Leading economist and director of Earth Institute discusses aid and global warming
Posts Tagged ‘International aid and development’
In conversation with Jeffrey Sachs
July 24th, 2009 |
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Irrigation is key to food security
July 24th, 2009 |
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Irrigation seems to have been left off the agenda when it comes to discussing food security in Uganda. It needs to be added now, argues Richard M Kavuma
As we now know, the people of Katine, the wider Teso region and other parts of Uganda are bracing themselves for famine following back-to-back drought. This is, of course, bad news, which makes the recent G8 pledge to support Africa to feed itself all the more timely. But what bothers me is the failure of the Ugandan government and indeed its donors – including the UK – to realise that simplistic solutions will only be stop-gap measures. Yes, there is talk about fertilizers and drought-resistant crop varieties, but governments have pretty much maintained a business-as-usual approach to agriculture. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s 2009 Least Developed Countries report says as much.
People in Katine realise that the weather is changing and many ask what is happening to “their” world. A year ago, one village leader’s message to the G8 heads of state was that they should help Katine plant trees to help stabilise the unpredictable weather. Of course, planting a tree in Katine is no panacea for all the crimes committed against the planet, especially by wealthier countries, but the 55-year-old village chairman was thinking along the right lines. But what does his president, Yoweri Museveni, in Kampala think? That it is all right for natural forests like Mabira to be replaced with sugar cane farms because sugar cane companies will pay billions of Ugandan shillings in taxes.
One painful thing about this drought/famine scenario was echoed by Stephen Ochola, Soroti district chairman, the other day: How can Egypt and Israel, which are largely deserts, grow fruits and export juice, while Uganda, blessed with rich soils, rainfall and lakes and rivers, starves? Why, Ochola wondered, can’t Uganda start seriously promoting irrigation to supplement the rains when necessary?
Out of Uganda’s estimated 400,000 hectares of irrigable land, barely 5% is under irrigation – and these are large-scale farms. The government has for years talked about harnessing water for production, but there is too little being done.
People must find creative ways to harness water resources to make irrigation by smallholder farmers possible. But they need creative, committed leadership. It is expensive, of course, but who said saving lives was going to be cheap? For without a change in approach this is what it will come down to – saving people from starving to death.
Another issue that does not feature in the G8 text was brought up by farmer Julius Eilu, who is already having trouble feeding his family of nine children. Asked what he would do to cope, Eilu said: “Perhaps I should stop fathering children.” This is a telling statement by a father in an area where children come with some pride.
Eilu’s president in Kampala sees no problem with Uganda’s population growth rate of 3.2% per year. In fact he thinks Uganda’s population of 30 million is too small. Yet as families have more children that they can hardly afford, farmland gets fragmented into small plots for the many siblings, productivity reduces and the dependence ratio grows. Couple that with unpredictable weather and the business-as-usual approach of the state and you have the recipe for a perpetually food-insecure, poor country.
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UN faces $5bn aid gap in recession
July 22nd, 2009 |
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Half-yearly report says members countries have less funds to spare while poverty is on the increase in developing world
The United Nations is warning of a $4.8bn (£2.9bn) shortfall in funding to tackle humanitarian crises in the world’s poorest countries, as the credit crunch leaves developed world governments with little cash to spare.
Delivering its half-yearly update about emergency fund-raising, John Holmes, of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that while the UN’s emergency appeals had received more funds than at the same time last year, the economic crisis was exacerbating poverty and increasing need.
“It is clear that the global recession puts pressure on the aid budgets of all donor governments, but of course it puts immeasurably more pressure on crises-stricken people in poor countries,” he said.
The UN has raised a total of $4.6bn over the past six months for its humanitarian appeals – but Holmes said it had identified $4.8bn of “unmet needs” – the biggest gap ever.
Holmes compared the shortfall in funding for the world’s poorest people with the vast sums spent by the US, UK and other developed countries on bailing out their banking sectors.
“If just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars recently committed by governments to private financial institutions were allocated to humanitarian action, these appeals could already be fully funded, and those in need could be getting the best available protection and assistance, on time,” Holmes said.
He singled out Kenya, Palestine and Zimbabwe as states whose financing needs have become more severe over the past six months, and said the UN is keen to raise more resources during the rest of the year.
Holmes said humanitarian needs in just one country, Somalia, had decreased recently – but only because a food aid project had been cancelled due to rising insecurity for the staff working on the ground.
Aid agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm since the global downturn began last year about the disproportionate impact on poor countries, which often rely heavily on export earnings.
World trade volumes have collapsed over the past six months, and unlike their richer counterparts, governments in the developing world find it hard to raise funds on international capital markets. Only a small proportion of the funding pledged at the G20 summit in London earlier this year to combat the impact of the crisis was targeted at the world’s poor.
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi came under international pressure in the run-up to the G8 summit he hosted in L’Aquila earlier this month, after cutting Italy’s aid budget.
At a recent conference in New York, organised by the president of the UN general assembly, member-states pledged to offer extra aid, but little has so far been forthcoming.
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Fears of food crisis in Katine
July 21st, 2009 |
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• Katine farmers worry about food shortages
• Amref and Farm-Africa assess food situation
• Soroti district ‘experiencing famine’
Explainer: The food crisis in Uganda
Julius Eilu, 38, is worried. On a Sunday afternoon in Katine, north-east Uganda, he, his wife, Petelina Akello, and nine children sit around a small mound – no more than 1kg – of cassava flour meal, accompanied by wild vegetables.
“Now that they [the children] have had a meal during the day, at night we’ll just convince them to sleep,” said Eilu, his hair unkempt, shirt unbuttoned, face unwashed. “I keep worrying about what to do if this situation does not change.”
The situation he refers to is the severe food shortages being experienced in the Teso region of Uganda.
And what will Eilu, a farmer, do? “I don’t know,” he laughs, as people here often do at a grim situation. “I don’t know. Maybe I have to stop fathering children.”
There are many like Eilu in this region and in other parts of Uganda.
Earlier this month the government acknowledged that food shortages in the country had reached famine levels.
