Are anti-AIDS programs based on a false premise?

The public radio show This American life has a fascinating story on how counterintuitive behavior sometimes save lives and how many AIDS prevention programs in Africa are based on flawed conventional wisdom.

(Click here to access theshow... see Act One)

Record foreign investment in Africa

It’s been widely reported that 2011 marked the year in which Africa received its largest ever share of global foreign direct investment (FDI). The continent received some 5.5%, up a full percent from the previous year. Africa still ranked as “the least attractive investment destination in the world,” in a survey of investors. But those who already had a presence in the continent viewed it overwhelmingly positively, while those who didn’t viewed its prospects dimly.

Bits and pieces - Africa edition

AFRICAN CORRUPTION NUMBERS TRUMP DEVELOPMENT AID
Foreign Policy's blog has a piece on Africa's missing billions and the tax havens that aid and abet these crimes. Each year, more than $1 trillion exits developing countries, and more than $140 billion of comes from Africa. That's almost four times as much as the continent gets in official development aid... The key players in this shadow economy are corporations. Globally, more than 60 percent of capital flight comes from multinationals operating in resource-rich regions.


THE RISH AND FALL OF A VILLAGE HOUSING MARKET
The Wall Street Journal has an article on a small village in Guinea's Forest region that saw a housing market develop around investment from giant Rio Tinto only to crash when the controversial mining giant shuttered two-thirds of its operations only a short time later.


FILM FESTIVAL IN THE SAHARAN SANS
The New York Times had a feature on a film festival held in the Algerian desert.


UNCLE TED RETIRES
A story I must've missed earlier: Ted Roberts, the much loved Sierra Leonian news presenter, retired in February from the Voice of America. He worked at the VOA since 1964 and spent the last 14 years as host of the weekend news program Nightline Africa.


KENYAN NOBEL LAUREATE INTERVIEW
The American channel C-SPAN had an excellent hour-long interview with Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai, who spoke, among other things, about her book The Challenge for Africa.


PRO-MONARCH POLL BANNED IN MOROCCO
You know freedom of the press is pretty limited when media outlets are banned from publishing polls that are 'extraordinarily favorable' toward the head of state. That's what happened in Morocco recently. The Moroccan magazine Tel Quel and the French daily newspaper Le Monde collaborated on a poll to measure the popularity of King Mohammed VI, on the 10th anniversary of his accession to the North African country's throne. Publication of the results were banned in Morocco. "The monarchy can not be put into the equation, even via a poll," explained Khalid Naciri, the government's spokesman and information minister. Daring ask people if they approve of their head of state would sent a terrible precedent, apparently. The irony? The banned results were overwhelmingly favorable toward the king, who is the 7th richest monarch in the world. 91 percent admitted to having sensed some positive change, since Mohammed became king. The further irony? 51 percent said that the overbearing royal protocol had lightened.

Thoughts on US policies toward Africa

Here are some good recent pieces exploring western, and particularly American, policy with regard to Africa...

-Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) explores the increasingly militarized nature of the United States' policy toward the continent.

-FPIF also muses on the dictatorship in Uganda.

-Oxfam America and Foreign Policy held a discussion calling for a new path on American foreign assistance to Africa. Panelists called on U.S. leaders to make U.S. foreign assistance more supportive of effective states and active citizens. In particular, the panelists called for a U.S. aid approach that is more transparent, more consistent with the needs of citizens and local governments, and more focused on giving recipient states the power to manage their own development.

-Nigeria's This Day wonders in an editorial if Africa needs food aid.

The impact of foreign assistance in Africa

OneWorld.net and Public Radio International offer an interesting discussion between a journalist and a Zambian economist debating 'the impact of foreign assistance in Africa, challenging the existing model and calling for innovative change.'

The influence of private foundations on development assistance

Speaking of aid, the IRIN news service has a piece on the increasing influence of private philanthropic foundations on international development assistance.

On a related note, a Reuters story wonders if journalists are too soft on aid agencies.

Does food aid hurt or help?

That is the question being asked by the charity CARE, reports The International Herald-Tribune.

I alluded to some of the problems in the food aid distribution system in an earlier essay and CARE's assessment bears this out.

CARE, one of the world's biggest charities, is walking away from about $45 million a year in federal funding, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

Its decision, which has deeply divided the world of food aid, is focused on the practice of selling tons of American farm products in African countries that in some cases compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

[...]

"The NGOs have been ignoring this evidence for years that there's a negative impact on the prices farmers receive," said [Peter] Matlon, [an agricultural economist based on Nairobi, Kenya] who is involved in a $150 million effort financed by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations to increase the productivity of African farmers.

CARE concluded that dumping surplus American food lowered prices paid to domestic farmers and thus undermined broader anti-poverty efforts.

More media scrutiny of development aid

A column in The Christian Science Monitor calls for more critical reporting of the international aid business.

