TransparencyGate: the end of the road

by Till Bruckner, PhD candidate at the University of Bristol and former Transparency International Georgia aid monitoring coordinator. Sixteen months after I first filed a Freedom of Information Act request with USAID for the budgets of American-financed NGO projects in Georgia, I have reached the end of the road. Rejecting my appeal, USAID has confirmed that it continues to regard NGO project budgets as “privileged or confidential” information, and will not release budgets without contractors’ permission.

The opacity of USAID’s subcontracting makes it impossible for researchers to get access to comprehensive and comparable data that could inform debates about the effectiveness of delivering aid through NGOs. For example, the issue of aid fragmentation within NGOs could only be raised because Oxfam GB voluntarily provided a researcher with a list of all its projects abroad.

USAID is on very thin ice when it tries to push developing country institutions to become more accountable. The next time USAID lectures an African official on the importance of transparency in public procurement, I hope she will pull out a list of blacked-out budgets and argue that her ministry is following American best practice when it treats all financial details of its subcontracting arrangements as “privileged or confidential.”

Financial opacity also remains the default position for most NGOs. CARE and Counterpart instructed USAID to release more information in response to this FOIA, and they deserve credit taking for this step. However, USAID’s latest information release suggests that no other NGO has given the green light for such information sharing.

The recent public statements by NGOs and other aid actors reveal wildly divergent understandings of what accountability should mean in practice. As InterAction points out, “the issue at hand is what constitutes relevant information, and to whom specific information should be disclosed.”

What information is relevant? Scott Gilmore argued that we should be interested in accountability for outcomes rather than for expenditures, and many commentators on this blog have questioned the desirability or utility of public access to NGOs’ salary figures or NICRA rates, and raised concerns about privacy, security and competitive disadvantages.

I continue to believe that project proposals, including uncensored budgets, are essential components of a meaningful rendering of account. Proposals spell out what an NGO plans to achieve, when, where, why and how, and at what cost. If we don’t even know what a project sets out to do, and with what resources, how can we hold it to account for its success or failure?

Equally, there is disagreement on who qualifies as a legitimate stakeholder. CNFA and Mercy Corps have both emphasized that they feel themselves obliged to render account to institutional donors and beneficiaries, but not necessarily to third parties. This line of argument glosses over the sad reality that NGOs do not reveal project budgets to their beneficiaries either. Also, as charities enjoy tax-exempt status and spend public money, we are all donors, like it or not. And we all care about the beneficiaries, so we are all “aid watchers”.

If project budgets are not particularly relevant, and scrutiny by ordinary citizens does not bolster accountability, why do international NGOs regularly make their local sub-grantees post project budgets in public places for all to see? As far as I know, no Northern NGO has worried that such excessive transparency may compromise the privacy, security or competitiveness of community-based NGOs in the South.

This FOIA journey has shown one thing above all: NGOs (save Oxfam GB) simply do not want outsiders to see their project budgets, full stop. Not a single NGO has used this forum to announce its willingness to give beneficiaries or other stakeholders access to its project proposals and budgets in the future, even though every country director has these documents on his hard drive and could attach them to an email within two minutes.

Project budgets are shown only to those stakeholders who have the power to force NGOs to open their books: donors, headquarters, and audit institutions. The poor and powerless have to be content with whatever information NGOs choose to provide.

Can NGOs be accountable without showing outsiders where the money goes? The Humanitarian Accountability Project thinks so. “Public disclosure of financial information is not a requirement for HAP membership,” HAP recently confirmed. InterAction concurs, stating that it “purposefully does not define in our standards specific mandates for disclosure.” InterAction also highlights “the request of some donors to keep their financial support private.”

Transparency International, drawing parallels to the oil and gas industry, strongly disagrees: “Competitive advantage or even privacy, are not acceptable exceptions. Only personal physical security suffices.” Aidinfo observes that “the burden of proof is shifting to those who would keep information secret.”

Donor-abetted secrecy jars with President Obama’s call at last week’s MDG summit: “Let’s resolve to put an end to hollow promises that are not kept.  Let’s commit to the same transparency that we expect of others.”

“Proofiness:” trashing back on FAO hunger numbers

Just before the big UN meetings here in New York around the Millennium Development Goals, the FAO released new world hunger numbers, and Aid Watch listed reasons to worry that these numbers were “made up.” A blog post from Oxfam GB’s Duncan Green called our post “lazy and supercilious,” with the amusing headline “Easterly trashed.”  The accusation that I am “lazy” struck a raw nerve, and so I have responded forcefully by asking Laura to do more work.

A closer look at the FAO’s documents, along with information provided by smart Aid Watch commenters as well as the FAO’s own senior economist David Dawe validates, rather than “trashes,” many of the concerns Aid Watch raised.

For one, the methodology for the FAO survey numbers does not actually directly measure malnutrition but tries to estimate it indirectly based on a model of human calorie requirements and food availability and distribution:

From the total calories available, total calories needed for a given population, and the distribution of calories, one can calculate the number of people who are below the minimum energy requirement, and this is the number of undernourished people.

A modeled number is NOT the same as directly measuring malnutrition (as the WDI anthropometric numbers cited in the previous post attempt to do). Is the model correct? How did they test it? A model has many assumptions and parameters, which are inevitably less than 100 percent reliable. All of these make the modeled numbers subject to a LOT of uncertainty. Has FAO made any attempt to quantify the uncertainty? Have they tried comparing their estimates to the anthropometric measures in WDI?

Second, according to the FAO’s downloadable data charts, this exercise was last carried out in 2005-2007. These survey numbers are available for every country in the database (176 in all). The data tables tell us that while there is no country-level data for Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or Papua New Guinea, they are included in regional estimates, and there are country-level entries for places like Sudan, Zimbabwe and Libya for each three-year data collection period going back to 1990.

Neither of the most recent FAO State of Food Insecurity reports, from 2009 or 2008, includes discussions of the methodology for the 2005-2007 surveys. And neither explains how the 2008 figures were obtained. The 2009 report’s tables list as sources UN population data from 2006, and “FAO estimates” for undernourishment.

Third, the estimates for 2009 and 2010 are not only based on very indirect and noisy links between capital flows, imports, terms of trade and food availability, but the numbers for the former are not real numbers but based on USDA projected scenarios using IMF estimates for quantities that are notoriously difficult to estimate or project.

