World Bank and so knows the institutions well. For good measure ask Dr. Easterly. He is an honest man. If you catch him in a good mood he might tell you.
SS
If it were not such a fraud foreign aid would be effective and quite cheap. Sometime after 9/11 the Madrasa – Koranic schools — which catered to poor Pakistani kids were identified as a radicalizing force. So too was public education in Pakistan which was too underfunded to cater to the number of children demanding teachers while the quality of existing teachers and their qualifications were quite variable. Reforming the public education system would be an enormously costly and difficult undertaking but is necessary if Pakistan is to survive as a modern state.
There exists, however, radio satellites over south asia owned by a private company which was willing to offer free band width (digital) for educational radio. The U.S. military purchased thousands of (HD) radios to put into the schools. They came to the diverse aid bureaucracies requesting a small portion of their funds for Pakistan be devoted to producing educational programs which could supplement classroom training in the schools. Despite the fact that such programs can reach millions of children at very low cost and have been shown consistently to improve educational outcomes the aid bureaucracies demurred. They prefer to spend 100s of millions in Pakistan in hands on programs that they can control and which largely waste money to little effect. The radios are still in a warehouse years later to the best of my knowledge. They have not been used for any educational programming whatsoever. As I said above I have 28 years full of examples that it is not about aiding the poor.
SS
Well, there is a different NOT test that the statmenet does pass: we need to draw on the strengths of only the government (or only the market). There are plenty of people arguing those positions.
Well, there is a different NOT test that the statmenet does pass: we need to draw on the strengths of only the government (or only the market). There are plenty of people arguing each of those positions.
And actually, I’m getting a paper ready for publication that considers different ethical bases for aid, in some of which factors other than efficiency are also important. For instance, being willing to sacrifice some efficiency in order to reach the poorest of the poor. Efficiency still plays a role, but it’s not the only one and may not be the primary one.
I said above that I had 28 years of instances of the venality of foreign aid. Here’s a second in what promises to be a long series.
Sir -
I recently saw your video on the young Americans inspiring a small project to convert waste to fertilizer in Haiti. You correctly state that two of the biggest problems in developing countries are human waste in the urban areas and impoverished soils.
Imagine cities if you will in India, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere with 1 – 5 million people, very inadequate sewage removal, no sewage treatment and malnutrition due to poor soils and low crop yields in the surrounding countryside. What a perfect solution these young ladies have especially when done on a large urban scale, for example through a World Bank financed treatment plant.
As an economist at XYZ AID, recently retired I tried numerous times to get the XYZ AID or the World Bank to look into the possibility. Such a project is indeed quite feasible, I did the research and quite economically viable. Industrial scale technology is available and cost effective. Instead the international donors continue to advocate that poor peasant farmers purchase imported fertilizer, 90 % of the time produced over seas and shipped to the country and transhipped to rural areas at enormous cost. Of course it is impossible for the farmers to afford the fertilizer. In Ethiopia, to take one example, farmers were loaned money with donor collusion to buy fertilizer. When the rains failed the farmers found themselves trapped in debt. The chemical fertilizers are in addition less stable in the soil than organic ones and their value is quickly lost when the rains skip a growing season.
Your story is encouraging but if you want to touch the real heart of the aid problem enquire of the World Bank or aid donors why they won’t finance large scale waste to fertilizer treatment and conversion plants.
SS
Posted by: SS | May 09, 2009 at 01:14 PM
SS says…
@ Anne – Challenge for Dr. Easterly from the Mark Thomas Blog
” since I do not recall reading a United Nations discussion on waste treatment and conversion among discussions on development programs”
And why not? – - The video I refer to above was put together by Nicolasl Kristof – - one can probably find it in the N Y Times archives – -praising a small, one toilet project in Haiti done by an NGO. I sent him an e-mail to the above effect encouraging him to look into the feasibility of doing such a thing on a large scale and asking the World Bank why they had not. Kristof is not an agricultural economist nor an expert on development just a good reporter and apparently a good person trying to find solutions. One would not necessarily expect him to have the answer readily.
The technology is feasible and cost effective and already being used though it is not widespread. So why not finance more of these plants? The answer, Anne, is I’m afraid simple. The West in aggregate exports a lot of fertilizer to the developing countries. Let’s ask our friends who are development or agricultural economists to answer this challenge. Why not finance such environmentally friendly plants and solve two of the most salient problems of the third world, waste disposal and adequate plant nutrients? Dr. Easterly is a good man, he knows the answer. Let’s see if he’ll say anything. Unfortunately as he well knows he would be way over his head in challenging the agri-business interests head on or even the aid bureaucracies for that matter.
SS