Duncan Green's Blog, page 73

Why are we failing on gender? 3 bad excuses and 6 good ideas

women’s empowerment.

Last week I went to a networking event for women working in international development about ‘women’s empowerment’ (WE) in Syria. During the Q&A one of the attendees asked an astonishing, but revealing, question: “Why do you think donors are now asking for gender components to be part of programmes?”

I sensed (and shared) the frustration of the speakers – after an hour of debate focused on how to do better in supporting WE, the audience hadn’t understood the why of WE in the first place.

Why is this so? It boils down to a number of practical misconceptions and feeble excuses that I have heard over the years and still hear far too often.

“Our activities are gender-neutral, so there is no need to target women”

This assumption means overlooking compelling evidence that society’s expectations of the role and behaviour of women continue to ensure that their lives are fundamentally different from men’s. From the opportunities that are made accessible to them, to the factors that restrict their ability to engage in them. Not only is this perpetuated through socio-cultural norms, but it is also often still enshrined in legal discrimination on the basis of sex.

Often, development programmes and policies discriminate against women simply by being mostly designed and led by men. As such, they are intrinsically biased towards favouring male needs, viewpoints and approaches.

“Working on gender issues is too hard” (aka “we need to be realistic”)

Programmes like to be ambitious on everything except equality targets: short timelines, small budgets, stretch targets on the programme’s “main” focus, but gender equality? Not so much.

Teams apparently lack incentives to work on gender equality because they are too busy doing other things. So not enough time is dedicated to understanding and addressing gender issues. Gender experts are given a handful of days to come up with solutions to centuries of gender discrimination.

And when they come up with sensible recommendations – as one of the speakers perfectly put it – “the men in the room will roll their eyes” at the prospect of another rant from the gender expert, whose recommendations they will then dismiss as unrealistic and unachievable.

“We don’t have the budget for that”

This is the most commonly heard phrase and perhaps the most disturbing.

How come there is no budget if I have a £70 million project whose focus is inclusive economic growth (the expected impact of many projects)?

“This is not a women’s project”, they say. But if the targets resemble any of the following: better services for citizens, more jobs, or firms attracting investment, then gender equity should be central. Where is it stated that better services should go exclusively to male citizens, only men should access jobs, or that male-owned firms should be the ones getting aid investments? All policies and programmes should seek to benefit women as much as men.

But gender targets do not magically design and achieve themselves. So, when the inevitable happens, you get the following:

“Ooops, we haven’t benefitted any women.”

It is only when programmes fail to achieve their gender targets (if any), that people start to panic. They then try to retrofit activities to benefit women into projects that have been entirely designed to reach and benefit men – from the partners involved, the team members recruited, to the types of goods and services they deliver.

This lack of early planning to make programmes gender equal is not about sticking in a separate “gender component” (whose reason to exist was puzzling my fellow event attendee). Gender mainstreaming is critical from day one.

But not all is lost!

There are numerous ways in which development practitioners at all levels can contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Here are 6 – I have plenty more:

Educate your client. We moan about how it is all the donor’s fault, since they decide priorities and requirements. But surely we could do better at convincing them that by not setting specific gender targets (which does not mean merely disaggregating data by gender), they are not only systematically leaving behind half the population, but also actively contributing to the gap increasing.
Talk to disadvantaged women. We have been implementing programmes without talking to the people we are supposed to benefit. Few go to the most disadvantaged communities and speak directly to them to understand their specific concerns. It does require investment upfront, but it will pay off by preventing the failure of more programmes.
Diversity in recruitment. No wonder progress is slow when we keep seeing the same faces lead programmes – especially in terms of their gender and privileged socioeconomic background. In most fields, it is extremely hard to find women to take up leadership positions. When we do, donors’ preference for sticking with a “safe pair of hands” perpetuates this vicious circle of profile recycling.
Due diligence in recruitment. Last year, the development sector was shaken up by reports of sexual exploitation, abuse and complete disregard for the populations it is supposed to help. This state of affairs would be less likely if there was greater emphasis on recruiting people with the key values and objectives that any development professional should stand for.
Resources and structures. If gender equality is to become a priority, leadership teams must include gender experts or champions. This will ensure the necessary buy-in so programmes allocate resources early on, put in place concrete actions with clear responsibilities, and hold teams to account.
Raising awareness. Promoting debate and discussion on the topic, especially outside the circle of gender and social inclusion experts.

