William Easterly: What Bono Doesn't Say about Africa

I've been pretty tough on William Easterly, and part of it may be the way his message is delivered. As Dani Rodrik states:

I agree with many if not most of the details of Easterly's argument, but would not have packaged them in quite the way that he does, which I think gets too rhetorical and counterproductive at times...

Development is not my main area, so a couple of days ago I took some time to talk to a development economist, someone I respect and trust completely, and asked where development economists are as a group, closer to the Easterly 'let markets work' position, or closer to the Sachs more 'interventionist' approach.

The answer was that the profession is probably closer to Easterly if the choice is framed so simply, as free-market versus interventionism, and only between those two economists (there are other choices), but it's more nuanced than that. I guess if I had to give a simple takeaway line from the conversation, it would be that it confirmed my belief that institutions matter and are fundamental to development success.

Markets don't just spring up out of nowhere, they need the support of proper legal and institutional foundations, and aid doesn't necessarily do the most good, or any good, if the institutions to deliver help aren't in place and functioning. To me, the Easterly-Sachs debate as it's usually portrayed, as a struggle between a free-market approach and an interventionist approach, misses an essential point. What is needed are functional institutions and far too little attention is placed on that part of the development equation, at least in public debates on this question. I suspect that if you talked to either Easterly or Sachs they would agree with the importance of institutions, so I don't mean to infer this is a fundamental disagreement with either of them, but I would like to see the development of foundational institutions stressed much more than it is in discussions of the Sachs or Easterly approaches. With the proper institutions in place, the particular development path that is taken may not matter quite as much.

In any case, here's William Easterly with a more upbeat view of Africa than usual:

What Bono doesn't say about Africa, by William Easterly, Commentary, LA Times: Just when it seemed that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."

It's a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that's being offered up... But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

Let's begin with those rampaging Four Horsemen. Do they really explain Africa today? What percentage of the African population would you say dies in war every year? What share of male children, age 10 to 17, are child soldiers? How many Africans are afflicted by famine or died of AIDS last year or are living as refugees?

In each case, the answer is one-half of 1% of the population or less. In some cases it's much less... That doesn't lessen the tragedy, of course, of those who are such victims, and maybe there are things the West can do to help them. But the typical African is a long way from being a starving, AIDS-stricken refugee at the mercy of child soldiers. The reality is that many more Africans need latrines than need Western peacekeepers — but that doesn't play so well on TV.

Further distortions of Africa emanate from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's star-studded Africa Progress Panel (which includes the ubiquitous Geldof). The panel laments in its 2007 news release that Africa remains "far short" of its goal of making "substantial inroads into poverty reduction." But this doesn't quite square with the sub-Saharan Africa that in 2006 registered its third straight year of good GDP growth — about 6%, well above historic averages for either today's rich countries or all developing countries. Growth of living standards in the last five years is the highest in Africa's history.

The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 — more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the "poverty trap" of being "too poor to save" endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it's too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?

Instead, the international development establishment is rigging the game to make Africa ... look even worse than it really is. ...

Why do aid organizations and their celebrity backers want to make African successes look like failures? One can only speculate, but it certainly helps aid agencies get more publicity and more money if problems seem greater than they are. As for the stars — well, could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

The real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts. A respected Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda, made this point at a recent African conference..: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?" asked Mwenda.

Perhaps Bono was grouchy because his celebrity-laden "Red" campaign to promote Western brands to finance begging bowls for Africa has spent $100 million on marketing and generated sales of only $18 million, according to a recent report. But the fact remains that the West shows a lot more interest in begging bowls than in, say, letting African cotton growers compete fairly in Western markets (see the recent collapse of world trade talks).

Today, as I sip my Rwandan gourmet coffee and wear my Nigerian shirt here in New York, and as European men eat fresh Ghanaian pineapple for breakfast and bring Kenyan flowers home to their wives, I wonder what it will take for Western consumers to learn even more about the products of self-sufficient, hardworking, dignified Africans. Perhaps they should spend less time consuming Africa disaster stereotypes from television and Vanity Fair.

Comments

[anne]

Remember, and imagine, I wrote several days ago that a fabulously wealthy American technology child, wrote to Brad DeLong to make a series of complaints about about, well, Bono. Bono, we found, had suddenly become Africa's problem, at least our child technology billionaire. Now, William Easterly has in turn and creatively discovered that the problem for Africa is, well, you guessed, Bono.

[anne]

Possibly I have forgotten how to think and read, and forgotten all I am supposed to know, but this is a horridly offensive column by a person who continually finds ways in which to be more offensive.

"Today, as I sip my Rwandan gourmet coffee and wear my Nigerian shirt here in New York, and as European men eat fresh Ghanaian pineapple for breakfast and bring Kenyan flowers home to their wives, I wonder what it will take for Western consumers to learn even more about the products of self-sufficient, hardworking, dignified Africans."

Africa is saved, now let us all mock Bono, as I wear my Nigerian shirt all the day today and tomorrow and thereafter. Will no one bring me my Kenyan flowers?

[Richard Beddard]

I agree that the Sachs-Easterly debate polarises the issues. Did you see this video?

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140

Almost at the end (which is worth watching), the speaker produces a chart in which he prioritises the ends or 'development' and the 'means. Economic growth is the most important factor in bringing it about, but the least important result. Apart from the fact that it's all a bit paternalistic, I think it's a very good insight. Bandit capitalism isn't much good on its own. But without economic development who's going to pay for health, education, governance, human rights, rule of law. Foreign aid? Forever?

