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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Global Development: Views from the Center
Equatorial Guinea Dictator to Lead the African UnionJanuary 31, 2011By Vijaya Ramachandran in Global Development
This post is joint with Julie Walz Yesterday, the African Union chose Equatorial Guinea’s dictator of 31 years, President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, to serve as their chairman; a move that will undoubtedly undermine the AU’s attempt to bring stability to the African continent and to confront leaders who cling to power./ Obiang has been criticized for violating the basic human rights that the AU swears to uphold and is consideredone of the world’s worst dictators. Having ruled the country since 1979, Obiang claims to have won 97 percent of the vote in 2002 and 95 percent in 2009. And despite their oil wealth, the people of Equatorial Guinea have seen little benefit. Life expectancy is a mere 50 years, half of the children who live in that country do not complete primary school, and about 15 percent die before age of 5. The country ranks 118 out of 182 in the UNDP Human Development Index. Comment »Youth in the Middle East: Nowhere to Go but the StreetJanuary 31, 2011By Charles Kenny in Global Development Tags: Egypt, ODA, Pakistan, Tunisia
The firestorm of events across the Middle East over the past few days can’t be explained by long-term development factors: the link between politics and economic development (or lack thereof) is complex in the extreme. Still, the staggering lack of opportunities for young people, especially young entrepreneurs without political connections, is clearly an important part of the mix. That includes people like Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26 year old whose self-immolation sparked the protests which brought down Tunisia’s president, and which in turn set off the remarkable events unfolding in Egypt. Read More… Comment »Restoring U.S. Financial Markets in a Credible Way: Comments on Feldstein and YellenJanuary 27, 2011By Liliana Rojas-Suarez in Global Development Tags: China
From January 6-9, I participated in the annual ASSA (Allied Social Science Associations) conference in Denver, Colorado. I was part of a high-level panel discussion with a number of distinguished economists including Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve’s Vice-Chair; Martin Feldstein, of Harvard University; Andrew Brimmer, former Governor of the Federal Reserve Board; and Alan Krueger, former Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, among others. The discussion focused on the economic policies undertaken during the Obama administration. Perhaps the most interesting presentations on these issues were given by Yellen and Feldstein. Here I briefly summarize their main points and the comments that I delivered during the panel discussion. Read More… Comment »Despite Domestic Focus, the State of CGD State of the Union Bingo Remains StrongJanuary 26, 2011By Sarah Jane Staats in Global Development
This is a joint post with Kaci Farrell Last night’s State of the Union address, like the mid-term elections, was not about foreign policy. Development aid was MIA, but President Obama’s remarks about the environment, trade, security, investment, technology, and migration—the six other areas measured in CGD’s Commitment to Development Index—allowed a handful of diligent guests to finally spell B-I-N-G-O! Comment »South Africa to Launch Development Aid AgencyJanuary 25, 2011By Vijaya Ramachandran in Global Development Tags: OECD DAC, South Africa
This is a joint post with Julie Walz. South Africa announced last week that it will launch its own development aid agency in 2011 – the South African Development Partnership Agency. This move places South Africa ahead of other emerging donors such as India and China , who have yet to create separate agencies to dispense aid. No longer just a recipient of aid, South Africa has quietly ramped up its role as a leader on the African continent, largely via peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction, and even analytical work. Read More… 1 Comment »Two Lessons from TunisiaJanuary 24, 2011By Nicolas van de Walle in Global Development Tags: Democracy, Governance, TunisiaRecent events in Tunisia suggest two lessons. First, the west is wrong to think of old dictators as useful allies. Like other longstanding authoritarian despots before him, President Ben Ali managed to convince the United States (and also western allies like France and the UK), that the repressive nature of his regime was essential for regional stability. In this case, his bloated police state was viewed as a necessary inconvenience by western diplomats, given the alleged threat of radical Islam, even if it meant that the West was maintaining close diplomatic relations with a corrupt and increasingly unpopular regime that could probably not win more than 15% of the vote in a free and fair election. In an uncertain world with so many unreasonable people, the logic of this kind of realpolitik is not without its appeal. Ben Ali was useful to successive administrations in Washington. And there were many regimes around the world worse than Ben Ali, whose administration was reasonably capable and avoided the egregious excesses of some autocracies, notably in the Arab world. Read More… Comment »Endorsing the No-Exit Strategy in Pakistan, and Patience on the HillJanuary 24, 2011By Nancy Birdsall in Global Development Tags: On the Hill, PakistanThis is a joint post with Wren Elhai. “The one last misconception I’d like to address is there are those who point to America’s history in this region and claim that eventually we will abandon Pakistan . . .we have learned from the past that . . . the only productive way forward is a long-term enduring partnership.” Read More… Comment »Baby Doc Return to Haiti!? Let Bill Clinton Run for President!January 21, 2011By Vijaya Ramachandran in Global Development
