How to build local government accountability in South Africa? A conversation with partners

This is what a good day visiting an Oxfam programme looks like. I skim the interwebs (and this blog) to put together some thoughts on a given issue from our experience or what others are writing (‘the literature’). Then sit down with local Oxfamistas and partner organizations (who are usually closer to the grassroots than we are) to compare these bullet points with their reality. Last Friday it was ‘how can NGOs build the accountability of local government.’ My ten minutes covered:

• Supply (training officials) v demand (strengthening civil society) v building collective trust in fragmented societies
• The importance of identifying and working with insider champions within the state – no good shouting at the gates if no-one inside is willing to listen and work with you
• It can be risky – make sure staff and partners have support if the state officials lash out
• Often need to pursue deeper culture change on officials’ attitudes to excluded groups
• Need to choose between focussing on the broader ‘enabling environment’ of access to information, respect for the law, exposing corruption etc or more specific campaigns for housing, electricity, schools etc
• Some interesting examples of text-based complaints mechanisms (India) and name-and-shame league tables (Vietnam)

A lot of this resonated with the South African experience. Some thought-provoking additional points included:

The SA implementation gap between ‘first world norms and standards’ and an underfunded and often chaotic/corrupt corrupt administrative reality is so wide it may even be counterproductive (no point in acting because however hard you try, you can never comply). Local government is hobbled by lack of cash, capacity, and officials’ inability to understand ‘perfect’ guidelines and standards drawn up by distant consultants.

The political incentives are all wrong. Patronage is as big a problem as corruption – party hacks get parachuted into senior administrative jobs, lacking the capacity or interest to perform them properly. ‘People in positions feel very powerful’, and their power springs from playing the political game within the ANC, fighting the internal turf wars rather than doing right by the people.

Despite this, there are officials and politicians willing to do the right thing, either because they are politically progressive and committed (this is the ANC, after all), or because more self-interested political incentives are temporarily/accidentally aligned with those of the popular movement. A huge element of civil society advocacy is built around identifying and building relationships with such individuals. Finding backing for local insider champions (eg from higher tiers of government and politics, or international bodies) can make a real difference in strengthening the hand of the good guys within the state.

But that can be very exhausting: ‘you look at the giant that is Government and it’s so difficult to navigate. You never quite know where to push, (and nor do the officials!). You invest hugely in building intimate relationships only to find they’ve moved department and you have to start all over again.’

Civil society (including Oxfam) don’t always do themselves any favours: ‘CSOs go with the attitude ‘you’re paid to do this, and you drive a 4×4. Why should I congratulate you when you actually do your job?’ So they get nowhere.’

Options include:

• Judicial activism, but there is little cash to support it, and it is very slow.
• Changing norms: At present ‘there’s no corruption, no shame’ among officials. CSOs could go for broad public awareness raising and pressure along the lines of ipaidabribe.com, ‘they work for us’ websites on the performance of politicians or civil servants, ‘slowest response of the year’ competitions etc. But those in the room thought this would be very risky indeed, given the ANC’s hostility to public criticism.
• Broaden alliances beyond networks of CSOs (which seems to be the default model), not least because civil society currently has access to political leaders (they were often in the anti-apartheid movement together), but little real traction. Partners thought the private sector offered more promise than faith-based organizations or traditional leaders.

We finished by asking everyone to suggest something new to try. Here’s what they came up with:

• Invest much more in ‘positive reinforcement’. Find champions, publicly support them. Build relationships.
• Do more long term awareness-raising  with communities about what the government ought to be doing for them
• Think about a South African ipaidabribe.com
• Budget tracking/ ‘follow the money’ watchdogs to ensure that money allocated arrives intact and is then actually spent (a scandalous amount of health and education money has to be returned to central government because local officials fail to spend it on time).

But in the end, several partners thought that only an increase in political competition, with the ANC facing a genuine chance of being voted out of municipal governments, would shift the behaviours of most officials. Given the state of the opposition, that doesn’t look likely, but I’ll speculate on that in a future post.

And if you happen to be in Cape Town today, why not come along to the Sustainability Institute at 12 to discuss ‘Creating a Just Food System through Active Citizenship‘? Some good panelists (and me).

How can a post-2015 agreement drive real change? Please read and comment on this draft paper

The post-2015 discussion on what should succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is picking up steam, with barely a day going by without some new paper, consultation or high level meeting. So I, along with Stephen Hale and Matthew Lockwood, have decided to add to the growing slush-pile with a new discussion paper. We want you to read the draft (see right) and help us improve it. Contributions by 5 November please, either as comments on the blog, or emailed to research[at]oxfam.org.uk.

The paper argues that there’s an urgent need to bring power and politics into the centre of the post-2015 discussion. To have impact, any post-2015 arrangement has to take into account the lessons of over a decade of implementing the existing MDGs, and be shaped by the profound global change since the MDGs were debated over the course of the 1990s and early noughties.  We’re hoping that this will be at the centre of this week’s discussions in London linked to the High Level Panel and in Berlin at the Berlin Civil Society Center on Development post 2015.

The most significant shift is that the new arrangements have to be designed to influence governments, whereas the main impact of the MDGs was on the aid system. Why the shift? Because aid is becoming less important, both because it is likely to decline in volume over the next few years, and because governments’ dependence on aid as a percentage of revenues is falling even faster than aid itself. In any case, aid is a pretty ineffective way of influencing government behaviour, beyond the actual expenditure of donor dollars.

So if influencing governments is the goal, what can we learn from the experience of the MDGs? The first thing to note is a startling lack of research. Many reviews blur the distinction between ‘MDGs’ and ‘MDG policies’/’MDG planning’ (in effect, social welfare). Analysis of the data on improvements in health, education, and other key sectors largely ignores the vital question of how much of that improvement can be plausibly attributed to the MDGs, rather than to other factors such as national politics, economic growth, or technological innovation. Given the substantial political and financial investment in the MDGs, and the need to design an effective post-2015 framework, being unable to attribute – with any certainty – progress due to the MDGs is a truly lamentable gap in our knowledge.

There is even less research on (and less anecdotal or circumstantial evidence for) the impact of the MDGs on the policies and behaviours of rich countries, beyond changes in their aid budgets. There is scant evidence that MDG 8’s commitment to a ‘global partnership for development’ has had any impact on rich country behaviour. Understanding this failure is vital, given that many proposals for the post-2015 regime seek to place more obligations on rich countries in areas such as climate change and resource consumption.