The good news is that some donors have been making gender equality a primary focus not only in aspirational statements but also in practical requirements (eg. to implement their Strategy for Gender Equality and the Gender Equality Act 2014, DFID now want to see concrete action plans and targets for gender equality in programmes). Likewise, a number of development consultancies have been expanding their gender teams and recruiting more diversely. I have been lucky to witness this change in mine and several other organisations.

The not-so-good news is that many of these misconceptions also apply to the inclusion of other socially excluded groups who have been left at the margins of development policies and programmes for decades. Do we really have to re-learn the same lessons for each group in turn?

If the international development community is to support development for all and not just for the usual suspects, we need to rethink how we all operate and take concrete action.

 

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The hump counter attack! Jose Manuel Roche sets me straight on the global transition (or lack of it)

income. José Manuel Roche, Head of Research for Save the Children UK, felt moved to respond.

I enjoyed Duncan’s recent blog about the shift from a two hump to a one hump world. Who wouldn’t? So I’d like throw in my two pennies’ worth – and bring some more controversy to the mix.

A debate started recently on twitter when some people questioned the income mountain graph from Gapminder. I like the graph in many ways but also sympathise with some of the critics. In my view the problem is that by stacking different regions one on top of each other the graph hides inequalities between countries. Also, regions are heterogeneous. Who would put the USA in the same group as Bolivia, Haiti or Guatemala?

I went back to the amazing Gapminder tool, played a bit with the parameters and, voilà, the humps are back!

This new graph compares countries according to the World Bank’s country and lending groupings. At one extreme we have high-income countries and at the other, low-income countries. A comparison of 1975 and 2018 shows the incredible global shift in the last four decades, with middle-income countries like China, India and Indonesia making great advances.

Thinking about the implications of this shift, here are three quick ‘take-aways’:

First, the gaps are bigger than they look. Let’s not fool ourselves, there are still huge inequalities between countries. The graph rightly expressed income in purchasing power parity ($PPP) to compare consumption, and the scale is expressed in log income to show marginal gains (see diminishing returns) and because you won’t see anything in a linear scale graph (see full Gapminder  documentation). That’s all a bit techie, but what it really means is that income gaps are bigger than they look. Just consider that the median income in rich countries is PPP $35 a day but rich people in those countries enjoy more than PPP $100 a day. Whereas in poor countries the median is PPP $2 per person per day, while the rich are only scratching PPP $10 a day. So we’re still talking about huge gaps. And this is income and consumption data, not wealth. Inequality matters indeed.

Poor and rich countries are still two completely different worlds. The two extreme distributions (poor and rich humps) hardly overlap meaning rich people in poor countries are only at the level of the bottom tail in rich countries – if it sounds too abstract, look at these photos comparing  living standard for families in Malawi and the UK. (By the way, Gapminder has a whole photo centre to bring stats to life). The implications are clear for global development finance and who needs to contribute more. Surely, emerging middle-income countries can also do their share. Wait. China contributing to development in Africa? Unthinkable!