The comments from FAO economist David Dawe suggest (quite logically) that the economists, statisticians and policy-makers responsible for the FAO numbers are well aware of the drawbacks of the methodology they’ve chosen to produce both the survey year data and the estimates for years with no surveys at all; entire conferences and volumes are devoted to debating how to measure food deprivation.

Of course, none of this ambiguity and caution makes it into the papers. The New York Times reported simply that the UN said Tuesday, September 14 that the “the number of hungry people fell to 925 million from the record high of 1.02 billion in 2009,” but that “the level remains higher than before the 2008 food crisis.”

An alternative narrative based on the above would be something like: “the UN attempted on Tuesday to provide some projections for 2010 of the number of hungry people in the world compared to previous projections for 2009, all of which are in turn based on a combination of remarkably shaky links to other projections of impossible-to-project factors like capital flows, unverified and uncertain models of hunger and food availability, an unexplained estimate for 2008, and a survey of uncertain coverage and usefulness last conducted in 2005-2007.”

A new best-selling book called Proofiness opens with a quote that we are “vulnerable to the belief that any alleged knowledge which can be expressed in figures is in fact as final and exact as the figures in which it is expressed,” then the rest of the book explains why this “proofiness” is really “mathematical deception.”

Aid Watch will continue its lazy and supercilious attacks on proofiness.

World Bank President starts brawl about development economics research

UPDATE 4:30 PM, Sept 30 -- debating Ravallion about World Bank censorship (see end of post) World Bank President Robert Zoellick gave a speech at Georgetown University today calling for the "democratizing" of development research.  Bob Davis at The Wall Street Journal reports some reactions:

Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence, who led a commission on economic growth, said Mr. Zoellick's comments are "generally not only in the right direction, but very useful." Harvard economist Dani Rodrik.... also praised the World Bank president. "The speech hits all the right notes: the need for economists to demonstrate humility, eschew blueprints...and focus on evaluation but not at the expense of the big questions," Mr. Rodrik said.

But the reaction wasn't unanimous. New York University economist William Easterly...called Mr. Zoellick's comments "amazingly presumptuous." He says the current system of economic research, where ideas are picked apart by other economists, works well. If anything, he says World Bank economists are often the exception because their bosses pressure them "to reach the 'right' conclusions," Mr. Easterly said—meaning that World Bank loans are useful and foreign aid is productive.

The World Bank's chief of research, Martin Ravallion, responded, "I have never been told what conclusions I should reach, and I doubt very much that anyone told Bill Easterly what conclusions he should reach in his many years working for the Bank's research department."

That's OK, Martin, you must have been on vacation when the World Bank pushed me out the back door for not reaching the right conclusions on aid.

Mr. Zoellick, a moderate Republican who pushed for trade expansion as U.S. Trade Representative, also said that researchers should keep an open mind about whether countries can benefit from heavy doses of industrial policy.

That won praise from Mr. Rodrik, who has long pushed that view, and opposition from Mr. Easterly. "The most extreme advocates of industrial policy have lost the argument in the free and fair competition of ideas" Mr. Easterly argued. "Zoellick is trying to politicize it" by making it a bigger part of a World Bank research agenda.

UPDATE: see Martin Ravallion's comment below denying World Bank censorship, here is my response.

Martin, you are being disingenuous in what you do NOT say. Yes, I agree that if any given World Bank researcher sticks to publishing in academic journals, the findings do not spread to general public awareness, and, most importantly, the researchers themselves make no attempt to publicize their findings, then the researchers can say (ALMOST) anything they want (ALMOST because even then there have been exceptions and SOME politically sensitive findings would still be out of bounds). I myself did this for many years.

But once a researcher makes an effort to communicate with a broader audience beyond the tiny number who read academic journals, then any such statements are subject to censorship, as I found in my own experience personally, and others with whom I have communicated (unfortunately, they will not allow me to use their names) have verified similar experiences. So the World Bank researchers' participation in the "democraticized" debate, which President  Zoellick says he wants, is still subject to censorship. I can't believe you can really claim to deny this.

Moreover, the World Bank produces many public non-academic reports itself based on research findings. These reports' conclusions are politically influenced and censored. Again I cannot believe you would deny this.

But thank you, Martin, for taking the time to engage in a dialogue on this. I do believe the research done for academic journals in the World Bank has generally been of high quality and meets standards of academic rigor.

best, Bill

Brain circulation not brain drain

NYU economist Yaw Nyarko discusses his work on the so-called African brain drain with World Vision Report. Click here to listen to the interview (12 minutes).

InterAction's statement on NGO accountability

Editor’s note: Aid Watch asked InterAction for a contribution to the debate originally sparked by Till Bruckner’s post The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test. See below for a list of all related posts. Statement from Barbara J. Wallace, InterAction’s Vice President of Membership and Standards, on NGO Accountability

Washington, DC (September 27, 2010)—InterAction appreciates the active discussion about NGO accountability and transparency, and has been monitoring the debate. The variety of opinions and information is valuable. This is not a new conversation for us. Our community of U.S.-based international NGOs has been discussing these issues for more than 20 years and they are the basis for development of our Private Voluntary Organization (PVO) Standards. These standards state that each member organization ‘shall be committed to full, honest and accurate disclosure of relevant information concerning its goals, programs, finances and governance.’ The issue at hand is what constitutes relevant information, and to whom specific information should be disclosed.

We deplore the nature of the debate taking place on your blog.  Highly inflammatory accusations have been made against NGOs—now proven to be untrue—using faulty research and questionable methodology. Whistleblowers bring disturbing information to light, but also bear responsibility for sharing accurate information based on fact. Instead of igniting a constructive conversation with a different take on accountability and transparency, this blog chose to smear the NGO community using conclusions from incomplete information that fit the author’s premise rather than engage in constructive discussion about what constitutes sufficient transparency, generating a lot of attention, but little constructive change.

InterAction purposefully does not define in our standards specific mandates for disclosure, nor do we dictate to any organization the details of their organizational management. InterAction’s membership is wide and diverse. Our largest members are worldwide and have total budgets over $1 billion. Our smallest has an annual budget under $60,000, works in one country and has no paid staff. Our members have varying operational models, methodologies and organizational capacities. This makes it almost impossible to compare the raw data from one organization with the raw data of another. The following caution in evaluating comparative detailed financial information may be useful as an example of this pitfall.

