Who knew that the aid organization most responsive to feedback is: the military?

I didn't see this one coming: that the nicest responses I have ever gotten to criticisms made on this blog came from military officers (both this time and on one previous occasion). I didn't know that a command-and-control ARMY would prove about 1 trillion times more responsive than the civilians at USAID. I didn't know that a Lieutenant General would handle criticism better than a Starbucks PR executivewho flamed out in response to another blog post (what DO they teach in PR school?) . OK, admittedly, the military hasn't changed anything yet that I know of, but at least they've engaged in a dialogue. Anyway I received this email from Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV in response to forwarding my mockery of the Powerpoint slides on nation-building in Afghanistan (also known as counter-insurgency or COIN):

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE

Bill: 

do appreciate you passing this along to us in Kabul.  Gave up command of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth on 2 November and immediately deployed to Afghanistan.  On 21 November assumed command here of the NATO Training Mission -- Afghanistan (which we activated at the same time) and Commanding General of CSTC-A.  That said -- your blog hits home for all of us here.

Know that the ISAF team is looking at a variety of different products, including those you highlighted in your tweet.  What I can tell you is that I have oversight and responsibility for our COIN Academy here and we are not using these slides in our instruction.  There is a place for it among technical folks -- but not for the practitioner on the ground. Would be glad to share more about our Academy -- but suffice it to say, these are not our slides - and not how we teach COIN.

That said -- if anything, the slides reveal the sheer complexity of the problem we are all contending with -- at times so complex that it proves elusive to social mapping, as you can see.  Do want you to know that those are only one of many items considered by the senior staff in their analysis, as we focus in on how best to proceed in our mission.  Believe that as we leverage the best minds in this business -- of which you are a vital element -- the future prospects for Afghanistan will become brighter.

As an advocate for the practice, want you to know that your blogs are a welcome -- and refreshing -- presence.  This is essential to our growth as an institution, and to our ability to learn.  Your efforts are greatly appreciated, believe me.

Best to you and your family this holiday season.  We have snow in Afghanistan, so at least we'll have a white Christmas here, although far from home and loved ones.

Best -- Bill

Tiger Woods thoughtfully explodes “Halo Effect” myth in development

I am sure all of you had the same reaction I did as Tiger Woods slid into taudry tabloid hell: “thanks, Tiger, for creating a teachable moment for development economics!” Our expectation that celebrities will be model citizens, contrary to vast evidence, is based on the Halo Effect. The Halo Effect is the idea that someone that is really, really good at one thing will also be really good at other things. We thought because Tiger was so good at being a golfer, he also must be very good at to have and to hold, forsaking all others, keeping thee only unto her as long as you both shall live…

What Tiger considerately did for our education was to show how the Halo Effect is a myth. This blog has a undying affection for those psychological foibles that cause us to strongly believe in mythical things, and the Halo Effect is a prime example (and the subject of a whole book on its destructive effects in business.) Why would marital fidelity and skillful putting have any correlation?

OK fine and good, but many of you are asking: What the Vegas Cocktail Waitress does this have to do with development? The Halo Effect was discussed in a previous blog, but when assaulting psychological biases, you can never repeat the attack enough. Not to mention that we all remember the psychology literature more easily when illustrated by a guy with 10 mistresses.

So if we observe a country is good at say, technological innovation, we assume that this country is also good at other good things like, say, visionary leadership, freedom from corruption, and a culture of trust. Since the latter three are imprecise to measure (and the measures themselves may be contaminated by the Halo Effect), we lazily assume they are all good. But actually, there are plenty of examples of successful innovators with mediocre leaders, corruption, and distrustful populations. The US assumed world technological leadership in the late 19^th century with presidents named Chester Arthur and Rutherford B. Hayes, amidst legendary post-Civil War graft. Innovators include both trusting Danes and suspicious Frenchmen.

The false Halo Effect makes us think we understand development more than we really do, when we think all good things go together in the "good" outcomes. The "Halo Effect"  puts heavy weight on some explanations like "visionary leadership" that may be spurious. More subtly, it leaves out the more complicated cases of UNEVEN determinants of success: why is New York City the world’s premier city, when we can’t even manage decent airports (with 3 separate failed tries)?

The idea that EVERYTHING is a necessary condition for development is too facile.  The principles of specialization and comparative advantage suggest you DON"T have to be good at everything all the time.

So the true Tiger Woods Effect tells us something else more interesting than the false Halo Effect: that if you are very, very good at hitting a 1.68 inch ball into a 4.25 inch hole, then you can often get away with everything else for a long time. But sometimes not forever.

