“What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation”

interesting, wasn't it?

February 9, 2009
NYU’s Aid Watch Initiative Held Conference on “What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation”

By William Easterly

During last Friday's conference, participants and speakers leveled a variety of criticisms at aid agencies for lacking accountability and transparency, but also suggested new ideas and expressed hope for a new way forward.

presentations available at: http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/

some quotes copy-pasted from the blog

Yaw Nyarko: “No nation has ever developed because of aid and outside advice.”

Esther Duflo: “Field experiments have a subversive power.”

William Easterly: The institutions of a free society make it possible to answer "what would the people say?" Can we imitate this in aid to know "What would the poor say?"

Andrew Mwenda: “Aid money makes African governments accountable to the aid agencies rather than to their own people.”

The power of accountability for African governments is shown by some examples when political elites faced a threat to their very existence, like in Rwanda after the genocide or Uganda after Musevni’s takeover in 1986, when both governments instituted pro-development policies.

Nancy Birdsall: Cash on delivery aid “traps the donors so they are forced to have poor country governments accountable to them and accountable to their own people.”

June Arunga: "Aid money is diverting African skilled professionals away from private enterprise to writing proposals for NGOs.”

When June pitched her idea of using cell phones to facilitate financial transactions to Western investors, one well-known philanthropist expressed disbelief that poor Africans (whom she had seen mainly in pictures begging and starving) had cell phones: “Who do they call?” she asked.

Dennis Whittle: “Put up a billboard in each community saying what aid money is supposed to be going towards.”

Lant Pritchett:
"Is this information you are gathering from us just to help you write your report or can you really be helpful to us?" - a woman in South Sudan.

Evaluation can help make politically successful development movements into effective ones.

Ross Levine: “Aid agencies are insufficiently evaluated on advice…financial survival depends on distributing money.” The right advice often violates the imperative: “Don’t interfere with lending!”

Leonard Wantchekon: "We African professionals want to be the ones advising our own governments rather than foreign aid professionals!"

Karin Christiansen: “In Afghanistan, the government does not know how one-third of all aid since 2001 – some $5bn – has been spent…Liberian civil society organizations couldn’t get basic information [which foreigners could.]”

William Duggan: “I wasted 20 years of my life on aid efforts, but now I see some hope for change.”

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now."

'Africa doesn't have to grovel to the west'

By William Wallis

Published: January 31 2009 02:00 | Last updated: January 31 2009 02:00

The Double Club in Islington, north London, seemed the perfect place for lunch with Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist preparing to take on the western donor establishment with the publication next week of her first book, Dead Aid .

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c244c6f4-ef37-11dd-bbb5-0000779fd2ac.html

Kakuma News Reflector - A Refugee Free Press

I think this offers an interesting perspective, no?

http://kakuma.wordpress.com/

The Kakuma News Reflector is an independent news magazine produced by Ethiopian, Congolese, Ugandan, Rwandan, Somali, Sudanese and Kenyan journalists operating in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.

A print version of the online news magazine is circulated in Kakuma camp and town. We will publish on a monthly basis until funding allows us to increase our publications to twice a month.

KANERE is currently in the process of registering with the Kenyan Government as an official news agency. Its initial development has been supported by a Fulbright Research Grant from the U.S. Institute of International Education. We continue to seek a more sustainable source of funding.

Contact Us

We can be reached at blo3@cornell.edu.
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(i wonder what the cornell connection is, tho)

Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid

Hellos,
im currently reading this. i think its apropos for the aid conference friday. Let's revive this blog!!

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V64-3VW1SR3-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=fcc05995c03b27c580c859e9c2e2712e

--
Abstract
Critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government
failure. In this paper I test predictions for aid effectiveness based on an analytical framework that relates aid effectiveness to political regimes. I find that aid does not significantly increase investment, nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators, but it does increase the size of government. The impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive. But liberal political regimes and democracies, ceteris paribus, have on average 30% lower infant mortality than the least free regimes. This may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs. An implication is that short-term aid targeted to
support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than
current programs.

JEL cluss$cnfion: El; F35; 011; 019