Development Acumen and Achilles Heels?

This week, I met with CDC's excellent new CEO, Diana Noble. CDC is a development finance institution, set up by DFID, but not financed by UK taxpayers since 1995. CDC has been successfully recycling returns from investments into new investments. With the aim of having a bigger additive effect transformative change, they are focusing all new investments in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

In the course of our discussion, Diana told me about the Acumen Fund, investing in "social enterprises, emerging leaders, and breakthrough ideas".

The Fund has an interesting "10 things we have learned to be true"

1. Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth

2. 
Neither grants nor markets alone will solve the problems of poverty

3. 
Poverty is a description of someone's economic situation, it does not describe who someone is

4. 
We won't succeed in the long term without cultivating local leaders

5. 
Great people, every time, no exceptions

6. 
Great technology alone is not the answer

7. 
If failing is not an option, you've ruled out success as well

8. 
Governments rarely invent solutions, but they can scale what works

9. 
There is no currency like trust, and there are no shortcuts to earning it

10. 
Patient capital investing is built upon a system of values; it is not a series of steps

I like the fact that the Fund is reflective. I also like the focus on dignity, leadership, blends of grants and markets, patient investing, listening to customer feedback.

But the Achilles Heel of this sector is the lack of independent evaluation and verification of impact.

The claims of Acumen's success are loud: 55,000 jobs created and supported, and 86 million lives impacted. I could not find any evaluations on the website (the "knowledge centre" has photo essays, stories and update letters but no independent assessments of impact and sustainability).

It would be so much more reassuring if these numbers had been generated by independent and publicly available evaluations. This is one way of building trust.

The Egyptian Revolt one year on: How should it change the way we think about development?

This week IDS releases a collection of papers authored by Egyptians who bridge the academic and activist worlds on "The Pulse of Egypt's Revolt".

The collection is edited by my colleague, Mariz Tadros. Mariz is a Research Fellow at IDS and previously an Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo and a journalist for the Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper.

The collection of papers, including a nice overview from Mariz, asks two questions:

(1) why and how did the Egyptian uprisings begin? and
(2) what are the implications for development paradigms, concepts and practices?

Linking to and getting inspiration from the other 11 papers in the volume (including one of her own on "Backstage Governance") Tadros puts forward 5 ideas:

1. We need new ways to grasp the pulse on the street

The paper argues that "disciplinary silos" and "methodological precincts" make it hard to get a rounded picture (deductive political science, for a variety of reasons, assumes Egyptians will not rise). It says that what matters is the "dark matter of citizenship" and that this cannot be assessed by surveys. Finally it highlights sites of information that are not mainstream but which need to be engaged (Wikileaks, online reactions to stories, new Arab satellite TV channels, soap operas, films).

2. Calling the revolts a "Facebook revolution" is a gross simplification

There were many triggers and it was their confluence that was important: youth (Facebook, yes, but also old fashioned pamphlets and slogans) and the brutality they were subjected to; the people, who were connected to the brutality by Al-Jazeera and the like and came out in numbers that the security forces couldn't handle; and the military which did not side with Mubarak (and we don't know how hard they had to be pushed to switch loyalties). All of these factors came together.

3. The act of revolting should not be confused with its outcome

Tahrir Square in Jan-Feb 2011 was a particular time and space: it did not represent the whole of the nation (Facebook offered limited opportunities for forging a coalition outside of youth in Cairo), and the political truce called for by rivals with a common goal--get rid of Mubarak--was quickly called off.

4. The concept of "unruly politics" may offer a powerful way to understand people's mobilisation

Much of the public dissent leading up to the revolt was missed because it does not fit conventional "checklists" of what constitutes the right way of challenging the status quo (for example the Stay at Home campaign in 2008 or campaign that conveyed their anger with politicians of their hunger by banging on pots and pans). The unruly label is because citizens engaged in spaces outside of the conventions realms of state and civil society--in hidden and informal spaces that many civil society organisations failed to connect to.

