Measuring “Development”
Posted on 26 October 2010 | 2 responses
By Dr. Ramaswami Balasubramaniam
People are obsessed with measurements. Each one of us wants to constantly measure everything around us. Whether it is our own personal wealth, or our academic performance or a movie that we want to see or just saw, or the service that we received in a recent flight that we took, we want to constantly measure and rate.
It is now become such an integral part of our lives that we do not pause to ask why are we measuring and what are the metrics that we are using. Being in the development sector, I have been fascinated by the evolving obsession of practitioners, donors, academia and the community in measuring and evaluating.
The tools, methodologies and the people involved in this activity are getting better and better. Everyone seems to be so preoccupied and engaged that many consider a program a failure or bad, if some acceptable form of measurement is not undertaken. I have written numerous proposals and implemented many projects in different sectors of health education, and community development that I have found myself questioning not just the validity but also some of the metrics and the fundamental premise that drives these measurements.
I am not saying that measurement is wrong; all I am pointing out is that we need to understand the program being measured, the competence of the people measuring, the tools deployed and the metrics of measurement and more importantly the context, before one indulges in this activity.
Why INGOs Should (Maybe) Be Generalists
Posted on 21 October 2010 | 4 responses
By Jennifer Rubenstein
Should international NGOs (INGOs) focus narrowly on one activity, or be “jacks of all trades?” I want to propose one reason why they should be jacks of all trades—more precisely, one reason why they should develop the capacity to effectively respond to a wide range of needs and operate in a wide range of political contexts.
The reason that I have in mind is based on the idea of reducing INGOs’ moral hazard (roughly speaking, their risk of engaging in activities that are morally objectionable). This argument seems right to me, but I’m a political theorist, not an aid worker: I hope that aid practitioners who read this blog will tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Research suggests that once INGOs start providing aid in a particular location, they tend to continue providing aid in that location, for psychological, moral, institutional, and/or economic reasons. I will refer to this phenomenon as INGOs being “geographically sticky.”
Geographical stickiness is good when INGOs stick for good reasons, e.g., because they can fill an important need that no one else can fill. It is bad when INGOs stick for bad reasons, e.g., aid workers’ desire to stay in a particular location, or an INGO’s wish to access funds only available for a particular purpose. The worry in these latter cases is that INGOs that will undertake projects that are unnecessary, counterproductive, or for which they are unqualified, just so that they can continue working a particular location.
Foreign Aid as “Soft Power” (in India, Brazil and China)
Posted on 20 October 2010 | 3 responses
By Sherine Jayawickrama
The embrace of foreign aid as an instrument of “soft power” and as a pillar of foreign policy has been notable in the United States – and it is increasingly so in India, Brazil and China as well. It is a reflection of how the landscape of global development and aid financing has changed in recent years. I’m not sure that NGOs are yet fully coming to terms with what these changes mean.
Vijaya Ramachandran at the Center for Global Development blogged a couple of weeks ago about India’s emergence as an aid donor. She noted that, although India was the largest recipient of foreign aid in the mid-1980s, it is now the fifth largest donor to Afghanistan and its aid to Africa has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 22 percent over the past ten years.
The Economist recently argued that Brazil was, in search of soft power, turning itself into one of the world’s biggest aid donors (see Speak Softly and Carry a Blank Cheque – subscription needed to view the complete article). Although the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) has a relatively small budget, there are a plethora of Brazilian institutions that provide assistance to developing countries. The total value of all Brazilian aid could be close to $4 billion a year – similar to donors like Sweden and Canada (except for the strong upward trend in Brazil, compared to stagnant levels in many countries that are more traditional donors).
Getting Beyond Participation to Ownership
Posted on 15 October 2010 | 2 responses
By Dayna Brown
Across the places the Listening Project has visited, people have talked a lot about their roles in relief and development efforts – what they have been and what they would like them to be. They have often talked about “consultations” and “participatory processes” which have been cosmetic or superficial, and they desire a more meaningful and powerful role in the entire process. As one person in Kenya said, “there should be nothing about us without us.”
People involved in and affected by international aid efforts have talked about how true participation – which most aid agencies believe will support local ownership – should mean having the power to decide, instead of only the power to carry out what others have decided.
For all the efforts aimed at “empowerment,” many feel disempowered by the prevailing aid delivery process. As a grassroots development worker in Ecuador suggested, “this is how the verb ‘to participate’ is conjugated: I participate, you participate, they decide.”
People want to be involved in making decisions about the assistance that is intended to affect their lives – about what priorities to address, what should be done, how the assistance will be provided, what local people will contribute, who receives or benefits from the assistance, and how the efforts should be evaluated.
Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Global Health
Posted on 13 October 2010 | No responses
Rahim Kanani recently sat down with Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director of the U.S. section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), to discuss the intersection of innovative mechanisms in global health financing, advocacy, accountability, and civil society.
Rahim Kanani: Explain a little bit about the intersection of global health financing and health priorities, and from there we can move into new ways or new mechanisms that are being explored to address this enormous gap.
Sophie Delaunay: Let’s start with malnutrition, for example. Malnutrition is affecting millions of children worldwide. A study conducted by the World Bank last year estimates that $12 billion a year is necessary to address childhood malnutrition. At the moment, the overall spending on malnutrition is 350 million dollars a year. MSF is actually one of the five largest contributors. We alone cannot respond to all the needs.