[anne]

No; there is no Sachs-Easterly debate. There is no such debate, only continual impossibly mean attacks by William Easterly on anyone from Bill Gates to Bono to Tony Blair to Jeffrey Sachs to Nicholas Kristof who would extend themselves to Africans. Who the heck is stopping andyone from buying me Kenyan flowers? Who? Jeffrey Sachs?

Never ever will I let Jeffrey Sachs strip my "Nigerian shirt" from my shoulders. Watch me wear my Nigerian shirt.

[anne]

We are spending an insanely tragic $15 billion a month surging through Iraq. What the heck are we doing in "Foreign Aid? Forever?" for Africa. Sorry, I do not drink Rwandan coffee, or any coffee, but I am all aflutter for Kenyan flowers. Do little European wives give husbands flowers, too?

[anne]

There is no limit, absolutely no limit to what we will spend on the insanity of war in and occupation of Iraq, but suddenly development babes are absolutely terrified of a rock singer raising money to help other people. When our church raises money for solar cookers for Darfur, I will be sure to tell everyone "the heck with the Good Samaritan." What did Jesus know anyway.

[anne]

Forgive me, remember though, I am always a-wearing my Nigerian shirt everywhere. Dear Nigerian shirt wearing "Me." Jesus would have been proud of my Nigerian shirt wearing. Moses would have been as proud. Martin Luther King too. Where are my Kenyan roses?

[Philip Thomas]

Interesting article, cogently written. Wish I could say the same about all the comments.

[anne]

There is no helpful institution, no market network, no trade relation, no international investment, no development effort that has not been welcomed by those who care for Africans. But, the pernicious attacks on those who actually extend themselves for Africans is beyond understanding and tolerance. Beyond tolerance, because we are being told that ignoring our neighbors after centuries of exploiting them is proper, and the message to ignore is welcome by those who never cared to begin with.

Who has any idea how difficult a time Kenya has had gaining a limited access to European flower markets? From the hateful title of his book, which I will not mention, to mocking a decent rock singer, William Easterly has given us an excuse to turn away from others to whom we are obligated.

There was a reason Martin Luther King preached on the Good Samaritan more than any other subject.

[anne]

"Wish I could say the same about all the comments."

How about remarking on the 5 million violent deaths through the countries about the Congo since 1994? A series of tragic struggles referred to as Africa's World War. Any wishful comment to comment wishfully?

How about wishfully wondering and commenting how Africans are coming to be treated for AIDS, even as AIDS rages? How about that, Wishful?

[F0ul]

What a great article!

Celebrities soon forget that the only reason we take any notice of them, or even pay them, is because they entertain us.
What we don't need is for these high school drop outs to start telling us how the world works - because they don't have a clue.

What Africa needs is no European and US trade barriers. It needs no environmental and politically motivated protectionist blocks on entering the important wealthy markets of the west.
What Africa will get is entry to the Chinese market while the west is still buying overpriced beads and flowers sold by ex pop stars.
Africa will slowly become the sweatshop of China over the next 20-30 years - and the West will have lost a huge potential partner while Africa becomes rich!

Pop stars should stick to singing, politicians should ask difficult questions of their advisers, and advisers should stop listening to pop stars!

[windowlicker]

Anne: ADHD or bipolar?

[robertdfeinman]

When the discussion gets framed as the "Easterly/Sachs" debate it is an indication that the topic has been hijacked.

Both men have character flaws which ruffle some feathers. Sachs is too optimistic and self assured and Easterly is too flippant (although he is witty).

But if one can't abstract their arguments from their style than all that is left are ad hominem arguments. Now if someone would like to discuss the issues...

It seems to me that everyone can agree that development efforts, especially in Africa, have been sub-optimal for a long time. This also seems to imply that whatever was done before was also sub-optimal. Those who argue that all that is needed is to hit the stubborn nail with a bigger hammer need some very strong reasons to get people to support this position. I think this is Sachs' weakness.

On the other side those who say that development mechanisms aren't working and haven't worked need some pretty powerful suggestions as to how to change things. Criticism alone is insufficient.

As to whether popular personalities are helping or hurting the cause, isn't the PR motto "There is no such thing as bad publicity"?

[anne]

Interestingly enough, Tony Blair and the Queen just knighted Bono for the work he has done on behalf of others. But, what after all is such an honor? Of course my African students adore Bono, simply adore Bono, as do I.

[anne]

Bono, Geldof, Madonna, Starbucks (Rawandan coffee there I imagine); why the attacks? Why the attacks on Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Gates? How do these attacks help Africans? Should I ask Rabbi K--- to give over the African projects at the Temple?

What does it mean to ignore environmental problem in trade, anywhere, from Mexico to Ghana?

What does it mean to ignore the fierce tragedy of AIDS?

Please explain.

says...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/health/06aids.html?ex=1338782400&en=1f7a3ee5d6fb564a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 6, 2007

New AIDS Cases in Africa Outpace Treatment Gains
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BEIRA, Mozambique — Four years ago, the region surrounding this somnolent seaport, Mozambique's second largest city, offered hardly any AIDS-prevention advice to pregnant women. Today, two dozen health clinics give mothers-to-be H.I.V. counseling, tests and medicine to protect their newborns from catching the virus.

Clinic workers persuade four in five women to be tested, and one in six tests comes back positive. Last year alone, the clinics identified 5,018 women who were poised to pass H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, to their babies.

