Another Ideological Future Think of International Development

The expression, “Armies always re-fight the last war,” might also apply to development agencies.  Yesterday’s problems are engaged with outdated design.  Next development policy must have both present and future value.  What does that mean and what trends and policy emerge a decade from now?  

Trends

1.      Fewer poor countries. The old idea of a binary world of a few rich countries surrounded by lots of poor ones (G8 vs. G77) is no longer true.  This includes not just fast-growing India and China, but countries including many in Africa.  International loan programs for many poor countries will decrease in 10-15 years because current clients will be too rich to qualify.

2.      New donors break traditional aid cartels. The old donor-recipient model dominated by the 34 governments in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is passé. New donors (China, India, the Gulf, etc.) have different rules and different aid models linked to commerce.  Private philanthropists rival mid-size government donors in both size and influence.  The Gates Foundation distributes about $3 billion per year, which would make it on par with the aid programs of Italy or Australia.  Private sources of capital—hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and other investment vehicles—are also sources of capital for poor regions.  Private capital investment to Africa was $55 billion last year, almost double the level of traditional aid.

3.      The end of the “doubling aid” era.  The “Gleneagles (Scotland) call for doubling aid” to Africa to $85/person by 2010 as part of the G8 Millennium Development Goals fell short, British and Australian pledges aside.  Prospects for major public sector aid dollars expansion are probably low.  Fiscal exigency across Europe and North America will likely hasten the relevance of private and non-OECD projects.

Policy

1.      More demand for value.  This is the early stage of results-based aid. Output-based aid is here while outcome-based aid (AKA Cash on Delivery) is being piloted.  Cash transfer accounting models are being applied because these are more efficient and as a reaction to old aid models that aren’t.

2.      Global public goods supplant country programs. With only a few dozen really poor countries left, and many poor people in middle-income countries, investment solutions will have impact beyond a single country.  This means more emphasis on vaccines, agricultural technology, clean energy, regional infrastructure and other factors that cannot be done by designing narrow country programs in Mali or Haiti.  Of course, political aid and bribes to allies for strategic reasons will stay in a country silo.

3.      Development shift toward non-aid tools. The UK debate about its aid program in India is a sign of the future.  The British public is asking why its scarce aid dollars might go to a country with $300 billion in reserves and a space program.  More to the point, India doesn’t want British aid.  It wants business, technology and visas.  This is increasingly true for Indonesia, Nigeria, Mongolia, Vietnam, etc., etc., etc.  For the OECD countries, development policy and tools have to be redesigned to encourage trade, investment, migration and other global interactions that are beyond the purview of aid agencies.

Conclusion

The new world isn’t here yet.  Western governments do not embrace these trends.  They are not set up to deal with change.  USAID and IDA were established years ago for a different world.  They show their age.  

Budget systems do not handle results-based aid models well.  Agencies maintain country-based allocations and strategies.  Credible/efficient ways to fund global public goods are illusive.  Even modestly articulating the concepts are more buzzwords than reality.  Finally, private sector tools are underutilized and even under threat (read the Overseas Private Investment Corporation—OPIC—in the USA).

This brief essay helps outline why the USA struggles with development reorganization and mistakenly embraces a flawed whole-of-government model.  Creating modern institutions with the capability to respond to new world demands may sound like moving chairs on the Titanic, but it will be required for competitive resources budgeted for global development.  Otherwise, function will continue to follow form while development agencies and their ideas fight the last war on poverty again rather than the upcoming one.

Weird How Thinking About Dying Can Give Direction for Life

Woke up this morning and just started writing after reading this quote.  Two cups of coffee later it ended in this...

“Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” ― Steve Jobs

True confession: As a young person, I was totally freaked out by anything related to death or dying. It just wasn't something that was discussed in my family.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized nobody talked about it!  In our modern Western society we are so obsessed with youth and beauty and spending and ambition that we ignore our inevitable demise as much as humanly possible. All the avoidance around the topic of death and dying reflects our denial of it.

Then people I loved started to die. And my perspective on life changed dramatically. Steve Jobs said this while he was trying to understand death during his own prolonged illness.  He also said, “What difference does it make if you are the richest person in the cemetery?”  It reminded of me of what I am learning from others who talked about their regrets in life while they were dying.

They said:

    I wish I hadn’t worked so hard;

    I wish I'd loved and expressed my feelings more;

    I wish I'd stayed in touch with my family and friends;

    I wish that I had let myself be happier;

    I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

To this, I add;

    I wish I had the wisdom and understanding to have learned all this 45 years ago.

Sent with love and thoughts of you before I am dying…

Charles

P.S. Someone read this and added: When you let the wrong people in your house, stuff comes up missing like Joy, Peace, Love, Hope and Faith.

Juneteenth Isn’t Just for Blacks…

President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.  Enslaved Africans in Texas did not get the memo for another two years.  But on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that these enslaved Africans were now "free."  It would evolve into the annual festival known as "Juneteenth."

History tells us that things were not so simple.  Africans in America and their descendants continued to be controlled in various ways, whether through the system of laws that would become known as Jim Crow, or domestic terrorism of the Klan and its enablers.  A particularly heinous form of state-sanctioned control was the criminalization of blackness under the guise of "public safety."

Rationalizing continued slavery by using cases of criminal acts created a legacy that haunts Americans to this day.  Douglas A. Blackmon (in Slavery by Another Name) chronicles how slavery continues for those convicted of "crime."  These crimes included profound threats to public safety as speaking too loudly in the presence of a white woman--for which offenders could find themselves sentenced to work in labor camps or chain gangs for decades.

Just as slavery, by whatever name, eventually gave way to Jim Crow, Jim Crow was replaced with the "New Jim Crow."  It is the latest version of a caste system that keeps black Americans (now expanded to include anyone that chooses differing behavior or opinions than the status quo) as new targets threatening our security, safety and “way of life.”  This system emerged in the decades following the civil rights revolution, driven largely by the War on Drugs and Homeland Security.

The results remain the same: convicted of crime, “new threats” are locked up and locked out of full citizenship for life. 

I wonder what those newly emancipated Africans in 1865 Texas would think if they could travel through time to 2013? What would they make of a post-Emancipation America where there are more blacks in prison, jail, probation, or parole than were enslaved in 1850? 

Or that more black (or any color) men are legally denied the right to vote because of felon disenfranchisement laws, than in 1870, when the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote on the basis of race? 

How would they make sense of the fact that it all still exists 50 years after their descendants faced bullets, bombs and beatings to secure civil rights in the 1960s that remained unprotected after the Civil War?

Indeed there is a long, consistent history of abuse to blacks in America...and Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans…many Hispanics and Muslims would argue similarly.  Then there are the poor.

This is written on the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth as a reminder about the long, tenuous and CONTINUING struggle for racial equality, an all-inclusive equality that was assumed to be an inherent factor of "emancipation."  Or maybe it is incurring subtle commentary and comparison on the value of life.