Africa desperately needs trade links: a pictorial essay

In all the debates about free trade, we can forget sometimes that international trade is not optional for a very small, very poor country. If there are any kinds of returns to scale at all in many sectors, and casual observation and much research suggests there are, then a tiny domestic market will rule out any serious domestic production in many, many sectors (is the Gambia going to be making refrigerators any time soon?) So trade will be a necessity, specializing in what each small, poor country can do, and importing everything else. And what continent is full of small, poor countries? Africa, of course. Then it’s all the more distressing that Africa does not have much in the way of trade links – shipping routes, air connections, Internet connections (for both communication and moving goods) – with the global economy. This is best seen in a series of pictures.

Lack of shipping routes going to Africa (except South Africa and Nigerian Oil):

Click here for a larger image.
Source: the excellent 2009 WDR “Reshaping Economic Geography” of the World Bank, Chapter 6

Scarcity of Airline Routes to Africa compared to rest of World (except South Africa):

Source

Scarcity of Internet Connections except South Africa (map of # of IP addresses in 2007):

Source

In short, Africa is disconnected from the global economy, which is very bad news for a continent that desperately needs international trade (the disconnection is both symptom and cause of the lack of trade). Lack of international trade = poverty for small economies.

This lack of trade links reflects many factors: rich country protectionism, domestic policies on customs & tariffs & foreign investment, poor port and road infrastructure, thus very high land transport costs within Africa, barriers crossing borders within Africa, Africa stereotypes that discourage foreign investors and out-sourcers, and so on.

There is some hope on the horizon for the Internet and communications issues, at least. High-speed fiber optic cables are connecting the east and west coasts of Africa to the rest of the world. And we all know about the famous cell phone revolution happening within Africa. Comparative advantage reflects your infrastructure quality and transport costs as well as your other endowments and experience. Perhaps the new broadband Internet connections will make possible all kinds of new businesses that economize on physical transport and use the Internet and cell phones instead. How about some kind of e-Africa.com, ready to open for business?

Burundi-based aid worker pushes back further on Burundi stereotype

Dear Professor Easterly, A former colleague from Wellesley forwarded me your WSJ review of Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains.

I live in rural Burundi, and wanted to thank you for challenging the apparent depiction of this beautiful and complex nation as "a place of unrelieved poverty, violence, disease and human degradation." Burundi is certainly very poor, and I am working with the landless Batwa, by far the poorest of the poor. But I am more struck by affirmations of human dignity than I am by human degradation, and I live quite safely here as a single woman. Public health in Burundi is what one might expect in a nation still emerging from a long civil war, but even in healthcare, there are bright spots; e.g., a well-functioning national tuberculosis plan. As it happens, I was at the Village Healthworks clinic in Kigutu on Thursday for the funeral of Déo's father (I know one of his brothers), and was impressed with its facilities and programs.

I was struck by your question about whether anyone would ever write a book about the Ghanaian economist who uses his well-earned success in the west to contribute to a peaceful democracy at home. Will anyone ever write a book about Déo's classmate Jeanne-Odette Niyongere, who completed advanced training in France and is now a gynecologist on the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Burundi and married to an economist in the Ministry of Finance, with whom she is raising four children in a comfortable home in Bujumbura? Or about my Mutwa colleague Béatrice Munezero, who during the civil war founded a school for Batwa and other children at risk that has now reached the 8th Grade?

You refer to Déo's escape from the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis during the genocidal year of 1994. This gives the impression that Burundi's situation was much the same as Rwanda's at that time. Burundi and Rwanda are aptly described as "faux jumeaux" -- fraternal rather than identical twins in a strict translation of the phrase, but also siblings whose comparison tends to play one or the other false. Burundian Hutus did rise up and slaughter Tutsis in late 2003 after the assassination of the first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye. Ndadaye, who was also the first Hutu president, was apparently tortured to death by members of the Tutsi-dominated army. This was the same army that in 1993 killed 300,000 Hutus in response to a suspected plan to topple the Tutsi-controlled government. Once it secured Bujumbura in late 1993, the army moved into Burundi's interior, where the killings of Tutsis had started, and began the indiscrimate slaughter of Hutus. One of my colleagues described late 1993 to me as follows: "When President Ndadaye was murdered, Hutus began killing Tutsis with clubs and machetes. A few weeks later, the army arrived with machine guns and grenades and began hunting men like beasts."

All this is to say that the situation in Burundi was and is very complex, and that Burundians know this and are free to talk about it. You may also be aware of this. I am grateful to Tracy Kidder for having written a book to put Burundi on the map for westerners, and to you for having so thoughtfully reviewed it. In the forest of books on Rwanda (of which there seems to be at least one for each of the thousand hills that usually figure in their titles), it's good to hear of a Burundian tree.

Sincerely,

Jodi Mikalachki

Education and Community Development Worker

MCC Burundi

Stories from Blogs We Like

Maybe Also Fight Deadly Diseases that Don't Make Headlines: “Neglected Tropical Diseases are devastating, debilitating and deadly parasitic and bacterial infections that adversely affect the poorest 1.4 billion people worldwide living on $1.25 a day.” From the Global Health blog at Change.org. High Tech Sunshine on Violence: Extending the idea to other African conflicts of using cell phones and a web site that was already used to “map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.” Could we try this with monitoring big aid projects? From the Freakonomics blog.