The ratio of indirect cost to direct cost or total cost varies and depends on many factors. It will be difficult if not impossible to get a definitive or measurable indicator for cost reasonableness since each organization has a different accounting/allocation methodology. That is to say there are numerous differences in both workforce and accounting classifications as to direct or indirect costs, as well as other variables such as the extent to which subcontractors are used, the structure of an organization, the expanding and declining business base for individual organizations, and the differing accounting methodology of one organization verses that of another. For example: one company may have a large labor overhead ratio to direct labor because it includes vacation and sick leave along with other types of overhead costs directly related to labor, while another organization will have a lower ratio because they direct charge vacation and sick leave. Neither practice is preferred over the other and both are equally acceptable. They are merely different. (www.usaid.gov/business/regulations/BestPractices/pdf)

In our working groups, annual Forum and CEO Retreats ongoing discussions about the responsibility of accountability and definition and value of transparency in a newly technologically advanced world are common themes.  In addition to the request of some donors to keep their financial support private (and the NGOs legal responsibility to honor that request),  organizational capacity, security concerns and other circumstances all have to be taken into consideration when determining whether or not specific information should be made public in part or in its entirety. All NGOs are not the same. That said,InterAction member organizations believe that informed citizens provide important insight, and they value the participation of informed local citizens in project design, implementation and evaluation and have used such insights to improve practices and methodology.

As we become an increasingly technologically advanced and interconnected society, NGOs will need to keep pace with new requests for information, and to balance questions of security, law, individual privacy rights, and proprietary methodology with this ever increasing demand.  InterAction and member organizations will continue to discuss NGO accountability, transparency and the impact of technology on our standards within its communities of practice, and will continue to wrestle with the increasing demands for public information and the reduction of unrestricted funding for operating expenses, which include this kind of public information management.

The discussion about what constitutes accountability under what circumstances and to whom continues. The most important focus of that discussion is what difference the NGO makes to the population it serves.

Related posts:

The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test Till Bruckner Responds to Critics on Meaningful Transparency NGO Response: CNFA Reaffirms Commitment to Transparency World Vision responds on transparency USAID and NGO transparency: When in doubt, hide the data Response from Mercy Corps on Transparency NGO Transparency: Counterpart International to release budget Transparency International clarifies the debate, deplores attacks on Till Bruckner Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request Return to TransparencyGate: Humanitarian Accountability Partnership weighs in

Return to TransparencyGate: Humanitarian Accountability Partnership weighs in

Editor’s note: Aid Watch asked HAP for a contribution to the debate originally sparked by Till Bruckner’s post The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test. See below for a list of all related posts. The HAP (Humanitarian Accountability Partnership) Secretariat is encouraged that issues of NGO accountability are being discussed in fora such as this, and in particular that the debate is now going beyond the sector.

While public disclosure of financial information is not a requirement for HAP membership,  members and other aid organisations that apply for certification with the 2007 HAP Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management are expected to make their humanitarian plans and progress reports available to key stakeholders. Humanitarian plans include the overall goals and objectives, the timeframe and linked financial summary. Progress reports include progress against the plan, including against the financial summary, and are communicated at time intervals suitable to the different audiences.

As part of the HAP certification process, the auditor notes commitments made by the organisation, including in relation to financial integrity and reviews the management system that supports the implementation of commitments. Specifically linked to the current discussion, the auditor also verifies that the organisation has in place an information policy that includes narrow criteria for non-disclosure, and reviews how the organisation shares financial summaries and progress reports.

Financial transparency is an important aspect of an organisation’s public accountability, recognised as such by various initiatives, including HAP. However, financial transparency is not a sufficient indicator of accountability, in particular of accountability to the group that matters most, the people whom an aid organisation aims to assist. Financial details alone do not reveal much about the quality of the services provided to communities: do the projects deliver good quality services that meet the communities’ needs? Are the interventions appropriate in the specific context? Is the population that the organisation is aiming to assist included in the design and implementation of programmes? Are communities satisfied with programme delivery? Are they able to provide feedback and affect the way in which organisations that affect their lives work? Are they able to raise complaints and receive a response when programming is poor?  And last but not least: are organisations continuously improving the way in which they operate to best serve the needs of those they aim to assist?

The fact that an agency may not make its financial information publicly available at all times does not necessarily mean that it is not transparent or that it lacks accountability. There may be significant risks associated with sharing such information in certain contexts, in which case the organisation should provide a justification for non-disclosure.

Related posts:

The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test Till Bruckner Responds to Critics on Meaningful Transparency NGO Response: CNFA Reaffirms Commitment to Transparency World Vision responds on transparency USAID and NGO transparency: When in doubt, hide the data Response from Mercy Corps on Transparency NGO Transparency: Counterpart International to release budget Transparency International clarifies the debate, deplores attacks on Till Bruckner Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request

Solving the mystery of the benevolent autocrat

UPDATE 4PM: RESPONSE TO COMMENTS (SEE END OF POST) Step 1: You're right, almost all of the biggest growth success stories are autocracies! Step 2: Wait a second, all of the worst growth failures are also autocracies! Step 3: Solving mystery: autocracies have much higher variance of growth rates, so they have both best and worst growth rates

Wonky Moral of the story: focusing on success only in Step 1 created a selection bias that led to the erroneous conclusion that autocracy was good for growth.

Plain English Moral of the Story: autocracy is extremely risky: it could result in high growth, but it could just as well result in a growth collapse -- for every Lee Kuan Yew, there is a Jean-Bédel Bokassa.

Extra credit question: why would arguing that the autocrats under Step 1 are benevolent while Step 2 autocrats are malevolent be logically fallacious?

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS 4PM To answer some questions, the growth rate is the geometric average 1960-2008 of per capita growth per annum. The source is WDI.

The source for the democracy data is Polity IV, which has some problems, but is enough for the kind of illustration here.

The point about causality is well taken, I am just making a point about how what for these data is actually a POSITIVE and SIGNIFICANT correlation between democracy and growth is turned into an apparent NEGATIVE association in Step 1, which is where the "benevolent autocrat" discussion usually stops.