5. There is a disconnect between development paradigms and the dynamics of unruly politics in authoritarian settings.

First, there is a disconnect between the publicised state of the economy (good) and conditions on the ground (no change). Second, the irrelevance of institutions mandated to improve governance and the background operation of the State Security Investigations in pulling the governance strings. Finally, the neutering of civil society through apolitical compartmentalisation and projectisation. These disconnects, together with the right political catalysts and moment, created the right environment for mass mobilisation.

Overall, the shifts the Bulletin calls for include:

(a) a "made in Egypt" economic growth policy, one that recognises the politics of different choices about how markets function, the political consequences of those choices, and how citizens should be protected from its extremes,

(b) civil society organisations to root themselves in civil society, not in donor society,

(c) looking before leaping onto the social media bandwagon--it undoubtedly has a role to play in creating new spaces for meaningful engagement, but not if it is not embedded in the context,

(d) aid to be viewed less through a geopolitical lens and more through a developmental one, and

(e) new ways of supplementing conventional methods of data collection as to the conditions, attitudes and perceptions of ordinary citizens, capable of doing extraordinary things.

Clearly Mariz argues that the donors have a very large opportunity to shape the way they interact with civil society and the Government and that these new relationships must be driven by home grown initiatives, development. Having worked in Egypt in the late 90s this all makes a lot of sense to me. I just hope the new government provides the space to let this happen.

Do Indices Change Anything?

With so many indexes out there, whether they change behaviour in those collecting, reporting or reading them seems like an obvious question to ask. Thirty minutes on Google Scholar does not reveal anything.

I have indices on the brain this week. On Monday I was at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs making a presentation on hunger, food security and agriculture. This is going to be a new priority for the new Minister for International Development. I presented the Hunger Reduction Commitment Index (HRCI) that an IDS team has constructed with support from Irish Aid. The HRCI shows Denmark at number 1 in the donor countries. This went down well, but raised the question: if Denmark is doing so well, why the new priority?

Then on Tues-Weds there was a meeting at FAO on measuring hunger outcomes, using various indices--my IDS colleagues Edoardo Masset and Stephen Devereux were in attendance. I hope some progress has been made in measuring hunger properly since the last such meeting in 2002 and that even more progress will be made in the next 10 years.

Then on Thursday we had the Global Think Tank Index from the University of Pennsylvania. The index places IDS at 8th in the world in terms of think tanks on international development (2nd in UK behind ODI) and 2nd in the UK in all topics for a University affiliated think tank (although we are independently governed). Of course I would like to be higher than 8th, but last year we weren't even on the list (because no one thought to nominate us, presumably thinking that someone else would --you cannot nominee yourself) so that is an improvement.

Finally on Thursday and Friday we hosted a DFID-IDS Learning Event on Nutrition Governance, showcasing 6 country case studies. Each case study looked at the incentives, barriers and tradeoffs behind the structures and frameworks that are supposed to help coordinate nutrition actions across sectors and across levels of government. We noted the vast difference in governance effectiveness behind the "good governance" scores of the WHO Landscape indicators which track whether such structures are in place.

In all of these examples, the index in question has proven to be a lightning rod for discussion. Sometimes this can be a distraction, but most times it serves as a kick off point for discussion and debate about the index, but also about the issue.

Nevertheless, it does seem that there is a need for rigorous evaluations of indices used--do they spur effective action? This is something that IDS will work with Irish Aid and DFID on in evaluating the HRCI and a related but distinct nutrition commitment index.

If you know of any studies we can draw inspiration from, please let me know. Thanks.

Dangerous Delays and Fallible Fire Alarms

Save the Children and Oxfam released a joint report today entitled "A Dangerous Delay: The Cost of Late Response to Early Warnings in the 2011 Drought in the Horn of Africa". The report argues that early warning systems performed, but decision makers did not respond to them. In an interview Justin Forsyth the head of Save the Children UK likened the situation to an alarm bell that had a very delayed effect. A lot of people were harmed by the delayed response and the cost of dealing with hunger and malnutrition was much higher than if it had been addressed earlier.