Soroti, the district in which Katine sub-county is found, is one of 17 regions in the north and east of Uganda that the government has defined as experiencing famine. While Katine has not reached this level, food shortages and rising prices indicate a potential crisis.
In the north and east of Uganda at least 35 people are reported to have recently died of starvation. The government said last week that so far 51 districts had requested relief food. Local and national leaders blame the famine on weather calamities starting with the floods of late 2007. After the floods came drought, tempered by late and poor rains, which resulted in food stress during much of 2008. The same pattern recurred in the first half of this year, culminating into the current drought.
Like many farmers in Katine, Eilu and his wife hoped to begin harvesting food last month, but they got nothing. “We planted one acre of millet, half an acre of sorghum and about a quarter acre of groundnuts but they have dried in the garden,” said Akello, as she showed me the empty granary in her compound. “And the cassava we planted last year did poorly again because of the drought.”
The government has announced it is allocating UShs 20bn (US$10m) to buy relief food and is seeking another $85m. But this money is yet to reach Katine. Christine Agwero, a member of the Katine sub-county council, says in her parish of Ochuloi many families are now having one meal a day, while children are starting to skip school so as not to miss out on that meal.
Calls for action
The district chairman of Soroti, Stephen Ochola, said the entire district was affected by the food crisis, including Serere and Kasilo counties, which usually grow a lot of food. Although Soroti had not received any food relief, Ochola hoped for help from the central government and agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Soroti Catholic Diocese Integrated Development Organisation (SOCADIDO).
Earlier this month, these two organisations and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) carried out a rapid assessment of the region’s food situation and their report was expected last week.
The head of SOCADIDO, Father Silver Opio, said only after such a report would the agencies determine the next course of action. Last year the church organisation, relying on donations from larger bodies like the American Catholic Relief Services, provided some food relief to Katine and other areas.
Opio said he had asked the priests in charge of the diocese’s 22 parishes in the Teso region to send him their assessment of the food situation in their parishes. He said getting accurate data was difficult because even parishes that were deemed to have reasonable levels of food had pockets of starvation that needed to be addressed.
But Ochola, a member of the opposition party Forum for Democratic Change, said that since last year, Teso leaders have been warning the government of possible famine because of the back-to-back drought, but no action was taken.
“May be if, by God’s grace, we get the second rains, we will save the situation. If we don’t get the second rains, next year will be worse,” he said.
Last weekend, the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, sought to reassure people in Teso of his government’s support. The New Vision newspaper quoted him as telling people in Bukedea district that “the people will not die of hunger because crops have failed”. The government would provide food relief and later farm implements and planting materials.
That would pleasantly surprise Eilu, who thinks an NGO, rather than the government, might offer assistance. In the last few weeks Eilu has been selling firewood in Soroti town to earn money to buy food from the market, but there is only a limited number of trees.
The family could offer their farm labour in exchange for food or cash. But with the dry weather, said Akello, there is no farm work to be had. Other people have resorted to selling goats or chickens to raise money for food, leaving themselves even more vulnerable.
“I think I may have to sell my one cow,” said Julius Epudu, a father of four from Ajobi village, Katine, as he surveys his dry, half a hectare (1 acre) garden of sorghum. “When these ones [children] start crying and I have no more money, I may have to sell that cow.”
Affect on project
The food shortages are starting to affect aspects of the Amref project in Katine. In Ajobi village, in Katine parish, one member of the village savings and loan association (VSLA) has disappeared without repaying a loan of UShs 60,000 ($30). The member had borrowed the money in April with the intention of using it for petty trade, but he has so far failed to pay it back and has fled the village.
“Actually some members have proposed that we dissolve the group and share out the savings, but I have said no,” said chairwoman Stella Apeduna.
Already the groundnuts and vegetable seeds distributed to farmers three months ago have gone to waste, as plants are drying in the gardens. Amref fears that contributions by users for the upkeep of water sources could reduce as families use all their money for food.
The health component of the project may not be spared either. Other parts of Uganda have reported severe malnutrition and Sam Agom, the in-charge medic at Tiriri health centre, fears similar problems may be experienced in Katine.
“Right now we don’t have anti-malaria medicines and our people have been selling food to buy medicines that we prescribe. Now if they have very little food, the disease situation in the community could get worse,” Agom said.
Amref’s country director Joshua Kyallo said the organisation was gravely concerned about the situation. Amref and Farm-Africa, which is offering technical support on the livelihoods component of the Katine project, were now gathering information on the effect of the food shortages on the community and the project, and would discuss the matter with district leaders, line ministries in Kampala and organisations like the WFP.
“If we see that the situation is getting out of control, or if government declares this a crisis situation, then Amref would make a separate appeal to respond to the problem,” Kyallo said.
George Mukkath, the director of programmes at Farm-Africa, said he was concerned about the low availability of food in the sub-county because the next harvest was “a long way down the road”. He said the fact that the price of maize had nearly doubled in Katine was one clear indicator that there was something chronically wrong.
Farmers needed more crop varieties that were drought-resistant. The 18 farmers groups established in Katine were given a new variety of cassava “but if they can introduce other crops which can withstand water stress, they will get a crop”, said Mukkath.
“We need to have wider discussions with Amref on how to deal with the current food crisis. We are talking to them and they are talking to people on the ground.”
He added: “I see an opportunity in this situation to address long-term food security. How it can be integrated into health, education and water and sanitation programmes. If there is no food security, health suffers, children don’t go to school. It’s important we all have discussions at a later stage on how to address these things.”
For Julius Eilu, a member of the Emorikikinos farmers group, the situation is getting out of hand.
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This Sporting Life, in Uganda
July 21st, 2009 |
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Send in the accountants
July 14th, 2009 |
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Many of Africa’s leaders will have been distressed to hear Obama’s message on aid conditions
Africa’s leaders have become accustomed to a protective stance of victimhood. They only need to say “neo-colonial” for world leaders to back off from criticism. And moats have made the problem worse: imagine the retort to a British politician complaining about African governance. Obama’s arrival in Africa was preceded by his spectacular apology to the Muslim world, so many African leaders must have been hoping for more of the absolving balm of western guilt. They did not get it. Instead, Obama delivered three unwelcome messages.