What we know is that some governments have adopted the language of the MDGs and have customized them to fit national priorities, while civil society groups have increasingly used them as advocacy tools.

Beyond that, many post-2015 participants seem to think it is not possible to give a more complete answer to the traction question because of the missing counterfactual (how can we know what would have happened without the MDGs?). Not so. It is certainly possible to know much more than we do about attribution through more rigorous qualitative research. For example, in-depth interviews with policymakers could investigate the traction exerted by a range of external and domestic forces on their decisions (avoiding any leading questions on the MDGs). We have yet to locate such research.

So much for the MDGs, what about whatever comes next? International instruments can exert influence in three key ways:

1. By changing national norms in areas such as women’s rights. However intangible, norms matter, leading to long-term changes in what society considers acceptable or deplorable, which then leads to changes to laws, policies and behaviours.
2. By directly influencing government decision making, through any of a number of possible carrots (aid, contracts, acceptance, approval) or sticks (sanctions, disapproval).
3. By giving civil society organisations and other domestic actors more tools with which to lobby, campaign, and secure action by their governments.

In most cases, the main drivers of change will be domestic – the result of national politics and culture. But international initiatives are second-order factors that can nudge things along. We identify six kinds of instrument at global and regional levels.

Big global norms: rallying cries intended to influence the underlying attitudes of decision makers and citizens, such as ‘zero poverty’ or ‘zero hunger’.

Global goals and targets: as encapsulated by the MDGs.

Regional goals and targets: the African Union has been particularly energetic in agreeing regional targets, setting out what its member governments should be aiming for on the Rights of Women (AU Protocol, 2003),or their allocation of spending to agriculture (Maputo Agreement 2003), health (Abuja Declaration 2001) and similar commitments on social protection, and water and sanitation.

Global league tables: the international community and/or civil society can simply collect and publish data allowing a comparison between different countries’ absolute situation and rate of progress, as in the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Anecdotal evidence (and long NGO experience) suggests that league tables can be effective both in attracting public and media interest, and in goading politicians into action – there is nothing a leader likes less than to be seen to lose out to a rival nation.

Data transparency: according to some architects of the MDGs, perhaps their greatest legacy will be the improved quality, collection and dissemination of social data. One option would be to make this the centrepiece of a post-2015 arrangement, and leave it to others (national or regional bodies, international institutions) to ‘mash up’ the data into different indices and use it to advocate for progressive policies.

International law: Most governments are already signatories to dozens, if not hundreds, of international conventions and the role and influence of international law appears to be on an inexorable upward curve, steadily encroaching on previously untouchable areas of state sovereignty.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of these options in influencing norms, decision making or civil society activism? Here we are basically into guesswork/gut feeling, captured in the table below. We’d be interested to hear your views, and very grateful for links to any relevant research.

Possible options for international instruments to drive change post-2015

Instrument	Influence on national norms	On decision making	Civil society take-up
Big global norms	Sometimes strong, but often disappear without trace	Long-term influence (e.g. shaping future leaders’ world views)	Strong, if resonate with national reality
Global goals and targets	Partial	Transmission via aid system, otherwise likely to be partial	Yes, when resonate with national reality Far stronger if accompanied by national goals, civil society commitment to these, and clear national accountability mechanisms
Regional goals and targets	More influence where regional identity is stronger (e.g. African Union)	Especially if governments have to ratify and legislate. Rivalry can also be effective	Can provide a valuable advocacy tool, especially where regional identity is strong
Global league tables	Weak	Effective if builds on regional rivalries	Can provide a valuable advocacy tool
Data transparency	Weak	Depends how data are picked up by national actors	Depends on civil society capacity to use data for advocacy purposes, alliances with academics, etc.
International law	Strong, but slow osmosis into national common sense (e.g. children have rights)	Especially if governments have to ratify and legislate, or report publicly on their performance (as with the UNCRC or CEDAW)	Depends on civil society capacity to use legal system (and responsiveness of legal system)

Over to you for comments, links etc

What have the MDGs achieved? We don’t really know… Heretical thoughts from Matthew Lockwood

A second instalment in Matthew Lockwood’s series of valedictory boat-rocking blogs (his first was on fossil fuel subsidies) as he leaves the IDS Climate Change team for a new role in the UK energy sector. This time, he asks why the results agenda often stops short of being applied to the big picture stuff like the MDGs.

One of the interesting things about having come back to the international development field after some years away is the greatly increased emphasis on results, across all areas of activity, including not only projects and programmes, but also policy making, research, and advocacy.

Many people and organisations are interested in the results agenda, including the big foundations such as Gates, influential bloggers like Owen Barder, my boss Lawrence Haddad, and DFID’s Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell. In his first big speech in office, in Washington in June 2010, Mitchell said “we’re also fundamentally redesigning our aid programmes so that they build in rigorous evaluation processes from day one.”

Like many others, I think aspects of the results agenda are important, reasonable and politically wise, although there are also some interesting critiques of the approach. But I also think that, if you really take it seriously, it throws up some challenges and dilemmas.

For me, this is clearest in the case of development’s big frameworks and policy directions. One prime example is the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their proposed replacement with more development goals after 2015. As most readers will know, the MDGs are a set of human development goals, with subsidiary targets and indicators, formally adopted by the UN in 2000.

There is pretty broad agreement that progress towards meeting the MDGs is partial and uneven – some of the goals have been met or look very likely to be met, in some countries, while other goals (such as the target reduction in maternal mortality) may not. Asia, especially East Asia, has done better than Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, applying the results agenda to the MDGs is not simply a matter of asking whether the goals will be met. Rather, it is about asking whether the goals have been met as the result of the MDGs having been adopted. The purpose of having high level goals, including any that come after the current MDGs, is to create political will, the mobilisation of resources, policy change and delivery, all of which should bring about a positive change relative to what would have happened in their absence.

Many in the aid world would say that, of course, the MDGs have had a major impact, and that it is absurd to even raise the question. However, a rigorous assessment of the evidence suggests that it is actually quite hard to make a strong case.