In terms of HIV/AIDS, the gap is so abysmal that it’s hard to provide detailed data, but the fact is that there are only 5 million people on treatment today when 15 million need to be on treatment. Among those who are on treatment today, the vast majority resides in sub-Saharan Africa, and they can only access a less expensive stavudine based first line regimen that we now know has numerous side effects and is no longer recommended by the World Health Organization for this reason. So the gap is not just about the amount of additional treatments needed, but also about reducing the double standard and making new, more effective treatments accessible to these countries. The Global Fund estimated that they needed 20 billion dollars in order to be able to scale up their commitments to the countries for the next 3 years and move forward with an aggressive response; they needed $13 billion just to keep their doors open with their existing commitments. However, the recent Global Fund Replenishment Conference ended up with less than 12 billion of pledges from the countries, so this is very disappointing to see that these needs won’t be covered.
The Big Push Back!
Posted on 11 October 2010 | 19 responses
By Rosalind Eyben
In my book Relationships for Aid, I wrote about the international aid culture that ignores power, relations, the partiality of knowledge and complexity, and pretends there are no surprises and unplanned consequences.
In the last couple of years, it has only got worse. British government aid (DFID) is now imposing extraordinary demands in terms of reporting against indicators of achievement that bear little relation to the manner and possibilities donor-funded activities have for supporting social transformation. Researchers and NGOs in other European countries report a similar phenomenon. And because the pressure is coming from international donors, we know that the same trend is being experienced all over Aidland.
Theoretical and contested concepts such as civil society, capacity or policy become reified and then numbers assigned to the reification e.g. ‘state the number of policies influenced’. Answers are required to absurd value-for-money questions in which institutions are considered as if they were motor cars.
Last year a government donor organisation asked me “what evidence exists of the relative cost, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and quality demonstrated by civil society organisations, in comparison to the UN or profit-making organisations?” That was the moment when I decided it was time for a big push back.
Foreign Assistance Reform: Wrong Again
Posted on 8 October 2010 | No responses
By David Holdridge
Humanitarian aid workers with experience in the field bring an intimate perspective to the question of foreign assistance reform. For decades, my colleagues and I have borne witness to how foreign assistance has met the reality overseas with negative consequences: negative for U.S. citizens and of little sustainable value for the intended recipients.
The reform of foreign assistance currently being considered by the State Department is based on the following assumptions, all of which must be re-examined before committing U.S. tax dollars to an investment that promises little return.
1. Expanding USAID. This does not make sense and runs contrary to current calls for fiscal responsibility. Why would we want to enlarge such an ungainly federal apparatus to manage taxpayer assistance overseas? Growing the number of our civil servants working overseas is hugely expensive; they are encumbered by security concerns and a bureaucratic infrastructure and, importantly, they are shackled by an inability as ‘official’ Americans to integrate into the local landscape.
Why We Shouldn’t Teach People to Fish
Posted on 7 October 2010 | No responses
By John Coonrod
As debate heats up on reforming the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, we will hear – time and again – the chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
This proverb is surprisingly and dangerously misleading.
Most of the hungriest parts of the world produce more than enough food. India – the country with the largest number of hungry people – has tens of millions of tons of surplus food in storage.
If hungry people don’t lack “our” food, then surely they lack “our” knowledge? Don’t they need our technology and expertise to solve their problems of hunger and poverty?
No. People are not hungry because they are ignorant. Some of the world’s greatest knowledge of sustainable fishing, herding and farming reside in the world’s hungry villages. We in the West could frankly use a few lessons ourselves in sustainable food production.
Mutual Responsibilities to Tackle Corruption
Posted on 24 September 2010 | No responses
This is the third in a series of blog posts on the work and findings of the Listening Project, which explores the insights of people who live in societies receiving international assistance. More than 130 international and local organizations contributed over 400 staff members to Listening Teams that held conversations with nearly 6,000 people over the last 5 years.
By Dayna Brown
After watching President Obama’s speech at the MDG Summit at the UN on Wednesday, I was happy to hear him say we need a “new approach to development” and that the charity-based model of the past needs to change.
Many of the things he said reflected concerns brought up by people on the receiving end of aid efforts whom we heard from in the Listening Project. They too want a path out of poverty, not to be dependent on assistance, and for aid efforts to do more to improve their lives for the long-term.
I remember a village chief in Ethiopia who said, “We are still poor, even though we are being helped. Aid is life-saving, but not life changing.”
People in aid recipient societies would agree with Obama’s call for “shared responsibility, mutual accountability, and concrete results that pull people and countries out of poverty.” It was also good to hear him talk about the importance of reducing corruption and that donor countries have a role to play.
At Long Last… A U.S. Global Development Policy!
Posted on 23 September 2010 | 3 responses
By Sherine Jayawickrama
After a complex, year-long, inter-agency process, President Obama announced yesterday the adoption of the first ever U.S. global development policy.
If you have not been following the ins and outs of this process, you may be surprised to hear that the United States has never before had a global development policy! But, yes, it is true.
There have long been policies related to trade, defense, diplomacy, energy, agriculture, aid, labor, migration, etc., all of which have important implications for development. Yet, there has never been a process that tried to make sense of how all of those policies hang together, what the fundamental goals of U.S. government are related to global development, and how the myriad policies related to development should be aligned to meet these goals.
So that makes the simple fact that a U.S. global development policy now exists a cause for celebration. But what about the policy itself (especially its substance and viability)? Personally, I find much to like in the policy.
I like the focus on local ownership. President Obama drew applause when he declared that “the days when development was dictated by foreign capitals must come to an end.” The principle of developing countries taking the lead in setting development priorities is vital. The new U.S. global development policy (see White House fact sheet here - the policy directive itself is not public) promises a new operational model that supports country ownership and responsibility, and pledges to “work through national institutions rather than around them.”
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