Beira might be regarded as a beachhead in Africa's effort to halt the spread of AIDS, but for one hitch: more than half of those women never returned to the clinics for medicine to limit the risk of transmitting H.I.V. to their children.

"After the test, the problems start," said Alberto Baptista, the provincial health director. "We lose a lot of women."

There is a bright side to sub-Saharan Africa's war on AIDS: hundreds of thousands of infected people once doomed to die are now receiving life-saving treatment. Fully 28 percent of those who need drug treatment get it, compared with just 2 percent in 2003.

But Beira represents the less noticed, stubborn umbra — the pandemic's continued spread. For each sub-Saharan African who was placed on anti-AIDS drugs last year, experts say, five more were newly infected. The region's rate of new infections has not budged since the late 1990s, experts say.

If current trends persist, sub-Saharan Africa, already reeling under the burden of nearly 25 million infected people and in the midst of a population boom, will face 36 million additional new infections by 2015, according to a report to be released this June by the Global H.I.V. Prevention Working Group....

[anne]

Forgive me, but my name did not take for the above comment.

Much of the AIDS treatment at Beira can be attributed to Bill Gates and Bill Clinton who has been brilliant at drug price negotiation. How, after all, do people who can afford almost no medical treatment gain medical treatment, and who would not treat such people when in any way possible?

[paine]

like REPUGS OR DONKS
u get to choose
between
the easty chill wind
or sach's appeal

despite the rhetorical fire works
and
appearance of high table stakes
when all is said and done
there'll be both

a world run by easty ites
implies full employment
too for sack ites

in fact its a both kinda world
we live in
with the sad sackers missionary
pooper scoopers trailing behind
the heroic searchers of easty
as they freely shit on "the natives"

sorry paine
nope ....
too simple
we must be "more nuanced"

nuanced we're always told
by the slightly comfortable
to look for those nuances.... eh ??

nuance ?
the small stone
ready to screw up the meme works

nuance
that's liberalese for
a thought discovery
that allows
no hard and fast conclusions
no conclusions
that might lead to a higher intensity of action
for fear of excess and unintended negative consequences

vide the first new deal
we needed a mulligan on that one eh ??

might i suggest
from out here on the fringes

keep following
that prufrock advice and ...
up shot
more status quo

and don't we all have our list
of just who benefits from that ..... right??

[NLS]

Nice disgustingly terrible article! Blame it on the celebrities! Everything is super! They've got cell-phone growth! Everything is fine!

Wikipidia told me that Africa's population as of 2005 was 900,000,000 folks. And Easterly told me that each of the "Four Horsemen(but he lists five)" only account for 1/2 of 1% (or less) of the population of Africa. So, at most, 22,500,000 people are starving their asses off, getting killed in wars, serving as child soldiers, has the HIV, or is a refugee, PER YEAR!

I guess everybody else is living a wonderfully peaceful life basking on their sun-scorched lawn sipping lemonade, talking on their cellphones.

Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines but I think Easterly was trying to say was "I'm so jealous of celebrities. Look at em. My fame is nothing. Nobody knows who I am. Je suis seul. (le petit prince)"

[James Killus]

Table 1 - Chronic undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa all ages (Population with energy intake (kcal/caput/day) on average below 1.54 times the basal metabolic rate (BMR) over one year. The estimates are averages for sub-Saharan Africa.)

Percent affected
1969-1971; 1990-1992;
38; 43
Number (millions)
103; 215
Source: UNFAO, 1996b.

I saw an interview in which Brad Pitt made the point that the sort of hyper-celebrity that he possesses is not fun, yet cannot be avoided once it occurs. The spotlight has found a target and will not relent. Therefore, why not try to use that spotlight to illuminate those who might actually benefit from it? And let those who huff and puff and say "We pay you to entertain!" withdraw their gaze and switch off the paparazzi. Throw the celebrities in that briarpatch--if you can.

Which puts Easterly in perspective, actually. His focus is on the celebrity of Bono, Pitt, et al., and the "mistakes" that they make. So he sips his Rwandan coffee, smugly feeling that He Has Done His Part. After all, he has given money to Africa, or at least someone who owns part of it. Who cares about the Africans who must use their land to grow food and not coffee? Malnourishment is not starvation, after all. Besides, he feels the Invisible Hand upon his shoulder, or perhaps it is patting him on the back.

[anne]

December 2001 -

663,815,000 total population of sub-Saharan Africa.
291,310,000 population of adults 15 to 49.

28,500,000 sub-Saharan Africans HIV/AIDS positive.
26,000,000 adults 15 to 49. 9.0% adult rate.
15,000,000 women 15 to 49. 57.7% of infected.
2,600,000 children 0 to 14.

22,000,000 - 35,000,000 range of sub-Saharan Africans
HIV/AIDS positive.

6.41 - 11.39% range of women 15 to 24 infected.
3.13 - 5.56% range of men 15 to 24 infected.

19,400,000 deaths estimated for sub-Saharan Africa's
adults and children of diseases caused by AIDS from
beginning of epidemic to end 2001.

2,200,000 deaths of Africans from diseases caused by
AIDS in 2001.
500,000 deaths of children.

1,300,000 - 2,300,000 range of deaths for adults.
380,000 - 650,000 range of deaths for children.

3,400,000 Africans newly infected in 2001.
700,000 children newly infected.

11,000,000 orphans cumulatively at end 2001. An orphan
is described as a child who by 15 has had a mother or
both parents die of diseases caused by AIDS. Mothers
generally are the leading care takers of Africa's
children.