This post is joint with Julie Walz The surprise return of ousted dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier to Haiti has thrown more uncertainty into a country already struggling with political paralysis from the November election and a painful recovery from last year’s quake. Duvalier returned after nearly 25 years in exile and was arrested in Port au Prince for charges of corruption and embezzlement. The following day, a lawsuit was filed against him for torture and crimes against humanity. Duvalier is blamed, along with his father Francoise “Papa Doc” Duvalier, for the torture and rape of thousands –between 40,000 and 60,000 Haitians are thought to have died under their rule from 1957 – 1986. Despite this horrendous record, some young Haitians are drawn to Baby Doc, believing that he might bring some relief from the desperate conditions in which they find themselves. Comment »It’s That Time Again…Play CGD State of the Union Bingo!January 21, 2011By Kaci Farrell in Global Development
Thank you to everyone who played CGD State of the Union Bingo last night! We had a terrific crowd at our event and want to hear about your festivities. Click here for our reactions and commentary on President Obama’s speech. It’s January in Washington. Time for New Year’s resolutions, extra outerwear and…CGD State of the Union Bingo! Comment »How Quickly Are Countries Progressing Toward the MDGs? A New Interactive Web-App from CGDJanuary 20, 2011By Ben Leo in Global Development Tags: Millennium Development Goals
This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte. The United Nations recently published the 2011 World Economic Situation and Prospects report, which asserts that Sub-Saharan Africa, and possibly parts of South Asia, are off-track for halving extreme poverty levels by 2015. This must sound alarmingly dire and discouraging for those laboring long and hard to reduce poverty rates in countries within these regions. But this picture was painted by a highly simplistic brush. Despite doomsday generalizations, almost two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African countries are on-track (or nearly on-track) to halve poverty during the MDG period (1990-2015). A few of them – such as Ghana, Uganda, and Burkina Faso – are on the short-list of the highest-performing countries. These so-called MDG Trailblazers (both in Africa and beyond) are the subject of my recent CGD working paper. Based on popular requests, we have launched a new interactive MDG web tool that visually represents each individual country’s progress towards the highly ambitious MDG targets. Read More… 1 Comment »What Can Development Agencies Learn from Venture Capital Firms?January 18, 2011By William Savedoff in Global Development Tags: Cash on Delivery Aid
I recently participated in a conference of Engineers Without Borders Canada which was one of the most thought-provoking events that I’ve attended in a long time. One of the speakers was Vernon Lobo who is with a venture capital firm, Mosaic Venture Partners. For years, I’ve been promoting the idea that aid agencies should behave more like venture capital firms. Like venture capital firms, I’ve argued, aid agencies should not expect every project to be successful. Rather they should think of themselves as having a portfolio of projects – some will succeed and others will fail. The goal for aid agencies is to learn from the whole portfolio so that, over time, good approaches can be retained and shared while bad approaches can be dropped. What I didn’t expect to hear is how involved venture capital firms are with the firms they invest in. Read More… 9 Comments »Girls Still CountJanuary 14, 2011By Amanda Glassman in Global Development Tags: Girls Count
Today Miriam Temin and I responded to a critique of Nike’s “Girl Effect” campaign posted on William Easterly’s AIDWATCH blog (check it out here). As our readers know, Miriam and former Senior Fellow Ruth Levine co-authored the reports Girls Count and Start With A Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health in 2009, arguing that the cycle of neglect of girls’ rights, poor health and education indicators, meager economic options, and the generation-to-generation transmission of poverty can be broken by focused investments in policies and programs that meet girls’ needs. These arguments were simplified in a Nike Foundation campaign video that quickly went viral on the internet. You’d think this would be relatively uncontroversial, given the strength and extent of the underlying evidence. But Anna Carella’s critique on AIDWATCH has been plenty popular with 40 comments (a lot in aid-blog-world!). So we jumped into the fray. Join us! 1 Comment »Haiti Earthquake Aid FactsJanuary 12, 2011By David Roodman in Global Development Tags: HaitiLast year after the earthquake in Haiti, I posted graphs of aid and other financial flows to Haiti in recent years. This post continues in that tradition, focusing on post-disaster aid. A spreadsheet with all data and graphs is here.  6 Comments »One Year Later: Policy-Driven Responses to Help HaitiJanuary 12, 2011By Kaci Farrell in Global Development Tags: Climate Change, Debt Relief, Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA), FORMA, Haiti, Migration and Population, Trade
