Democracy and Society » foreign aid

Method-driven policy

Barak — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:51:56 +0000

Just because one can’t measure the impact of a program is not a sufficient reason to end it.

Why develop rural Africa?

Barak — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:58:54 +0000

Northern Zambia doesn’t have a lot of people. The towns are small, and few and far in between. The land is not good for farming, in general, either. Nevertheless, foreign aid donors are spending lots of money in trying to “develop” the region. One thought that crossed my mind while I was there last week was whether this is a good use of resources. Like the rest of Africa, Zambia has been urbanizing rapidly and I doubt that there will be many people left in rural parts of northern Zambia in 20 or 30 years. So why are donors spending money there? At best, it is simply slowing urbanization. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to accept the inevitable and pull aid from parts of Africa where people are leaving and putting more into where they are going?

Stop looking for magic beans

Barak — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:08:05 +0000

Over at Aid Watchers, Bill Easterly patiently discusses (not for the first time) why the search for the magic development intervention that will make a poor country a rich one remains (and will always remain) elusive.

Nita Lowey is still a hypocrite

Barak — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:39:59 +0000

What’s missing from this press release? It says nothing about military spending in Afghanistan even though it is about 30 times greater than foreign aid and there is massive corruption involved with it. Lowey’s continued refusal to acknowledge that military spending is a major source of the problem is really unfair to USAID.

Rep. Nita Lowey (Hypocrite-NY)

Barak — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:32:48 +0000

Yeah, what she said:

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), chair of the State & Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, announced that she would cut $4 billion requested for State Department and USAID funding for Afghanistan due to concerns about corruption…While the $4 billion in the fiscal year 2011 budget that Lowey wants to cut is no small amount of money, the 2011 Defense budget includes $138 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…It’s taking the easy way out to use the money as a vehicle for criticizing the war, playing on misperceptions about the efficacy of foreign assistance, while not facing any pushback from scary Republicans who will tell them they don’t support our troops.

Here’s a hypocritical and ineffective idea

Barak — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:38:25 +0000

Readers of the blog know that I am not a real big fan of the war in Afghanistan. That being said, the House appropriation’s subcommittee on foreign affairs decision to cut $4 billion in aid to Afghanistan, but not cut the $110 billion military funding request is both hypocritical and ineffective. I am not sure which angers me more. The subcommittee claims they want to cut aid to reduce corruption, yet because aid is such a small part of the budget for Afghanistan and because most of the corruption comes from military spending, cutting aid will have a negligible effect on corruption.

If the subcommittee really cared about ensuring US taxpayer funds don’t fuel corruption in Afghanistan, it would cut defense appropriations. The DOD’s response would likely be that “corruption is a part of doing business in Afghanistan, so we can’t fight the war without bribing people.” This is exactly the point and it seems a little unfair to single out USAID for wasting taxpayers’ money there. The US is in Afghanistan because the Taliban poses a national security threat to the US (according to the US Government), yet the Government in Afghanistan it is trying to build is very corrupt. How does raking USAID over the coals help fix this problem? (Banging head on desk.)

FWIW, I don’t think aid to Afghanistan will be cut because DOD wants these projects.

Bureacracy

Barak — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:36:22 +0000

The solution to too much bureaucracy is less bureaucracy, not more bureaucracy.

Development first crowd proven wrong again

Barak — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:30:38 +0000

Yet another example of why the development first theory is wrong:

Take Inderaw Mohammed Siraj, a 60-year-old Ethiopian opposition candidate who lost a finger after being beaten by ruling-party cadres in 2008. Last year, he says, he was kicked out of a food-aid program funded by the U.S., the World Bank, and the European Union when a local official from his village in a remote corner of northeast Ethiopia told him: “We will not feed opposition members.”

With virtually no opposition representation in Parliament, the independent press and local human-rights groups now closed or under attack, and the prospect of his children begging for food, he has realized life would be easier if he gave up politics.

I have no doubt that the development firsters will go away anytime soon, but it’s good to have examples of why they are wrong – especially from Ethiopia because this country is often one of their main examples.

Complaining is easier than doing stuff

Barak — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:55:41 +0000

It is a bit ironic for the branch of government that makes the bureaucracy to criticize its own creation. If Congress doesn’t like the excessive bureaucracy in the executive branch, it could, you know, do something about it. I guess its just easier (and more fun!) to complain.

PS: It’s not all our fault.

In the Dictator’s Defense

Barak — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:18:28 +0000

Aid Watchers is unimpressed with the World Ban’s defense of lending money to the Government of Ethiopia:

…any horrible tyrant can be supported under the assumption that this tyrant is merely a temporary stage in a country “in transition to democracy,” part of an “innate tendency” towards “building institutions.”

Ha! Nice take down!