44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
37 countries studied.

20% or more adults infected in 7 African countries.
11% or more infected in 12 countries.
8% or more infected in 15 countries.
5% or more infected in 24 countries.

[Survey development and estimates, drawn from UNAIDS.]

[anne]

18,644,000 total population of Mozambique.
8,511,000 population of adults 15 to 49.

1,000,000 adults HIV/AIDS positive.
13.0% adult rate of infection.
63.0% of infected adults are women 15 to 49.
10.56 - 18.78% range of women 15 to 24 infected.
80,000 children 0 to 14.

60,000 AIDS deaths in 2001.
420,000 AIDS orphans cumulatively to 2002.

[UNAIDS based data development.]

[anne]

Curiously, I have never come up with a convincing sense of what the AIDS epidemic means economically in sub-Saharan Africa. I just do not know, I do not find others at all convincing on the matter. Jeffrey Sachs has reasonale estimates for the economic growth effects of malaria, but not AIDS.

[evagrius]

Who has any idea how difficult a time Kenya has had gaining a limited access to European flower markets?

Kenya: Flower Exports Flourish Despite Odds

The East African (Nairobi)

1 May 2007

http://allafrica.com/stories/200705010301.html

Interesting bit in the article regarding the "carbon footprint".

It's a bit disconcerting, to say the least, to have criticisms about carbon emissions.

[anne]

http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200705010301.html

May 1, 2007

Flower Exports Flourish Despite Odds
By Catherine Riungu

Nairobi

Kenya's horticultural exports have weathered a storm over carbon pollution and criticisms from human rights groups in Europe to increase volumes. Export earnings and market domination in the first quarter of 2007 are on the rise.

Latest figures released by the Kenya Flower Council show that the country's flower exports now control 32 per cent of the European Union market, consolidating the lead Kenya achieved in 2000 after edging out Israel and Columbia. This is a point above last year's 31 per cent, which the country attained after climbing from 25 per cent in 2003.

Although Britain's giant retailers, Tesco and Marks and Spencer, have rejected pleas to delay putting aeroplane symbols on imported products as indication of food miles to discourage consumers from purchasing goods whose transit to Europe pollute the environment, buyers seem not to have noticed.

According to a report of a meeting between Kenya's horticultural industry and representatives of the supermarkets, produce from Kenya fetched some Ksh68 million ($972,000) during the Easter weekend alone, signifying continued preference for Kenyan products.

The development has opened a new battle front with environmental and human rights activists accusing the retailers of being more interested in profits than environmental issues.

A Non-Governmental Organisation calling itself War on Want is asking consumers to boycott products from developing countries, particularly Kenya and Columbia where it says workers in flower farms are being exploited through underpayment and exposure to poisonous agrochemicals. The NGO also wants supermarkets to stop stocking products from the two countries.

The giant retailers have responded to growing concerns about climate change in the UK by placing the aeroplane stickers on air-freighted products. Tesco has announced plans to take this a step further by showing the total amount of carbon embedded in each product.

Kenya's High Commissioner in London Joseph Muchemi has criticised the continued labelling, which he says may lead to a boycott of such products. But according to Tesco, "our customers love Kenyan produce. There has been no reduction of sales but instead they seem to have gone up."

The supermarket assured a delegation of officials from the Horticultural Crops Development Authority, the Kenya Flower Council and the Export Promotion Council that the supermarkets have no intention of reducing imports from Kenya.

The country supplies 90 per cent of all cut roses, and cut spread carnations sold by the two retailers. Marks and Spencer, the second largest store after Tesco, sources 100 per cent of its green beans and 75 per cent of runner beans from Kenya.

This has shifted debate to whether UK retailers should put a plane symbol on imported produce from developing countries to indicate how many miles a product has travelled, to how effective the campaign is....

[anne]

Thanks to Evagrius for showing us a little of what natural product trade difficulties and hopeful progress can be about.

[anne]

Good grief, I can barely step out of the house without being tisked at by my little catbirds. They have taken to jumping up and down on the front garden steps when I walk along. Will I even be able to clip a hedge again?

[anne]

The male always but always winds up with a worm draped over his beak, while the female likes insects. The nest is completely invisible in the leaves, so I will only have pictures of Mom and Dad until the babies fledge.

[notsneaky]

a decent rock singer

Now you've really gone too far.

[tp]

"There is no helpful institution, no market network, no trade relation, no international investment, no development effort that has not been welcomed by those who care for Africans."

Let's be reasonable. This is patently false, and if you can't agree, you're probably not the sort of person we need involved in the search for global prosperity. If you can agree, tone down the rhetoric, or what sets you apart from Easterly?

Regardless, you ask a question later that is and will continue to be of serious interest to development economists for decades to come - how exactly do epidemics like AIDS/malaria effect the African growth engine? A wide body of recent research argues for a net beneficial effect, which at first glance seems insensitive and counterintuitive, but makes perfect sense in the abstract. Greg Clark's book A Farewell to Alms (not sure it's hit bookstores just yet) is a fascinating read, and presents far more empirical evidence in a nicely synthesized way than I'll ever be capable of doing. Needless to say, his work stands on the shoulders of other well-respected economists.

Which isn't to say that any of these guys are 'right', it's just to say that all of this is a lot more complicated than any of us would like to think. And further, that its far, FAR too complicated to be solved with superficial rhetoric, or perhaps more dangerously, passion and emotion. Assuming that guys like Easterly ACTUALLY care about these issues, and aren't just hiding behind their own rhetoric and doing nothing, I'm far more inclined to listen to them than say someone like Al Gore.