(FOR WONKS ONLY) When I write this up more fully in an eventual paper, I will explain also some exploration of different functional forms for transforming the original POLITY index from -10 to 10, which is an arbitrary scale (autocracy being the negative direction). To illustrate the strongest possible POSITIVE correlation, I chose from 3 alternatives the one with the strongest statistical significance , which was the following function: POLITY/(11-POLITY). I would normally NOT like this kind of "data mining" among several different functions, but again the point of the exercise is to show the fallacy by which a STRONG POSITIVE association appears to be a STRONG NEGATIVE ASSOCIATION.

Lant Pritchett on what Obama got right about development

by Lant Pritchett, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Obama's speech at the MDG conference and the announced US Global Development Policy are the result of long preparation and internal discussions within the administration as part of the Presidential Study Directive, lead out of the NSC, announced a year ago, and the QDDR, prepared by State, both processes having been watched over by the Washington think tanks and advocacy groups.

While one could immediately focus on the "architecture" part of the speech and read the Beltway tea leaves of who is up, who is down, and what that means for this organization or that, it is worth at least first stepping back and asking where this first official US development policy came down on the big debates on development, where, I think it comes out a big winner on four big ideas.

First, the speech and policy put economic growth front and center as objectives of development and development policy.  It might seem obvious that economic growth that increases people's command over resources is the single most powerful force to improve nearly any indicator of well-being -- from poverty to food security to health to education -- but, surprisingly, that point can get lost.  The "development is about more than growth" backlash, which had important elements of truth, easily got carried away into "development isn't at all about growth" and it is good to see economic growth back front and center of development objectives.

Of course growth these day must carry some adjectives as baggage -- "sustainable" and "broad based" can never be too far away -- but both of those are perfectly legitimate qualifiers and a small price to pay for the primacy of growth.

Second, the speech came down hard, and right, on the debate between improving systemic capability and programmatic action.  This was of course not easy to do in the context of a speech on the MDGs, which lend themselves to a programmatic vision of development.  Functioning systems of education have multiple and complex objectives -- spreading a common socialization, improving learning of the basics, identifying and promoting excellence.  The goal of development is that a country can have an education system that, as a natural part of its operation as a system composed of many actors and pressures, sets and achieves goals, some of which are then mapped into particular programs.  The same is true of all other spheres of social and governmental action -- infrastructure, law and order, health, economic policy.  The speech clearly identified building this capability as a central (and difficult) part of development.

This resists a very powerful tendency to reduce development to a series of specific targets, each of which can be addressed by the implementation of sufficiently resourced programs (programs which can be cocooned or stove piped around systemic dysfunction), which can be crudely caricatured as the "show me the money" approach.

The MDGs are correctly interpreted as what will be accomplished when there has been development -- not vice versa.

Third, the speech gets right the need for innovation, with rigorous evaluation as an important component of an environment for innovation.  The endeavor of "development" as a conscious acceleration of the progress of nation-states is now at least 50 years old.  If it were easy and obvious then as a social movement it would have disappeared under the weight of its own success and be a historical curiosity, like abolitionists.

The paradox of the external organizations that attempt to support development is that people tell them "we'll give you your budget if you tell us for sure what you are doing will work."  This leads to a powerful culture of pretending that much more is known about the "theory of change" that leads to development that really is known.  The fact that the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world has just spent eight years devoting fantastically high level of resources to "develop" Afghanistan (with security as one element of that) with results that range from mixed to shambolic should make it obvious that we need much greater openness within the development community to an approach of structured experimentation -- on all fronts.

The same skepticism about "one size fits all" that made "Washington Consensus" two dirty words should be taken to the range of "expert" advice in sectors from education to health to public sector governance to "institution building." All of which is mostly just repeating the conventional wisdom and closing off, rather than opening up, space for novelty and innovation.

Fourth, one thing the speech gets right it does so by omission.  There is no dollar figure.  The message "lets do more" is always popular because it also means "business as usual" for what is already going on.  "Let's do better at what we are doing" is a tough internal sell, but one that is useful -- including, I believe, to people who are actually on the ground, doing the work.  Anyone who has actually worked inside the development industry knows how much better things, at least potentially, could be, but also how tough achieving that will be given the inertia of massive organizations.  So while tackling policy and "architecture" might seem arcane relative to the apparent obvious gain of spending more money.  More is better, but better is better too and more is even better after better is better.

As to whether the proposed changes can advance the correct development agenda of growth, expanded public capability, innovation with evaluation, and improved assistance...well, that's a topic for another day.

Lessons after the Meles speech at Columbia: Let Ethiopians debate Ethiopia

It's sure was nice to see mainly Ethiopians vigorously participating in a debate about Ethiopia, in contrast to the usual Old White Men debating Africa. The Meles visit to Columbia had the unintentional effect of promoting this debate.  We were very happy at Aid Watch to have had the privilege of turning over our  little corner of the web to host some of this debate, and then just get out of the way. Here's more in the aftermath of the Meles speech:

Africa Didn't Ask You (honestly):

New School Thoughts on Africa:

(both of the above are students in the class of New School Prof Sean Jacobs, who founded the group blog Africa is a Country)

There are two blog posts on HuffPo from Professor Alemayehu Mariam: Veni, Vidi, Orator, Fugio! Mr. Zenawi Goes to College!

Committee to Protect Journalists blog: As Zenawi speaks, editors are grilled in Ethiopia

Columbia Spectator: World Leaders site raises eyebrows Columbia’s invitation to Zenawi sparks outrage

David, Ban, Bill, and Alice

The always wonderful David Rieff takes on the MDG summit:

With the fatuousness that has marked his administration from the outset, the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, has now issued a document called “Keeping the Promise,” timed to coincide with the 2010 meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and the summit on the organization’s so-called Millennium Development Goals that is taking place simultaneously.

And yet, in true Alice in Wonderland style, the great and the good of the world (those eminent persons so beloved of U.N. commissions).... are acting as if the MDGs are a realistic program.

...only if one fetishizes the idea of civil society as a kind of universal ideological solvent, and believes that, in tandem with scientific innovation, the road to our collective salvation is now open to us, can such optimism be justified.

