Is African poverty caused by lack of the necessary technical knowledge applied to disease, nutrition, clean water, and agriculture? Reading many discussions, like that of the recent food security initiative, or the UN Millennium Project (UNMP) on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, would make you think so. Would it change your mind if that technical knowledge already existed and there were attempts to apply it as long ago as 1938? The following table compares the technical recommendations from a prominent and exhaustive survey of African problems headed by Lord Hailey in 1938 to those of the UNMP in 2005.
| African Problem to be Addressed | African Research Survey, 1938 | UN Millennium Project, 2005 |
|---|---|---|
| Malaria | “mosquito bed-nets …malaria control by the spraying of native huts with a preparation of pyrethrum” | “insecticide-treated nets…. insecticides for indoor residual spraying …{with} pyrethroids” |
| Nutrition | “…the African suffers from deficiency of Vitamin A” | “Malnutrition {is also} caused by inadequate intake of … vitamin A” |
| Soil fertility | “methods of improving soil fertility {such as} green manuring” | “using green manure to improve soil fertility” |
| Soil erosion | “increasing absorption and reducing runoff on cultivated land {through} the use of terraces” | “Contour terraces, necessary on sloping lands… when furnished with grasses and trees…{to avoid} soil erosion” |
| Land tenure | “… legal security against attack or disturbance can most effectively be guaranteed by registration” | “security in private property and tenure rights … registration of property” |
| Clean drinking water | sinking boreholes | “Increase the share of boreholes” |
(A longer version of this table and the citations for the quotes appear in my recent article “Can the West Save Africa?” in the Journal of Economic Literature.)
Enthusiasts for technology fixes for poverty concentrate almost exclusively on the science and the technical design — this is a characteristic fault of poverty solvers from Silicon Valley, the Gates Foundation, doctors, and natural scientists.
All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it – people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.
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This sounds very much like it’s leading towards government subsidy of ideas as the technical fix. What did you do with the real Easterly?
This fits to your “double” theory.
And, yet, it doesn’t seem that economists have done a very good job of dealing with the wildly unpredictable and sometimes irrational choices people make in their lives and as communities. Economists seem to be the first to forget that people are implementing change in deeply historical, cultural contexts that have everything to do with the success or failure of interventions. Case in point: The ten Millennium Villages strewn across Africa as if “Africa” was one homogenous place without many histories, cultural possibilities and ways of perceiving development. Everything is right in this post until the final sentence. Is it economics that addresses lived contingency and relationality? You make a much better case for another kind of development knowledge production. One that begins on the ground and not in the mind of experts (economic or otherwise).
That people had the idea to do these things in 1938 does not mean that the things were actually implemented, or implemented in a sustainable way, of course. These simple investments in health and agriculture would still go a long way, if they could be implemented correctly.
I agree completely that you need the right incentives for technology to ‘take’, and that economics has much to say about that. In the past these ‘technology fixes’ have often been implemented in complete disregard with economic laws, for example by using market-distorting subsidies, by not involving the private sector, and by not building up adequate capacity, supply chains and value chains.
An example from Nicaragua where things were properly done: a particular type of water pump, the rope pump was introduced in 1985 and became successful. By now there are some 70.000 pumps installed produced by some 20 bigger and smaller local workshops. The shift from imported piston pumps of 600$ to locally produced Rope pumps of 70$ has doubled rural water supply in 10 years, much faster than countries that applied only piston pumps. Users do maintenance and over 95% of the pumps remain in operation.
I think part of the answer lies in using low-cost technology (say, a 10$ treadle pump), which can be locally produced and sold at a fair market price, and can be maintained locally. We try to document such technology at http://www.akvopedia.org.
In conclusion: what about trying to implement the wish list of 1938, using the economic incentive-wisdom and innovative business models of today?
It’s slightly off topic, but I would like to have your opinion on some of the recent approaches to aid, like investing in entrepreneurs, that are based on economic models. I’m thinking of the Acumen fund (which I’d specifically like your comments on) as well as countless smaller initiatives to deliver solutions by selling products rather than giving them away.
I posted a video from the Acumen blog (on my blog, click my name to see it) today that I liked very much.