In the end, its Bhanerjee, Duflo, and even Rodrik that we should be listening to. Sensationalism is a great impetus for change, but it'll never be the means. My biggest fear when I listen to people like you? That it becomes the end.

[anne]

"There is no helpful institution, no market network, no trade relation, no international investment, no development effort that has not been welcomed by those who care for Africans."

Precisely; but there are those would-be bullying fools who know what I should be thinking. Am I being reasonable enough? Am I bullied enough?

[anne]

"There is no helpful institution, no market network, no trade relation, no international investment, no development effort that has not been welcomed by those who care for Africans."

There are times when your own words are just right, even if they are your own words and not standing on the shoulders of, well, you know. All that dangerous passion and emotion, I suppose. Duh.

[tp]

it'd be far easier to gain something from discussion with you if you made your thoughts a tad more accessible to those who, you know, aren't having your thoughts

[anne]

Léopold Senghor

I must hide in the intimate depths of my veins
The Ancestor storm-dark skinned, shot with lightning and thunder
And my guardian animal, I must hide him
Lest I smash through the boom of scandal.
He is my faithful blood and demands fidelity
Protecting my naked pride against
Myself and all the insolence of lucky races.

[anne]

Then, I suggest not being a would-be bully. As for clarity, I find William Easterly thoroughly destructive of attempts to dicover and introduce effective assistance programs in Africa. From the title of the infamous book on, there is an attempt to belittle work of profound importance and people African and otherwise of profound decent dedication.

[tp]

You know, I'm a huge intentions guy. And thus things like a 'profound, decent dedication' are incredibly important to me in terms of interactions. At the same time, 'profound decent dedication', hasn't cut it thus far when it comes to development. And while it may cut it eventually, at this point I believe that we can find other, faster, more efficient ways to get us there, that may or may not require the quality.

In any case, I'm still inclined to disagree with the quotation. And I think most studying these situations today would be inclined to disagree too. Look at Sachs in Sauri. He's implemented monocrop, synthetic agriculture, in spite of various pleas from ecologists, geneticists, farmers and investors alike for more sustainability. The cost of implementing more sustainable schemes at the outset? Close to zero, given the diversity of crops and centuries-old practices available in Kenya before we got there. And I guess I think that Sachs really does care. But if he does, and he's rejecting 'helpful institution(s)...development effort(s)', I fail to see how the sentiment holds water. And that's just one prolific example. Want more?

Regardless, I think this brings me back to the real issue at hand, which is that I don't believe anything Easterly says or does inherently negatively effects our search for greater understanding. If we get some wounded egos (and net negative effects on the motivations of those with 'profound, decent dedication'), it's certainly a problem, but probably not one Easterly needs to be thinking about solving. That emotion and 'profound, decent dedication' have done plenty of good in this arena is debateable, but I'll concede the issue at this point. I remain firmly convinced in my current research that those qualities will do little to move us forward from here however, and should necessarily be kept entirely separate from the nitty gritty of the tasks at hand. If you're not capable of dealing with these things in the abstract at this point, you're far more harmful than helpful to the search. And that's our fundamental difference, I believe. Show me how we come together at this point.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/international/africa/04village.html

April 4, 2005

Kenyan Village Serves as Test Case in Fight on Poverty
By MARC LACEY

SAURI, Kenya - Patricia Awino Odera had her handmade hoe cocked over her head the other day, her face scrunched up into a scowl, sweat pouring from her brow, her labors the very image of futility. Then hope descended onto her cornfield.

"No, no, no, no!" cried Herine Okoth, an agricultural extension worker, as she marched over the freshly tilled land. "Stop!"

Ms. Odera, a frail-looking 54-year-old grandmother who had never had a day of schooling in her life, had thrown fertilizer in with her corn seeds and spaced her holes too closely, both of which would reduce the harvest she and her children would get.

"We agreed that you'd put the fertilizer in first, separate from the maize," Ms. Okoth said. "It's not so difficult. It's like this. Fertilizer first. Then cover it with some dirt. Then throw in the seeds. Then cover those. It's not hard at all."

This settlement in western Kenya, where Ms. Odera lives, has become a giant test tube, and Ms. Okoth's instruction is one part of that experiment. Eventually there will be 10 such test villages, scattered across the world's poorest continent.

Led by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, the project aims to fight poverty in all its aspects - from health and education to agriculture and energy in one focused area - to prove that conditions for millions of people like Ms. Odera and her neighbors can be improved in just five years.

It is an important and uncertain gambit. If it fails, initiatives like that pushed recently by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to greatly increase foreign aid to Africa may seem foolhardy. If a single village cannot be turned around with focused attention, how can whole communities and even countries be revitalized?

The project led by Mr. Sachs grew out of the Millennium Development Goals, benchmarks created by the United Nations in 2000 aimed at prodding the world into reducing hunger and sickness by half, increasing school enrollment, and generally improving the lives of the poorest of the poor. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, appointed Mr. Sachs to oversee its poverty reduction efforts.

But setting the millennium goals - and putting in place a deadline of 2015 for seeing them through - has so far not meant much to people like Ms. Odera. Today the projections for reaching those goals keep slipping further and further into the future. It is now estimated that many of those goals will be reached decades late.

By then, Ms. Odera will be long gone. Her children may be dead, too. Her grandchildren, many of whom have already lost their parents to disease, will be well along in poverty-stricken lives of their own.