The most explosive was that Africa’s core problem is its own misgovernance: Africa’s persistent poverty has been largely self-inflicted. Obama is the first western leader to have the political space to deliver this tough but necessary message. He does not need a photo-op with smiling Africans to signal to voters back home that he is a compassionate sort of guy. Nor does he risk being denounced. His protection is in part that it is not possible to imagine Obama in a pith helmet; but beyond that, nobody can seriously question Obama’s sincere concern to help his father’s continent. His statement cannot be interpreted as being the preliminaries to neglect.
Second, the solution to misgovernance will come from within Africa: the key struggle is internal. By choosing to visit Ghana – which recently hosted an honest election, with the governing party narrowly losing – Obama flagged up that leadership depends critically on the integrity of the political process.
Obama has made a clarion call for change, but more importantly, he is the change. Africans see Obama as a fellow African, but unlike most of Africa’s own leaders he personifies the leadership values that he preaches. Poor leadership is not intrinsic to African leadership; it is intrinsic only to the people who have jostled their way into presidencies.
Why has the selection of African leadership been so disastrous? The problem lies not with Africans but with the structure of the polities in which they live. Around the world the chance of a stolen election soars if the society is poor, small, and resource-rich. Even then it is not inevitable: Botswana started with just these features yet it is a functioning democracy. But such countries need strong checks and balances such as a free press and what political scientists call “veto points” – independent bases of power that can block presidential decisions. The democratisation that swept across Africa after the fall of the Soviet Union in most cases amounted to little more than elections.
Which takes us to Obama’s final message: America will help, where it can, to tilt the balance towards brave people struggling for change. American money will be conditional upon decent governance. Where public money can be looted, the political class – no matter what its original composition – will end up peopled by crooks. In Africa aid is such a major component of public money that the scope for capture matters enormously.
To date America and Europe have chosen different mechanisms for aid: Europe has favoured budget support, in which the recipient government decides how the money is spent; America has preferred project aid, where the money is tied to a specific expenditure. In badly governed countries the effect has been the same: the money has been captured by politicians who are the core of the problem. Project aid only gives the illusion of integrity: governments get donors to finance the projects they would have done anyway, and this releases their own money for the presidential wish list. It is the wish list that project aid is really paying for.
The Obama principle provides the basis for a new, common approach. Where governance is satisfactory, as in Ghana, budget support is the only sensible basis for aid. Europe has it right: why should US politicians try to dictate to the Ghanaian government how to spend aid when Ghanaians are able to hold their government to account? At the other end of the governance spectrum neither budget support nor project aid can tackle the problem.
We can learn from Paddy Ashdown‘s experience in Bosnia. He concluded that what he had needed were not doctors without borders, but accountants without borders. Where governance is inadequate, aid should only come with an army of accountants able to ensure that it is not captured. The missing piece of international architecture is an independent assessment of the integrity of budget systems. Where a budget system was certified as satisfactory, Europe and America could safely converge on budget support. Where it was found unsatisfactory, aid would be conditional upon accountants. Governments would know that to get foreign accountants off their backs they need to build systems that withstand scrutiny. The rationale for cleaning up budgets is not that it would safeguard our money, but that it would clean up politics, and build on the distress that Obama’s speech will have caused Africa’s crooked politicians.
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Aid to Africa takes centre stage at G8
July 10th, 2009 |
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Group of Eight joined by African leaders to discuss Obama plan for £9bn package of food aid
The leaders of the G8 today came under pressure to honour their promises to the world’s poorest countries as Africa took centre stage at the final session of the three-day summit.
After two days spent discussing the global slump, the stalled trade deal and climate change, the presidents and prime ministers of the Group of Eight richest nations were joined by a group of African leaders to discuss Barack Obama’s plan for a $15bn (£9.2bn) package of food aid designed to revolutionise agriculture in the least developed nations.
Some aid agencies fear that the G8 will fail to deliver on the food security plan, noting that promises made at the Gleneagles summit four years ago to double foreign aid had not been met.
African leaders said ahead of today’s talks that they would raise their concerns about G8 backsliding. “The key message for us is to ask the G8 to live up to their commitments,” Meles Zenawi, the Ethopian prime minister, said before flying to Italy for the half-day meeting.
In recent years, the G8 has invited African leaders to join the summit for talks on development and besides Meles, the leaders of Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa were all at the table today.
Thousands of anti-globalisation demonstrators were hoping to turn up the heat on the industrialised powers with a protest march on the summit venue in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila.
The anti-capitalist marchers will also tap into local frustrations about the slow progress of reconstruction since the 6 April earthquake devastated the town, with more than 24,000 people still homeless in the area.
Despite only limited progress at the summit on the key issues of climate change, trade and development, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, urged the G8′s critics to be patient.
“There is a bit of frustration because one would like to convince everyone about everything and obtain all the results straight away, but things are progressing,” Sarkozy said.
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Time for action on agriculture
July 10th, 2009 |
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With announcements on agriculture expected from the G8 today, Farm-Africa’s new chairman, Martin Evans, tells Liz Ford what Africa’s subsistence farmers really need
Asked what he would like the G8 to do for African farmers this week, the new chairman of Farm-Africa, Martin Evans, doesn’t hesitate to offer a list. Top of that list is money for research into new disease-resistant seed varieties, improved animal healthcare, particularly in those areas vulnerable to climate change, and help for farmers to access new technology and markets.
“What we’d like to see is basically the same thing as African farmers. We need to look at what they want and how the G8 can help supply these things,” says the agricultural economist.
“Money from the G8 that is put into agriculture research systems can have huge benefits. Fund additional research into improved seeds and animal disease prevention and you will offer a safeguard for years ahead. If they [G8] are really paying for agriculture, let’s see some money go into research.”
Farm-Africa is working with the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) on improving livelihoods in Katine, north-east Uganda, as part of the Guardian’s three-year development project in the region.
Working with 18 farmers groups in the rural sub-county, the project has seen the introduction of new disease-resistant, high-yielding cassava, which has just produced its first harvest, and plans are underway to build a storage centre for crops, which will allow farmers to sell in bulk and hopefully get a better deal. Mobile phones are increasingly being used by farmers to find the best place to sell their goods.
