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Issues: Enterprise & Trade
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Not so long ago, I spent a year living and working in Ghana. It was dusty, the people were frequently confusing, and the local cuisine was a rich source of starch and oil. But it was a lot of fun, and I look back on the time (and the people I met) fondly.
While misunderstandings between the locals and I were a common occurrence, we collectively understood one thing very well: that taxi drivers are scum. There are no meters or fixed prices in Ghanaian taxis, and every discussion commences with an absurdly high initial price offer from the driver, and a similarly unreasonable lowball payment offer from the prospective passenger. Much arm-waving and feigned expressions of shock emanate from both sides, often for minutes at a time. The driver remains adamant that a 10 minute trip takes 30, while the passenger is convinced that peak hour is a myth created by taxi drivers to harm the nation. If you’re merely a bystander, it’s some of the best street theatre around.
After initial reluctance (read: middle class guilt), I took to the sport of bickering with taxi drivers most enthusiastically. There would be pretend walk-offs, raised voices, and allegations that the driver is a “foolish man” (which ranks highly among Ghanaian insults). As the title of this entry suggests, I did indeed spent 15 minutes arguing over a sum of money that was around a dollar. More than once. Unlike your average Ghanaian, the dollar wasn’t of particular significance to me. Food (bristling with starch and oil) would be on my table that night either way.
So why did I have so many bees in my bonnet? Why would a man even wear a bonnet, especially one that attracted bees?
Many times in the past, I had criticised western tourists in developing countries who indulge in haggling with local sellers over sums of money that matter a lot to the seller, and not at all to the buyer. It appeared to be little more than a disposable income power play, bolstering the ego of a tubby idiot with freshly braided hair and fake designer sunglasses. It effectively mocked poverty... sought to entrench it. Whether or not this scenario is a metaphor for quite a number of recent free trade agreements negotiated between a rich country and a poor country is a matter I’ll leave to you.
Back to the taxis and my bees. But I don’t want any more talk about my bonnet.
The economist-in-me-that-I-can’t-always-switch-off was wondering whether giving $5 for the $4 trip would mean that the new baseline price for everyone would be $5. Would my capacity to buy my way out of an argument affect affordable transport for everyone else?
Or maybe it wouldn’t affect cash-strapped local taxi passengers... perhaps the driver was only trying to game me because I happened to be white. If the colours or tables were turned, such a thing would be held up as scandalous racism. Do I want to reward someone’s notion that some people should pay more than others for an identical service, solely based on their appearance? Is it a taxi driver’s place to decide that I must? In my home country, this concept of fairness is legally enforced via the requirement for metered fares.
And so I spent 15 minutes haggling on the side of the road. Haggling to receive access to the same fair price that the locals paid. Haggling to be equal. It’s entirely consistent with the complaints that many developing countries have about the uneven playing field of global trade and protectionism.
But instead of opening up another area of dispute with the driver, I settled for my $1 taxi saving, and was driven to do you thinkthe pub.
What do you think - is it right to haggle over a dollar? |
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Guest Blog by the Girl Effect. The girl effect is a movement. It's about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. It's about making girls visible and changing their social and economic dynamics by providing them with specific, powerful and relevant resources.
A conversation with DfID permanent secretary Mark Lowcock about Girl Hub and the potential of partnerships in development programming.
In 2010 the permanent secretary at the Department for International Development (DfID), Mark Lowcock, dove into uncharted waters when he formed a first-of-its-kind strategic collaboration with Nike Foundation. The result? A new initiative aimed at establishing a new way of delivering development programming at scale for girls. Girl Hub opened its first office in DfID's London basement, but quickly opened offices in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Nigeria to drive work on the ground.
Q: How did Girl Hub happen?
A: Girl Hub began when Maria Eitel, the president of the Nike Foundation, and I met four or five years ago in the margins of a meeting for the World Bank Gender Advisory Council. After years of working in the sector, I had a Damascene moment. The evidence was there to suggest that if you change the prospects of an adolescent girl on a big enough scale, you will transform societies.