First, the evidence that the MDGs may have made a difference is, at best, mixed. The most comprehensive and rigorous independent assessment is by Andy Sumner and Charles Kenny for the Center for Global Development. They look for significant differences in outcomes and impacts before and after 2000, when the MDGs were adopted.

The clearest effects were on aid levels (which are not an ultimate impact but an intermediate outcome). Compared with the previous decade, official aid increased in the post-2000 period, but not as a proportion of rich country GDP. More aid went to the poorest countries, including to Africa. There was a small shift in the share of aid going to the social sectors, on which the MDGs tend to focus, and this happened soon after 2000.

There is plenty of evidence of the influence of the MDGs on policy discourse, if this is measured by mention of the goals or their presence in donor policy documents, PRSPs and developing country government goals. However, the effects on actual policy change are less clear. Sumner and Kenny find it “hard to detect a trend” in low income country government spending on health and education. They also find no trend in the quality of developing country policy making, as measured by the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment ratings.

On the actual impact indicators themselves – such as income poverty, malnutrition and mortality rates, educational enrolment etc – Sumner and Kenny’s most relevant assessment is whether progress was faster pre- or post-MDGs, and whether progress post-MDGs has been faster than what would have been expected based on past trends. Again, results are inconclusive. The data “suggest that in no case is there an obvious sign of a significant break towards faster progress since 2000. Nonetheless there has been somewhat faster global progress on income, primary completion rates, child and maternal mortality over the post-Declaration period”. A study by Fukuda-Parr and Greenstein of country level data gives a similarly mixed picture. The comparison with predicted rates of progress based on historical analysis implies slightly better than expected outcomes post-MDGs on primary education and gender equality in education, but worse on maternal mortality.

Second, there is the problem of attribution. As Sumner and Kenny put it, “even ignoring the very limited evidence of faster progress since 2000 in the average (unweighted) developing country, it is a considerable step from ‘more rapid progress’ to ‘the MDGs caused more rapid progress’”. In other words, bilateral aid may have increased somewhat, some indicators have improved, but how do we know that these changes are due to the MDGs, and not to some other factor?

It is not possible to know what would have happened in their absence. This is not a case of running randomised controlled trials across a number of interventions. And as Richard Manning points out, it is hard to separate out the potential effects of the MDGs from the environment that produced them.

In some areas, such as vaccination or primary education enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa, the links between the MDGs, the mobilisation

and focusing of additional aid, and subsequent impacts seem convincingly close. But in others, the links seem less plausible, especially where there are also good alternative candidates that may explain changes in indicators better than the effect of MDGs. Poverty reduction in Asia, for example, is more likely to have been driven by the extraordinary period of sustained economic growth in China, than by a set of UN targets. It is also plausible that China’s growth will have pulled along a number of countries in its wake, including commodity exporters in Africa. The rapid reduction of poverty in Brazil is due in part to the development of social safety nets such as the Bolsa Familia. When I recently asked Romulo Paes de Sousa, Brazil’s former Deputy Minister for Social Development, and closely involved in the design of the Bolsa, whether it was the result of the MDGs, he dismissed this immediately, saying it was the outcome of a domestic debate that emerged from the minimum wage.

Yet despite the lack of clear, strong evidence of the impact of the Goals, and the difficulties of attribution, the MDGs are routinely hailed as a success. Most importantly, this success is asserted in the context of discussion about a new set of post-2015 development goals. When it was announced that David Cameron would be co-chair of the UN High Level Panel on post-2015 goals, Andrew Mitchell hailed the “huge progress that has been made through the Millennium Development Goals” and “the successes of the current goals”.

When challenged with the point that attribution is often difficult in cases such as these, and that you can’t compare counterfactuals, many proponents of the results agenda recognise the problem. However, their argument is that, in such circumstances, it is the duty of those proposing any particular approach to be explicit about their “theory of change” – that is, be explicit about the full chain of causal linkages you think is going to run from your intervention (here adopting international goals) and the impacts you hope for. Identify your assumptions. Assess the evidence for and against those assumptions, and weigh up the risks.

If done properly, this wouldn’t be just about ticking a box. The point of such an analysis should be to help understand how to make such goals more effective. It should look at why some goals were easier to meet than others (gender equity on education as opposed to access to clean water or reductions in maternal mortality) and in some countries than in others. It should look in a systematic and rigorous way in how the goals were used (or not used) and where there is evidence that they failed to lead to a result, explore alternative, potentially more effective “pathways to impact”.

The point here is not that the MDGs are somehow a bad thing, or that there should not be a new set of goals. In any case, it is not seriously in question that there will be further goals post-2015, of some form. Too much political capital has been invested in them for this to be the case, regardless of the ambiguity of the evidence base. The results revolution will not change the reality that some policies and initiatives are often inevitably driven by more than evidence, and that politics plays a major role.

Nor am I advocating a view that we should not try to measure impact or wrestle with the problem of attribution. What I am saying is that I think the example shows that really, really applying the agenda of results and evidence-based policy consistently and rigorously can be more difficult than the current discourse acknowledges.

Matthew Lockwood is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. From October 2012 he starts work on a four year project on innovation and governance in the UK energy sector. 

Obama v Kofi Annan: Who has the best model for agriculture in Mozambique?

This guest post from Joseph Hanlon (right) was also published today on the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog

Mozambique is a development paradox. Rural poverty is increasing despite high growth rates and billions of dollars in aid. Now the country has been targeted by two contrasting models of agricultural development. The Obama model was backed by the G8 in Washington in May, while the Annan model was proposed by the Africa Progress Panel (APP). Which works better for the poor?

The APP is heavyweight and conservative, chaired by Kofi Annan and with members including a former IMF head and a former US Treasury Secretary. It says one of the biggest dangers in Africa is the growing inequality between rich and poor, which is creating a threat of social instability. In sub-Saharan Africa “the current pattern of trickle-down growth is leaving too many people in poverty.” And the panel warns that Mozambique is one of the more unequal countries in Africa. The APP points out that Mozambique is a net importer of staple foods, despite having huge agricultural potential.

The APP report calls for “fundamental change” in both donor and African government policies. “Raising the productivity of smallholder farmers is critical. Smallholder agriculture must be placed at the centre of a green revolution in Africa.” This will require more government action and more support for small farmers.

Let’s call this the Annan model.