That looming failure is what spurred Mr. Sachs and his colleagues to select a particular village with dismal social indicators - this one - where they would apply a more focused antipoverty strategy to prove that, with enough attention, the goals could be reached quicker than people think. Sauri's remoteness is one of the factors that has allowed poverty to get such a foothold here. It is a forgotten place in a country that has seen corruption devastate its national economy.

Ms. Okoth, who interrupted Ms. Odera's planting, is one of dozens of experts working to make sure that this Millennium Village Project does not become another pie-in-the-sky effort.

The researchers behind the program are keeping track of every penny they spend, trying to demonstrate that for a modest amount, somewhere around $110 per person, a village can be tugged out of poverty.

They have tried to measure exactly how bad Sauri was at the start of the project last fall. Every home was surveyed to get an accurate portrait of the population. Blood tests were taken among a smaller group for a nutritional analysis, because many villagers eat only once a day, and show it.

Blood will also be tested to determine how widespread the malaria parasite is, and then again later, to see whether the mosquito bed nets given to every villager help keep more people, especially children, alive.

A new health clinic has gone up in Sauri. Villagers did the labor, and the project pitched in the sacks of cement, the sheets of tin and the white and blue paint. The Kenyan government must provide the drugs, one of many contributions required of the government to make the project fly.

Before the arrival of the health clinic, villagers relied on the district hospital, which got its first government doctor recently as part of the project. It had been without one since 1994.

At the hospital, there is an ambulance up on blocks; it has not moved for five years. The villagers will receive a free truck to share, which will double as an ambulance and a way for farmers to get their produce to market.

Those gifts aside, the project is not aimed at bringing about prosperity by writing big checks. Nonetheless, the arrival of so many Westerners in a remote village inevitably brings big expectations among the locals.

"Projects come and go in this part of the world," said Patrick Mutuo, a Kenyan soil scientist who is the project director. "Some people participate in order to get a free lunch. They see the immediate benefits and not necessarily the long-term benefits. This project is not about free this and free that. The attitude of the people will ultimately determine whether it succeeds. People need to get involved and stay involved long after the experts go home."

Most of the aid in fact will come in the form of shared knowledge from some of the foremost experts in the world in subjects as varied as health, agriculture, energy and economics. Residents, project officials say, will lift themselves out of poverty.

Pedro A. Sanchez, a top soil scientist at Columbia, is advising the people of Sauri on how to revive their badly damaged fields and how to plant trees as a way of fertilizing the soil for free. Officials estimate that villagers' dismal yields could double or triple as a result.

Not all the new food the farmers produce will remain theirs. This project is devised to create a community spirit and so, in exchange for their free fertilizer and seeds, farmers had to agree to give 10 percent of their yields to local schools. The schools will then start a feeding program that will feed children at noontime and, the advisers hope, lure more of them, especially underrepresented girls, into class.

The project also plans to bring electricity to Sauri by extending the power grid that came close to the villagers here, as part an old World Bank project, but never actually reached them.

Researchers are also working to rehabilitate water pipes that were set up years ago in yet another development project that went awry....

[anne]

http://twofortheroad.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/glimpses-of-hope/

June 14, 2007

Glimpses of Hope
By Leana Wen

Today begins with a bad story, and ends with a good one. We had heard about a settlement of recent returnees from Josh Ruxin, our gracious host in Kigali and director of Rwanda's Millennium Villages Project. Millions of Rwandans left Rwanda in the decades of instability leading up to the genocide, and many settled permanently in surrounding countries. Some have since been forcibly sent back, including this group of about 2,000 people from Tanzania. The group we encountered had all been settled in Tanzania since the 1980s, and had established sustainable farms and small businesses. Many were even born in Tanzania and had never set foot in Rwanda. Last November, they were stripped of their belongings and chased out of their villages, and told to return to Rwanda. Rwanda has a right of return policy reminiscent of Israel. ("Rwanda will never turn away our own people," a Rwandan woman told us, "We are one people, and no matter where they come from, they belong with us.") The refugees, or more correctly, the returnees, were welcome into the country.

However, the welcome party did not last. The returnees were told to settle into an uninhabited and virtually uninhabitable area in Bugesera district at on the Rwanda-Burundi border. Bugesera is widely regarded as the epicenter of the genocide, with 60% of its populous murdered. In this area, there is no water, no stable food supply, no electricity, and no public services. Shelter is mainly in the form of tiny huts with UNHCR plastic sheeting as a roof. A military truck comes by once in a while to bring a large sac of water that is placed on the ground in the middle of the settlement. As soon as they find out about the truck's arrival, women and children flood come to the large sac to fill up their bottles before trekking back to their homes. A three-month food ration had been provided to the returnees, and now seven months later, the entire community is living off of maize and beans. The majority of children are malnourished, and there is no expectation of productive crops on this difficult-to-cultivate land. "We are waiting for the famine," a local leader said. "Our people are slowly starving to death."

The closest community health center staffed by doctors is 10 km away, and a trip to the district hospital to see a doctor takes an hour and costs 600F ($1.20) one way. This might not seem like much, but for a group that survives by trade and has virtually no hard currency, it prevents villagers from seeking care. One woman we met, 36-year old Speciose, was late into her third trimester of pregnancy when she developed labor pains and stopped feeling the baby moving. She had planned to stay at home for her birth because of the cost involved in transport. Still, she listened to the nurses who staffed a local "health post" that her baby might be in jeopardy, and she went immediately to Nyamata District Hospital. Upon arrival, her baby was found to be barely alive, and she ended up giving birth to a stillborn child. Her husband had to borrow 2000F ($4) from a local shop owner to pay for their transport back. They are now saving up her to have a tubal ligation surgery, perhaps understandable for a woman who has been pregnant 12 times and has only three living children.

