Methods of Development | Learning Your ABCs… and D, for Development

Source: Aude Guerrucci, Poverty Action Lab

The University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation hosted an event the first week of March titled “Ending Poverty through Education: New Evidence from India and Africa.” The half-day conference included presentations from Karthik Muralidharan, Leigh Linden, Michael Kremer, and Annie Duflo. The comparison between Dr. Muralidharan’s presentation on “Achieving Universal Quality Education in India: Challenges and Opportunities” and Dr. Kremer’s “Girls’ Scholarships in Kenya = Education as Liberation?” is particularly interesting when debating which mechanisms serve best to incentivize and produce successful education programs.

Dr. Muralidharan’s papers reflect several randomized control trials in India that test incentives within the education system.  His research shows that enrollment has increased to over 95% in primary schools, but that the students are still unable to read and are not learning. He noted that the difference in objectives is between quality and quantity; for example, more money has been spent on education, but has not been used to target the issue of teacher absenteeism.

Methods of Development | Color-Blocking the Development Process Part 2

Race is an important, and often neglected, part of the development process. It usually makes things just a bit more complicated when it comes to distribution of resources and access to education and employment. South Africa is an emerging BRICS country whose race issue has been hard to ignore because of the geographical implications of the apartheid system. However, South Africa’s efforts to counteract the effects of apartheid have been both successful and unsuccessful, creating opportunity but also allowing inequalities to persist.

Nelson Mandela and François Pienaar at the 1995 Rugby World Cup | Source: Getty and The Telegraph

South Africa’s racial inequalities took center stage in the early 1990s with the end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s call for South Africa to become a “rainbow nation.” This objective was portrayed in 1995 by the rugby team and Rugby World Cup, also depicted in the film Invictus. The apartheid system physically separated people of different racial origins into distinct geographical areas that limited interracial mixing. South Africa chose four categories to define its people under the apartheid system: white, Indian/Asian, coloured, and black.

Unfortunately racism persists in South Africa and leads to tumultuous political situations and violent acts. A recent example is the vocal outcry that erupted from a poster issued by South Africa’s Democratic Alliance that illustrates an interracial couple with the caption “In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice.” Black South Africans continue to suffer disproportionately as compared with whites. As a result, affirmative action plans were implemented; helping black South Africans gain jobs and entrance to universities.

Methods of Development | Color-Blocking the Development Process Part 1

Quotas in universities for non-white students are becoming the trend in Brazil | Source: BBC News

Two recent articles in The Economist have covered the issue of race in Brazil and South Africa. That’s two of the BRICS countries possibly hindered by something that their governments have taken very little action to remedy thus far. But how to address historical asymmetries in a political arena?

In emerging economies like South Africa and Brazil, where race was largely ignored until a few decades ago, people are still trying to decide if there’s even an issue at all.

In Brazil, differences in skin tone merit a rather large spectrum. Race in Brazil is so nuanced, for example, that one census allowed people to identify their own race—which resulted in 134 categories. Unfortunately, this spectrum has also contributed to the notion that race issues do not exist because race cannot be as concretely identified as in other countries where racial mixing was less frequent.

Methods of Development | Mongolia as a Cop(per)-Out

Mongolia has long been forgotten amidst the development processes of the other Asian tigers. Its three million people still rely on ancient herding practices for livelihood and have only recently begun to urbanize and industrialize. While Mongolia is perfectly poised for rapid “wolf-like” economic growth due to a new mining project that will spur the economy, it is also at risk for significant obstacles that may prevent such outrageously high projected growth rates.

Map of Mongolian Mines | Source: The Economist

The key to Mongolia’s growth is the natural resources obtained via mining, with two key locations in Tavan Tolgoi and Oyu Tolgoi, both in the Gobi desert. Abundant in yet-un-mined natural resources, Mongolia will be able to export significant amounts of coal and copper to nearby Russia and China. This will be instrumental in keeping pace with projected growth rates of 14 to 22.9% per year.

However, with such neighbors, Mongolia is wary of an economic takeover. China already has vested interest in the success of the project—supplying workers, electricity, and assisting with the transportation of supplies to begin structural development. As such, Mongolia is also looking to other neighbors as trade partners and investors. This should create a fairly diverse trade portfolio for Mongolia to build upon, assuming it has plans to target other sectors for economic growth as well.

Cutting Corruption by Raising Government Salaries?

Corruption is a common barrier to development—it deters governments and individuals from investing in certain types of aid assistance and development projects. Instead of allowing funds to flow safely and efficiently between groups, corruption adds overhead costs to projects and usually demands bribes for bypassing bureaucratic red tape. Worst of all, people suffer when their governments incessantly block aid and reap the benefits themselves. This is also why some development theorists maintain that government and institutions need to be reformed in order to actually achieve development goals.

But what if there was a simple solution for all of this? What if there was a way to ensure that the government was not corrupt, and would facilitate growth and foreign investments?

