African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant

We’ve looked in detail at Jeffrey Sachs‘ proposals for massive increases in aid to Africa, and developing countries elsewhere, in a bid to end extreme poverty by 2025. We’ve also looked at the Millennium Villages project, Sachs’ bid to prove the effectiveness of aid at a local level. But Sachs isn’t only known for his personal advocacy and that of his department at Columbia University, the Earth Institute. He was also director the UN Millennium Project, a side-arm of the UN Development Programme, the UN’s main development-focussed organisation. Their report offers a detailed look at the practicalities of Sachs’ plan.

Sachs was invited to set up the UNMP in 2002 by Kofi Annan. The catalyst was 2000’s Millennium Declaration, in which the world adopted the Millennium Development Goals as the basis of development policy. The UNMP’s task was to convene experts in all the different areas of development, from education to governance, and to prepare a report on how to achieve the goals. With Sachs at its head, the Project published its report - Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals - in 2005, neatly coinciding with Sachs’ book, the Make Poverty History campaign, and the report of the Commission for Africa. The Project was then wound up, passing ongoing duties to a new UNDP group.

The report is not just Sachs’ work. It was put together by the co-ordinators of the ten UNMP task forces, which each brought together experts to look into their area:

• hunger
• education and gender equality
• child and maternal health
• HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB and access to essential medicines
• environmental sustainability
• water and sanitation
• slums
• trade
• science, technology and innovation

Hundreds of experts, the report says, had an input. Nevertheless, the report’s recommendations have many similarities to Sachs’ own ideas. I assume that that’s not because Sachs had undue influence over the report, but rather that his own thoughts have been influenced by the expertise represented in the UNMP (The End of Poverty was published in early 2005, and presumably was being written as the UNMP was preparing its final report). Nevertheless, the report is strikingly clear in its recommendations, giving the impression there was little dissent on issues such as aid levels. Surely, though, there were such disagreements, as economists bicker over such issues every day. It’s possible that the experts consulted were selected for their proven agreement with Sachs’ ideas, but I haven’t heard that that was the case. Either way, the report is, officially at least, the sum of a major research project into how best to meet the goals. But it also, I reckon, serves as a useful summary of the “big push” school of thought on Africa, of which Sachs is certainly an exemplar.

Like the Africa Commission’s report, the UNMP’s comes in two versions: a full 300+ beast, which I haven’t read, and a 72-page overview, which I have (you can also read the overview report on the website, including the useful summary of ten key recommendations). Those after real detail can also download the reports of the individual task forces.

Without the long autobiographical buildup of Sachs’ book, the report can get straight into the issues. First, it looks at why the goals matter, and how - and why - the world isn’t currently (as of late 2004, when the report was prepared, and even more so now) on course to meet them.

Why the goals matter

The goals, the report notes, are a unique effort - the first time the world has agreed measurable, timed targets for addressing extreme poverty. What makes them special, the report argues, is that the ambitious targets they contain have never been “so utterly affordable” before - mirroring a point made by Sachs, that a gradual decline in the proportion of the developing world’s people experiencing extreme poverty means that it is now possible to plan for its abolition. (p1)

The report attributes the goals with a double significance. For rich countries, it notes, they are “the fulcrum of international development policy” - a framework within which all development efforts can be coordinated. But for people in poor countries, they’re nothing short of “the means to a productive life” - the difference between a precarious existence, potentially one drought or bout of illness away from death, and a secure footing. Achieving the goals would lift hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty, save 300 million from hunger, and save 30 million children from a premature death. Moreover, the report notes, the basic needs the goals aim to ensure more people have - education, adequate food and shelter, and so on - are basic human rights as covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and so achieving the goals helps fulfil previous international commitments. (p4-6)

In addition, the improvements required to meet the goals are an investment in future economic development. Education, a healthier workforce, and the potential for savings and investment in growing businesses all mean that achieving the goals would kick-start growth in the long term. Finally, the report points out - again, as Sachs, and campaigners such as Bono also have - that the goals are “a linchpin to global security”. Poor, hungry societies are more likely to experience conflict and dislocation. Weak government and scarce resources, both characteristics of poor countries, are strongly linked to state failure and outbreaks of conflict between and within countries. Economists have demonstrated that civil war and rebellion is often as much about gaining control of scarce resources than about political change. In fact, an economic shock that reduces a country’s economy by 5% increases the country’s chance of civil war by half (p6). Drug production and trafficking is also more common in poor countries.

Where things stand

The MDGs are measured from 1990 to 2015, so the report was prepared over halfway through the period.¹ And the good news is, there has been much progress - between 1990 and 2002, the number of people in extreme poverty declined by around 130 million, life expectancy rose, and more people in the developing world gained access to clean water. (p8) The common perception that things in poor countries just keep getting worse is, by these measures, false.