This is such a critical point for improving development assistance it bears daily repeating. With respect to health development assistance the proclivity to focus on the technical (or clinical) intervention is most severe – and it has undermined repeatedly the impact of global health initiatives. Child health and malaria initiatives (and much of the literature about these programs) exemplify this problem. Failure to think in a sophisticated way about delivery strategies (including important contextual factors) has contributed to the failure to increase access to malaria medicines (it has continued to decline, despite significant increases in spending).
I would modify your point about the importance of applying economic tools to analyze incentives – and generate important knowledge about delivery strategies. Yes – much more consideration of incentives is needed. But economists alone (and economics tools alone) often fall short in this task. The important task of understanding what works and what not with respect to delivery strategies for different interventions requires the collaboration and input of anthropologists (think Judith Justice), and political scientists (hello Chris Blattman) and public policy experts, and for health interventions, public health experts. Economists alone often have too narrow understanding, and too narrow approaches to analyzing incentives, and the institutional settings that influence incentives in behavior.
@Easterly
“The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.”
I beg to differ – I would argue that the field that addresses these issues is Political Science or, if you’d prefer, Political Economy.
Like other scientists much – though not all – of economics has concerned itself with normative outcomes: “If countries do X they will get some welfare maximizing outcome Y”.
But how do we get countries to do X? Can we? Should we?
Studying reform incentives of political leaders, activists and voters is central in current comparative politics.
I of course acknowledge (and have myself learned a lot from) the important contribution of political science, anthropology, and public health. However, I will stick to my guns that technology enthusiasts get it wrong mainly because they are not used to the core “economics” way of thinking — which is that you have to think about the incentives of everyone concerned in technology adoption.
dear mr easterly,
i think that your emphasis on economics is analogous to the technologists’ emphasis on technology, don’t you think?
i do not necessarily see why economics is the panacea to these myriad issues. yet, i have a profound working involvement with investment, corporations, economics, development etc etc
i’d sooner substitute your economics with ‘human systems’ which perforce include economics, politics, etc etc. and those human systems are, in many parts of africa, frighteningly urgent need of DEFRAGMENTATION…
a reply is not really necessary, i agree, but one could be nice
brgrds
Touche! I am the last to believe in economics as panacea, there are no panaceas, and there is no ONE field that will comprehend everything. I am just insisting that economics provides a very important and crucial insight about incentives, and that incentives is one of the most important MISSING insights in technology discussions.
…the parable of the elephant and the six blind men at pains to describe said elephant just might make my point
I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your commentary (and used some of it in my recent graduate thesis paper on the role of design in Africa). Much of what you offer is a fair and ethical counter to the sometimes “blind” optimism of how we might “help” another country. I am encouraged to see groups like Ushahidi looking at mobile technology as a tool for democratic information exchange. Their ideas about one aspect of technology offer an interesting take.
LEFT & RIGHT AGREE?
For some time I had tried, written and spoken, about renewing the use of radio for adult education, empowering individuals and communities through information on health, agriculture, small business, pumps and automobile maintenance as well as in-school learning supplements, languages, etc. But no, international planners know best as Dr. Easterly might say and the approach of giving information to the people who can need or use it remains mired in Western attitudes and interests.
SS
Nice blog post on why technology is not enough. But I’d agree with some of the commenters here that making things happen also requires more than economics. Economics, and particular economic theories while helpful and important tools, are in a sense technological tools like any other.
Politics, anthropology and other social disciplines are equally important in understanding what enables people to change.
Perhaps the trick is not to focus on one or other discipline as being superior to another in explaining or motivating change – but to think about using multidisciplinary approaches that look at the challenges to change through multiple lenses to determine and understand what works.
Another element of this is of course to look at what works in practice, not just in any particular theory, and even if reality doesn’t match the theory.