Q: Why DfID? Why Nike Foundation?
A: DfID uses its core capabilities, resources, expertise and a global network to really test ourselves and change for the better. It is an organisation that is not afraid to challenge itself to look at things in a different way and for that reason, the Nike Foundation partnership offered us a tangible way to think and work differently with girls.
Partly due to the marketing capabilities and partly due to the sense of fun and energy we had in the early Girl Hub conversations the potential of the partnership was clear to me. I thought we could get into something that was a brand new approach to changing girls' prospects at scale.
Q: You've been quick to point out that this is a strategic collaboration and not a sponsorship. What is the difference?
A: It was very important to both the Nike Foundation and DfID that we appreciated where we were each coming from culturally. We all understood that we were trying to create a partnership, which is quite different to the way that DfID interacts with other organisations. The power of the Girl Hub collaboration has been to make it something completely different. I think the impact of the work as a result of this way the partnership was set up speaks for itself.
Q: What are your biggest accomplishments so far?
A: In December 2011 Girl Hub Rwanda launched Ni Nyampinga - the first teen brand in the country. And in just seven months, Ni Nyampinga magazine has become Rwanda's largest media publication.
In Ethiopia, Girl Hub was the catalyst for DfID Ethiopia's investment in the £10m End Child Marriage programme, which is on track to reach 200,000 girls in the Amhara region by 2015. And this past May, Girl Hub Nigeria supported a 13-week radio show called Carbin Kwai that was designed to reposition girls in the public discourse and provide a platform for community dialogue.
But we've only just skimmed the surface of what's possible.
Q: How can others use your model to take scope to scale?
A: It is a problem for official development agencies that we can be stuck in our ways of doing things. You can only replicate what we're trying with Girl Hub if you can find a partner who shares your vision and if you are clear about what each party is bringing to the table. But look at the nutrition space - where there is a lot of work going on at the moment. If we could get to the point where there are different sorts of partnerships working to get to grips with that, there is a big prize to be won.
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“The truth is, with the rise of China, we do not have to take any deal Europe throws at us that comes packaged with permanent poverty, incompetent volunteers and the occasional Nato bomb.” – Kenyan author and journalist, Binyavanga Wainaina.
Wainaina’s statement refers to the growing relationship of trade and investment between the emerging superpower, and the world’s second largest continent. The author’s comments also express a faith in the idea that Chinese investment is the answer to Africa’s development. We know that trade and investment are some of the key requirements for overcoming poverty, and some will welcome this as an improvement from years of foreign aid hand-outs. However, is Wainaina’s sense of security with the Chinese truly justified?
Last month, Niall Ferguson released a documentary series exploring China’s ascendency to economic superpower. The series also asked what China’s growing global presence could mean for the rest of the world (Episode 3). In today’s blog, using Niall’s documentary, we ask whether China’s expansion into Africa will help or hinder development across the continent.
Ferguson shows how 40 years ago, China had a smaller economy than Britain’s - now it is on course to overtake the USA as the largest economy in the world. To sustain this unparalleled growth rate, China’s economy needs to continue growing at a rate of 7% a year.
Ferguson’s documentary starts by focussing on Zambia’s experience of Chinese expansion. Copper mining in Zambia is big business for the Chinese, as they need this key resource to supply factories in production. One of the factories in Luanshya, (the Copperbelt province) generates between 2000 - 3000 tonnes of copper a year. Almost all copper produced in this factory is said to be shipped back for use in China. As we’ve blogged about before, China has played a significant role in developing petroleum industries in oil rich parts of Africa - to serve energy demands back home.