Second, inequalities between countries persist. I agree with Duncan, there are plenty of reasons to go beyond nation states and look at group inequalities. I’ve been working on this now for a while with colleagues in OPHI and at Save the Children (see our recent paper Still Left Behind and our Child Inequality tracker). But looking beyond national averages does not mean the nation state completely loses relevance. A comparison of 1975 and 2018 shows poor countries have hardly moved. And don’t be fooled, they’re not only fragile states or sub-Saharan African countries. As well as unstable Afghanistan and Central Africa Republic, it includes stable poor countries like Cambodia, Tanzania, Malawi and Nepal. We don’t need to go back to traditional “north/south” or “developed/developing” narratives. Yes, poverty and marginalization is partly caused by dynamics that occur within country borders, but it’s also the result of current and past relations between nation states (go back to 1800s in Gapminder and see how rich countries evolve into a second hump over time). Achieving social justice is surely about addressing both of these?

Third, multiple worlds need multiple strategies. The world today is more like a camel with multiple humps around a global average. So strategies need to be different in different settings and for different organisations. What if any is the role of international NGOs in middle-income countries? “Localisation” would clearly be different depending on context. Child rights organisations like Save the Children need a different strategy in fragile states where there isn’t a clear duty-bearer to hold to account. There may be a rationale for direct service delivery in some settings, but not in others. Clearly system building is different depending on the context too. Issues of redistribution and how to fund public services are ever more important in emerging economies.  Then there’s the question of how to deal with global challenges and the various roles of countries in different humps of the camel. And the whole global inequality problem also.

To close, let me give credit to the original income mountain graph. It shows we’ve certainly moved away from a bimodal distribution around two opposite clusters, as Branko pointed out. We live in a less polarised world. (Incidentally, there’s a group of economists who study polarised distributions like this.) I particularly like Duncan’s point that this polarisation fed into the “us and them”, “third world/first world” narrative. So yes, the world is not bimodal anymore. It’s not two humps. But the world is still very unequal. And we face greater complexity that affects not only INGOs’ operations, but every global institutions.

So these are my three takeaways in addition to Duncan’s initial thoughts. Who’d like to take it on from here?

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Is Mexico undergoing a transformation? Ricardo Fuentes on AMLO’s first 100 days.

his promises of a ‘4th transformation’ of the country. 100 days into the presidency of Andres Manuel López Obrador, I asked Ricardo to update us:

A hundred days into the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador one thing is clear: his historically high levels of approval show widespread support for political, economic, social and cultural change. It is understandable: the stubborn poverty levels that have barely moved in decades; the perennial low economic growth; the endemic violence and the gaping inequalities that millions of people experience on a daily basis make change not only desirable but indispensable. A large majority of people in Mexico clearly support the president’s mandate to transform a political, economic and social system that has generated marginalization and vulnerability for millions of Mexicans, while creating vast riches and fortunes for a handful.

Where there is less consensus is over how this change has been implemented in AMLO’s first three months. Despite the fact that a significant number of presidential initiatives (a bold strategy to stop fuel theft; the creation of a National Guard; eliminating pensions for former Presidents) have a high level of approval, there have been other decisions that have generated a strong rejection, in particular the rolling-back of programs for child-care and shelters for women victims of violence without a clear, well-thought out alternative.

The conversation has so far focused on specific programs. But it needs to shift to rethinking the overarching welfare system. One of the central questions in moving to a more comprehensive welfare system is the type of relationship that the State will build with citizens. In other words, at this moment of change, what will be the social contract that will govern the exchange and relationship between authorities and citizens? Historically, the interaction between the State and citizens in Mexico has been weak, fragmented and ambiguous – it is enough to visit a rural community or a neighborhood in the urban periphery to see that the role and responsibility of the State and authorities is unclear even to those in positions of public power.

But will he fly?

In order to truly transform the country, the new government needs to strengthen and clarify this citizenship-State relationship, with a new welfare system at its core. The components of the ideal system are clear: they must be rights-based, universal, gender-focused, and managed responsibly and transparently. However, what is not so evident, especially in a country where oil revenues continue to fall and tax collection is low, is how it should be financed and what are the democratic accountability mechanisms in case the State does not fulfill its task.