Economists are very good at saying “incentives matter!”, but not nearly so good at explaining what incentives matter and how in any given situation. As other commenters here have said, the insights of political science, anthropology etc (not to mention practitioners outside academia) are absolutely essential to actual understanding of relevant incentives.
perhaps the most important factor is the actual environment(s) typically addressed in what we may call the solutions discourse.
the harsh reality is that, by and large, in these actual environments, life happily (yes, happily) proceeds on platform in which there are, sometimes perhaps, no real or recognisable systems to speak of. but to the “informed” onlooker, there is a self-evident fragmentation of human systems.
less melodramatically, even if swathes of local populations from these environments are now familiar with the way the rest of the world works, received wisdom as to the efficiency of human systems is not indigenous, received wisdom is sometimes very actively disarticulated in the effort to enable viable political economy in these environments; otherwise why does the resolution of violence qualify a country as the most successful where in fact other countries thrive much better in the economic and other ‘plus’ senses?
the point at issue as i see it is that, with reference to africa at least, many of the relevant countries were grossly unprepared for political independence however long ago that may have come – but that is neither here nor there today. global success stories at the level of individuals should perhaps not be seen as relevant to the identification of the best solutions today – rather they may indicate what is possible in an abstract sense
those solutions will by definition be the result of muddling through many a shot in the dark, many hits and misses, many bastardisations of received wisdom be it economic wisdom or whatever else…
what is done incrementally, and possibly at a safe enough distance from government in many of these environments, is probably what will count foreseeably… we are after all concerned with ‘development’ and everything that connotes, more so in severely-governance-challenged environments.
to put it crudely, if economics and indeed many other disciplines are to proffer true solutions, it makes sense for the problem(s) to be understood, in a way that responds to both problem-solver and problem (consider democratic iran…ahmedXYZ probably did win, as far as the numbers go, but…)
as to the ‘rivalry’ between economics and technology, it may be instructive to ponder the vaunted proliferation of mobile phones in much of africa, including the rural parts.
pther cognate factors abound, but the much-ignored reality is that the cost of using a basic mobile phone is in fact singularly responsible for large-scale impoverishment which is easy enough to associate with a typically “poor” continent.
the telecom corporates record unprecedented profits, set up innumerable charitable foundations and run prize-winning promos, but the general populations really do suffer – consensually.
before the advent of GSM telephony, state-run fixed-line telephony was simply not an option for the greater many. it was cheaper and definitely not affordable. with profit and connectedness – read “incentives” – have come a general, superficial burgeoning which is hard to quantify as to its extent and its composition… do we then over-regulate telecom companies or do we hand out free mobile telephony?
other metaphors abound…
OFF ON OUR OWN TANGENTS?
Dr. Easterly has posed the problem correctly, available technology as opposed to knowledge and incentive to adopt it. The article clearly shows the technology is and has been there. As for incentive, the ability to improve one’s condition may often be enough. And knowledge? Radio can diffuse information at low cost, in local languages, with quality control at the point of message; something all the “experts” in the world can not do. It should be easy to find out if this is the problem.
So why not radio. There are two issues. One you must trust and respect the listener to do what he wants with the information. Second you must be willing to give up control of the development process yourself. These are issues Dr. Easterly has raised often. The answer unfortunately appears to be that development practitioners are too paternalistic to do either.
This discussion reflects the inability to go beyond ones own narrow interest and give up some control. It focuses rather than on how one might achieve the individual empowerment the article suggests as the solution, instead on how best to define the problem in terms suitable for career enhancing journal publications: e.g., is it anthropological, economic, sociological, etc. It reminds me of a quote, I believe from Engels, as to whether one was discussing “The phiolosophy of poverty or the poverty of philosophy”.” I believe that the point was that the poor are indeed not uniquely an object of study but real people needing real information and in some but not all cases resources, the motivation and incentives must come from them.
SS
The key to getting out of misery, generating wealth, capital accumulation: Savings – http://www.economicsjunkie.com/savings-and-investment/
problems (as well as solutions, it would seem) are, in the context of the article, almost incurably atavistic. and that is a symptom of the health of the beast. it’ll take a very long time indeed for pervasive tangible solutions, and the rest of the world won’t be waiting up
…and these are merely the first-hand observations of an (exasperated?) observer whose career and activities at the international commercial Bar have been so far removed from the world of published academic papers for a good while, maybe… and no regrets
no ulterior motives, no wild expectations, and definitely no under-information
as a frustrated ICT for Development practitioner and educator, I want to pick up on the last paragraph:
“The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.”