So what about the Zambians? What do they get in return? We are shown what, at first, appears to be a mutually beneficial relationship between the Chinese and the Zambians. China receives highly sought after resources such as oil, copper, and other minerals and the Zambians receive employment and infrastructure. China commonly funds construction of infrastructure such as roads, railways, airports and dams – mainly to facilitate the transportation of extracted resources across the vast continent. The Chinese have also been known to present gifts to the countries they are working within. In the series Ferguson visits a new hospital and a colossal football stadium in development. But what do these gifts actually represent? Are they really just a sign of friendship and partnership between the two nations? Or are they a way to win over those concerned their nation is being surreptitiously robbed of its resources? Although the construction of vital infrastructure serves a positive purpose for many impoverished communities, it can also be argued that it acts as an extension of foreign aid. It could serve to create another tie of dependence – “Africa relies on China for development”. This is frustrating at a time when the continent should be looking towards African led development.
These developments do result in some employment for Zambians, but Ferguson looks at the terms of employment under the Chinese. He visits a brand new hospital in Tanzania. Here we are introduced to the Chinese manager of the project, who describes that he has only had 3 days off in the 10 months he has been living in the country. When asked about the quality of Chinese labour vs African labour, the manager clearly favours the Chinese, ridiculing the comparative laziness of the African workers. Furthermore, there appears to be a significant influx of Chinese workers, despite there being many locals who are willing and able to work. So the promise of employment for local communities is not always realized.
In 2012, workers in one Chinese owned Zambian mine rioted over pay and working conditions. In one scene we meet the local Trade Union leader, and we get to hear the grievances of the miners she is representing. All voiced similar concerns regarding pay and treatment by the mine owners. So does working under the Chinese in Africa mean working for longer hours and little pay?
China’s presence in Africa appears to be a long term one. Although the benefit of Foreign Direct Investment in lifting people out of poverty is clear, we should not embrace blindly the idea that China or any major investor is the cure for poverty. Ferguson’s documentary shows the need to strengthen African industries; to shake off dependency and create long lasting change and development that comes from within the continent. |
Posted by Huma Malik in Enterprise & Trade for column GPP - United Kingdom on May 29th 2012, 12:47 |
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Guest blog by Muddassar Ahmed, the founder and the Chief Executive of Unitas Communications Ltd; a London based international communications agency. He is also a member of the Young Atlanticist NATO Working Group.
In the global search for poverty alleviation and sustainable development, Pakistan’s ‘Rural Support Programmes Network’ remains little known, yet offers enormous potential for the eradication of rural poverty across the world today.
The power of a collective community vision is what Pakistan's little known 'Rural Support Programmes Network' (RSPN) has used to empower rural communities to alleviate poverty. RSPN, Pakistan’s largest rural development NGO, is one of the most effective rural poverty alleviation models of the previous three decades. Yet its secret is surprisingly simple - community organizing.
The Network consists of eleven Rural Support Programmes, or RSPs. Founded in the early 1980’s, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) was created to improve agricultural productivity and raise incomes in poor, remote northern regions of Pakistan. Building on the success of AKRSP, other RSPs spread across the country, out of which came the birth of RSPN in 2000.
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Today the RSPs stand out for their unique approach and staggering success rates. They have delivered outreach to 4.5 million Pakistani households (out of a network of 35 million) and skills training to 2.21 million. The RSP’s driving principle is the recognition that there can be no long-term poverty alleviation without community empowerment.
As such, their role is essentially one of a facilitator; empowering grassroots communities into local action that reduces poverty. By focusing on social mobilization and training in almost all areas of rural manufacturing, management and basic services, communities have been able to enhance their access to education, health care and social protection. And because the model holds that poverty alleviation cannot take place in a vacuum, it places a significant emphasis on enhancing those social and local governance conditions which allow economic development to flourish.
I’ve witnessed firsthand the activity of RSPN’s partner Sindh Rural Support Organisation’s (SRSO) activity in Pakistan’s rural Sindh province. My most striking observation was of the programme's immense impact on the collective self-esteem and aspirations of remote rural communities. Take the case of Ghulam Bibi in the RSPN supported Sindhi village of Imam Bux Gabol. As a 40-year-old mother of five, she used to work only sporadically on other people's land to keep her poor family afloat. However, the SRSO introduced the ‘Community Investment Fund’ (CIF), an innovative form of community-managed financing, funded by the Sindh government and managed by the women of the village. With this Ghulam Bibi was able to invest in livestock.