But progress in many areas is way off target, and varies wildly around the developing world. For sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a depressing story: the region is not on track to meet a single goal (p3). Where there is progress, such as on gender equality, it’s far too slow. And in many areas, including extreme poverty, hunger, and child mortality, there’s no significant progress. This useful chart summarises the situation (click for a larger version).

The proportion of Africans living in extreme poverty (with an income of less than $1.08/day in 1993 PPP dollars) increased slightly, from 45% to 46%, between 1990 and 2001. (p9) Interestingly, though we think of African poverty as primarily rural (and 73% of rural Africans are extremely poor), sub-Saharan Africa even leads the world table for the share of the population living in slums, with more than 40% in that category in many African countries. (p12) The report calls the region “the epicentre of crisis”. (p9) It stresses, though, that progress is poor elsewhere too. Western and Central Asia have seen increasing hunger and poverty, for example, in part as a result of the painful adjustment from communism. (p3,9)

Why progress is so patchy

What’s going wrong? The problem, the report argues - and this is one of the sections where it most strongly seems to be chanelling Dr. Sachs - is that the engine of development, economic growth through trade, is bypassing whole areas because of a lack of basic infrastructure like roads, and human capital such as education. Without these, villages rely on basic primary export industries - growing cash crops like coffee - and this has become an increasingly poor way to survive, thanks to environmental stress and plummeting prices. In cities, too, poverty reinforces itself - the poorest members of society, crowded into slums, have the least opportunity to speak up and demand better infrastructure and proper services.

Because of these obstacles, the report argues, market forces alone won’t achieve the goals. Major investments are needed in energy, transport, decent housing, health and education. With those basic needs met, “jobs and foreign investment will begin to flow in”. (p15)

But this isn’t exactly a new idea. So what’s stopped this investment occuring?

1. Governance failures. Development requires the rule of law, protection for property and human rights, appropriate public investment, effective public administration, and a host of other things. Where these are missing, foreign and domestic investment in the economy is threatened. For example, without protection for private property, foreign businesses will consider a country too risky to invest in. It’s implied, but not openly stated, that governments in many developing countries are failing in these areas, through lack of will in some areas and lack of capacity in others.

2. Poverty traps. Even well-governed countries, however, may be unable to benefit from trade and start real economic growth, simply because they are so poor. Without basic infrastructure, these countries can’t plug into growth; but without growth their governments can’t obtain the revenue needed to make the necessary investments. Low savings, uncontrolled population growth, and an exodus of talented minds abroad all worsen the situation. These problems are exacerbated by the debt-servicing commitments of many poor countries, which often eat up the little tax revenue their governments manage to collect. Geographical factors like distance from ports also have a big effect, and discriminate particularly against Africa, with its vast size, dense rainforest, and malarial and drought-prone climates.

For well-governed countries stuck in a poverty trap, the answer is a “big push” of investment between now and 2015, aimed at establishing the basic infrastructure needed for growth. Such investment would have to come from foreign donors.

3. Pockets of poverty. Though we tend to look at poverty from a country-by-country perspective, there are also significant variations in income within countries. Even middle-income countries can have large numbers of extremely poor people, and even when a country’s economy is growing, sections of the population can be left out. For example, Western China hasn’t benefitted much from the boom affecting the Eastern half of the country where ports are nearer. However, this is less of an issue in Africa, where many countries are desperately poor almost all over.

4. Areas of specific policy neglect. Sometimes governments simply aren’t trying. The less technical, more political aspects of the goals - like environmental sustainability and gender equality in education - are sometimes simply not given priority by governments, or simply ignored. In particular, maternal health doesn’t get the attention it deserves, despite Africa’s high levels of deaths in pregnancy and childbirth.

In short, the unevenness of progress towards the goals is the result of both structural problems such as geographical obstacles; the sheer scale of the task, as with countries lacking basic infrastructure, and sometimes lack of will or ability of governments to see the task through. The report isn’t too specific about what the balance is in different country’s cases, preferring to talk in general terms. But behind these broad concepts lie a host of different problems: “poor governance”, for example, encompasses everything from well-meaning governments lacking talented civil servants, to murderous dictatorships like Robert Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe. The key, the report goes on to argue, is to identify what the obstacles are in each specific country’s case. That process is the focus on the next chapter, and next time.

1. Confusingly, though the effort to meet the goals began in 2000, they are measured from 1990. So July this year marked the “halfway point” of efforts to meet the goals, triggering a wave of reports, speeches and statements bemoaning the lack of progress. But the halfway point of the actual period they cover was back in 2002.

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