Actually, I feel that development economics is more than widely enough represented in the academia and out in the fields – what I’d say the field that is missing most is psychology and the actual understanding of human motives and choices far beyond the economic realm, which can only indicate so much. I would point people to augment reading this entry and paper suggested above with Richard Heek’s work @ http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/, esp his entry on low-self-efficacy-issue. I have found his work to synthesize well the interrelated nature of development as an approachable one for most “ICTD Technologists.” Love the 1938 – MDG timeline – will use that in class to PROVE that development was happening before the technologists arrived
(said as a somewhat guilty technologist…)
I think we can agree on a few things:
1. Incentives matter (it is almost all about having the “right” or desirable incentives for all the actors)
2. Economics is by and large the science that look at the practical way of analyzing the incentives. Economics is fundamentally about incentives.
3. Economics has not achieved that much in term of development, but economics can be perfected. One venue to look at is the non quantifiable variables that do affect incentives (like pride/shame, honesty, traditions, etc…)
The last point is precisely where History, Psychology, Anthropology and all the other-ologies kick in. The ideal would be for economists to learn those other sciences. Unfortunately we have only one life. Therefore, a close cooperation (maybe through co-authorship) among the different fields would be very desirable.
I think the big picture is being missed by the commenters here.
If we’ve had the same info & tech for 70yrs and over this time we’ve been implementing with different people groups, govt’s, styles/methods of aid and yet we are no further along (evidenced by the chart above)… how good does the next 70 years look?
At what point to people (the aid community) admit there’s a need to take a totally different approach. As in colossally different. Is being hands off to big a leap? Course it means everyone loses their jobs.
the field that addresses all this issues is EDUCATION
if the west are interested in helping Africa they should concentrate on educating the young and developing a generation that can help it self
My people die from lack of knowledge
Bill–
As important as the role of economics is in assessing opportunities for technological innovation, I would make a case for marketing as key. Good marketers listen to customer feedback and produce a package of appropriate pricing, distribution and promotion that drives the adoption of new technologies. Economists look retrospectively at costs and benefits and do not sufficiently consider the potential for increasing perceived value through marketing. What would an economist have predicted for the cell phone market in Africa in 1990? The explosion in the adoption of that technology is due to brilliant marketing that marketers did see and an economist never would have seen.
I have only one question: why didn’t Lord Hailey or the colonial government do anything about it? I forgot, they were busy plundering Africa!
Always at the core: government has no valid role in civilized society.
So Lord Halley beat de Soto to it by decades.
Of course often land registration has actually compounded the problem. In ‘Planet of Slums’ Mike Davis points out that the formalization of tenure in urban conglomerations in most of the third world has actually made the situation of the poor worse and given them less security. De Soto believes that security of tenure will allow the poor to use their property as collateral for loans, but in practice that will merely legally facilitate local loan sharks taking over ownership.
I think one possible approach is to look at all the technical solutions that have been known about, often for hundreds of years, and then try and find out why they haven’t been put into effect. That is to say to look for the disincentives.
I’ve posted some of my thoughts on this here http://www.wepoco.org
In particular that although Americans might have forgotten, most Europeans and Africans are likely to know very well why any ideas from 1938 weren’t implemented.
That the same needs exist today as 70 years ago is perhaps not too surprising – much of Africa hasn’t changed in that time.
The comments about radio are interesting though, since one major development of the 1930s was broadcast propaganda. I’ve posted a copy of an advert from 1935 on my blog – http://saunby.blogspot.com/2009/07/there-is-crisis-in-europe.html
One consequence of all this was the development of the BBC World Service, and after Perl Harbour even the Americans realised the world had changed and launched Voice of America.
Railways, radio, cell-phones, Internet and other disruptive technologies are quite likely just as important for development as steady progress in agriculture, medicine, construction and the like. Though I’d hazard a guess that economists generally don’t have much to say about stuff that can’t be predicted.
Wonderful article, thanks for putting this together! “This is obviously one great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have so provided here. Keep it up!”
Wonderful article, thanks for putting this together! “This is obviously one great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have so provided here. Keep it up!”
This just shows once again UN’s incompetence in development.
At the heart of this problem, it’s not about economics changing peoples’ use of specific technologies, but about nudging macro changes in peoples’ habits and cultures.
It’s not enough that folks just learn to appreciate and use bednets for example — it’s a whole set of values and habits that need to change. On this note, economics falls short in providing a solution.
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