The Success of Development
Soweto, South Africa (Wikimedia)
I’ve been sort of in a funk about the prospects for doing something to improve the lives of the world’s poorest ever since I read Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms which suggests that the state of play in places like Africa is actually worse than most people think. One possible antidote, it seems, will come from development economist Charles Kenny, whose The Success of Development aims to kick me out of my miasma:
A lot of people are depressed about the state of global development. And they are particularly miserable about Africa. There is a widespread belief that the region remains mired in a Malthusian trap, home to many of the ‘bottom billion’ who are living in ‘fourteenth century’ conditions. And many argue that aid has been a dead loss in fixing the problem. According to this view of the world, we’re stuck in a serious crisis of development.
This book explores the bad news and the good news about development. It lays out the evidence on growing income disparities between the global rich and the global poor that are at the heart of a narrative of crisis. And it chronicles the failed search for a silver bullet to overcome economic malaise.
But it also discusses the considerable successes of development. Not least, the evidence for any country being stuck in a Malthusian nightmare is threadbare. The book points to global progress in health, education, civil and political rights, access to infrastructure and even access to beer. This progress is historically unprecedented and has been faster in the developing world than in the developed.
Interestingly, he’s making the book available for free online. Felix Salmon says he’s been glued to his Kindle all day reading it. I haven’t had that luxury, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.
13 Responses to “The Success of Development”
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June 15th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
the evidence for any country being stuck in a Malthusian nightmare is threadbare.
It’s not in Africa, but I claim Haiti qualifies.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
It’s important to remember that there’s also a lot of good news coming out of Africa that Western media rarely bothers to report. One thing that makes me take heart is how much Africans are innovating these incredibly creative solutions to development problems using technology that we in the developed world take advantage of every day, like Ugandan farmers using cell phones to stop the crop-killing “banana wilt” disease– we blogged about that and a few other pretty astounding uses of technology here: http://thewhitakergroup.us/wordpress/?p=562
And while there’s no silver bullet, that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and say “oh well” either, since there are definitely things the US can do that make a significant difference. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has created over 300,000 jobs on the continent since it was signed in 2000. One incredibly important thing we can do is make sure that legislation doesn’t get thrown aside in the near future, as some people are threatening to do– former Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa Rosa Whitaker just wrote a column on why AGOA is so important for Africa and why we can’t let Congress dilute it: http://thewhitakergroup.us/wordpress/?p=785
Anyway, there’s plenty in Africa that’s discouraging. But there’s also more than there’s ever been in recent memory that’s encouraging, and there’s a lot we can do to try to boost trade and investment with African countries so the game isn’t over yet.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Lots of authors are putting books online, but I find reading them on my screen tough on the eyes. If I could find a ebook reader that allowed easy reading of pdf’s, I’d buy it. From what people say, the kindle just doesn’t do it well (pay amazon to convert my pdfs? No thanks).
June 15th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Malthus waits.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
The massive weaponization of the African continent really doesn’t help matters, and I’m not sure there’s any precedent at all for natural democratic development in such an atmosphere, though I’m willing to be educated about it.
Of course, development policies and debt pushed on African nations by the Washington Consensus made/makes matters worse, and is probably a deeper problem, as well as in many ways explanation, along with the fact it’s just easy to look the other way, as well as profitable for great powers as far as oil and diamonds in particular regions.
Then, you just factor in the natural human history and tribalism in Africa, which goes back a long, long time, combined with resource competition for in many cases extremely limited resources, fueled by weaponry and cynical Western manipulation, and the condition of much of the continent of Africa is not surprising.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Poverty is a political problem, not a resource problem. Zimbabwe is all one needs to examine.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
And no, I’m really not sure what to do about it, though have never bought any argument that we should stop or decrease funding targeted towards health and education to Africans; to the contrary, we should be increasing this, while also reexamining all the onerous export-oriented policies that have been pushed on them, especially any cases where African nations are dependent on exporting food for income when their people are starving or close to starving or have to spend most of their income on food.
Honestly, if we want to be a more enlightened, civilized global capitalist society, we need to make sure there are trade laws preventing wealth consumers in advanced societies from enjoying the benefits of cheap food and commodities from poor societies when a certain threshold of people in these poor societies literally either can’t afford food or spend almost all their income on it.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Clark’s Farewell to Alms is a load of bullshit. From the stupid snark of the title to the indulgences of evolutionary psychology within, it’s a book mostly made to satisfy the status quo.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Cell phones are a huge advance over landline phones for much of the world. Only a handful of countries had the organizational skills to make landline systems work well — Italy is a notorious example of a country where getting a landline after you moved took a ridiculous amount of time. Landlines are natural monopolies, and most cultures don’t have what it takes to deliver good service.
On the other hand, Somalia during its phase without any government had fairly good cell phone service, so you can be at the warlord phase of development and still have decent cell phones.