It’s Getting Hot in Here… Notes on the UNFCCC Summit

Source: Hudson CGP/People, for more on Ryan Gosling in Development go here: http://developmentryangosling.tumblr.com/

What’s hotter than Durban, South Africa (besides Ryan Gosling in Development)? That would be the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which recently concluded its annual meeting there (referred to as the COP17). The main topic of discussion was the Kyoto Protocol and how the UNFCCC can extend its regulations on carbon emissions. Currently, the Kyoto Protocol only binds industrialized countries to specific emissions levels, which are due to expire next year. Developing countries, in contrast, can voluntarily decide to reduce their own emissions. However, three main barriers continue to exist, despite the successful attempt to push through an agreement by the end of the two-week summit that will result in meetings in 2015 and 2020.

The first is that the biggest polluters (U.S., China, and India) have failed to ratify the treaty (the U.S.), or view it as a significant obstacle to poverty alleviation (China and India). The second is that the rich countries, most significantly affected by the Kyoto agreement, are calling for a more even distribution of limitations (instead of targeting rich countries for the majority of emissions cuts and allowing developing countries to continue to pollute). The final obstacle to seeing results is that the Kyoto Protocol does not dictate a legal framework that enforces the emissions limitations. As a result, the meeting in Durban sought to create a new agreement that would allow for continued funding of green initiatives, encourage countries to renew their emissions commitments, and decide upon an international governing body to mandate climate objectives.

The Philanthropic Fork in the Road

Apparently philanthropy can no longer be the epitome of altruism. Instead, it needs to yield a smart business decision, too. Philanthropy, and its many facets, was discussed recently in the Wall Street Journal’s “The Journal Report.”

In the philanthropy world, there are usually two decisions to make: which organizations (of thousands) should I donate to, and how much should I give? Well, a third question has been added to that decision-making process, one that might not be easy to ignore. The new, big question: do I invest in an organization that runs its operations like a business and expects returns on investments, or do I invest in one that is addressing a cause I find important and worthwhile? If you’re lucky, the organization fits both criteria. However, the recent financial crises have put a kink in that idea, promoting the need for safer investment and more calculated giving strategies.

Expanding Borders: Economic Gains from Diaspora Networks

Immigration has been both praised and criticized for its effects on the development of a country. While developing countries invite the cutting-edge ideas that migrants from developed countries have to offer, some fear that unskilled laborers will take domestic jobs and drain the economy. But what if economic gains could be realized on both ends of the spectrum? Diaspora groups have the potential to stimulate development both in their countries of origin and in their countries of residence.

Chinese and Indian Diaspora Groups | Source: The Economist

An article from The Economist points out the extent of diaspora groups and the direct economic benefits reaped by people in the country of origin. In addition to remittances, markets for nostalgia goods (blogged about here), and other forms of aid, diaspora networks create good business opportunities. The article points out three ways that diaspora networks facilitate business, production of goods, and foreign direct investment:

First, they speed the flow of information across borders. Second, they foster trust. Third, and most important, diasporas create connections that help people with good ideas collaborate with each other, both within and across ethnicities.

Methods of Development | Access to Information and Technological Leapfrogging

Telephone Landlines | Source: 90ways.com

New technology and access to information have been touted as the impetus for development projects by allowing developing countries to jumpstart their economic activity. The ability to play catch-up in the development scheme is typically attributed to the backlogging of technological innovation. For example, with industries focused on compensating for already absent infrastructure, they are frequently slower to create the next wave of modern technology. As a result, most countries will copy the technology being utilized and produced elsewhere in order to keep up. This has most notably led to the staggering numbers of cell phone usage over landline connected phones in the developing world.

The spread of new technologies to developing countries typically results in more affordable equivalents that can be found in developed countries. For example, sharing ideas and information has also allowed several developing countries, such as Brazil, to create generic drug programs to combat diseases such as HIV/AIDS. However, while making drugs available worldwide would be terrific for development, companies that invest billions of dollars in research are less eager to part with their profits.

A Chile Front Sweeps Through Latin America

Since May of this year, students have consistently gathered in Santiago’s main square to protest the cost of higher education, demanding more government assistance to afford expensive private universities throughout the country.

Student Protestors in Chile | Source: AP

Chile’s history has been tumultuous, to say the least. However, a fairly stable economy and an established financial sector have developed, allowing Chile to experience remarkable growth compared to other Latin American countries.

Despite this, not everyone in Chile has been reaping the benefits of economic growth. As recently as 2006, during the presidency of Michelle Bachelet, high school students demanded “free use of public transport, lower fees for college entrance exams and a voice in government policy.” This caused quite a disruption in Chile’s day-to-day activities and implied that the hands-off, laissez-faire model of earlier economic reforms left something to be desired. While Bachelet attempted to meet their demands, apparently the reforms were not deep enough to overhaul the education system entirely and overcome socioeconomic divides.