The weak Mexican social contract is due, in part, to a fiscal weakness that limits the possibilities of public investment based on universal and inalienable rights – Mexico’s tax revenue is half the OECD average and well below that of countries like Brazil or Argentina. ‘Tax morale’ is low: the quid of readiness to pay of taxes is not linked to the quo of State guarantees to spend them well. Paying taxes does not translate – because of corruption and mismanagement – into quality public services. This dynamic weakens both citizenship and the State. It is a vicious circle that is easily overlooked, but needs to be fixed.

During the first 100 days of President López Obrador the idea of social change has been strengthened, a message well received by the majority of the population. However, there are still many doubts about the specific actions – or even the vision – required to develop and strengthen the relationship between the State and citizens. The government’s constant criticism of organized civil society, or indeed any public actor outside the administration, does not help. Nor does it help that the central prerequisite to strengthening the social contract – a progressive tax reform – is completely absent from public discussions.

Finally, it is a concern that the government wants to replace the provision of public services with direct cash transfers with no clear operating rules, no monitoring and evaluation systems or checks against corruption and clientelism (the diversion of public funds for political gain). Distributing money to create political clienteles has weakened the social contract in Mexico throughout its history. The true transformation of the country requires a strong State, built on a progressive fiscal reform, and an active and healthy citizenry, protected against the clientelism that has done so much damage to Mexico in the past. It would be a terrible missed opportunity if the current desire for change is squandered on reliving the mistakes of the past.

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Links I Liked

Two posts on decolonising academia: African and Development Studies: Excellent from Laura Mann. And How Diverse is your Reading List? (Probably not very…) by Tin Hinane El Kadi

‘The Elders, a group of independent global leaders, is calling on the international community to agree on a rigorous governance framework for geoengineering’ by Ban Ki Moon

How to integrate gender in research planning. By Anam Parvez Butt and Irene Guijt

But if you’re a Brit, there’s really only one story: Brexit is car crash mesmerizing right now. A few links

Some top gallows humour, including ‘European reaction to the no-deal vote was largely one of incredulity, with one senior EU negotiator describing it as “the Titanic voting for the iceberg to get out of the way”.

What could be the impact of Brexit on UK aid, trade and remittance flows? Some numbers from ODI

I’m also looking for good pieces by developing country authors/thinkers on the wider meaning and implications of Brexit – suggestions please!

Still M.A.Y. (featuring Snoop Mogg) – Theresa May’s Chronic Brexit

 

 

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Audio Summary (6m) of FP2P posts for 10 days up to 15th March

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5 Emerging Lessons from new research into Empowerment and Accountability in Messy Places

for first instalment). John Gaventa summarized the emerging lessons from the DFID-funded Action for Empowerment and Accountability research programme, which he coordinates. A4EA is trying to work out whether the stuff we know about E&A in more stable places is different from what happens in fragile or violent places, focussing in particular on Myanmar, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mozambique and Egypt.

Synthesizing dozens, of papers, articles etc (academics sure do pile up the wordcount), John identified 5 lessons from the research, with implications for DFID and other donors – boom! A listicle! So here you go:

Emerging Lesson 1:  closed, violent and authoritarian contexts pose fundamental challenges to possibilities or form of ‘voice, choice, and control’

Our findings point to the importance of:

Fear – drawn from legacies of authoritarianism and violence – affects the possibilities of ‘agency’, not just for the marginalised, but also the middle classes
Fear is re-enforced by constantly closing spaces, which takes not only visible forms around laws and institutions, but more invisible forms of threats, rhetoric, and coercion
Fear is often linked to norms of trust – and the absence of trust impedes taking the risk of

Not sure whoever wrote this understands trauma….

speaking truth to power

Implications for E and A support

Programming can’t just be about institutional channels, but must help overcome legacies of fear and internalised sense of lack of agency, as a precondition for E and A
Opening, protecting, and maintaining spaces are fundamental to allow E and A to emerge effectively
Small interventions may be necessary to build or rebuild trust in the possibilities or efficacy of action