Crisis talks
After more than 20 years of neglect from the international community, the world food crisis has pushed agriculture if not to the top, then certainly high up on to the G8 agenda this year, which could mean real benefits for farmers. Today a new initiative to fund farming and to tackle global hunger are due to be announced by leaders meeting in Italy, which reportedly could entail an investment of $12bn over the next three years.
The UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) has already laid out its commitment to revitalising agriculture and improving food security in its white paper, published on Monday. What it promises is not dissimilar to Evans’ wishlist. The paper, Building our Common Future, talks about helping subsistence farmers to get seeds and fertilisers, credit and access to markets, and of supporting agricultural research. It mentions “doubling agricultural production in Africa over the next 20 years” and calls on the international community to deliver the $20bn of new funding for food and agriculture promised last year (perhaps an inauspicious sign for any further cash pledges).
“We are just waking up to the fact that agriculture has been neglected and we’re seeing the impact of that. It’s absolutely true that the volume of aid and financial flows going into agriculture has been in decline over the last two decades,” says Evans, who took over as chairman this week.
The wake up call was triggered by the spike in food prices in 2007-08. Although prices for staple crops have now stabilised, DfID is still predicting long-term problems in producing and procuring food for nearly 1 billion people. The alarming rise in food prices coincided with the publication of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2008, which for the first time in more than 25 years focused on agriculture. The report said agriculture was “a vital development tool” for achieving the Millennium Development Goal to halve poverty by 2015. “The World Development Report refocused everyone’s attention,” says Evans.
Of course, helping farmers involves more than handing out seeds and discussing how new technologies can increase yields – it’s about making farming viable. “Food security is more than growing more food in your own backyard, it’s more of everything. Food security is about making farming more productive and more profitable. You need to improve access to markets. [Subsistence farmers] really don’t have good access to markets. You need investment in roads and communication technology to ensure trading conditions are right. Some money can usefully and sensibly be put into basic things like that.”
He adds: “It’s very difficult for poor people to amass any savings, so we can help them a lot by giving a bit of capital. I’m not suggesting that things are handed out on a plate. But we need to help to create the conditions that make things accessible and ensure farmers are encouraged and convinced that benefits outweigh the risks, and to take an entrepreneurial approach to things. It’s not about us turning up in our 4x4s, dumping things and leaving, it’s about working with farmers to identify problems and come up with plans. It’s very much about people helping themselves.”
He adds that farmers, the majority of whom are women, need educating on new technologies, such as how to conserve water and better irrigate land. But they also need to be convinced these new ideas are going to work. In Katine demonstration farms were set up to allow villagers to do just that.
Passing on the benefits
But with any new money promised by the international community comes the question of how it will get to farmers. Evans admits implementation is the hard bit, but that’s where NGOs like Farm-Africa step in. Donors are increasingly channelling aid through governments, but there has also been an increase in cash filtered through NGOs in recent years. “Assuming money is allocated by the G8, we hope a lot of it will come the way of good NGOs. We can do things neither governments or the commercial sector can do. But we need both.”
Looking to the future, Evans, who has more than 35 years experience working in agriculture, rural development and agribusiness, would like Farm-Africa to explore how large-scale business can benefit smallholder farmers, with whom the charity works throughout east Africa. “There are good examples where large-scale business can connect with small farmers by buying their products under contract, processing them for them and providing advice and seeds and technical support,” he says. “We can’t do these for all crops in all places, but I would like to see Farm-Africa exploring more opportunities for merging large scale agriculture and business to benefit small groups.”
“Like it or not, large-scale business is a fact. It can be a threat, but can also be a great way to look to see how Farm-Africa can open up these opportunities for the benefit of small farmers.”
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Can white paper eliminate poverty?
July 8th, 2009 |
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The Department for International Development’s white paper sets out the UK government’s position on aid and development over the coming years. But does it go far enough?
The release of Department for International Development’s white paper this week, ahead of the G8 summit in Italy, sets out the UK government’s position on aid and development in an increasingly fraught and complex global environment.
The paper, Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future, includes a renewed commitment to push 0.7% of Britain’s Gross National Income into international development, reaching ï¿¡9bn by 2013, and a doubling of funding (ï¿¡1bn) for African infrastructure programmes including transport, energy and trade.
There is a strong emphasis on supporting “fragile states”, with 50% of new bilateral funding going to the most vulnerable nations, and an emphasis on helping build security and justice alongside health, education and sanitation.
Climate change was also high on the paper’s agenda with a renewed commitment of ï¿¡800m to support climate change adaptation and new pilot programmes looking at initiatives such as low carbon innovation centres and a “global climate change knowledge network”.
So far it has been broadly well received by the development world. In a blog for the Overseas Development Institute, director Alison Evans says the white paper is a “valiant attempt to walk that difficult – and often blurred – line between morality and pragmatism” and pinpoints the crucial link between international development and national self-interest.
Nevertheless Evans does voice concern for what she sees as scant detail about how aid will be delivered differently or the difficult choices that DfID needs to make to deliver the transparency, scrutiny and accountability it promises throughout the paper.
The response from the NGO world has also been cautiously optimistic. Oxfam is largely positive, but expresses concern that the paper’s focus on security and justice in fragile states will come at the expense of social and economic development and health and education services.
WaterAid applauds the paper’s commitment to target support to the poorest people to help them through the financial crisis. Only 24% of global aid for water and sanitation now goes to the least developed countries.
However, despite this commitment, the NGO says there is not enough recognition of the lack of investment in improving water, sanitation and hygiene as part of wider health programmes. “It’s time for DfID to seek to fully understand the underlying causes of slow progress in health,” said policy director Henry Northover.
The white paper is being presented by the government as evidence of the UK’s commitment to honour its promises made at Gleneagles four years ago, and to put pressure on other rich nations to do the same.
But does the white paper go far enough?
Last week, in an online chat on the Katine blog, international development minister Gareth Thomas said the white paper would answer all question marks over the UK’s position on international development and aid. Has it achieved this?
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Calls grow within G8 to expel Italy
July 7th, 2009 |
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While US tries to inject purpose into meeting, Italy is lambasted for poor planning and reneging on overseas aid commitments
Preparations for Wednesday’s G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.