The Lysistrata Approach: Kenyan women deny their husbands sex until they resolve nation’s political standoff. From Chris Blattman’s blog. Would this work in Zimbabwe?

Dani Rodrik Asks: Why do poor nations continue to be enthralled with capitalism? His answer: “I am afraid one cannot rule out the possibility that poor nations are yet again falling behind the curve.”

My answer: “The previous times we scrapped capitalism because of a short time crisis didn’t work out too well.”

Where's Waldo? Find the missing USAID Head! From Views from the Center at the Center for Global Development.

Unlike Congress, Mexican Government is Competent: Actually had a decent response to Swine Flu. From Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution.

Growing Movement in UK and US to make Public Data, well, Public: I don’t think USAID has heard about this yet. From World Bank’s PSD blog.

Freedom is a Work in Progress: US Supreme Court now hearing the case of a 13 year old girl strip-searched by school officials without notifying her parents. School’s assistant principal was looking for illegal drugs LIKE ADVIL. “Savanna, who was an honors student with no disciplinary record, was found not to have any dangerous over-the-counter painkillers in her underwear.” From Wronging Rights.

Is There Such a Thing as a Good Colonialist?

An ongoing exhibition at NYU’s Casa Italiana introduces American audiences to a new Romantic hero, the Italian explorer and conquerer Pietro di Brazza. In three small but fascinating rooms of photographs, maps and drawings, the exhibit lays out the argument that Africa would have been better off with more of the kinder, gentler colonialism of Pietro di Brazza, and less of the harsh colonialism of Henry Stanley, the Anglo-American explorer in the service of the notorious most ruthless imperialist ever, King Leopold of Belgium.

Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza, photographed by Felix Nadar in Paris, around 1882

Born in Rome and educated in France, Pietro di Brazza joined the French Navy at the age of 18. His early expeditions, up the Ogoué river (now in Gabon) and across the Batéké plain (now part of Congo-Brazzaville), laid the groundwork for the French colonial empire in Equatorial Africa.

On his expeditions, he carried with him French flags and bestowed them on tribal leaders as symbols of protection against other predatory colonial powers. He signed a treaty of friendship with the leader of the powerful Batéké tribe, Makoko Iloo I, which would eventually cede much of what is now Congo-Brazzaville to French control. As a reward for his successful explorations, France made Brazza the Commissioner General of French West Africa, where he governed for 15 years.

Examining the allegiances, writings and portraits of the two explorers, the exhibit draws a studied contrast between the humanist ideals of Brazza, who opposed slavery and fought to prevent France from granting concessions to commercial merchants in Africa, and the mercenary tactics of Henry Stanley, whose exploration of Lake Victoria and the Congo River led the way for King Leopold to establish an empire of unprecedented brutality and exploitation in what is now the DRC.

Brazza was a man ahead of his time, the curators contend, who understood the need for sustainable development, and treated the natives with tolerance and respect. “I believe that the future of Western Africa and the Congo basin depends on the rich indigenous culture and trade—not on colonization through European immigration,” he said in a speech to his admirers in Paris.

Still, the exhibit left us wondering: Do we really need a colonialist hero? Is the world short on idealized portraits of rugged white men in native gear, posing against romantic backdrops of sand and mountains? For all Brazza’s noble ideals, should we pass lightly over the fact that he was in fact the colonial governor of French Congo and Gabon? That his “gift” of Congo and Gabon to the Republic of France opened the door to decades of war and commercial exploitation? That his presence in the Congo robbed its inhabitants of their right to self-rule?

After all, Brazza could not control the massive tide of history that his explorations and his friendship treaty with the Batéké leader set in motion. He himself fell out of favor with the French government, was dismissed from his post, and died in Algiers a disillusioned man. His last report, decrying the abuses of power in the French West Africa that followed from evidence of Leopold’s enormous profits in the rubber trade, was suppressed and has still never been released.

Brazza may have truly believed that the French flags he gave to the tribal chiefs were peaceful offerings of protection, symbols of liberté, egalité, and fraternité. But from our vantage point today it’s hard to see them other than as the symbols of colonial domination that, in very real, enduring terms, they were.

True, some colonial empires were better than others. Some colonial rulers were more benevolent than others. But colonialism, stripped of all its “White Man’s Burden” justifications, is at its core a kind of violence. And any historian who ignores this is engaged in hagiography, not history.

You can still catch “Brazza in Congo: A Life and Legacy” which runs through April 17 at NYU’s Casa Italiana. You can also see a mural created by the Brazzaville artists from the Poto-Poto School of Painting to commemorate the meeting between Brazza and Makoko Iloo I, at the National Arts Club.