Having for the first time been afforded the opportunity to be enterprising, she has today expanded the livestock’s size and value and created a thriving livelihood for herself and her family. And as per the RSP strategy, beneficiaries become the greatest advocates. She now routinely preaches the benefits of the programme to neighboring villages.This policy of investing in people as a conduit to investing in infrastructure ensures that RSPN/RSP programmes do not lose momentum as soon as funding ends, or once immediate goals are met.
Long before Barack Obama, as a presidential hopeful, expounded the transformative power of community organizing and local grassroots leadership, RSPN and RSP’s were applying similar principles across rural Pakistan. Together they established localised leadership and governance structures across 10 independent Rural Support Programmes (RSP) that still exist today.
But it’s not just advice and training that RSPN/RSP’s provides. Limited access to capital can still stack the cards against the world's poor. As microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus puts it: ‘it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty’. And in addressing this, the RSPs have become a leading force in supporting rural access to microfinance in Pakistan.
In summary, the RSP success has come from its unique ability to foster a vision for self-empowerment within rural communities. And in helping develop the skills, community structures, and access to capital to make such a vision achievable. The formula undoubtedly works, having reached three quarters of Pakistan’s districts, trained 1.06 million women and enabled the establishment of over 1,900 schools that generally outperform those supported only by the government.
Since its inception, the model has received widespread international recognition. The World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group noted the RSPN's "impressive record of performance”. It has also been described as the NGO encapsulating one of 13 development ‘Ideas That Work’. Founding RSPN Chairman Shoaib Sultan Khan was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for his work in "unleashing the power and potential of the poor". He has addressed the UN General Assembly to showcase RSPN's proven model of sustainable development.
Yet if the model is really so effective why has there not been an even greater transformation across rural Pakistan, especially given the high concentration of rural poverty? After all, the RSPN model has been widely replicated outside of Pakistan. In 1994, the UN Development Programme requested that RSPN Chairman Shoaib Sultan Khan set-up demonstration pilots of the model in Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The success of those pilots led India to subsequently launch a similar countrywide programme that benefited over 300 million poor.
One reason for this discrepancy lies in the very secret of RSPN's success; the RSPN model is an effective but long-term one, where significant results can only be gauged in the long-term over periods of more than a decade. As such, international aid agencies fail to provide the level of support RSPN needs to kick-start the crucial early stages of new programmes across different regions. These agencies have also failed to continue servicing current programmes before rural communities achieve some semblance of self-sufficiency.
Although a 2004 World Bank evaluation acknowledges that the long-term success of RSP is tremendous, it also notes that the short-term 'quick-fix' results sought by international donors, result in pressures to swiftly demonstrate aid money can lead to tangible outcomes in the short-term.
Despite the economic and political challenges of supporting a programme offering such long-term returns, it is precisely these long-term returns that are needed if sustainability is to truly be achieved. And it would be at the expense of other poor rural communities in Pakistan, South Asia and indeed beyond, if such a ‘bigger picture’ approach to rural development is not embraced and Pakistan’s poverty alleviation secret is not spread.
*Image from RSPN website homepage |
Posted by Mudassar Ahmed in Enterprise & Trade for column Success Stories on May 22nd 2012, 13:19 |
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On March 21, 2012 the House Budget Committee, under direction of Chairman Paul Ryan (R, Wis.), released its budget plan for 2013. This document essentially outlines the Republican Party’s spending priorities for the next fiscal year and provides a response to President Obama’s budget plan, released in mid-February.
Being that 2012 is an election year, these competing documents are both highly political and thus nearly impossible to be approved by a divided Congress. But they do give us an idea of how our two major parties are thinking about foreign policy.