In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised “sherpa calls” (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.
“For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It’s a nuclear option,” said one senior G8 member state official. “The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning.”
“The G8 is a club, and clubs have membership dues. Italy has not been paying them,” said a European official involved in the summit preparations.
The behind-the-scenes grumbling has gone as far as suggestions that Italy could be pushed out of the G8 or any successor group. One possibility being floated in European capitals is that Spain, which has higher per capita national income and gives a greater percentage of GDP in aid, would take Italy’s place.
The Italian foreign ministry did not reply yesterday to a request to comment on the criticisms.
“The Italian preparations for the summit have been chaotic from start to finish,” said Richard Gowan, an analyst at the Centre for International Co-operation at New York University.
“The Italians were saying as long ago as January this year that they did not have a vision of the summit, and if the Obama administration had any ideas they would take instruction from the Americans.”
The US-led talks led to agreement on a food security initiative a few days before the L’Aquila meeting, the overall size of which is still being negotiated. Gordon Brown has said Britain would contribute £1.1bn to the scheme, designed to support farmers in developing countries.
However, officials who have seen the rest of the draft joint statement say there is very little new in it. Critics say Italy’s Berlusconi government has made up for the lack of substance by increasing the size of the guest list. Estimates of the numbers of heads of state coming to L’Aquila range from 39 to 44.
“This is a gigantic fudge,” Gowan said. “The Italians have no ideas and have decided that best thing to do is to spread the agenda extremely thinly to obscure the fact that didn’t really have an agenda.”
Silvio Berlusconi has come in for harsh criticism for delivering only 3% of development aid promises made four years ago, and for planning cuts of more than 50% in Italy’s overseas aid budget.
Meanwhile, media coverage in the run-up to the meeting has been dominated by Berlusconi’s parties with young women, and then the wisdom of holding a summit in a region experiencing seismic aftershocks three months after a devastating earthquake as a gesture of solidarity with the local population.
The heavy criticism of Italy comes at a time when the future of the G8 as a forum for addressing the world’s problems is very much in question. At the beginning of the year the G20 group, which included emerging economies, was seen as a possible replacement, but the G20 London summit in April convinced US officials it was too unwieldy a vehicle.
The most likely replacement for the G8 is likely to be between 13- and 16-strong, including rising powers such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, which currently attend meetings as the “outreach five” But any transition would be painful as countries jostle for a seat. Italy’s removal is seen in a possibility but Spanish membership in its place is unlikely. The US and the emerging economies believe the existing group is too Euro-centric already, and would prefer consolidated EU representation. That is seen as unlikely. No European state wants to give up their place at the table.
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UK seeks to shame G8 over Africa aid
July 6th, 2009 |
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• Gleneagles figures should be revealed, says minister
• UK move meets resistance ahead of Italian summit
Britain is to try to shame G8 leaders during this week’s summit into agreeing to publish tables setting out whether they are meeting their solemn commitments to double aid to Africa.
The pledge was made by world leaders at the British-chaired G8 four years ago.
Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, disclosed that the British government has been arguing that the G8 summit, starting in Italy this week, “is the time to publish a Gleneagles framework whereby the whole world will be able to judge … which countries have met their Gleneagles commitments and which countries have fallen behind”.
However, Britain is finding it hard to get agreement from other G8 countries to publish the details of how far they have fallen behind their promises.
The G8 leaders at Gleneagles made a collective promise to more than double aid to Africa by 2010.
Britain remains on course to dedicate 0.7 percent of national income to development assistance by 2013.
Total UK aid is due to be £9.1bn by 2010-11 with spending in sub-Saharan Africa projected to be £3.4bn – nearly three times 2004-05 levels.
The single biggest culprit is Italy, the country chairing this week’s summit. The anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof interviewed the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in La Stampa, accusing him of having no credibility. Berlusconi replied “I am sorry. We made a mistake.” Italy is due to cut aid to Africa next year.
British officials are privately scathing about Berlusconi’s aid record, and are saying continued Italian membership of the G8 cannot be guaranteed now that Spain’s GDP has risen above that of Italy.
Britain hopes to make announcements at the G8 on extra help for agriculture, as well as action to reduce maternal mortality. In his white paper, Alexander promises to provide an emergency social safety net with help for 50 million of the poorest people by giving direct financial support, underwriting crop schemes, providing assets such as livestock or access to education and health to the poorest people. The aim is to build such social protection schemes in more than 20 countries over the next three years.
In another shift, Alexander promised the UK will spend £1bn a year in overseas aid on countries that have recently emerged from conflict.
The money will target security and job creation rather than areas such as health and education although it is not clear how much money will come from his budget or that of the Ministry of Defence.
He also promises to respond to the new hunger crisis by increasing agricultural research, with the aim of doubling agricultural production over the next 20 years.
But he intends to cut the number of countries in which DFID has offices. Since 1997, DFID has reduced the number of countries to which it gives aid by a third.
The UK’s aid programme to China is, for instance, likely to be abandoned, The white paper also vows to increase the amount of aid for climate change to up to 10% of the total overseas aid budget.
The white paper also pledges a large proportion of UK aid will be channelled through multilateral institutions although UK aid will be increasingly linked to the UN agencies that deliver on impact efficiency and reform. It also backs a single UN body to support women, saying the current UN effort is fragmented.
Alexander also proposes to treble the amount of money devoted to fighting corruption in developing countries.
Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy, Kirsty Hughes, backed support for fragile states, but warned: “The government should not rob Peter to pay Paul.
“Money should not be diverted from schools and health to pay for police, security and justice spending. Building security in fragile states cannot be achieved by a focus on security and justice alone.
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Like it or not, I’m involved
July 6th, 2009 |
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Fed up with windbag actors advocating for the poor and needy? Me too. But shutting up is worse
Why do you have to hear it from an actor? I have a profound dislike of activism. I don’t enjoy hearing dispatches from the crisis zone delivered by actors and rock stars. I get no joy from fundraising events, op-eds, posters, speeches, slogans. I’m tired of it. And I’m tired of the crisis in Africa.