Emerging Lesson #2:  Despite the difficult contexts, agency and action do emerge but not always in ways we see or recognize in the more formal ‘E and A’ field

Our findings point to the importance of:

‘exit’ rather than ‘voice’ as a strategy of action, as well as other strategies of working beneath the radar
Popular culture as a medium for political voice, not just institutional channels for social accountability
Spontaneous protests such as fuel protests (in all countries) are demands for accountability but not often in our frame of ‘social development’

Implications for E and A support

Importance of finding the ‘islands’ of agency and action, in local settings
Need to broaden our understanding of ‘voice’
Understand the ways in which large scale, unruly and episodic protests contribute to empowerment and accountability

Emerging Lesson #3: Accountability is about holding institutions – usually government – to account, but in FCVAS, we need to re-understand the nature of authority

Sure you may be the Public Authority round here, but can you fill in a logframe?

Our findings point to the importance of:

‘Governance diaries’ with marginalised groups give us a different view of authority from below
Authority is highly fragmented – involving non-state actors such as armed groups, faith leaders or traditional authorities
Voice is about ‘response’ but authorities may not have the capacity to act
Space is not static – spaces are opening and closing constantly, affecting entry points and alliance formation.

Implications for E and A support

Need to understand ‘institutions’ and ‘authorities’ as perceived from the bottom up – we need political economy analysis from below
Search for accountability alliances, going beyond the ‘citizen’ – ‘state’ dichotomy, and
Search for the entry points which can create new models and cultures of accountability. Sub-national points of entry may be just as important as national or ‘going to scale’ too quickly

Emerging Lesson #4: Women’s leadership can be particularly important for E and A

Our findings point to the importance of:

Challenging gender norms. Both men and women can contribute greatly to women’s political participation – e.g. helping to close the gender gap in electoral turn out in Pakistan
Movements such as the #BringBackOur Girls Movement in Nigeria can be an important form of demanding accountability around the security of women and girls
Spaces away from government, e.g. universities, can be important spaces for collective action and challenging norms of sexual harassment
Gender norms are linked to religious and other norms, but labelling women as secular/feminist/Westernised ignores the complex ways identities are experienced.

Implications for E and A support

Support for gender equality offers an important entry point for E and A, even in difficult

south sudan women’s protest

settings
Outside funding is a two-edged sword – in Pakistan we found it was critical to building women’s participation, in Nigeria #BBOG has refused external funding to protect its domestic legitimacy
Avoid binaries when talking about women’s movements – mobilisations may not be under’ feminist’ or ‘religious’ banners, but around community issues

Emerging Lesson #5:  The role of donors working in these spaces is a tricky one

Our findings point to the importance of:

In each country, there are large scale E and A programmes, but despite donor efforts to link across levels of government, centralised, informal, and unpredictable decision-making processes make this challenging
E and A programmes are plentiful, but often segmented across governance, sectoral (health, education) and economic (e.g. EITI) departments. There has been little effort to join up the lessons and opportunities across them
Some policy mandates for leveraging citizen engagement are available, e.g. the World Bank Citizen Engagement Policy, but these have rarely been used

Implications for E and A support

Re-think scale, focusing on those which can spread horizontally, not only which can be scaled vertically.
Seek more joined up approaches, combining social, political and economic work in the same areas and programmes
Strengthen civil society and governance actors to use policy levers to open new spaces

Really great synthesis of the kinds of ideas that are emerging as we head into the next phase of the research.

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6 ways to rethink aid for real, complex human beings

Last week I went along to the annual conference of DFID’s Social Development Advisers (SDAs – DFID has lots of

what’s going on in there?

acronyms). As well as giving them an initial picture of what the ‘Action for Empowerment and Accountability’ research programme is finding out about DFID’s adaptive management programmes, they asked me for a pre-dinner rant about what they should be thinking about in the longer term.