But this was always the line at the Gates Foundation, and it is now clear that this view has won the president’s and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s backing. USAID’s contribution to these Pollyanna-ish fantasies is a document adorned with the title, “Celebrate, Innovate, and Sustain: Toward 2015 and Beyond.” .... The policy initiatives it is committed to are summarized on its website as being “focused on addressing critical development challenges by using science, technology and innovation in creative, yet practical new ways. If we are to secure a prosperous and peaceful future for our children, we must harness innovation to help people around the world unlock their potential to improve their communities and societies.”

Reading this, it is hard not to feel that ... for the Obama administration all development aspires to replicate the experience of Microsoft. For what is being proposed here are “solutions” in the purely technical sense. But development is not a software problem that can be resolved—as Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed new products for their corporation—by bringing the best minds together to brainstorm innovative [sic] solutions. Development is a matter of culture, of politics, and of justice, far more than it is a matter of technology or, for that matter, the technologized vision of human beings that can, without embarrassment, speak of ‘unlocking’ people’s potential as if they were seams of some precious mineral buried in the dirt.

In this Gates/Obama vision of the world, all the fundamental ideological questions have been solved .... There are no great ideological contradictions, just issues of “empowerment,” “good governance,” “transparency,” and “accountability.” The world as a global Seattle, a global Cambridge, Massachusetts: What an idea! That this is nonsense should be obvious, at least if one lets go of the idea that because what the administration would like to accomplish, and, more broadly, what the Millennium Development Goals represent, are good and moral, these ambitions as they are currently being articulated have any chance of being realized.

.... as long as those who claim the mantle of the moral arbiter can say, with a straight face, that we still have a chance of eradicating global poverty by 2015, or, if not then, at least not very long after that, we are living in a world of lies, no matter how well intended.

...Before you know it, the only licit tale about our world becomes the fairy tale.

And because of that, let Lewis Carroll have the last word. "If I had a world of my own,” he wrote in Alice, “everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”

Diary of a serial summit attendee

One week. Two development summits. Hundreds of heads of state, development luminaries, CEOs, and social entrepreneurs. Celebrity star power. No poor people. Aid Watch spent three days trying to make sense of the greatest show on earth to help the world’s lowest. TUESDAY

0930 hrs: I am crammed into a press box at the back of the world’s most glamorous development meeting, craning over the photographers to catch a glimpse of this year’s distinguished guests as they file into the room. At last, the charismatic master of ceremonies takes the stage, and the annual Bill Clinton Admiration Clinton Global Initiative comes to life. The meeting is to match people with big ideas with people with big money, and the pace of networking is furious.

1230 hrs: USAID administrator Raj Shah speaks at a CGI lunch on the topic of agriculture. While the Green Revolution saved hundreds of millions of lives in Asia, it never spread to Africa because aid agencies “actually just failed to try.” That doesn’t square with the World Bank’s finding that “Much energy has also been wasted in trying to replicate Asia’s Green Revolution model in Africa….”

1330 hrs: Introducing another “new” solution to world poverty, Hillary Clinton announced a $60 public-private partnership to replace dirty cooking stoves that spew toxic smoke with healthier, environmentally-responsible ones. (Read Alanna’s ideas on what this initiative will need to do differently to succeed where many previous efforts have failed, and these reflections from experience in India and rural Africa.)

1700 hrs: The best debate of the day is between Mohammed Yunus, who asks that the term microcredit not be used for firms that loan for profit, and Vikram Akula, of SKS Microfinance, who thinks only a commercial model can reach all the people who need and deserve loans, through access to capital markets. Here’s a summary from Forbes.

1830 hrs: My first “Tweetup,” at a bar in midtown, is much more fun than I anticipated. Lots of bloggers, aid workers, entrepreneurs and students whom I knew only by their Twitter handle now have faces and voices.

The best summary post of the day comes from Laura Seay, aka Texas in Africa, who articulates the uncomfortable sense that something essential is missing from these meetings:

… the presence of the poor is limited to pictures in slide shows while wealthy people hobnob over cocktails and abundant buffets. Am I the only one who would rather hear about what life as a poor woman in Ethiopia is like from an actual poor Ethiopian woman?

WEDNESDAY

0900 hrs: The “UN Digital Media Lounge” is where they keep the bloggers who couldn’t get real press credentials to attend the UN summit. There’s wifi, coffee and bagels, but at 47 blocks north of the actual UN building it feels a bit removed from the MDG summit. All day, different heads of state are speaking at the UN on “integrated and coordinated implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the major United Nations conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields; and follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit: draft resolution.” Some of these are broadcast on the screen at the lounge; I browse though others on the UN live feed site.

1430 hrs: The most hyped event of the day is the launch of a new global health strategy for child and maternal health, “Every Woman, Every Child.” Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon promised a “clear road map for making a fundamental difference in millions of lives.” Then he opened the floor to two-minute speeches from practically everybody in the room: poor countries, rich countries, foundations, corporations, NGOs, all making promises and pledges, which the UN announced amounted to “over $40 billion in resources for women and children’s health.”

Oxfam UK questions whether the funds pledged for women and children are actually additional funds or just “promises with a seemingly big price tag in a new shiny UN wrapper.”

1700 hrs: Meeting fatigue is setting in. Since I’m not invited to the MDG Gala, where attendees will celebrate pledges to fight poverty in New York’s swankiest Plaza Hotel, I’m grabbing a beer, going home, and watching President Obama’s speech from the comfort of my couch.

…Wait a minute, did President Obama really just admit the US approach to food aid is creating dependence, not development, and that our aid policies have focused on short term gains at the expense of sustainable development? Did he just become the world’s latest aid skeptic? Did he just pledge to be guided by evidence, “to invest in programs that work, and end those that don’t”? Judging from immediate reactions, people watching are starting to get that some of that old “Yes, we can” feeling.

THURSDAY

1045 hrs: It’s Raj Shah again, stopping by the UN Digital Media Lounge. Wow, did you know he’s only 37 years old, a medical doctor with a degree in health economics? The guy is impressive. But he doesn’t address the most obvious follow-up question to Obama’s speech last night: What happens next so that Obama’s hopey-changey speech gets translated into actual change in our 50-year-old aid legislation and at USAID and the 25 other government agencies involved in US foreign assistance? Will development really be elevated on par with diplomacy and defense when the White House’s new policy says that Shah will report to the Secretary of State, and will have a seat on the National Security Council only “as appropriate”?