So why the delay? Using Forsyth's analogy, either policymakers did not hear the alarm, did not trust it, or although hearing and believing the alarm, they simply could not respond to it quickly enough. The report makes some good recommendations about amplifying the alarm (via the media and building up capacity of those to communicate the significance of the alarm up the decision chain). It also makes good recommendations about helping people respond to it more quickly once they believe it (emergency response funds, insurance, greater joint programming between development and humanitarian groups).

The one area that the report is relatively silent on is whether the policymakers believe the signals. The report focuses on the case where the signals were right and outlines the cost of ignoring them, but policymakers might argue: what about the costs of acting when the signals were wrong?

As researchers, we should be analysing, ex post, the frequency with which the early warning signals get it right. If we can attach a probability to the predictive power of the signals, then when the next signal goes off policymakers can better assess the risks of responding to a non crisis against the risks of responding late to an emerging crisis. In other words, how often will the signal get it right?

It's not pretty, but I would not be surprised if this is the kind of calculation that is often made.

In appreciation of Philip Payne

This week I heard the sad news that Professor Philip Payne passed away.

Based at the Nutrition Policy Unit (set up by ODA, now DFID, in 1977) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he was one of the key shapers of nutrition and nutrition policy in the 20th century, with plenty of implications for the 21st.

He did lots of big things. Three stand out for me.

1. He helped to debunk the idea that malnutrition was due to a protein gap. He and others pointed out that if there is a calorie deficit in the diet, then a focus on protein is merely an expensive and not nutritionally useful way of filling that gap.

2. He bridged the gap between the nutrition, economics and political worlds. He was one of the first to recognise that these drivers were fundamental to reducing undernutrition.

3. He focused on function, stress and adaptation. Using language that would be seen as in vogue today, he and people like Michael Lipton and Richard Longhurst introduced nuance into the various debates about when coping with stress incurred unacceptable costs and when it was a positive adaptive response.

Never far from controversy, renowned for speaking his mind, he would approve of the way the rest of the nutrition community is finally catching up with him.

Hungama: Stirring stuff for nutrition in India

A remarkable new report has been published by the Naandi Foundation, called Hungama (a Hindi word for causing a "stir" or a "ruckus"). Undernutrition is often neglected and so we need to make more noise about it, especially when it is unresponsive to economic growth. This is what this report does. It surveys 112 districts in India.

"Of the 112 districts surveyed, 100 were selected from the bottom of a child development district index developed for UNICEF India in 2009, referred to as the 100 Focus Districts in this report. These 100 districts are located in 6 states. The best-performing district from each of these states was also selected for survey. To this set was added another set of 6 districts, 2 each from the best-performing states of the country. Having the largest sample size for a child nutrition survey since 2004, the HUNGaMA Survey captured nutrition status of 109,093 children under five years of age. Data collection took place between October 2010 and February 2011 in 3,360 villages across 9 states. Coordinated by the Naandi Foundation, the HUNGaMA survey presents underweight, stunting and wasting data at the district level (this was last done in 2004 by DLHS-2, which reported only underweight estimates). It is also the first ever effort to make the voice of over 74,000 mothers heard."

