In 2000, members of the United Nations agreed on a set of priority poverty alleviation objectives, known as the Millennium Development Goals, to be achieved by 2015.
They are, briefly:
Goal 1: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by halving the proportion of people who earn less than $ 1 a day
Goal 2: achieve universal primary education for children everywhere, both girls and boys
Goal 3: promote gender equality and empower women by eliminating educational disparities between boys and girls
Goal 4: reduce child mortality by two-thirds for those under five.
Goal 5: improve maternal health by reducing the maternal mortality rate by two-thirds
Goal 6: combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other illnesses by halting the spread of HIV and reversing the incidence of malaria and other illnesses
Goal 7: ensure environmental sustainability by halving the number of people without access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation
Goal 8: develop a global partnership for development through a global non-discriminatory trading and financial system, tariff and quota reductions, debt reduction, affordable medication, work creation, and technology transfer
Many of these are very broad goals and significantly less defined than indicated above. In 2004 Bjorn Lomborg, working in Denmark, collected eight of the world’s top economists (including three Nobel laureates) and asked them to evaluate the most important development tasks. They started from the premise that there is a finite amount of money for development and so certain goals must be prioritised in the short term which will allow for sufficient economic growth to complete the list.
Their goals came out (in order of priority) as:
Goal 1: control HIV / AIDS transmission and spread
Goal 2: provide micronutrients to reduce malnutrition and hunger
Goal 3: liberalise trade by reducing subsidies and tariffs
Goal 4: control the spread of malaria
Goal 5: development of new, low-cost, agricultural technologies
Goal 6: improve access to community-managed water supply and sanitation
Goal 7: create small-scale water technology to improve livelihoods
Goal 8: produce research on water productivity in food production
Goal 9: lower the cost of starting a new business
The Copenhagen Consensus was published as a measurable yardstick. Thus far the Millennium Development Goals are falling far short of their target; not least of which is a failure to take the South African government to task over their pathetic response to AIDS.
As The Economist says of the UN, “denouncing bad behaviour by states will always be easier for a private body than for an inter-governmental agency.”
And so it is significantly easier for a private measurement organisation, like Whythawk, to offer an opinion on how well development organisations are meeting their self-appointed tasks than it will be for them to do so themselves.
Development without a goal is directionless. A goal without impartial measurement will never be achieved.
In 1993 I was travelling in the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia. The long civil war in Angola was drawing to a close and the northern border of Namibia was safe to travel in once more. They were having good rains and the soil there is so fertile and rich it would make any farmer weep with joy.
Yet, no land was under plough. Instead the locals were queuing patiently outside UN feeding stations waiting for their daily ration of grain. And you would too. Farming is hard work. If international donors are happy to provide you with the basics you need to survive why would you work?
And this is the difficulty of development: how do you transition to a post-conflict development model from that of conflict-survival? A people who have learned to accept assistance from the outside will pay little attention to their own development. In Zimbabwe the very foreign governments that Robert Mugabe rails against are responsible for feeding his starving people.North Korea is the same. It is unlikely that people will learn to hold their leaders to account if those same leaders are divorced from any responsibility for their people’s well-being.
Social development focuses more on the immediate needs of survival than in supporting those who are helping themselves. So there are feeding schemes, and community gardening projects, sewing projects, craft projects … the products are not commercially viable but the purpose is to keep the poor occupied rather than to help.
Across Africa men and women leave their families and homes and travel, seeking opportunities. Some head north to Europe, some south to South Africa and – in countries not their own – they seek employment and opportunities denied them at home. Some have degrees or technical skills but immigration laws prohibit them from formal employment so they park cars, sell trinkets or wait tables.
Some, lacking even elementary skills, collect on convenient corners and stand by the side of the road. Patient, noble and dignified. They are not begging; they are hoping. Hoping that someone will stop and hire them for the day. They do not question what they will be asked to do. They do not negotiate their pay. They are a pair of hands and a willing body.
Our orientation is all wrong. We spend more time assisting those who do not help themselves than those who try. By doing so we create a moral hazard where we encourage people to be less effective than they could be.
One of the most horrifying side effects of the chronic unemployment in South Africa is that people who have AIDS would rather not take anti-retroviral drugs. The reason is simple: with AIDS they get a government disability grant; if they take the drugs and get healthy enough to work then they will lose that grant. Most would rather stay sick than struggle to find work.
By the side of the road those who would work stand and wait.
There are very few things in life that are free: air, water, seafood … not free in the sense that you don’t pay for them (water out the tap, fresh fish in the markets) but the product itself turns up, well, for free.
In the case of water, it falls out of the sky; air is always around; and fish breed without any human intervention.
Governments have attempted to shore up fish stocks by issuing permits for quotas but these are only as good as their ability to enforce them. European and Asian fishing fleets have a wonderful time over-fishing in the territorial waters of developing countries who lack the navies to protect them. Carbon credits are an attempt to put a price on pollution.
Yet any attempt to place a value on fresh water, clean air or available seafood tends to result in screaming and vociferous exclamations that these things should be free since they turn up on their own.
Love is touted as free; see what happens to you if you attempt to love everyone equally. Even cell-phones are given away on contracts for free. Richard Branson has had an impossible time trying to convince South Africans that this isn’t so - that “free” phones get priced into the contract - but he’s had to give in and offer his own “free” phone.
The same goes for development services which are given away – you guessed it – free. If the services were truly free then none of these organisations would be permanently attempting to raise money.
Call it a rule: the quality of any “free” good will degrade with time if there is a significant demand for it.
In reality the very claim that things should be “free” creates an implacable and insurmountable lie. Rather we should discuss efficiency and cost. When a good is given away via an implicit subsidy then the real cost is hidden from the end-user. When a charity raises funds with the intention of giving something away then, without an external and impartial observer (such as Whythawk), it is impossible to measure the efficiency and cost of the service they provide.
There is an intrinsic cost to everything. If we fail to express that value the danger is that the free good will be used up like sweets at a children's birthday party.
Deforestation around Lake Victoria - shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania - makes the area a less efficient rain catchment for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are damaging its $ 400 million-a-year fishing industry. Imagine that anyone using Lake Victoria in any way had to pay for that use, from dumping pollution to cutting down the trees that support it, then we could put a value on the lake. Without value, it becomes a puddle. Say what you like about the evil intentions of private water companies, at least they place a value on their product and so have a vested interest in ensuring its continued availability.
The danger is that, slowly and implacably, the things that the poor, dispossessed and uneducated could do to earn a living and support their lives are starting to run out. There are few coastal fish left to catch from small boats, polluted water is degrading subsistence agriculture, and bad air causes illness and entrenches poverty. The technical skills required to work are rising rapidly so that the average factory no longer has place for a completely unskilled person.
The barriers to stepping up and out of poverty are starting to rise. Unless new and determined energy is put into re-inventing development the gap between rich and poor may be as severe as that facing the Incas when confronted by Pizarro and the might of the Spanish.
as a measurable yardstick. Thus far the Millennium Development Goals are falling far short of their target; not least of which is a failure to take the South African government to task over their pathetic response to AIDS.
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