1400 hrs: And, we’re back at CGI for a special panel on Haiti’s reconstruction. Uh-oh, is Haiti’s President René Préval really inviting Wyclef Jean on stage? President Clinton talks investment climate with the CEO of Royal Caribbean, the cruise line that brought in more than half of Haiti’s tourists last year. He describes a Coca-Cola/IDB/TechnoServe project sourcing Haitian mangos for a new Odwalla mango-lime juice, and speaks movingly about the resilience of the Haitian people.

Coca-Cola is everywhere this week, in the speeches of Melinda Gates, Raj Shah, in multiple panels at CGI. The prominence of corporations in this week’s events led to at least one wry comment about “saving the world with high-fructose corn syrup” and an observation that we’re hearing “more and more about mutual benefit and less about the moral requirement to help those in need.”

Given the overlap in timing, topics and headline speakers (Hillary Clinton, Mohammed Yunus, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Melinda Gates and Pres Obama all spoke at both events), comparisons between the two events are inevitable, with one journalist suggesting the CGI could be “the new UN.” It does have far better production values, better food, and better (though still spotty) press access. Come to think of it, Bill Clinton would make a bit more inspirational SecGen than the mild-mannered one we have now. But let’s not forget that CGI members fork out $20,000 per year for the privilege to attend what is still, despite the roster of impressive accomplishments, a club for very privileged people.

1730 hrs: The leaders of the MDG summit have issued their “outcome document,” whose long stretches free of content, by custom, were agreed upon before the delegates even arrived:

We underscore the continued relevance of the outcomes of all major United Nations conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields and the commitments contained therein, including the Millennium Development Goals….We strongly reiterate our determination to ensure the timely and full implementation of these outcomes and commitments.

Clinton is creating more of a pulse closing his show, which I’m watching from the press pen since they couldn’t fit half the press people into the mobbed closing session. Looking out at the audience (Oh my God that’s Mick Jagger!), Clinton quips that while “politics is show business for ugly people,” work in the non-governmental sector is “show businesses for nerds.” For this week, at least, he’s right, it’s been quite a spectacle. Thank goodness there’s 12 months until the next one.

Allow me to introduce the world's latest aid skeptic: Barack Obama

If the international community just keeps doing the same things the same way, we will miss many development goals. For too long, we've measured our efforts by the dollars we spent … But aid alone is not development.

Our focus on assistance has saved lives in the short term, but it hasn't always improved those societies over the long term. Consider the millions of people who have relied on food assistance for decades. That's not development, that's dependence....

let's move beyond the old, narrow debate over how much money we're spending and let's instead focus on results-whether we're actually making improvements in people's lives

From the prepared text of President Obama's speech yesterday to the UN Millennium Development Goals summit.

What Hillary’s cookstoves need to succeed

This post was written by Alanna Shaikh. Alanna is a global health professional who blogs at UN Dispatch and Blood and Milk. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton announced a new $60 million initiative to help 100 million households adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership that includes the US State Department, the UN Foundation, the World Food Program, Royal Dutch Shell, the World Health Organization, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Secretary Clinton, who made the announcement on the opening day of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, made a good case for the importance of cookstoves in the lives of women and families. She framed it as a global health issue:

Exposure to smoke from traditional stoves and open fires – the primary means of cooking and heating for 3 billion people in developing countries – causes almost 2 million deaths annually, with women and young children affected most.  That is a life lost every 16 seconds.

But here’s the thing. Improved cookstoves aren’t a new idea. They’ve been kicking around international development circles since the 1940s. The Magan Chula stove, for example, was introduced in India in 1947. Never caught on before. Why would this effort be different? Why would it work this time?

The major flaw in previous cookstove efforts was focusing too much on good design from a designer’s perspective, and not enough from a user perspective. The improved cookstoves were technologically sophisticated and environmentally friendly. But they weren't comfortable for the women cooking on them, and they required changes in cooking methods, some of which made the food taste different.

In the kind of patriarchal societies that keep women tied to stoves and kitchen responsibilities, women don't have a lot of autonomy for decision-making, especially not about major household issues like a new stove. Many of the benefits of better cookstoves don’t directly impact the families who use them. Decreasing the environmental impact of a stove has no obvious effect on its owner. And indoor air pollution isn’t an obvious problem to the people who live with it – they don’t necessarily connect their illnesses with the stove that causes them, and when everyone lives the same way, there is no comparison to demonstrate the link.

Most importantly, using a new kind of stove means cooking differently. That’s a huge lifestyle change. It’s hard for the women who are doing the cooking, and it’s hard on their husbands and families, who may not like the new kind of food that results.

If this new effort is going to avoid the mistakes of its predecessors, it needs to do a few vital things:

• It needs to get as much input as possible from the people who will actually use the stoves. The stoves will need to be as much like existing stoves as possible, to minimize the change in cooking style required to use them. In particular, women need to be able to cook traditional foods that are appealing to their families. Listening to the women who’ll cook on them is the best way to do that.
• It needs to produce affordable stoves and consistently distribute them. Price is a big barrier to use of better cookstoves, since the benefits aren’t immediately obvious. The stoves need to be cheap enough that families can buy them with a minimum of savings or debt. Since they won’t last forever, there needs to be a steady supply of available improved stoves. That means building a structure for production and distribution, not some kind of one-off stove airlift.
• Finally, it will need to market the stoves intensely. Since the benefits to getting a new stove are obvious, and the problems aren’t, they’ll need to really sell these stoves. Women, and their families, will need to be convinced of the benefits. That will require a lot more than a dry brochure or an earnest slogan.  It will need actual ads, with an advertising strategy behind them.

Positives are popular, skeptics are digital

My print copy of today's Financial Times had this at the bottom of the oped page.

Yesterday's FT print edition had a column by Jeff Sachs. The positive gets the column, the skeptic gets the footnote.

Bitter, who me &^%$#@?

To be honest, I get more press space (both in print and online) than I really deserve, compared to other skeptics. But, in general,  positives get more way more press than they deserve than skeptics.

It's just simple human nature: all of us prefer inspirational stories with a happy ending to skeptical questioning that implies more work to do before the end. For-profit newspapers (currently struggling to survive at all) very understandably have to go with what's popular (the Sachs column is currently the 2nd most popular on FT Comment, I am way too scared to ask how way down the ranks my online column is)

I have the impression that the balance between positives and skeptics is much more even in the not-for-profit online world of newspapers, blogs, and Twitter (could somebody rigorously test this please).