The committee’s proposed budget for “international affairs”—which includes U.S. foreign aid spending—came in at significantly less than what President Obama has requested in his own budget plan. The Obama plan has allocated $56.1 billion for the international affairs budget in 2013, whereas the Ryan proposal has allocated $43.1 billion—a difference of about 23 percent, and a 10-percent decrease from actual spending on international affairs in 2012.
So what would such a spending reduction involve? For those too squeamish to peruse the entire 230-page document, here are some of the notable policy recommendations (largely cost reductions) for international affairs spending in the Ryan plan:
- Eliminating USAID’s “Development Assistance” funding model, and instead funding all U.S. foreign assistance through the Millennium Challenge Corporation—an independent aid agency created in 2004.
- Eliminating the Complex Crises Fund (CCF), established in 2010 “to support stabilization activities and conflict prevention in countries demonstrating high risks of insecurity.”
- Eliminating funding for the Inter-American Foundation, the African Development Foundation, the East-West Center, the Asia Foundation and the Center for Middle Eastern-Western Dialogue.
- Eliminating contributions to Clean Technology Fund and Strategic Climate Fund.
- Eliminating Feed the Future, President Obama’s 2009 initiative that aims to end global food insecurity.
- Reducing funding for USAID’s International Disaster Assistance.
Many aid organizations and think tanks have been critical of the proposed policies, most arguing that such cuts would greatly damage U.S. influence in international affairs, threaten the lives of millions and jeopardize national security.
The strongest criticism comes from the Center for Global Development (CGD) regarding the elimination of Feed the Future. Ryan’s budget proposal argues that existing initiatives, specifically Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole food and nutrition program, already serve the function of addressing food insecurity, making Feed the Future unnecessary. However, CGD argues, these two initiatives “[are] not a long term program to promote food security … It is a ‘feed the now’ rather than ‘feed the future’ approach. Its goal is to keep people alive, not to increase farm yield or any of the related activities necessary to help develop sustainable agriculture.” CGD have also shown in the past that Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole have proven to be some of the most inefficient and wasteful programs in the federal government.
But regardless of what you think about the proposals, the Ryan plan tells us something useful. It’s not that our elected officials on the budget committee don’t care about doing what’s best for the world’s poor; it’s that—for now—they don’t have to.
When President Obama’s budget proposal was released in February, the Inter Press Service pointed out that “Given a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, election-year politics and the lack of a politically potent grassroots constituency willing to lobby for more foreign aid, the administration’s request is unlikely to make it through the Congress intact.”
Facing the Ryan plan’s policy prescriptions, this prediction appears to be dead-on – there are few grassroots voices calling for more or better aid. At the Global Poverty Project, we’re passionate about the latter half of the above quote — the general lack of political will on the part of the individual to support effective foreign aid.
As a general rule, Congress won’t voluntarily fund something unless it is of an immediate measurable advantage to the United States, or unless the people demand it. That’s what is both magnificent and challenging about our democratic system—it requires our participation.
Unless the average American raises concerns or ideas with Congress about the sort of aid we should be giving, this situation is unlikely to get any better. And every March, we will continue to fight the same battle over that 1-percent of federal spending that goes toward foreign aid.
What’s truly necessary is for everyone, from development experts to ordinary citizens like myself, to move beyond political name-calling and preaching to the same small-but-passionate choir of aid enthusiasts, and to become campaigners. Let’s commit to using our voices to ensure that the needs and interests of the world’s poor are addressed, in 2012 and beyond.
Sign petitions, make phone calls, write letters—and more importantly, talk to your friends, co-workers and family members, and get them to do the same. The people of Egypt toppled a dictator with the help of Facebook and Twitter; compared to that, influencing our foreign policy doesn’t seem so difficult anymore.
Let’s be the generation that harnessed our social networks to create positive change for the world’s poorest people. Let’s stop defining our democracy by the inaction of our elected officials. Instead, let’s define it by the actions we take together, whether as Democrats or Republicans, Mac or PC, iPhone or Android.
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