Once you get phone service, the economy ought to grow quickly simply due to how much less waiting around is required to get stuff done.
June 16th, 2009 at 1:20 am
shah8 — In what way does Clark’s book “satisfy the status quo”. He dumps all over institutionalism and the economics profession. Of course, the genetic thing is basically crazy, but that was actually a very small part of the book added at the last minute. (Which doesn’t make it right, but it doesn’t make the whole book BS.)
I don’t think the question: Is Africa malthusian, yes or no? is that useful. Africa would clearly benefit from slower population growth, both b/c of better dependency ratios and b/c, in countries like Tanzania, 70% of the people are involved in professions which depend on farming, fishing, or hunting, or on exploitation of other resources, oil, etc., of which there are a finite amount. Life expectancies and incomes suggest that much of africa is poorer than NW Europe circa in 1800.
Would Africa benefit from a slower rate of population growth? Yes. (Does anyone think otherwise????) For my money, every country would benefit from a slower rate of population growth… think about congestion, waste, environmental damage. All that stuff increases with population.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:31 am
I have not read the book, Thorstein. Reading Amazon reviews tends to leave me with the impression that the “crazy” *was* the answer to the question posed.
I’ll also have you know that yapping about population pressures is one of my triggers for ranting for pages. I’m too tired to do it now, but let’s just say, harping on population is the lazy man’s search for the key under the spotlight.
Africa has problems because key resource are commodified in legal and resource terms that Africans do not control. If Europe can always compel the extraction of valuable resources at market prices that Europeans aren’t subject to, like, say, fish, timber, or flowers, then Africans have minimal ability to acrue assets into mobilizable capital due to persistent cash-for-imports crisises.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Honestly, you people are so used to a fair functioning Government you have no concept of life without it. Africa is a hodge-podge of dictatorships and nominal democracies crippled by terminal corruption. You can send food, but it won’t feed anyone because it’s being stolen. You can make trade law, but it only formalizes corruption, while depriving citizens what little earning power they have. You can ban DDT while millions die of malaria. You can preach condom use while looking away from multiple genocides. You can have all the good intentions in the world, but that won’t make Africa a real functioning continent, because you aren’t brave enough to hold their leaders to a higher standard.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Debate on Africa is becoming almost perfectly circular. Perhaps if we stipulated to a number of things we could begin getting beyond beside-the-point argument and running on the spot to actual movement. So, let’s stipulate that:
1. Colonialism and its associated form of capitalism screwed up traditional societies and often in brutal ways, arbitrarily drew maps defining new territories, exploitatively extracted natural resources, turned tail in the face of resistance only to deploy different methods to achieve largley the same ends.
2. Newly independent African states inherited the mantle but not the substance of western democratic traditions, leaving us vulnerable to demagogues and tyrants.
3. Corruption is an equation, with the receiver on one side and the giver on the other.
4. So much for the reasons, rationalisations, justifications and excuses. Few outside Africa (and not that many within) are now inclined to share in any sense of outrage and desire for redress.
5. Long past time for Africa to get over it. Apologies for slavery and the impact of colonialism are by now of little practical use and certainly no longer an effective guilt trip to gain concessions in aid and trade negotiations.
6. Europe and North America can resume tut-tutting in disgust only after they have removed the rank hypocrisy from their trade and aid policies and begin genuinely fulfilliing their previous promises. And please, dangling trade policy and other value-free trinkets when you need votes at the United Nations is a practice that would get you charged with a crime if you did it in your own country.
7. Stipulations on how aid money is to be used should no longer require that the cash be spent on suppliers from the donor country. That’s a test of whether you really want to help or whether aid is merely a disguised stimulus package for the donor nation.
8. The only stipulation that has any justification would be one that requires independent external monitoring and audit of the manner in which aid is used — in real time, from day to day. No, really, we do have some sense of how to use those computer and interwebs thingies that make that kind of accountability possible.
9. In spite of the time it takes, no aid should be applied to particular tasks until upstream and downstream blockages to its effective spending are identified and dealt with. This should be done even if it requires diverting aid to deal first with the upstream and downstream issues. For example, it’s pointless spending money on a school when the community it’s intended to serve is starving, insecure or lacks basic infrasctructure for tolerable daily life.
10. Broad-brush characterisations of Africa as all this and all that are useless, inaccurate and particularly damaging to further advances in the many places there is actual progress.
Such characterisations serve only to provide a a sheen of moral cover to those who would prefer to look away or sanctimoniously lecture us on the need to sort out our own problems. (Which would be easier to do if only the rest would let go of our testicles.)
11. “Beyond hope/repair/salvation” is a great title for a book, but of no use to those prepared to plug away at the problems irrespective of the time it takes, stumbles and setbacks along the way.
Finally, let’s stipulate that, if I tell you I’m in South Africa, you will not mention your friend Jim in Kenya and wonder if I know him or could drop something off at his place one weekend. Look at a map for chrissakes . . .