Foreignaid. Socialentrepreneurship. Satellite. Emergingeconomies. HDR. Knowledgenetworks. Auditcultures. Undp. Millenniumvilages. » Blog's archive » THE RESOURCE CURSE: Does the Emperor Have No Clothes? By Victor Menaldo Over 1.5 billion people live in countries whose economies are dependent on the revenue from natural resource exports. With growing demand from China and other emerging markets, the demand for minerals and oil will continue to increase.
And prices will increase even further in response to the accelerated depletion of these non-renewable resources. What effect will mushrooming reliance on oil and minerals have on commodity exporters’ politics, legal institutions, and economics? Conventional wisdom says that, over the long run, the results will be devastating. Increased natural resource reliance will promote authoritarianism, corruption and the weakening of the rule of law, economic stagnation and even war. The idea of a resource curse can be found in academic writings ranging from country case studies of oil and mineral reliant states, such as Iran and Nigeria, and large-n statistical analyses. Source: Haber and Menaldo (2010). Percent of the Global Copper Market, 2006. SPECIAL REPORT: The United States Agency for International for Development (USAID) Launches The Knowledge-Driven International Development (KDID) Portal to Encourage Greater Effectiveness of Development Knowledge.
The Knowledge-Driven International Development (KDID) Portal is a family of websites established to maximize the effectiveness of economic development assistance by connecting development practitioners to spread innovation and good practice. Launched by the United States Agency for International for Development’s (USAID’s) Knowledge-Driven Microenterprise Development (KDMD) office, KDID consists of portals that act as forums where members connect to other professionals, discuss ideas, share experiences and access the latest thinking in best practice. While currently there are two portal sites, microLINKS and Social Transitions (ST), KDID plans to add others over time to cover additional topics and regions. The microLINKS portal covers advances in the microenterprise development sector with a focus on financial inclusion within the context of both domestic and global markets.
You may visit the KDID portal here: By Matthew Fox, Research Assistant. Dani Rodrik's weblog: The unsung development miracles of our time. Which are the countries that have improved their human development indicators the most since 1970 relative to their peers? You’d be surprised, as I was, to find that the top 10 is dominated not by East Asian superstars, but by Moslem countries: Oman, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. This year’s Human Development Report is full of neat analysis and results, including this one. Leaving aside the oil exporting countries, the North African cases are particularly interesting. As Francisco Rodriguez and Emma Samman, two of the report’s authors, note, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria have experienced remarkable gains in life expectancy and educational attainment, leaving many Asian superstars in the dust.
What was their secret? What is somewhat puzzling, as Rodriguez and Samman also note, is that these countries have not made nearly as much progress in democratization. The Deadly Consequences of Niche Aid in Africa - Ro Wyman and Bill Wyman - The Conversation. By Ro Wyman and Bill Wyman | 10:10 AM November 11, 2010 Despite the large doses of health aid that humanitarian organizations have poured into Africa, many Africans are still living with — and dying of — a lack of basic healthcare. Why? Primarily because most aid is niche aid. It is certainly critical to vaccinate against deadly diseases like tuberculosis, polio, and measles; distribute bed nets to combat malaria; and administer lifesaving antiretrovirals to people with HIV.
However, by focusing funding on “big diseases,” well-meaning health organizations have failed to close critical healthcare gaps — which is costing lives. In northern Rwanda, where we work, diseases like HIV and tuberculosis account for only 10% of the health problems. The tragedy is that we can prevent these deaths with low-tech, cost-effective measures. Creating such a system requires: Constructing a proper health infrastructure. MY M&E. Development needs a holistic approach. Developing countries need joined-up thinking to promote growth, and donor agencies must find ways to support this. Next month, more than 2,000 participants are expected to gather in Montreux, Switzerland, for the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, organised by the WHO and other partners. The popularity of the meeting reflects growing support for the idea that improving health requires more than pursuing discrete objectives such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Equally essential is an awareness of how different development goals relate to one another, such as the effect of economic growth on raising levels of public health. In a similar way, a holistic approach is also essential for building the solid infrastructure and social systems needed to sustain scientific research and technological innovation in developing countries, as both activities cut across a wide range of different social and economic objectives. 'Systems thinking' Seeing the bigger picture. Inclusive growth: merely desirable or essential? | Vinod Thomas. The global financial crisis and the spike in food prices have pushed millions of people into poverty worldwide. By the end of 2010, the financial crisis is estimated to have added around 64 million people to the ranks of the poor who live under $1.25 a day. Meanwhile, social unrest and popular demands for better and fairer societies are echoing across the world.