The second agricultural model for Mozambique was agreed in Washington in May, when G8 leaders adopted a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition proposed by President Barack Obama and USAID. The idea is to use giant agribusiness to end hunger in Mozambique and five other countries. The first project in Mozambique will be to support Cargill, the giant grain trader and largest private company in the world, to take 40,000 hectares of farmland. US officials say this will include some small-holder contract farming, which means Cargill will not make enough profit from the investment, so the giant transnational grain trader must be subsidised from G8 aid.

Let’s call this the Obama model.

The two models are incompatible. The Africa Progress Panel report points specifically to the very large land concessions in Mozambique,

and warns that “for Africans, the benefits of large-scale land acquisitions are questionable.”

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently issued its Africa Human Development Report 2012 which points to “the recent international scramble for land in sub-Saharan Africa” and urges caution on big foreign investors.” Much agricultural technology for producing crops is scale-invariant (it is as efficient on small farms as on large), so large farms should not be expected to be inherently more efficient.” The report warns that “private investors naturally prioritize their own objectives, not the well-being of the poor and vulnerable.”

To be fair, Mozambique’s experience with large investors has not been all bad. Indeed, a single US multinational has probably done more to reduce poverty in Mozambique than any donor action – and without subsidy and without grabbing any land. Universal Leaf Tobacco has agreements with 150,000 peasant families, and their earnings from tobacco have lifted thousands of families out of poverty. How ironic that the antidote to poverty should be a poison, tobacco.

But Universal’s success is due to a different model to that of Obama – out-grower or contract farming. The company provides seeds, fertiliser and other inputs as well as extension services, and guarantees to buy the crop. In return, the farmer must sell her tobacco to Universal. This package works because of two factors: first, risk is shared, so if a drought or cyclone destroys the crop then farmers do not have to pay Universal for the seeds and fertilisers they received. Second, the market is guaranteed; if a farmer grows tobacco, she can be sure to sell it.

Elsewhere, Mozambique has the lowest agricultural technology levels in southern Africa, because under the present free market policies, peasants are expected to carry all the risk – of weather, pests and a lack of market. Mozambican farmers are very poor – the average rural cash income is $31 per person per year. That is less than the price of a bag of fertiliser. Very few peasant farmers are willing to risk their whole year’s income on fertiliser, or better seed, or a different crop. The problem for Mozambican peasants is that foreign companies will only share the risk with tobacco and cotton, and are not interested in other crops. And under the present free market system pushed so hard by the international community, the state is not allowed to share the risk for maize and other domestic food crops.

Nearly all Mozambican farmers still use only a hoe, and do not have a tractor or oxen to plough, so they can only farm 1.5 hectares. Now, international investors are noticing that this leaves vast tracts of underused land. The difference between the Annan and Obama models is how that land is to be used. The Obama model is that giant northern agribusinesses like Cargill with G8 help should take that land and end poverty through what the APP calls “the current pattern of trickle-down growth”. The Annan model would upgrade million of peasant farms to up to 5 hectares each, using most of the available land, but providing initial support with mechanical ploughing, inputs and assured markets.

Will the Annan or Obama model lead to the biggest reduction of poverty and the best use of Mozambique’s land?

Joseph Hanlon is visiting senior fellow at the Department of International Development of the London School of Economics and honorary research fellow in the School of Environment and Development of the University of Manchester. He has been writing about Mozambique since 1978,

Holding out for the super-voucher: Kevin Watkins responds to Justin Sandefur on private v public education

Kevin Watkins (right), senior visiting research fellow at the Brookings Institution, responds to yesterday’s guest post by Justin Sandefur

After reciting the familiar evidence on the learning achievement problems in poor countries, Justin Sandefur offers an even more familiar ‘one-stop’ solution – a market-based fix, with low-fee private schools, vouchers, and the apparently talismanic Pearson corporation leading the way to a better, smarter future. It seems that only for-profit school providers and corporate entrepreneurs know the secret of raising education standards of marginalized kids in poor countries, and that public provision is part of the problem rather than part of a potential solution.

Nothing in the research cited by Justin makes the case for his prescriptions. Let’s start by being clear about our differences.

I admire Justin’s work. I also share many of his concerns.  The learning crisis is one of the great development challenges of our day. And like Justin I want to see some bold new experiments in education – a sector paralyzed by the conservatism of aid donors, government indifference, and weak leadership from the UN and the World Bank.

In the event, Justin’s idea of a bold experiment turns out to be a rehash of voucher-scheme proposals first advocated by Milton Friedman over half a century ago, mixed US-style Charter Schools, and Swedish free school reform models.

I have no interest in defending the indefensible quality of public education provided in many of the poorest countries. But when public education systems are broken they need fixing, not bypassing or franchising out to the private sector. And if we care about equity, there is no credible alternative to a public system that offers opportunity for all rather than choice for some.

The twin crisis in education
Justin’s take on the 2015 education progress report suffers from an excess of charitable spirit. On his account poor countries get something like a B+ on access and an F on learning. The F is justified. The B+ is not.

There are currently around 61 million primary school age children out of school. Since 2005 progress towards universal primary education has slowed globally and stalled in sub-Saharan Africa, where out-of-school numbers are rising. Meanwhile, millions of children enter school only to drop out before completing a full primary school cycle.

The reason for the slow down, as highlighted in the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, is governments’ failure to tackle the inequalities based on wealth, gender and location that are keeping marginalized children out of school. The former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has called on Africa’s governments to address these disparities by adopting targets for greater equity in education.

There is no escaping the extent of the learning achievement deficit. If anything, Justin understates the scale of the problem by focusing only on children who are in school.

Consider the case of Malawi. Just 41 per cent of Standard 6 children were able to achieve basic competency level for reading in the last regional learning assessment. The really bad news: over half of the school intake has dropped out by this stage.

Of the 126 million primary school age children in sub-Saharan Africa, around two-thirds are likely to enter adolescence unable to read, write or do basic numeracy, irrespective of whether or not they complete primary school. Research by Jishnu Das in India and Pakistan suggests that close to one half of the children in these countries face the same prospect. 

The implications of the learning crisis have not been taken on board by the development community. Quality education can break the cycle of poverty, narrow social inequalities and provide a foundation for dynamic, inclusive growth. But what passes for education now is a travesty. And in an increasingly inter-connected and knowledge-based global economy, low levels of learning achievement are a prescription for slow growth, youth unemployment, and more inequality across and within nations.