I went last night to a meetup of development Twitter folks in New York and was very impressed by the knowledgeable, rigorously skeptical attitude of those with whom I got to chat (including those who worked for organizations who publicly side with the positives). Many of the development Twitterati get it more right in 140 characters than the old media does in long feature stories. (There are some really major exceptions in the old media, such as insert your name here.) One Twitterati I met complained about how badly even such an august publication as the New Yorker had botched a story on Somalia.

So OK positives, you've got the newsprint for now, but watch out for the revenge of the digital skeptics!

The Millennium Development What?

This is a joint post written with Claudia Williamson, a post-doctoral fellow at DRI. If you’re reading this blog, and especially if you’re in New York City right now, you’re probably familiar with the Millennium Development Goals. Besides being the focus of this week’s United Nations summit, they are just (according to the UN) “the most broadly supported, comprehensive, and specific development goals” in human history. Should we fail to meet them by 2015, (according to Oxfam) “we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”

They are the Hollywood blockbuster of development targets. They may not be nuanced or realistic, but they bring in lots of money.

For the rest of the world, who may have never been inside a white Land Cruiser, or can’t tell a CIDA from a SIDA, who’s ever heard of the MDGs?

In the latest wave of the World Values Survey, taken from 2005 to 2008, people in countries around the world were asked this question.

In the US, the world’s largest donor, only 5 percent of people surveyed were willing to admit that they had heard of something called the Millennium Development Goals. (Another survey from 2010 which posed the question slightly differently found that 10 percent of Americans had heard “a lot” or “some” about the MDGs, while 89 percent had heard “not much” or “nothing at all.” Either way you slice it, more Americans now believe the US president is a Muslim (18 percent) than have heard of the MDGs.)

In Japan, the second largest donor included in the survey (there are unfortunately no figures for the UK), 11 percent had heard of the worldwide targets. The Germans and Swedes scored the highest among donors, with 27 percent and 31 percent awareness, respectively.

When we plotted data from the World Values Survey against per capita income (data from the World Development Indicators) we found a negative relationship between income levels and the percentage of respondents who had heard of the MDGs.

Ethiopia, the poorest country in the sample and a large aid recipient, registered the highest MDG awareness, at 66 percent. Mali (47 percent) and Zambia followed (44 percent).

So people in countries that receive aid are more likely to be aware of the MDGs than people in the countries that give it. This probably doesn’t come as a shock. After all, aid policy in recipient countries affects people’s daily lives, determining for many whether they will get a loan for their small business, whether their crops will be competitive at market, whether their child will be vaccinated against a deadly disease. But aid policy in donor countries makes little difference to most. Simply put, people know when it pays to know.

Many people who think the MDGs are deeply flawed as specific development targets still support them because they believe they can be effective tools for advocacy in rich donor nations. And they have been effective at raising aid budgets over the last ten years. But as a tool to raise awareness among the wider population in wealthy countries about the problems facing poorer nations, the MDGs have fallen short.

Heated debate with John McArthur on MDGs and accountability

In 2000, nearly every country in the world made a promise to achieve a set of eight goals, including poverty reduction, women’s empowerment and universal primary education by 2015. How far have we gotten? Host Michel Martin speaks with two opposing voices about the progress made this far: John McArthur, CEO of Millennium Promise, and William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University.

Listen to the interview on NPR's Tell Me More. Once in the media player, the segment is called "UN Convenes to Assess Global Progress"- it's 12 minutes long.

The Millennium Development Goal that really does work has been forgotten

UPDATE 12 noon: this  is a dueling oped with Sachs on ft.com, debate has moved on and even some agreement (see end of post) from a column in the on-line Financial Times today ; for ungated access and a picture of the handsome author go here. The Millennium Development Goals tragically misused the world’s goodwill to support failed official aid approaches to global poverty and gave virtually no support to proven approaches. Economists such as Jeffrey Sachs might argue that the system can be improved by ditching bilateral aid and moving towards a “multi-donor” approach modelled on the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But current experience and history both speak loudly that the only real engine of growth out of poverty is private business, and there is no evidence that aid fuels such growth.

Of the eight goals, only the eighth faintly recognises private business, through its call for a “non-discriminatory trading system”. This anodyne language refers to the scandal of rich countries perpetuating barriers that favour a tiny number of their businesses at the expense of impoverished millions elsewhere. Yet the trade MDG received virtually no attention from the wider campaign, has seen no action, and even its failure has received virtually no attention in the current MDG summit hoopla.

This is all the more misguided because trade-fuelled growth not only decreases poverty, but also indirectly helps all the other MDGs. Yet in the US alone, the violations of the trade goal are legion. US consumers have long paid about twice the world price for sugar because of import quotas protecting about 9,000 domestic sugar producers. The European Union is similarly guilty.

Equally egregious subsidies are handed out to US cotton producers, which flood the world market, depressing export prices. These hit the lowest-cost cotton producers in the global economy, which also happen to be some of the poorest nations on earth: Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.

According to an Oxfam study, eliminating US cotton subsidies would “improve the welfare of over one million West African households – 10 million people – by increasing their incomes from cotton by 8 to 20 per cent”.

Brahima Outtara, a small cotton farmer in Logokourani, Burkina Faso, described the status quo to the aid agency a few years ago: “Cotton prices are too low to keep our children in school, or to buy food and pay for health.”

To be fair, the US government has occasionally tried to promote trade with poor countries, such as under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a bipartisan effort over the last three presidents to admit African exports duty free. Sadly, however, even this demonstrates the indifference of US trade policy towards the poor.

The biggest success story was textile exports from Madagascar to the US – but the US kicked Madagascar out of the AGOA at Christmas 2009. The excuse for this tragic debacle was that Madagascar was failing to make progress on democracy; an odd excuse given the continued AGOA eligibility of Cameroon, where the dictator Paul Biya has been in power for 28 violent years. Angola, Chad and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo are also still in. The Madagascan textile industry, meanwhile, has collapsed.

In spite of all this, the great advocacy campaign for the millennium goals still ignores private business growth from trade, with a few occasional exceptions such as Oxfam. The burst of advocacy in 2005 surrounding the Group of Eight summit and the Live 8 concerts scored a success on the G8 increasing aid, but nothing on trade.