Twelve months after the devastating earthquake, some of the fresh ideas CGD policy experts proposed to help Haiti through non-aid channels have gained traction, while others remain relevant, but have yet to be tried. The anniversary is a time to revisit progress and shine a light on untapped opportunities to assist Haitians in their reconstruction efforts through U.S. policies on trade, debt, migration, and more: Read More… Comment »The Currency War: Risks for Latin America and the Role of Central BanksJanuary 7, 2011By Liliana Rojas-Suarez in Global Development Tags: BRIC, CLAAF, G20
During the 13th and 16th of November, the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF) held their second meeting of the year in Lima with the purpose of discussing the effect of the currency wars on the Latin American region. As a result of the meeting, we presented the 23rd CLAAF statement. The statement has been extremely well received and broadly covered by the Peruvian press. The members of CLAAF that participated in the meetings were: Comment »Still Time to Prevent Another Food Price Crisis—and the One after That?January 7, 2011By Kimberly Ann Elliott in Global Development Tags: Food Aid, Food Crisis, UN, World Bank, World Food Program
This is a joint post with Vijaya Ramachandran. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recently reported that the December 2010 Food Price Index surpassed the peak reached in June 2008. A closer examination of the data, however, provides some modest hope that the worst effects of the 2007-08 price spikes can be avoided, with luck and better policies. First, it is important to note that only two of the five components of the Food Price Index were above 2008 levels—meat (slightly above) and sugar (more than twice as high). Second, as shown in the chart below, staple grain prices, which are key to preventing hunger among the poor, are increasing sharply, while rice and, to a lesser degree, wheat remain well below their 2008 peaks. Maize is the exception, thanks in part to U.S. policies supporting corn-based ethanol that bring to mind the zombies populating popular culture—they just won’t die! Read More… 5 Comments »Ten Zero-Cost Ideas for Development Progress in 2011January 6, 2011By Nancy Birdsall in Global Development Tags: Climate Change, Corruption, Global Health Initiative, Governance, Migration and Population, On the Hill, OPIC, Pakistan, QuODA, Trade, USAID
A new year calls for a development policy wish list. My wish list is about what the rich and powerful global actors– mostly but not solely in the United States – can do to improve lives among the poor and vulnerable around the world in the coming year. I find it harder than usual to make such a list this year. In our ever-more-global system the rich and powerful can have the largest impacts for good through global cooperation on collective action problems. (Think climate change, avoiding food and oil price hikes, minimizing global financial panics.) But global cooperation is becoming harder than ever to manage. Since World War II, the United States has led or at the very least been a willing follower. But the United States, gridlocked on key issues and preoccupied with a jobless recovery, seems less and less able and willing to lead. There are some bright spots. Read More… 5 Comments »Ahead of His Time—the Amazing and Generous Dennis WhittleJanuary 6, 2011By Nancy Birdsall in Global Development Tags: GlobalGiving
I have a soft spot in my heart for Dennis Whittle, who has just announced he is leaving GlobalGiving after 10 years. My soft spot is self-indulgent as Dennis wrote this last October. Better reasons (for the soft spot) are: (1) With Mari Kuraishi he had the courage and confidence to leave the World Bank and start something really truly new: GlobalGiving. (2) He is a rare combination of creative and management-savvy, as the success of the organization he co-founded demonstrates. (3) He understands that in this age of open-source networking, it is not competition with like-minded organizations but informal collaboration/cooperation that generates better branding and more benefits for all. This is smart, of course. But my guess is that he discovered this truth early because he is, well, nice. I look forward to the writing and speaking he plans on the concepts behind GlobalGiving. Here’s the address for his blog: http://www.denniswhittle.blogspot.com/. 1 Comment »Top 20 Posts for 2010 for CGD’s Views from the Center blogJanuary 5, 2011By Lawrence MacDonald in Global Development
Inspired by David Roodman’s list of his 20 most popular blog posts for 2010, we have done something similar for CGD’s Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance blog, and the Global Health Policy blog. Below the 20 most popular posts for Views from the Center. Enjoy! Comment »Oil to Cash: An Idea to Fight the Resource CurseJanuary 5, 2011By Todd Moss in Global Development Tags: cash transfers, Oil to Cash
Tina Rosenberg has a terrific piece in the New York Times on cash transfer programs in Brazil. She concludes:
That’s one reason why cash transfers are increasingly popular not only in places like Brazil and Mexico, but also Mongolia, Malawi, and other poor countries. Read More… 4 Comments » |
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