What is driving the crisis in learning? The causes are complex and vary across countries? Many of the children entering public education systems over the past decade arrived carrying huge handicaps, including household poverty, parental illiteracy and pre-school malnutrition – an affliction for around 175 million children. These are disadvantages that impact heavily on learning.

The school environment is another concern. Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, the pupil-teacher ratio exceeds 40:1 and there is less than one book for every three children. Overcrowding is typically worst in the early grades where children from non-literate homes need most support.

The quality of teachers and teaching is one of the most critical school-based determinants of learning.  Unfortunately, teacher absenteeism is rife. Many teachers lack subject knowledge. Trained to deliver teaching by rote, they are ill-equipped to deliver active learning. In-service support is lacking. To make matters worse, public education systems typically skew resources and the best teachers towards the most advantaged pupils, best-performing schools, and most prosperous regions.

The private sector rescue act
Justin builds his case for private sector solutions by attacking what he describes as myths, some of which bear a striking resemblance to straw men. He also offers a few myths of his own.

Take his claim that low-fee private schools are readily affordable to the poor. In fact, there is no shortage of research documenting the struggles of poor households to pay ‘low-fee’ providers. One village-level survey in rural western Uttar Pradesh, India, has found that low-fee schools are unaffordable to the poorest two quintiles, and that the growth of private provision has reinforced education inequalities linked to wealth, caste and gender.  When asked, many of the parents paying for low-fee private school say that they would prefer the option of sending their children to a public school that offered decent education – a revealed preference that Justin ignores.

Evidence from urban informal settlements is equally compelling. In Lagos it costs the equivalent of around 10 per cent of the minimum wage to send one child to an approved low-fee private school. This is in a country where one third of households with children who have dropped out of school cite education costs as the reason for their non-attendance. In Kenya, Moses Oketch and others have highlighted the lack of access to public education for low-income households in informal urban settlements, leaving them with no choice other than to attend private schools. The resulting cost barriers are restricting progress towards universal primary education. The bigger question is this: why should we tolerate a state failure that leaves some of the world’s poorest households facing prohibitive user-fees to secure their children’s right to education?

What about ‘the myth’ that private schools perform no better than public schools. As far as I am aware, no credible commentator has ever questioned that there is a private-public school performance gap. The question is whether that gap disappears with the introduction of appropriate controls for differences in the school environment, student characteristics and the household environment.

Some of the evidence Justin presents on this is borderline slapstick. His Bridge school graph is taken from the company’s advertising pamphlet. The data, apparently drawn from ‘the early days’ of a study, has no controls for socio-economic status. Read the pamphlet though. It includes the following insightful observation from a Bridge School parent:

“My kids understand everything [at Bridge International] so well.  It makes sense to them.  They used to be confused.  Now Danny knows all the answers; he loves to study”

And all for just US$4 a month!

To be fair to Justin, he does cite credible research. It’s just that the research evidence does not support his sweeping reform prescriptions. The important study by Jishnu Das and others on Pakistan documents significant public-private school performance gaps. But the authors explicitly caution against assuming that the private sector can be scaled-up with no impacts on quality. 

Justin’s co-authored paper on Kenya hardly lends weight to his preferred market-based policy option. The data provided measure the test score premium of all private schools (including high-cost schools serving the elite) over public schools up to 2005 in the Kenyan primary school leaving exam. Interestingly, the premium fell as the private school share in enrolment rose from 2003, suggesting that private providers struggled to maintain quality as they absorbed more children from poorer households. The wider point is that the surge in enrolment that followed the elimination of user-fees in 2003 brought over a million of the country’s most disadvantaged children into public schools, while those exiting to private schools came predominantly from less disadvantaged households.

Simple comparisons of private school fees and public school costs can also obscure another source of private advantage – namely, higher levels of per pupil spending. Recent survey data for 11 countries shows per capita spending on children going to private schools averaging six times the level for their public school counterparts. 

Justin ends his blog with a sweeping appeal for more voucher schemes, US-style charter schools and Swedish-style free schools. This will be music to the ears of enthusiasts for Michael Gove’s vision for education in the United Kingdom. Here, too, though Justin’s reverence for the private sector gets in the way of evidence-based argument.

Vouchers have been a near universal prescription for increased inequality in education, even in countries with a strong capacity for regulation. The best overview of the evidence is available here.  There is no credible evidence that charter schools are raising standards or reducing education disparities in the United States. In fact, the only national-scale study, conducted by Stanford University, reported that only 17 per cent of charter schools out-perform matched neighborhood public schools.  And the Swedish model that he apparently sees as the preferred market option has been criticized for increasing inequalities and lowering standards, with an influential business-funded pro-market think tank joining the critics.

There is an alternative
We could, of course, spend another blog post swapping evidence on the relative performance of public and private schools. But I doubt that Duncan will let us. And anyway it would be beside the point.

Perhaps we need to start out by admitting that there are no quick fixes. Private schools clearly have a role to play in achieving the education for all goals – and far more should be done to ensure that education strategies include a proper regulatory framework for private providers. Ultimately, though, governments need to take responsibility for fixing school systems that are failing

We know the strategies that can lead countries out of the low learning trap. This McKinsey report has some powerful examples.  Reform of teacher recruitment, training and support, the development of national learning assessment systems to identify failing schools and pupils, a stronger focus on pre-school provision and early grade teaching which are amongst the most important determinants of learning and future well-being, and more equitable public financing all have a role to play. As Barbara Bruns of the World Bank has documented, this is the public education reform path that Brazil has followed – and the country is now one of the world’s fastest climbers in the international learning assessment league table.

Now that’s what I call bold experimentation – and it has delivered results.

Mouthwash or Global Leadership? What the Hunger Summit will tell us about Britain’s commitment to development

An edited version of this article appeared on the Guardian’s Poverty Matters website yesterday

When it comes to debates about world hunger, mouthwash – more fragrant PR than finding long-term solutions to feeding the planet without destroying it – is just as much of a problem as the greenwash the abounds in environmental fora.  And the Listerine test will be ready and waiting for recently-announced Hunger Summit, to be hosted by Britain during the Olympic Games.