There is often a good story to be found, even in this larger, bad tale. The Millennium Village Project had helped distribute mosquito nets to the village, and every child we spoke with slept under a mosquito net the night before. This is quite astonishing given the condition of the huts. We encountered a group of children near the water sac on their way to school, and every child said that they regularly attend school. Healthcare itself is free for inhabitants, and pills for common ailments are readily available and dispensed at the health post. Despite harsh farming conditions, the returnees are starting small plots to produce maize, sorghum, beans, and other crops. Some have started small shops, and there are goats and chickens running around the village. When asked about how they felt to be forced to leave Tanzania, an elderly woman born in Rwanda remarked, "Life is very hard here. But Rwanda is our home, and home is always the best place." Perhaps at the end, it is human resiliency and strength of spirit that gives people the will to move on.

An even better story is the success to date of the Millennium Village site in Rwanda. Millennium Villages are model villages in rural Africa intended to illustrate how the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved. The village in Rwanda is located in Mayange and Nyamata, also in the Bugesera district and just 40 minutes away from the settlement of Tanzanian returnees. Its similarity to the area of recent returnees is striking. The vast majority of the area's 50,000 people are returnees who came back after the genocide. The area was extremely poor and disconnected from public services. The Millennium Village's project began just 1.5 years ago has since expanded to a population of 50,000 returnees, and its accomplishments to date include increasing consultations in the health center from 10 a day to over 100 and implementing a microfinance system for farmers that has resulted in increasing in yield productivity from 300 kgs per hectare to 3,700 kgs per hectare. The accomplishments extend beyond numbers. The leader of the district remarked that just two years ago, all she felt like doing when she saw her villagers was to cry. "Everybody was starving, everybody was weak, and nobody had hope. Now, kids are running around and expecting a future." There are still many questions regarding scale-up—whether this project is replicable remains to be seen—but at least in the meantime the success of Mayange/Nyamata offers a glimmer of hope for the recent Tanzanian returnees, and indeed for the rest of Rwanda....

[tp]

These are great stories. And we've seen them before. But they are stories (w/ the necessary marketing applied), and they don't change the more fundamental problems we need to be tackling. Have you read Sam Rich's piece on Sauri? Paul Collier? Stiglitz? The solution is a synthesis of analyses, not a re-posting of popular press articles. Here's Rich (I believe this piece was posted here not long ago)-
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=231264

An excerpt, which I'm loathe to post here, but will do for the sake of convenience:

“There are so many stories to be told about Sauri,” Bunde said. “The problem is which ones to tell.”

When I asked him how Sauri had changed in the last two years, he leaned back, laughing, and said, “The girls have better haircuts now.” There are more hair salons, he said, warming to his subject, and the girls are all getting braids. For the first time, people are selling French fries on the side of the highway. People are more generous, too. “A funeral is a big event in the village, with lots of food. In the old days we would get rice and beans, but now we get meat and soup too.” There was so much excitement when the project started that mothers named their babies “Millennium.”

I mentioned the elections that took place at the start of the project. Committees of about a dozen villagers for health, education, agriculture, and other key sectors were elected on the advice of project coordinators. The committees’ role is to decide how the Millennium Villages money should be spent, and to empower Sauri as a result. But Bunde didn’t seem to have confidence in the elections or the ­committees.

“Few people took part, and they didn’t know who to vote for. . . . What would Sachs say if he knew about the witchcraft that took place before the elections? The Kalanya were scaring people to vote for them. In Kenya, we have the Kikuyu ­factor—­the Kikuyu are the dominant tribe. Here in Sauri, we have the Kalanya factor. The Kalanya are the dominant clan. Kalanya elders head all the committees, and yet many of them are uneducated and illiterate. And yet here,” he said, gesturing at the young journalists around him, “we have some clever, educated people.”

Bunde argued that “clanism” was fostering nepotism and other forms of favoritism. As an example, he cited one of the buildings at the new clinic, which was so badly constructed that it has been condemned. And he hinted at other forms of corruption. There were rumors that the clinic was charging patients from outside Sauri. Civil servants and police in neighboring villages were allegedly using their influence to get their children into Sauri’s ­school.

There was fighting both within and between committees, he continued, and this had delayed development in the village. In the early days of the project, he said, Sachs had ceremoniously handed over the keys to a truck that was to be used to take goods to market and as an ambulance. But because of power struggles over it, the truck hadn’t been used or seen in the village ­since.

Bunde said that there wasn’t enough education of Sauri’s people at the start of the project. After receiving free fertilizer and mosquito nets, some villagers sold them to people in the surrounding communities the very next day and then conspired to get more fertilizer and ­nets.

When I asked if he planned to put any of these stories in The Sauri Times, he shook his head. “No, we don’t want the donors to pull out!”

And another?
"The Millennium Villages Project, he said, “has made all the classic development mistakes. . . . If you give away tons of fertilizer, it’s predictable that much of it will end up on the open market. If you put millions [of dollars] in a small place, you’re going to have problems.”

Encouraging farmers to grow maize is the wrong strategy, he argued. “It just means you move from being food insecure for 11 months of the year to food insecure for just nine months of the year.”