While there is plenty of reporting on corruption by governments themselves, the author claims that aid organizations themselves regularly cover up managerial dysfunction, including sexual harassment, by ignoring the actions of those responsible. This includes a UN agency director in Geneva lying about his age to stay in power longer, the misappropriation of US funds by private contractors in the Middle East, and the placement of inappropriate personnel in well-paid UN positions by in-house "mafiosi" to the detriment of more qualified individuals.

There are also turf wars among agencies supposedly designed to help the people.

Numerous projects, too, are poorly coordinated as a result of interagency UN rivalries or inappropriate expertise among contracted consultancy firms, and sometimes such initiatives are implemented for the wrong reasons.

But NGOs can be hesitant to criticize the strings that come with aid money, no matter how nonsensical they may be.

NGOs, which rely heavily on donor funding, can cite innumerable examples of aid that makes little sense, they are cautious about criticizing their benefactors. One aid administrator in London pointed out that even when known to be part of a questionable political agenda, "it's still your bottom line."

Some UN member states have presented a plan to revamp the international aid structure but the columnist concludes that Many member states, however, have too much to lose from a truly open UN.

Konaré rebukes Sarkozy

A spat has erupted between African Union head Alpha Oumar Konaré and French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The Namibian newspaper has a good resumé of the debate.

Sarkozy asked university students in Dakar, "Do you want to end the arbitrary corruption, violence? That money is invested instead of being embezzled. Do you want the rule of law? It is up to you to take the decision and if you decide so, France will be by your side like an unwavering friend."

This, of course, would be a first for France in Africa.

Konaré hit back at the condescending attitude of the French leader. The AU chief said he agreed with Sarkozy on corruption, violence and immigration, 'young people are aware of that and many of them have been fighting these things for a long time'.

A top leader in the French Socialist Party attacked Sarkozy for giving patronizing lectures to Africans on development while at the same time 'stealing Africa's best minds through the policy of selective immigration'.

Developmentalism as neo-colonialism?

New York University professor William Easterly has an interesting piece in Foreign Policy entitled The Ideology of Development. I've sparred with him in the past in FP's pages and take issue with some points he raises here but this essay is worth a read. Easterly offers a pungent critique of top-down of what he calls 'Developmentalism,' an ideology he claims is just as dangerous as fascism and communism.

He contends that a noble idea (the free market system) has been hijacked by bureaucrats of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These institutions were created primarily to advance the interests of corporations in donor (western) countries. As such, they have typically advocated policies to achieve precisely this end. During the 1980s, the cure-all-prescription was for poorer countries to completely deregulate their economies and to open themselves up to unrestrained foreign pillaging.

I'm generally in favor of more openness in trade. But I believe in this to the extent that it helps raise the standard of living of people in countries that do so. Raising the standard of living broadly, not just for the narrow elite. Where more openness hurts the broader population, I see nothing wrong with regulations, social programs, etc. I do not believe in government intervention merely for its own sake. I do not believe in deregulation and free trade simply for their own sake either.

Easterly echoes a criticism I've often made myself. These international institutions try to shove down the throats of poorer countries one-size-fits-all policies, regardless of any other considerations. These policies are conceived in air-conditioned offices in London or New York and completely disregard local realities on the ground, realities that are key to the success or failure of any reform. This is why most structural adjustment programs (the formal name for when a country hands over management of its economy to foreign bureaucrats) have failed.

He points outs out that this top down imposition of policies is the antithesis of free markets. Furthermore, he argues that these ill-suited foreign prescriptions have had a counterproductive effect by giving open markets a bad name. This disillusionment is what opened the door to a populist demagogue like Hugo Chavez who has become a mythical figure precisely by attacking laissez-faire capitalism. Most of the countries in South America, the continent most harmed by structural adjustment policies, are run by at least moderately left-of-center governments.

Easterly fails to mention another situation that further alienates people in the non-western world: hypocrisy. Western countries preach the gospel of the free market. But it's only a one way street. Africa is regularly encouraged to follow the laissez-faire prescription by opening its economies to foreign exploitation, something which has obviously garnered the continent's people such wonderful results during the last 200 years. But western countries reject the same prescription by refusing to eliminate huge agricultural subsidies to their farmers, subsidies which make African agriculture uncompetitive in relation. Free trade implies a certain reciprocity that western countries presently aren't willing to concede.

Laissez-faire capitalism is a fantastic ideology in theory but ideology doesn't fill your stomach.

And it's worth noting that developmentalism is not the sole provenance of the right-wing. Many moderate left-of-center folks, such as Professor Jeffrey Sachs, embrace these theories. They view it as a sort of benevolent update of old theories. Laissez-faire with a human face, you might say. But there's nothing particularly humane about any ideology that ignores the wishes and desires of the humans that it affects!