The concern for inclusive growth, or a growth pattern that includes all income strata, is not new. What is different is the urgency for achieving greater inclusiveness – and a nascent realisation that without it sustained growth will not be possible in the future. People stress different dimensions of inclusive growth. First, there is the crucial connection between income inequality and poverty. Second, many see the value of inclusive growth in the stability and peace it can promote. Third, some see greater inclusion as an aid to growth itself. However, there is an important caveat to all this.
The Modern Development Enterprise – A Look Back at USAID’s Major Reforms « Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network • Blog. Why do development efforts continue to fail? If you haven't seen it yet, Stephen Walt's piece ("Where Do Bad Ideas Come From? ") in the new issue of Foreign Policy demands a read. He starts with the obvious – that we never learn from our mistakes – but asks, when it comes to our policy decisions about the world, why? Skip to next paragraph Recent posts Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition The possibilities are probably endless, but Walt narrows them down.
Most of Walt's examples are about warfare – we could have learned from the French, but we went ahead and fought Vietnam anyway. But there's another idea that begs to be part of this conversation: development. The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of Africa bloggers. Open data in development – the missing debate? | aidinfo.org. After reading an earlier post on the role of open data in development, Tobias Denskus calls for more critical debates around open aid data. His article is really worth reading first; he draws our attention to four issues in the current state of aid transparency: Everybody in the aid sector seems to be on board with it.
This suggests that the ideas of aid data and transparency are too broad, no longer innovative or don’t challenge the fundamentals of development. Where’s the debate around the small print? What do we mean by “aid transparency”? Everybody and their mother seems to think aid transparency is a good idea – inevitably, it means different things to different people, all depending on the occasion. I imagine this will continue as other public transparency initiatives gain popularity, with the details and intentions of each blurring into the kinds of wooly development rhetoric we’ve all seen. 1. 2. 3.
Is “aid transparency” becoming development jargon? Open aid data is just a tool. Using technology to map data and information for development efforts. Maps have emerged as an important asset in publicly revealing data and information needed for development efforts at the community, national, regional and international level. They have become a useful way of providing and finding information on what exists and where. Private companies like Google for instance have been collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to help unveil the power of statistics in the region.
They have been working with UNECA to provide train the trainer events throughout the African continent, which can aid the development of collection and use of statistics using not only mobile applications but Google Map Maker, Google Earth Google Maps, Google fusion tables, and Public Data Explorer. This is also proving useful for mapping of the vast African landscape is in the face of lack of street names and route numbers for instance. Local knowledge is key to this type of mapping for development effort. The role of open data in development | aidinfo.org. Edit: Tobias Denskus wrote an interesting response to this – I address some of his points here. At the Open Government Data (OGD) camp this year, David Eaves, a Canadian open data and public policy activist, gave an excellent keynote talk highlighting some of the challenges that lie ahead in the world of OGD.
He made some interesting points which I’ll share and add to with a perspective from international development. In short: building international development open data portals will help to create a more effective, data-literate aid sector; openness fosters a culture of learning and improvement, and if you’re doing something interesting with data, talk about it. We built libraries to help citizens become literate Across the world, an increasing amount of government data is being released through online portals. Only last week, the UK government released details of all spending over £25,000.
We need a patch culture Open data leads to behavioural and cultural changes. Deconstructing Mobiles: Myths and Realities about Women and Mobile Phones. Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Oct 16, 2009 Mobile phones have been a boon to developing countries and to social development. Access to mobiles may indeed allow for better medical information, change the way farmers grow and sell crops, expand the way families interact, influence the way governments treat their citizens, and improve the way students learn in schools. But what is the real story behind these benefits? And who really gains from them?
In our ongoing series on Mobile Myths and Realities: Deconstructing Mobile" we turn to how women are or are not benefitting from the ibiquity of mobile telephony. What did we find? Mobile technology has the ability to change the way we communicate, but its effects are not evenly distributed. So why are mobile phones viewed as a near-perfect device? In her case study “ Mobile Cell Phones and Poverty Reduction: Technology Spending Patterns and Poverty Level Change among Households in Uganda " (Diga, 2008) Kathleen Diga writes: </b>*}