Growing only maize year after year depletes the soil. It’s also a ­high-­risk strategy, he said, as the entire crop may fail. The price of maize has dropped dramatically around Sauri, he noted, as the village’s crop yields have improved and supply has increased. Maize is a subsistence crop that has fed Sauri families for years, but, he contended, its price is too low to make it a cash crop. He is trying to push the project to spend more time touting vegetable crops that fetch good prices at market, such as onions, tomatoes, and ­cabbages.

In this official’s opinion, the project could be more effective if it pushed for some macroeconomic changes, rather than concentrate all its efforts in the village. For instance, farmers in Kenya don’t buy fertilizer because it costs three times as much as it does in Europe, he said. If the Kenyan government eased taxes and import duties on fertilizer, “a lot more farmers would buy it.”
"

[anne]

TP

Thank you so much, for your concern as well. I had read the article by Sam Rich and have no argument with it or you on a program that is at once experimental and hopeful and problematic and must be flexibly learned from. Why should we not be pleased? Good grief, a 5 year $500,000 experimental investment for 5,000 people.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=231264

Spring, 2007

Africa's Village of Dreams
by Sam Rich

[tp]

Right, I suppose that's the thing. At the risk of sounding far too glass-is-half-empty for my own liking, I guess I think that even with $500,000 (which I read as being negligible per capita from our own perspective in your post, forgive me if I've missed some nuance), we can be doing far better, and we even know how to be doing far better.

And yes, the notion of the experiment is at the heart of the marketeer's approach- but if we can (costlessly) improve the experiment so that we're confronting new problems, not just ones that we already know how to solve, and can do that at the outset, doesn't it make sense to do it? And if Sachs isn't doing it (and he's not), shouldn't people be trying to change that? And if we should be trying to change it, shouldn't we be talking about it?

Easterly's feud is probably self-serving. That's fine and I won't dispute it. But it doesn't change the fact that criticism (creative destruction?) will bring us forward. And in terms of market-based approaches, its probably a 'first-best' institution. And I'm still having a hard time seeing it as a net negative. How else would you propose we improve these experiments?

[anne]

Well, members of a Jewish Temple nearby are simply providing a market for the products from a Kenyan traditionally Jewish (who knew?) village. A few needed items in return such as solar cookers and flashlights, and water purifiers. The larger Jewish community is apparently providing short term specialists who wish to be teachers and there are a few scholarships.

Then again, a Kenyan woman won a Nobel peace prize recently for planting trees. I would hope the prize is providing for lots more trees. I am reading lately of the exciting but unexpected success of tree planting in Niger.

Kenya has finally removed public school fees. There is a movement for a public health care system. As I recall, I can go on. What's not to like, though nothing can be enough for now and all can be so fragile?

[anne]

31,293,000 total population of Kenya.
15,333,000 population of adults 15 to 49.

2,300,000 adults HIV/AIDS positive.
15.0% adult rate of infection.
60.9% of infected adults are women 15 to 49.
12.45 - 18.67% range of women 15 to 24 infected.
220,000 children 0 to 14.

190,000 AIDS deaths in 2001.
890,000 AIDS orphans cumulatively to 2002.

[UNAIDS data analysis.]

[anne]

Notice by the way the estimates for AIDS incidence I development from UNAIDS data several years ago. What the heck does an estimated 15% rate of infection for adults 15 to 49, the prime working ages, mean?

Notice my estimate for adult women infected. I would call AIDS a women's disease for attention to the incidence. Who the heck is raising the children? Grandparents. But, what does this mean?

A cumulative 890,000 orphans? Huh?

[anne]

The Rabbi was talking to me of the Kenyan Jewish village, and I asked about the age distribution, which they are going to try to find, because age distribution tells us who is raising the children. Since the Kenyan village Jews have been isolated, they may have fared relatively better even though they are discriminated against.

Notice the last crazy sentence I wrote.

[anne]

AIDS by the way is a different sort of disease, that strikes workers in prime age or students about to become workers. Parents. Notice that cumulative number of orphans by 2002. Grandparents.

So weigh against free schooling and trees and possibly a health service as infrastructure, and experimental villages from, say, rock star to Jewish financed. Trade, sure. Peace, absolutely essential.

[tp]

I guess I'd repeat the question and ask for a non-evasive answer? (Agreed that peace is essential by the way, maybe even to the extent that someone like Collier suggests)

None of these latest anecdotes make cases for the rock stars, as far as I'm concerned- they're things that could be occurring on top of our own necessary experimentation. Which prompts the question again I suppose - how do we improve the experiments without criticism? Unless, I guess, you're arguing that the Jewish Temple is just a positive externality of say the Sachs experiment as is? I'm not sure that's tenable- something tells me you could make tons of changes to the Sachs plan and still get the Jewish Temple involved. No?

[anne]

Ah, I may not have properly understood. I think criticism of development specifics is always in order, always important. Criticize away. The ability of the Chinese leadership to learn of criticism and respond has determined development success so far and only this may insure a continuation. The World Bank as the Jewish Temple as the ANC in South Africa must be as responsive to program criticism as can be. And, I could complain up a storm about the ANC as others have. Nonetheless, I am hopeful about South Africa after so few years since Apartheid.

[tasafaye]

jeffry sachs and eastely are both share some ground of their analysis even they have similar sense of seing things however, they differed their voice to animate the subject.

but,to face the reality, the whole system we trying to digg is about to crample and soon be out of date.