If your profession gives you a public voice, you have a new relationship with those who don’t. Your voice becomes a cherished commodity. Not for its merits but for its sheer volume. You may have nothing to say, but those who do – the wise, the desperate and the better informed – all clamour to make use of your media connection.
We are not in a position to choose whether or not we have a relationship with our own society or with the world’s poorest people. We can choose the nature of those relationships, but either way they’re there. We’re business partners. If we choose to ignore them we are simply choosing to make that relationship a negligent and destructive one. As voters and consumers we are directly complicit in the misery of the millions we do business with. If we let our governments and businesses think we are indifferent to their cynicism they will go on practising it on licence from us and every cup of coffee we drink and every piece of cotton we wear will continue to be an act of cruelty.
We are involved with Africa, whether we like it or not. Of course, I’m aware of famine, drought, poverty and corruption, but I also see the statesmanship of Mandela, Joaquim Chissano, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf … the works of Achebe, Okri, Soyinka … the music of Fela Kuti, Cheikh Lo and Angelique Kidjo.
My own children will inherit all this together with the children of that continent. Within 15 years they’ll be trading or fighting with each other, exchanging diplomacy or whatever other relationship we might have set in motion. They will also share the triple crisis of a global economic slump, high food prices and climate change – all of which will be addressed (or not) by this year’s G8 in Italy.
Italy is another relationship I can’t wish away. My wife and children are Italian. I am completely in love with that country for better or worse. I was decorated by the Italian ambassador as an exhortation to promote Italy’s image abroad; an easy task when it comes to food, wine, architecture, etc … but one which will be made almost impossible if Silvio Berlusconi does not improve his lamentable record on aid. For this reason Oxfam issued me with call-up papers once again. I’ve held the giddy title of global ambassador for Oxfam for a number of years now.
So, with an all too familiar sinking feeling, the ambassador agreed to go to Italy to try to do something to persuade the G8 leaders to deliver on their aid promises and prevent the overwhelming number of preventable deaths taking place daily on their doorstep. No problem.
It’s tempting to look for ways back to a decorous silence. To try to return to a pleasing and well-argued belief that actors should shut up. But you can’t unknow what you know. NGOs have a way of inviting you to be a firsthand witness. And once you’ve seen what a well-placed or well-timed word (by anybody) can do, shutting up starts to require some painful mental contortions.
I had dinner with Bob Geldof a couple of weeks ago. I explained that I felt I had to be judicious about when and when not to speak out, that I wanted to hold fire and keep under the radar so as not to blow all credibility. He said, “Fuck that, you’ve got to just go!”
If everyone did that, we could finally do away with long-winded actors.
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The anti-aid agenda
July 2nd, 2009 |
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If Berlusconi sets the tone at next week’s G8, it will be a disaster for a cherished Labour goal
The G8 is less than a week away but already the Italian presidency is seen as having a disastrous impact on aid. Uninterested, disorganised and short is likely to be the summary of the summit by the end of next week: the G8 leaders, according to the latest plans, will have only three hours sitting down together.
While the developing world reels from the economic downturn, Italy has shown no ambition for the aid agenda. It is falling dramatically behind on its own commitments made in 2005 at Gleneagles and is instituting draconian cuts of 56% in its aid budget this year. Italy will end up with the lowest rate of aid – less than 0.1% of GDP – in the G8, despite its reiterations of commitment to the European agreement to reach 0.51% by 2010.
Italy’s lamentable performance is prompting a crisis of identity for the G8. Accusations of summit ceremony with no substance have always dogged the event, but given that it no longer represents all the biggest economies (China is not a member), or the biggest populations (such as China or India), its one last claim to world leadership has been as the world’s biggest aid donor. But even that claim now looks fragile in Italy’s hands. Spain has overtaken Italy in GDP per capita and now has one of the highest aid rates in the EU, handsomely ahead of Italy. The question of whether Silvio Berlusconi has forfeited his right to a place at the top table is likely to hover over events next week.
But the failures of Rome are only one aspect of how to ensure the survival of one of Labour’s most cherished achievements over the last 12 years: pushing increased aid up both the international and domestic agenda. By 2010 Britain is on track to have increased its aid budget to 0.62% of GDP, one of the highest in the EU and not far short of the totemic 0.7% set by the UN in 1970. While many departments are braced for cuts, aid is to increase – and the Tories have promised to abide by the increases. Labour has established a new political consensus on aid domestically, and an international profile on the issue which is widely admired. But can it hold?
That is part of the impetus behind the white paper expected next week from Department of International Development (DfiD). It indicates a growing unease across many parts of government that now is the time to lash the legacy down, to make it as difficult as possible for the Tories to unpick. The aim is to make aid analogous with the NHS or the BBC, a significant part of British identity. That means that a lot more people need to know what DfiD does, and this is what lies behind proposals to rebrand with a logo of UKaid.
It’s all laudable stuff, but difficult. At heart, aid is a moral argument about interconnectedness in a small world, and Labour has doggedly championed that message under the likes of Clare Short, Hilary Benn and, now, Douglas Alexander. The Tories have bought into that, because as one observer put it: “It’s a cheap way to detoxify the brand, aid represents only 1% of government spending.” But the concern is that the Tories might dilute the primacy of poverty reduction – diverting money into Foreign Office objectives, perhaps dismantling Dfid, as John Major and Douglas Hurd suggested recently. So the new white paper will try to buttress the moral argument with an awareness of self-interest: African economies, if strong enough, offer huge potential markets.
With energy draining away at an international level and a critique of aid gathering strength with the likes of economist Dambisa Moyo, it’s a vulnerable moment for the aid agenda. The fear is that achievements are hard won – involving huge effort in mobilising people on to the streets – and can easily fall apart: commitments dropped, and targets missed when everyone thought the job had been largely done.
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UN warns of starving North Korean millions
July 1st, 2009 |
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• World Food Programme helping a fifth of those in need
• US-monitored North Korean ship turns for home
Millions of North Koreans face hunger and worsening malnutrition, the World Food Programme said today after scaling back its operations in the impoverished country.
The UN aid agency said it was reaching fewer than a third of those targeted and about a fifth of those in need.