But before we descend into full NGO curmudgeon mode, let’s step back and appreciate the significance of the announcement that David Cameron intends to use the Olympic spotlight to debate world hunger (his spin doctors can’t have been happy at him harshing the national mellow in this way). This is not an isolated gesture – the UK is one of the few European countries to stick to its promises to spend 0.7% of national income on aid from 2013 onwards, and is pushing hard for a tough international treaty to regulate the global arms trade. This kind of leadership earned the Prime Minister an invitation from the UN to chair (along with the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia) a ‘High Level Panel’ to explore how the world can set collective long-term targets for reducing poverty and achieving sustainability.

And leadership is desperately needed. In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, 1 in 7 of us currently go to bed hungry. In Yemen, the number of food insecure people has doubled since 2009, and Oxfam is about to scale up to reach a million of them. In West Africa, over 18 million people are at risk. The crises are cyclical and deepening – this is a systemic issue, not a one off.

As to why Britain is taking the lead in this way, explanations run the gamut from a continued effort to detox the Tory brand (i.e. mouthwash), to a broader push to use aid to pursue national security goals, to a search for international statesman glory, to (shock) the Government actually understands and is committed to the importance of ending hunger and world poverty.

How will we know which of these is true when the Hunger Summit comes around? By whether it is a one-off event, or the launchpad for a genuine effort to tackle the global perfect storm of climate change, pressures on land and water, high and erratic food prices and rising consumption. Next year, Britain chairs the G8 group of the world’s most powerful economies, providing David Cameron with the chance to repeat the developmental coup of the Gleneagles summit of 2005, when a combination of political leadership and mass campaigning produced breakthroughs on debt and aid. Should he so wish, the G8, along with his membership of the High Level Panel, will provide ample opportunities for British leadership on global development and sustainability.

Early signs also suggest that the Summit will echo the Obama Administration’s reliance on private sector solutions. While some private sector companies are showing a real lead (Unilever  is aiming to involve 500,000 smallholders in its supply chains by 2020), companies can be nasty as well as nice. The state has a crucial role both in regulating private sector behaviour, but also playing a hands-on role in agricultural development (as has been the case in almost every successful agricultural take off to date). Whatever the fiscal temptations, the summit needs to avoid passing the buck.

Beyond the paraphernalia of photo-ops and ‘announceables’, Oxfam, along with many other NGOs, will be looking for concrete commitments in several areas: putting a stop to the spate of land grabs in poor countries by large foreign companies lured by high commodity prices and the prospect of future scarcity; tackling the perverse impact of biofuels, which in the name of rich world energy security, are ousting hundreds of thousands of small farmers from their land, deepening poverty and hunger; greater investment in the 500 million small farms that 2 billion of the world’s more vulnerable people rely on for their sustenance, and reforming an international tax system that allows western tax havens to actively encourage capital flight and tax evasion, sucking  billions of dollars out of poor economies.

Without such progress, the hunger summit will not be nearly enough. Tackling hunger today is welcome, but the prospect of rising hunger for future generations has to be on the table too.

How is poverty research changing? Reflections from some clever people

Last year DFID convened some leading UK-based researchers to brainstorm on the lessons, challenges and frontiers for poverty research. The resulting is an interesting blogpost from the ODI’s Andrew Norton (right) and a paper, ‘Understanding Poverty and Wellbeing’.

In his post, Andy explains that ‘the key problem the paper addresses is the mismatch between the complex nature of poverty and the reductionist nature of measures used to track it’. He devotes his post to exploring ‘the significance of [three] big changes in the global context, and what they mean for poverty analysis and research.’

First ‘the shifting geographies of both growth and poverty.  An increasing number of developing countries are comfortably outstripping the growth rates of the developed countries – and sustaining that performance over a substantial period of time. It’s no longer just about the dynamism of ‘BRICs’, ‘CIVETs’, Asian tigers or African ‘cheetahs’– there is a clear economic convergence happening on a global scale.  If you take out countries with significant systemic problems, poor countries are growing faster than rich ones, and inter-country inequality is therefore declining. As a result of these changes, the bulk of the world’s poor are now in middle-income, rather than low-income countries. This means that poverty reduction increasingly requires progress on policies which reduce inequality within countries, and which turn growth into jobs. 

Second, the impact of increasing levels of urbanisation on a global scale.  Simple ‘money-metric’ measures of poverty struggle to cope with the difference between urban and rural contexts. Does water have to be paid for?  Can rural families gather fuel? Do household members have to pay for transport?  How does the differing environment affect health and the quality of life? Does living in a deprived community right next to a wealthy suburb bring stigma and discrimination? 

A final shift in optics in the past decade concerns our increasing consciousness of risk, shocks and uncertainty and the importance of understanding the factors which give poor people and communities resilience in the face of growing risks from an increasingly volatile climate, from rapid changes in the prices of key commodities (particularly food), and from socio-political change.”

The paper, published by the group as a whole, concludes by proposing areas of focus for poverty research and analysis, namely thinking differently about the ‘what’ of poverty research and about the ‘how’.

First the what:

“Politics, including that of rising middle classes and their preferences for redistribution; the politics of high levels of inequality & related pathologies e.g. conflict; the consequences of elites detached from context for local, national or global social contracts. The securitisation or retreat of the State in many parts of the world and the power of private sector interests in preventing equalising policies. And the contrast with the politics of successful poverty reduction, including the role of democracy, social movements, new communication and information-sharing modalities, and threats to instability.

Poverty measurement, focusing on how the current interest in, and new methodologies for, measuring multidimensional poverty can be honed; how participatory processes can influence poverty measures; how to identify the multidimensional poverty traps that keep people in chronic poverty, and the sequences by which people move out of multidimensional poverty; the relationship between income and other dimensions of poverty; how multidimensional measures can assess the impact of growth on poor people.”

Then the How:

“Longitudinal quantitative and qualitative research is an important new basis for improved poverty diagnostics. This implies improved and extended availability of panel data sets to enable the quantitative tracking of households over time – which has proved invaluable for policy analysis. In combination with this – or separately – longitudinal ethnographic studies provide a rich source of understanding of the factors which reduce or exacerbate poverty over time. Longitudinal studies enable ‘natural experiments’ to emerge from data – where comparisons can be made both between groups and over time which indicate the importance of particular poverty reduction interventions. Much of the early work which indicated the poverty-reducing significance of social protection interventions was of this kind.