Quick read headlines for me:

• in these districts (remember, this is not representative at the state or national level), underweight rates have declined from 53 % in 2002-4 (the LFHS 2 data) to 42% in 2011 (the Hungama data). This is a rate of about 1.4 percentage points per year, much faster than NFHS data suggest (the maroon dotted line below) and somewhat faster than the NNMB data suggest (the maroon solid line below). But has stunting declined? Unfortunately the LFHS-2 did not collect stunting data, even though Hungama did. But can we conclude that stunting (the preferred indicator of undernutrition) has also declined? Not really, because as the below data show, the NNMB recorded an increase in stunting (the solid blue line) at the same time it recorded a decline in under weight. Interestingly, the smallest decline in underweight is for the best districts in the best states (Figure 15): 35% to 32%. This is a bit surprising if only because the rates are still so high.
• it is interesting that the stunting and underweight rates are better for the Best Districts in the Focus States than the Best Districts in the Best States (figure 1). This needs more exploration.
• wasting rates are puzzling. These are higher for the Best Districts in the Focus States compared to the average of all Districts in Focus States. The overall wasting rates are 11-12% which is lower than the rates in the diagram above for NNMB (15%) and much lower than NFHS (19% -- a big proportionate decrease).
• one of the big differentiating covariates of the different district groupings is whether mothers have heard of the term "malnutrition" in their local language: 8% in the 100 focal districts, 18% in the best districts from focal states and 80% in the best districts from best states. But this is not reflected in the differences in undernutrition rates in these groups (remember, the stunting and underweight rates are higher in the best districts from best states compared to the best districts from focal states)
• lots of analyses are suggested by the data--I would like to examine how ICDS characteristics in 2004 and 2011 are correlated with changes in underweight rates
• the 3 categories of states are a bit confusing, and simple comparisons of means might be misleading because one group consists of 100 districts and the other 2 groups consist of 6 districts each.
• the data and the report have received serious attention from the media and the Government. I hope the research community is also active in sifting through the data
• the effort by Naandi (and it really has been an incredible undertaking for an NGO) shows the enormous vacuum created by the lack of Government data. Despite the great work from Naandi, it remains essential to have a comparable set of snapshots from the GoI every 2-3 years.

I hope this remarkable report stirs all stakeholders into action to accelerate undernutrition reduction.

Expert Panels: What Are They Good For?

I am currently on the UN Committee on World Food Security's High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE). It is an interesting experiment and a part of the reform of international governance of food and nutrition put in place a couple of years ago by the UN. It is interesting because (a) the HLPE acts as an independent think tank in the midst of the UN on food and nutrition, making public recommendations to the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and (b) it tries to draw together expertise and know how from the four corners of the globe.

The HLPE has selected and commissioned two teams to work on two hot issues of the day: "food price volatility" and "land tenure and international investments in agriculture". I have just received final copies of the two reports.

The first is on food price volatility. Two interesting points from this report: (1) it shows clearly the transmission lags between world food price changes and local food price changes. There were 3-6 month lags in transmission of increases from global to local, but very muted declines in local prices even after global prices declined substantially between May 08 and March 09. African prices were the slowest to increase, but once up, they stayed up, right into 2011 (Figure 9 in the report) and (2) there is a nice typology of policy solutions (Table 13) although I would have liked to have seen a greater linkage of these options to political and administrative capacities. For example,Table 12 of the report, which summarises policy interventions actually adopted in the wake of the 07/08 food price spike, shows that countries from Latin America and the Caribbean were much less likely to restrict or ban exports than Asian countries and yet African countries were much more likely to reduce or suspend taxes than Asian countries. Why? Technical, political or administrative capacity reasons?

The second is on large scale land acquisitions and is quite explicit in its discussion of power asymmetries between land users/occupiers, governments and large commercial interests. It aligns its recommendations more closely to different stakeholders than does the first report. Like the first report it calls on the CFS to play a stronger role in promoting data access, policy transparency and stakeholder accountability. This is an important role for the CFS. Data sharing does not always come easily to UN agencies in this arena and transparency and accountability are not always easy for organisations governed by 190 or so members.

As a member of the HLPE I have been encouraged by the openness of the HLPE process so far and the initial attention from the CFS to the first two reports. The HLPE members do not get paid, but the HLPE consumes resources. As more reports come in, an M&E function needs to be put in place to see if and how the reports influence the wider field -- and the CFS/UN in particular.