It blamed a lack of international donations, with none since the state’s nuclear test in May, and said it faced new restrictions from Pyongyang. It said it had received 15% of the $504m it needed.
Torben Due, the WFP’s representative for North Korea, told reporters in Beijing that since January it had been delivering reduced food packages and reaching 1.7 million people. “It is amongst the lowest [number] we’re ever had in the DPRK [North Korea],” he said.
The agency estimates that 8.7 million people need food aid, and the emergency operation launched last autumn aimed to reach 6.2 million. It has been distributing a tenth of the 40,000 metric tonnes it aimed to deliver each month.
“There’s a need to do more, and that’s why we are asking these donor countries for more,” Due said.
North Korea has relied on foreign aid since a crippling famine in the mid-1990s, which killed hundreds of thousands.
Tensions continue in the region and US officials said today that a North Korean ship under scrutiny by the US navy for more than a week appeared to be returning northwards. The Kang Nam 1 is the first vessel to be monitored under UN sanctions intended to clamp down on the trade of banned arms and weapons-related material.
Unnamed officials in Washington said the ship, believed to have been bound for Burma with suspicious cargo on board, had turned around on Sunday. Pyongyang renewed its warning that intercepting its ships would be a declaration of war.
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Katine’s six-month progress review
July 1st, 2009 |
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Amref’s latest six-month report claims successes in school enrolment and health, but lack of drugs and the small number of farmers benefiting from livelihoods work remain challenges
Read the six-month report, financial review and the report highlights
Read Madeleine Bunting’s mid-term review of the Katine project
The number of children in school has risen by 17% and diarrhoea cases in children under five years old have dropped dramatically, according to the latest six monthly update from the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) on the Katine project.
At the start of the project in October 2007 enrolment stood at 7,531 and it has now gone up to 9,071. Some of the increase is due to the expansion of two schools set up by their communities, but Amref claims this is a result of their work in the sub-county. Amref believes that the increase has seen many orphans and children with special needs getting into school; nearly 30% of school-age children in Katine fall into this category. The rise in school enrolment is a boost for the project, which has organised training for teachers over the last 18 months as well as contributing over 1,000 more textbooks and new desks. Classrooms and schools have been renovated or rebuilt and Amref claims there has been a drop in teacher absenteeism, an ongoing problem in remote rural areas, which badly affects educational achievement.
The decline in diarrhoea cases also marks a positive outcome for Amref’s strategy of community health workers, the report claims. The village health teams (VHTs) have been trained and motivated with gifts of bicycles, T-shirts and gumboots. Nine out of 10 patients at the health centre are now referred by the VHTs, which are working effectively to assist the management of a wide range of health conditions such as TB and HIV. But the report acknowledges that the lack of drugs to treat common illnesses such as malaria is hampering the success of the health teams. It reflects the government’s inadequate drug supply system across the country; Amref has insisted that the project’s aim should be to strengthen existing drug supply systems, but this is not proving effective. It is probably now the single biggest challenge of the three-year project. There are also not enough drugs to treat HIV and to prevent mother to child transmission. Other aspects of the health programme have also proved ineffective; the take up of contraceptive services has been tiny, reflecting strong cultural prejudices.
Other successes include a new laboratory at Ojom health centre, which can process tests for malaria, TB and HIV, the report states. Within the first six weeks of the lab opening, 790 patients had come for tests, usually for malaria and HIV indicating the enormous unmet demand for effective healthcare across the Katine sub-county. Another success is that there has been a sharp increase in the number of pregnant women coming for antenatal care – although few of them manage the recommended four visits. It is the long distances and inadequate transport that limits the number of visits a woman makes; it can be as much as 25km to reach the nearest health centre in the sub-county.
Given those distances, the improved immunisation rate – which has now more than doubled according to Amref’s report – is a big achievement. VHTs have played a major role in ensuring that the outreach clinics in schools and trading centres are well attended.
Amref has given some thought about how to deal with the resentments caused by the fact that only a small number of farmers are benefiting from free seeds and tools (about 540 out of the sub-county population of 25,000). Recipients will now be expected to pass on to neighbours a proportion of their first crops as a way of spreading the benefits.
The big challenge that lies ahead in the second half of the project, the report comments, is how to manage the high demands of the community and local government officials. In particular, the water and sanitation budget for hardware (as opposed to training) is exhausted, but there is still considerable demand to expand the services planned to build new boreholes.
There are a number of problems with construction; one contractor of a school at Kadinya has failed to finish the task and lawyers have had to be brought in, the report acknowledges. Some pipework on the rain harvesting has not been fitted properly; and a plastic panel latrine block was blown over in a storm and will now be rebuilt in brick. Construction work is due to begin at a number of other schools, but the more collaborative approach (with community donations of materials) has proved slow.
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Development Q&A: Gareth Thomas
June 30th, 2009 |
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Debate aid, trade and debt with the UK international development minister, Gareth Thomas, who will be live online at 2pm on Tuesday 30 June to answer your questions. Scroll down to read his answers
With the imminent publication of a white paper that is expected to set out the government’s plans to eliminate poverty, the UK international development minister, Gareth Thomas, will be online for one hour at 2pm (BST) on Tuesday 30 June 2009 to answer your questions about aid, debt and development.
Thomas has held positions in the Department for International Development for the past six years.
Before becoming international development minister in the reshuffle earlier this month, replacing Ivan Lewis, Thomas was joint minister of state for DfID, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and UK Trade and Investment. Prior to that, he was undersecretary of state for DfID and DBERR.
Between 2003 and 2007 he was undersecretary of state in DfID with responsibility for Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Overseas Dependent Territories. He was also DfID’s green minister with responsibility for the department’s environmental performance.
DfID has taken an interest in the Guardian’s Katine project. Earlier this year, the head of DfID Uganda and Ivan Lewis visited the sub-county.
DfID is Uganda’s fourth largest donor, pouring millions of pounds into the country annually.
Post your questions to Gareth Thomas now and find out what the minister says from 2pm on Tuesday.
If you have problems posting a question, email Katine.editor@guardian.co.uk
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Reviewing Katine: governance
June 26th, 2009 |
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To mark the midway point of the Katine project, and ahead of mid-point reviews to be conducted by our independent evaluator and Amref, this week Madeleine Bunting examines progress in each of the project’s five components. In her final review she looks at governance.