In-country capacity building: stronger in-country networks including not only research institutes but research users, research analysts, statistical offices and citizens are needed.”

What does the UN’s first Africa Human Development Report say about food security?

A guest post from Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva (right), who is taking over from me as head of research at Oxfam in a couple of weeks, (I’m not leaving, just changing jobs within Oxfam – more on that later).

Over the past two years, I spent most of my time working on the first Africa Human Development Report (left), which was launched yesterday in Nairobi. It was about time for the first African HDR, especially given recent famine in the Horn and repeated threats of humanitarian food crises in the Sahel. The report focuses on food security – for a large number of Africans (some 220 million), hunger is a daily threat – and often one with permanent consequences.

The premise of the Africa HDR is simple: food security, through better nutrition, can improve education, health, productivity, and other important social and economic factors that allow people to have a good life (see figure).

In contrast, malnutrition can be a long lasting burden:

“The perverse dynamic between food insecurity and poor education, bad health and poverty can last generations. Hungry children with weakened immune systems die prematurely from communicable diseases such as dysentery, malaria and respiratory infections that are ordinarily preventable and treatable. They start school late, learn less and drop out early. Malnourished mothers are at greater risk of dying in childbirth and of delivering low-birthweight babies who fail to survive infancy. Undernourished babies who make it through infancy often suffer stunting that cripples and shortens their lives. As adults they are likely to give birth to another generation of low-birthweight babies, perpetuating the vicious cycle of low human development and destitution.”  

Recent evidence reveals a jarring paradox in Africa. Several countries have been progressing very rapidly in the last years – between 2004 and 2008, African economies grew on average 6.5% annually; child mortality is decreasing; school enrollment is improving; and the Human Development Index (a composite measure of health, education, and income) has risen faster than anywhere else since 2000. Yet Sub-Saharan Africa has not been able to turn improvements in human development into better nutrition indicators – especially compared to Asia’s progress in the last two decades. In sub-Saharan Africa the number of malnourished children increased by 55 million in the last 10 years. 

The stubborn persistence of hunger in sub-Saharan Africa is partly the result of a brutal neglect of the rural sector for decades, which led to widespread rural poverty, low agricultural yields, poor infrastructure, and limited basic services in rural areas:

- 93% of the arable land is rain-fed.
- African farmers use less than 20 kgs of fertilizer per hectare of arable land, compared to nearly 350 kgs in Asia.
- Since the early 1960s, production of cereals per capita has fallen 13% — the only region to suffer a decline. Today, cereal production in Africa is around 150 kgs per capita; in Latin America it is close to 300 kgs, and in Asia more than 350 kgs.
- Only 30% of Africa’s rural population lives within 2 kilometres of a road. In South Asia, 58% do.

This policy bias reinforced a vicious circle of high levels of inequality, skewed control over resources, and access to opportunities against certain groups – for instance, women have less ability to own and inherit land (figure). As the African Progress Panel Report (launched last week) mentions, the new wealth is not creating the necessary employment or reaching marginalized groups. Add to that the detrimental effects of some international practices – including the lingering effects of structural adjustment, lavish northern agricultural subsidies, the production of bio-fuels, and neglect of agriculture in official development assistance.

African governments face important policy decisions, mostly on how to transform the recent economic growth and advances in other development indicators into long-term opportunities. The report focuses on four areas of intervention: increase agricultural productivity, strengthen nutrition policies, build resilience, and empower marginalized groups. 

These are interventions that each African country will need to weigh against other national priorities. There is evidence that African people recognize the attempts that governments make to improve access to food. And they also notice when they don’t: about 60% of respondents on the 2009 Gallup World Poll special issue on food security in Africa disagreed with the statement: “The government of this country is doing enough to help people get food”.

Creating better institutions and investing more resources are part of the solution. But any real improvement in the food security situation of African societies will need to make sure that all groups participate actively in the decision-making process. Solving the food security conundrum in Africa requires strong public action. The role of the agricultural sector in development and poverty reduction has been explored at length. But the role of nutrition, social protection, and civic participation has not been duly recognized. Active citizens can play a critical role in ensuring that governments are held accountable and that any policy related to food is participatory and equitable (a very important issue given the recent spate of land grabs).

Too often in Africa (as well as other developing regions), governing elites do not reflect the public interest in their actions and policies. Issues of governance, agency, and democracy might seem unimportant for food security but, increasingly, we have learned that hunger and starvation are closely related to politics and political economy. This is why empowerment and resilience are important. Access to information, roads, and well-designed social programs allow people to make better decisions and better participate in markets and societies. The power structures that keep certain groups from accessing land or that bias public investment towards leaders’ constituencies must be clearly identified – and African governments, civil society, and other stakeholders will need to alter these power relations and give everyone a fair chance to avoid the perils of hunger and its negative consequences for human development.

And here’s the 6 minute launch video

Jobs, Justice and Equity: excellent new overview of Africa’s progress

Jobs, Justice and Equity is the title of a new report published today by the Africa Progress Panel, a high powered group of ten luminaries including Kofi Annan and Graca Machel. And Bob Geldof. The report does an excellent job of assessing the cup half empty v half full narratives on Africa, and has some great graphics – it should become a standard reference on the region. Here are some highlights:

“The extreme pessimism surrounding Africa a decade ago was unwarranted. So is the current wave of blinkered optimism. Real gains have been made and Africa has an unprecedented opportunity for sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and poverty reduction. However, governments are failing to convert increased wealth into opportunities and employment for their most marginalized citizens and there is a growing demand for justice and equity. Inequalities across Africa are not only ethically indefensible, they are economically inefficient and politically destabilizing.”

The report points to 5 global trends that are shaping the continent: the youth surge; agriculture and climate change; the rise of the emerging powers; science, tech and innovation and ‘the rising tide of citizen action’.

On growth: “Some of the fastest growing countries in the world are in Africa. From 2005-2009, Ethiopia recorded higher growth than China, and Uganda outperformed India. In 2011 Ghana had the highest rate of growth in the world.”

On the youth surge: “Africa’s growth has done little to alter the labour market. Agriculture still accounts for almost two thirds of all livelihoods. Even in fast-growing economies like Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, formal sector employment has failed to keep pace with the new entrants to the workforce. Africa’s youth population will rise from 133 million at the start of the century to 246 million by 2020, requiring another 74 million jobs over the next decade simply to prevent youth unemployment from rising.”