DFID is the only bilateral aid agency with recognized SDAs, so I started from there – what would it take to make the ‘social’ and in particular ‘the human’ truly central to development discourse and practice? Because I fear that it is currently at risk of becoming rather inhuman. By that I mean that its structures and language seem not just far removed from lived realities, but often oblivious to them.

6 examples:

The inner lives of real people: the sector has an emaciated view of the human condition. Compare the best we can come up with about what goes in inside people’s heads and hearts – broad generalizations like ‘rights’, ‘agency’, ‘power within’ – with the kind of depth and insights achieved by psychologists, psychotherapists or novelists. How do we recognize and work with (let alone measure) issues like love, shame, fear, solidarity? Those emotions are often what actually drive or inhibit people from bringing about the change we seek, yet are largely missing from our radar.
Leadership: Marxists downplay it (they prefer amorphous masses rising in protest). Orthodox economics prefers to talk in terms of individuals maximising their utility. But anyone working on social or political change knows that leadership at all levels (the grassroots, not just the celebs) is vital. How do we create an enabling environment for progressive leaders, both now and future generations? How do we support leadership among women, indigenous groups or others traditionally excluded from power? Should we go back to backing individuals (scholarships, stipends, mentoring) rather than always insisting they come up with project proposals before we can hand over any cash?
Siloes v Real Lives: Sitting in a refugee camp or a shanty town, the aid sectors siloes of humanitarian, long term development, advocacy, or sectoral approaches (‘sorry, I do education, not water’) are nothing short of bizarre. Starting with real lives and loves might be one way to break down the walls.
Process: The processes, both in deed and thought, of the aid agencies often work against a people-centred approach. Fly in/fly out consultants and researchers (including me); a control-freak desire to ‘solve the principal-agent problem’ so that we can get those pesky poor people and their governments to do what we want. Ways to overturn that include immersions, handing over the stick, and maybe canonizing Robert Chambers and his lifelong effort to get us to rethink what constitutes knowledge and wisdom.
Reframing development for a post-aid world: See this recent post. The aid sector seems in thrall to the exotic and the Other – we want to work on problems and issues that barely exist in its home countries. Malaria, extreme hunger and poverty, farmers (remember them? A friend of mine once returned to Wales after years in Nicaragua and asked a startled mate who picked him at Heathrow ‘so how’s the harvest this year’ – priceless). A people centred approach might help us shift to working on shared rather than ‘othered’ issues, like inequality, road traffic or the tobacco trade that kills 15 times more people than malaria.
From deficits to assets: people-centred thinking would naturally start with what they have, not what they lack. Positive deviance, asset-based community development, appreciative enquiry. Bring it on.

I’m not holding my breath. DFID, like most agencies, often seems in thrall to other ways of thinking and working: measurement (counting what can be counted, not necessarily what counts), neoclassical economics, unsustainable models of growth. But we can always dream – we (including the beleaguered SDAs) shouldn’t settle for less and ensuring the work of aid and development agencies acts as if human beings really exist, in all their wonderful depth and variety.

 

 

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Podcast: Aidan Eyakuze (Twaweza) on the crackdown on civic space in East Africa

Earlier this week I grabbed a few minutes with Aidan Eyakuze, one of East Africa’s most prominent civil society leaders. The topic (what else?) was the crackdown on civic space under way in Tanzania, where Aidan runs Twaweza, a brilliant NGO that works across the region.

Tanzania’s previously liberal and vigorous environment for activism is now being reshaped by an increasingly authoritarian government – Aidan had his passport removed soon after Twaweza published an opinion poll showing a dip in the president’s popularity. Points that struck me about this interview:

The nuanced approach of government: if a CSO is providing useful feedback on government services, or otherwise working ‘with the grain’ of authority, then things are fine. The moment you go against the grain, watch out.
Aidan’s call for CSOs to become more reflective about their own legitimacy and transparency.

Interesting and important stuff. Apologies for the sound quality on my side, but at least you can hear Aidan clearly, which is the main thing.

Here are some of Aidan’s previous writings on the blog:

The government outlaws fact checking

What is Civil Society for?