Read Madeleine’s reviews of health, education, water and sanitation and livelihoods
Empowerment has been the strand of the project that us journalists have found the hardest to understand. What exactly is empowerment, and how is it going to be measured or evaluated? I’ve listened to Joshua Kyallo, Amref Uganda’s director, explain how villagers can be empowered to demand better services from the government at district level. But there are plenty of questions in my mind as to how effective this will be in improving the operation of state services in Katine.
The district budgets for health and education, for roads and water are desperately inadequate. It is not just the lack of demand for services that causes the state to be so ineffectual at village level here. I find the “rights-based” approach, based on developing in villagers a sense of entitlement to basic health and education, hard to understand. Katine may put more pressure on the district, but there are multiple problems at every level of Ugandan government; often the district can do very little.
There are other aspects of empowerment that also need to be questioned. I talked to a few Katine residents – not those recruited as volunteers by Amref – and the way they spoke seemed to indicate that Amref was well regarded, but there was no great enthusiasm. I felt that in some places there was a gentle disappointment settling in. Several of the Amref staff spoke of how they had struggled with huge expectations of the project from Katine villagers. Is that the Guardian’s fault, I asked, with its headlines promising “transformation”? Perhaps partly, they agreed.
I wondered how actively Amref has managed expectations and how widely it had communicated with villagers across this very scattered sub-county about what the project was going to do and what it was not going to do. Joseph Malinga’s story about the confusions in a particularly remote corner of the sub-county, Merok, seemed to point to an important breakdown in communications. How was it that this kind of misunderstanding was not corrected by Amref earlier?
There is a sense that Amref decided what it wanted to do in Katine and the extent to which local people – beyond the local government officials – have been involved in that strategy is unclear. There is clearly a tension here between giving people what is known to be good for them – hygiene training – or giving them what they keep asking for – cows. The only way to square this circle is constant communication and explanation and from the outside it is hard to see how well Amref is doing that.
The concern is that given the considerable demands the Guardian makes on Amref – for information and visits – the priority has been to communicate with London rather than the remote hamlets of Katine.
What we need to know
How well are local people being involved in the project?
How much say have they had in shaping its priorities?
Is Amref’s relationship with the Guardian distorting the project?
How does empowerment in the long run help deliver better services?
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Send in the accountants
Many of Africa’s leaders will have been distressed to hear Obama’s message on aid conditions
Africa’s leaders have become accustomed to a protective stance of victimhood. They only need to say “neo-colonial” for world leaders to back off from criticism. And moats have made the problem worse: imagine the retort to a British politician complaining about African governance. Obama’s arrival in Africa was preceded by his spectacular apology to the Muslim world, so many African leaders must have been hoping for more of the absolving balm of western guilt. They did not get it. Instead, Obama delivered three unwelcome messages.
The most explosive was that Africa’s core problem is its own misgovernance: Africa’s persistent poverty has been largely self-inflicted. Obama is the first western leader to have the political space to deliver this tough but necessary message. He does not need a photo-op with smiling Africans to signal to voters back home that he is a compassionate sort of guy. Nor does he risk being denounced. His protection is in part that it is not possible to imagine Obama in a pith helmet; but beyond that, nobody can seriously question Obama’s sincere concern to help his father’s continent. His statement cannot be interpreted as being the preliminaries to neglect.
Second, the solution to misgovernance will come from within Africa: the key struggle is internal. By choosing to visit Ghana – which recently hosted an honest election, with the governing party narrowly losing – Obama flagged up that leadership depends critically on the integrity of the political process.
Obama has made a clarion call for change, but more importantly, he is the change. Africans see Obama as a fellow African, but unlike most of Africa’s own leaders he personifies the leadership values that he preaches. Poor leadership is not intrinsic to African leadership; it is intrinsic only to the people who have jostled their way into presidencies.
Why has the selection of African leadership been so disastrous? The problem lies not with Africans but with the structure of the polities in which they live. Around the world the chance of a stolen election soars if the society is poor, small, and resource-rich. Even then it is not inevitable: Botswana started with just these features yet it is a functioning democracy. But such countries need strong checks and balances such as a free press and what political scientists call “veto points” – independent bases of power that can block presidential decisions. The democratisation that swept across Africa after the fall of the Soviet Union in most cases amounted to little more than elections.
Which takes us to Obama’s final message: America will help, where it can, to tilt the balance towards brave people struggling for change. American money will be conditional upon decent governance. Where public money can be looted, the political class – no matter what its original composition – will end up peopled by crooks. In Africa aid is such a major component of public money that the scope for capture matters enormously.
To date America and Europe have chosen different mechanisms for aid: Europe has favoured budget support, in which the recipient government decides how the money is spent; America has preferred project aid, where the money is tied to a specific expenditure. In badly governed countries the effect has been the same: the money has been captured by politicians who are the core of the problem. Project aid only gives the illusion of integrity: governments get donors to finance the projects they would have done anyway, and this releases their own money for the presidential wish list. It is the wish list that project aid is really paying for.
The Obama principle provides the basis for a new, common approach. Where governance is satisfactory, as in Ghana, budget support is the only sensible basis for aid. Europe has it right: why should US politicians try to dictate to the Ghanaian government how to spend aid when Ghanaians are able to hold their government to account? At the other end of the governance spectrum neither budget support nor project aid can tackle the problem.
We can learn from Paddy Ashdown‘s experience in Bosnia. He concluded that what he had needed were not doctors without borders, but accountants without borders. Where governance is inadequate, aid should only come with an army of accountants able to ensure that it is not captured. The missing piece of international architecture is an independent assessment of the integrity of budget systems. Where a budget system was certified as satisfactory, Europe and America could safely converge on budget support. Where it was found unsatisfactory, aid would be conditional upon accountants. Governments would know that to get foreign accountants off their backs they need to build systems that withstand scrutiny. The rationale for cleaning up budgets is not that it would safeguard our money, but that it would clean up politics, and build on the distress that Obama’s speech will have caused Africa’s crooked politicians.