On poverty: “While rapid growth is creating an emerging middle class, only 4 per cent of Africans have an income in excess of $10 a day. Almost half of all Africans, 386 million people, still live below the $1.25 a day poverty line. Another 30 per cent – 246 million people – live in the poverty grey area, on between$1.25 and $2.50 a day. Nevertheless Africa has begun to turn a corner in terms of poverty. For the first time in over a generation, the number of people living in poverty has fallen. Fewer children are dying before their fifth birthday and more are getting into school. But while countries across Africa are becoming richer whole sections of society have been left behind. African wealth disparities are amongst the biggest in the world and unequal access to health, education, water and sanitation is reinforcing wider inequalities.”

On food security: “The risk of food insecurity is higher in Africa than any other region. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 200 million people are food insecure. Smallholder agriculture must be placed at the centre of a green revolution for Africa. Unlocking productivity will require new thinking, new approaches to public spending and strong political leadership. More needs to be done to stop speculators buying up large tracts of land. In the last decade Africa accounted for 948 acquisitions covering 134 million hectares – an area larger than France, Germany and the UK combined.”

On resource mobilization: “Between 2000 and 2008, ODA flows to sub-Saharan Africa increased from $12bn to $36bnper year. In contrast, the value of natural resource rents rose from $39.2bn to $240bn. If governments could increase the share of rents captured by extraction, they could reduce aid dependence and increase domestic resource mobilization dramatically. In 2011, for the first time ever aid decreased by 3 per cent to Sub-Saharan Africa. But aid continues to be a crucial tool for African development particularly in food aid, education and post-conflict areas.”

And here are two nice summary infographics – first the cup half full, then the cup half empty

 

New directions in philanthropy – report from the Bellagio Summit

Summits are clearly losing altitude these days if people like me are getting invited. But when it’s the Rockefeller Foundation’s legendary lakeside conference centre at Bellagio, on Italy’s Lake Como, you’d be crazy to say no – it’s every bit as exquisite as everyone says (see pic).

The Summit in question is on ‘The Future of Philanthropy and Development in the Pursuit of Human Wellbeing’ (catchy, eh?), hosted by Rockefeller, the UK Institute for Development Studies and the Resource Alliance and bringing together philanthropic foundations, ‘impact investors’, NGOs and academics, with a decent geographical spread of people. Here are some impressions, thoughts and half-hearted attempts to spin the conclusions after day one, drawing on the conversation and the pile of background papers available on the Bellagio Initiative website.

First, some numbers. According to a paper by Michael Edwards, foundations provided between $7bn-$9.5bn to ‘international’ or ‘development’-related activities in 2009. Big money, but only 7% of total aid. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  account for a third of the total – a whopping $2.5bn in 2009. The US is by far the biggest source (total of $6.7bn in 2009). European foundations only mustered a measly $0.5bn in 2007.

And how do philanthropists see development and their role? Some impressions from a rapid series of plenaries and panels:

What’s Hot:

1. The Arab Spring has had a massive impact in highlighting the importance of dignity, well-being, empowerment, citizenship, voice etc etc , along with youth as a crucial change agent (often ignored by the development industry).
2. Networks, systems, complexity etc

What’s Not

1. The State. Philanthropic types may grudgingly acknowledge the need for partnership with the state, but they basically see government officials as a bunch of corrupt parasites, definitely more problem than solution, intent on thwarting the efforts of heroic entrepreneurs to improve the lives of their countrymen and women.
2. Political and historical analysis: I don’t attend many discussions where I find myself wishing for fewer stories, and more analysis, but this was one of them – more NGO than the NGOs when it comes to substituting heart-warming anecdotes for academic rigour.

Perhaps the most interesting theme for me was the rise of the national. The role of domestic philanthropists in developing countries is growing both in volume and recognition, with a rich variety of traditions of giving from the zakat tradition of Islam (see excellent background paper on Islamic philanthropy) to southern Africa’s Ubuntu philosophy. Add to that the rise of middle classes in emerging economies with money to spare. Much of this giving is religiously-inspired, personal, private (it is often seen as very poor behaviour to blow your own philanthropic trumpet) and fragmented, which offers real grounds for improving quality and impact. Beyond raising money directly for philanthropy, there is a wider area of new money stemming from improved tax systems and natural resource revenues. As official international aid declines, financing for development is likely to become increasingly domestic and ’southern philanthropy’ is likely to play a significant role. 

So what future directions for philanthropy emerged from all the bla  bla bla? Two big ones

Innovation: Philanthropists spend their own money so in the words of philanthropist James Chen of the Hong Kong- based Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation, they can take risks and fail: ‘Governments find it hard to pilot and fail – there’s career risk for them -  but we can be an incubator at the pointy end of the stick, and then take our successes and persuade government to adopt them and scale them up.’ But the appetite for risk doesn’t always extend to issues of power and social change. Could that thirst for innovation be applied more often to empowerment and accountability as well as business models and mobile phones or, in the case of the totally charming James (pictured), adjustable glasses?

Advocacy: this is an altogether trickier one, but just thinking about the impact of Bill Gates at the recent G20 summit, or of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, there is no doubt that the philanthropic community could exert far more influence than it currently does if it made a more concerted entry into advocacy (it could do so and easily remain impartial, in terms of party politics, as Oxfam does). For example, it could more actively support active citizenship and accountability. I decided to pitch advocacy on something that seemed a bit uncomfortable (at least for some of the people in the room – philanthropists are of course all different and it’s perilous to generalise), namely what philanthropists could do in leveraging new forms of finance for development. Think about it. Faced with a likely decline in global aid levels, they could:

At Domestic level:  work with religious givers and institutions; push for better corporate giving; advocate for more and more progressive tax systems and closing down loopholes and tax evasion.

At International level: advocate against tax havens and capital flight, work to increase the volume and impact of remittances and giving from diaspora communities, support innovative ways to raise more cash such as the Financial Transaction Tax or carbon taxes.

So will the philanthropy sector come to the same conclusion as the NGOs, who realized some time ago that it was necessary to tackle the structural causes of poverty with advocacy as well as programming? There are signs that this is happening, but judging by yesterday’s conversations, it will mean confronting the deep ambivalence to the state shown by some philanthropists.

Let’s see if any of these ideas survives today’s discussions.