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.

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.

Land tenure

“security in private property and tenure rights … registration of property”

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.

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.