And a nice piece about how Twaweza is attempting to ‘walk the line’ of shrinking space

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Book Review: Getting to Zero – A Doctor and a Diplomat on the Ebola Frontline

Guest post by Melissa Parker (left) and Johanna Hanefeld 

This excellent book provides a fascinating account of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. It is co-authored by Sinead Walsh, who was Irish Ambassador to Sierra Leone at the time of the outbreak and, Oliver Johnson, a medical doctor, who was based at Connaught Hospital in the capital city, Freetown, and head of the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership.

Written in the style of personal memoirs, Walsh and Johnsons’ distinct perspectives are clearly stated in every chapter. Together, they capture the uncertainty and horror of a viral haemorrhagic fever spiralling out of control. As Ebola spread from Eastern parts of the country to Freetown, they detail the woeful lack of resources enabling the health system to respond effectively.

It is shocking to learn, for example, that several months after the first case was diagnosed, senior staff in the Ministry of Health were struggling to find an accurate list of the country’s hospitals, health centres and units; district health personnel were not systematically connected to e-mail; and colleagues in Freetown were emailing documents to friends and colleagues working for INGOs, asking them to circulate printed copies of infection, protection and control measures to district hospital staff struggling to respond.

The District Medical Officer in Kenema had so little faith in the health system that he resorted to texting the Minister of Health in the early hours of the morning: there was, he explained, no other way to reliably place an order of gloves for his staff.

Complex political dynamics compounded the problem. We are told, for example, that the WHO was reluctant to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern because they did not wish to alienate the governments of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and they were worried that it would be interpreted as a hostile act.

When the UN declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security, resources began to flow and large numbers of humanitarian agencies worked alongside Sierra Leonean staff on the frontline. With remarkable detail, Walsh and Johnson map out the global, national and sub-national connections, and disconnections. In so doing, they show how actors did, and did not, coordinate as the outbreak unfolded. It becomes clear that while humanitarian agencies knew from the outset that it was important to coordinate their activities, and to take account of domestic politics, the reality was that none of this worked, or worked too late and in isolated pockets. When it did work, this was down to the work of dedicated individuals, rather than the effectiveness of the international system.

Getting to Zero is a compelling read. It provides new and unique perspectives of the multiple challenges facing humanitarian agencies and the Sierra Leonean government in Freetown, while simultaneously highlighting the bravery, humanity and commitment of the many responders we meet in the book. In some respects, their work complements anthropological research, which has suggested that local initiatives and local learning were influential in containing the outbreak (see Paul Richard’s book, or Melissa’s blogpost with Tim Allen). Above all, Walsh and Johnson demonstrate, in awful and terrifying circumstances, the ability of individuals to make a difference.

 

 

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Links I Liked

The reductive seduction of other people’s problems. Great essay on the pitfalls of northern voluntourism: ‘don’t go because you’ve fallen in love with solvability. Go because you’ve fallen in love with complexity.’

‘The average woman is willing to give up 19 percent of the maximum total amount in order to keep the cash from her husband.’ Randomistas are pretty odd some time, but this study on cash transfers & women’s empowerment is interesting

White saviour communication rituals in 10 easy steps. Good summary from Aidnography’s Tobias Denskus of the latest poverty porn debacle

Great News! Oxford University Press has published an International edition of Jean Dreze’s book Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone, including Open Access. My review here.

Millions of Ugandans quit the internet after the introduction of a social media tax on 60 online platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. To use such sites, Ugandans now have to pay a tax of 200 Ugandan shillings (4p) a day.

Props to the mighty University of California system for boycotting rip-off Elsevier journals and putting together a great guide to finding journal articles through Open Access instead.

“It’s like a summertime paradise, likewise butterflies in twilight. See the Larch rolling miles upon miles, when we meet satisfied Popeye,”’ Truly bizarre rap video on China’s rise.

White Saviour: the movie trailer

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