The UN has continuously engaged US private business on virtually every poverty-reducing MDG except the one on trade that would reduce poverty-increasing subsidies to US private business. And while the UN will hold a “private sector forum” on September 22 as part of the MDG summit, the website for this forum makes no mention of rich country trade protection.

The US government, for its part, announced recently its “strategy to meet the millennium development goals”. The proportion of this report devoted to the US government’s own subsidies, quotas and tariffs affecting the poor is: zero. News coverage reflects all this – using Google News to search among thousands of articles on the millennium goals over the past week, the number that mention, say, “cotton subsidies” or “sugar quotas” is so far: zero.

It is already clear that the goals will not be met by their target date of 2015. One can already predict that the ruckus accompanying this failure will be loud about aid, but mostly silent about trade. It will also be loud about the failure of state actions to promote development, but mostly silent about the lost opportunities to allow poor countries’ efficient private businesspeople to lift themselves out of poverty

UPDATE: this was a dueling piece with an oped by Sachs today on FT.com.

One of us also got a prestigious slot in the print edition of FT :>)

Surprising new agreement with Sachs, where he says:

{Bilateral aid doesn't work because it's} "largely unaccountable," "programmes are scattered among many small efforts," {and it creates mainly an} "endless spectacle of visiting dignitaries from donor countries."

Continuing disagreement with Sachs when he says:

The most exciting example {of success} is the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria. ...while a decade ago all three diseases were running out of control, now all are being reined in with millions of lives saved.

Jeff, could you clarify a bit what you mean saying that AIDS is "being reined in" when for every 100 people added to AIDS treatment, 250 people are newly infected with HIV?

Maybe this is why accountability for Millennium Development Goals did not work out that well

Speaking at 12:15pm today at Stand Up NYC for MDGs

at Lincoln Center outdoors. Please come and join the other 5 people listening.

Cry the Beloved Country: Ethiopians criticize Columbia for hosting Meles

UPDATE Sept 19, 8:30am (see end of post) I have been getting a lot of email from Ethiopian-Americans who are very upset that Columbia University has invited Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to speak this coming Wednesday, like this one:

Most of the professors who come across him, in most cases are neutralized or transformed as his advocates. So far, you are the only one standing clear, so the Ethiopian people need one intellectual friend like you to make their case. Please don't be afraid and help our people and speak up.

I am both moved and extremely uncomfortable.  The Ethiopian diaspora critics of Meles are upset about the support for Meles coming from Professors Sachs and Stiglitz at Columbia (note: I hear from critics in the diaspora, because its nearly impossible to be a critic from inside Ethiopia). I have criticized the Meles regime here and here (2nd one joint with Laura). But it should not be up to the faranji to conduct the debate.  None of us know enough or have enough at stake to get it right.

But I am happy to give the opposition a platform in this blog, without necessarily endorsing any one viewpoint, individual, or movement. Nor do I imply that any one I quote is necessarily representing a majority of Ethiopians. I have previously given space on the blog to a supporter of Meles.

So what are the issues? The Columbia student newspaper noted how Columbia's original speech announcement had a laudatory bio of Meles (since removed), further outraging the Ethiopian opposition.

Under the seasoned governmental leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi ... Ethiopia has made and continues to make progresses in many areas including in education, transportation, health and energy.

Obang Metho, the director of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia,  wrote me with an alternative bio:

Electoral manipulations, harassment, intimidation,beatings, political imprisonments and the withholding of humanitarian aid for any who do not support Meles ‘ethnic-based EPRDF party, have effectively closed all political space to any opposing groups. The criminalization of dissent, advanced through new repressive laws regarding civil society and vague antiterrorism laws that could make nearly anyone guilty, have further silenced the people and the media.

Columbia University has the right to invite whomever they choose, but yet, such an invitation will only be misused to further elevate a dictator who is oppressing the people of Ethiopia.

Political science professor Alemayehu Mariam wrote an open letter to Columbia president Lee Bollinger on the Huffington Post:

There is widespread belief among Ethiopian Americans that Mr. Zenawi's invitation to speak ...necessarily implies the University's endorsement and support of Mr. Zenawi's views, policies and actions in Ethiopia. I am writing to request your office to issue an official statement clarifying your position concerning Mr. Zenawi as you so eloquently did when Mahmood Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke on your campus on September 24, 2007.

Professor Mariam cites some of the credentials of Meles Zenawi to get the Ahmadinejad treatment:

In 2005, security forces under the personal command and control of Mr. Zenawi massacred 193 unarmed protesters and inflicted severe gunshot wounds on 763 others...

In December 2008, Mr. Zenawi arrested and reinstated a life sentence on Birtukan Midekssa, the only woman political party leader in Ethiopian history. He kept her under extreme conditions in prison.

He quotes the Committee to Protect Journalists:

The government enacted harsh legislation that criminalized coverage of vaguely defined "terrorist" activities, and used administrative restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and imprisonments to induce self-censorship... The government has had a longstanding practice of bringing trumped-up criminal cases against critical journalists, leaving the charges unresolved for years as a means of intimidating the defendants... Ethiopia as the only country in sub-Saharan Africa with 'consistent' and 'substantial' filtering of web sites...

Even it's not up to the faranji to debate Ethiopia's politics, we can all certainly comment on what support is given to each side by our governments, our aid agencies, and our universities.

What do you think of Columbia's invitation to Meles? Should President Bollinger issue the "Ahmadinejad" disclaimer requested by the critics?

UPDATE (Sunday 9/19 8:30am): The same pro-Meles Ethiopian Ph.D. student cited in an earlier Aid Watch post wrote me again this morning ("you are back at it again!"):

The note you posted regarding HE PM Meles Zenawi is highly charged with hatred and grudge. It does not look one produced by a man who claims to be a scholar and neutral. Once again, you clearly demonstrated your malicious intent to harm the flourishing name of our prime minister... your witnesses are disgruntled and die hard extremists

I am very happy to feature both sides to the debate, just as I want to also provide an alternative viewpoint to the support of Meles by Professors Stiglitz and Sachs at Columbia. Unfortunately, this debate cannot happen within Ethiopia because Meles suppresses dissent, and even this very blog post is almost certainly blocked from anyone trying to access it from within Ethiopia.