If you think you’d like to help out, I’d love to hear from you. You could summarise a book or research a topic. No specialist knowledge needed - that’s the point!

Email me at africa @ brasstacks.org.uk if you can lend a hand. Or just sit tight - I’ll get back to it soon, I promise.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: About the Site, Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2008/11/01/we-apologise-for-the-inconvenience/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/12/07/because-trade-legislation-sunshine-clauses-can-be-exciting/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/12/07/because-trade-legislation-sunshine-clauses-can-be-exciting/#comments Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:39:07 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/12/07/because-trade-legislation-sunshine-clauses-can-be-exciting/ In my last post, I talked about the Africa Commission’s proposals for preference agreements, that give selected developing countries access to selected rich-world markets on a country-by-country basis. The Commission praises the US for loosening its agriculture preferences so that poor countries can export clothing they’ve manufactured to the US without punitive tarrifs - even if the original cloth was sourced from elsewhere. It turns out that far from being extended to the rest of the G8, these provisions are under threat of expiring in the US. I recieved the email below from the One campaign, the US version of Make Poverty History. Now, I haven’t looked into this in detail, but these preferences certainly seem like a good idea. Either way, if you want to see them renewed, the email below suggests things you can do - especially if you’re in the US.

Dear ONE Member,

Unless we take action now, up to 150,000 Africans, mostly women, could lose their jobs.

The “third-country fabric” provision of African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) must be renewed before the end of the year. This provision helps African businesses create jobs by allowing them to import fabric that they can then make into clothes to sell in the United States.

In September, ONE Members sent over 160,000 letters to members of Congress. We took out a full page ad in Roll Call, a daily newspaper read by members of Congress, with the names of ONE members who supported renewal of this important provision. We can now build on that momentum by reminding our representatives about this pressing issue today.

Please take a moment to write your representatives

AGOA passed in 2000 and increased trade opportunities in Africa giving some of the world’s poorest people new opportunities to earn a steady income, send their children to school, and build a hopeful future. But the crucial “third-country fabric” provision is set to expire next year.

Our action showed Congress that we support renewing this provision that’s helping Africans continue to work their way out of poverty. Our efforts helped put this on the negotiating table, and now we have one last chance to ensure that it’s passed before this Congress adjourns.

Please take a moment to write your representatives

Without it, hope for many who have benefited from AGOA will fade and tens of thousands could lose their opportunity to work their way out of poverty.

Thank you for your voice,

Josh Peck, ONE.org

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/12/07/because-trade-legislation-sunshine-clauses-can-be-exciting/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/11/25/an-urgent-appeal-from-rav-casley-gera/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/11/25/an-urgent-appeal-from-rav-casley-gera/#comments Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:22:29 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/11/25/an-urgent-appeal-from-rav-casley-gera/ Faithful reader,

First, let me take the opportunity to thank you for your support over the first few weeks of this project. Your comments, whether complimentary or critical, are invaluable. Even the ones that offer me viagra.

Now, however, I turn to you in dire need of further assistance. I’ve always wanted this to be a group journey - for you not just to follow me on my quest through reports, books and interviews, through theories, counter-theories and inter-economist feuds; I want you to accompany me, sharing the joys, and the burdens. Now, your first opportunity to really participate is here. Today, I launch our first official Christmas Punraising Appeal.

A stable supply of puns is vital to the successful development of a light-hearted website on a serious topic. But now, African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant is desperately short of puns. My initial personal pun resources, although meagre, proved enough to see us through the first few weeks. But now, a mere two-thirds of the way through the Africa Commission Report, my supplies are exhausted. The situation is nearly desperate.

I understand that your own pun pockets aren’t bottomless. But for just two puns a month, you could transform the life of this researcher.

I know you don’t want to throw good puns after bad, or see me develop some sort of puns dependency. As the old African saying goes,

“Give a man a pun, and he’ll joke for a day;
Teach him how to pun, and he’ll joke forever.”

That’s why I don’t just want your puns; I want your advice, your support, in developing the skills I need to supply my own pun needs in future. A pun up, not a pun out.

Please, leave a reply with your puns today. Once the Africa Commission Report is finished, we still have Sachs to finish off. Time is pressing; every day the situation becomes more dire.

Act now. Together, we can make a difference.

This has been a punraising message on behalf of African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant.

Kind Regards,

Rav Casley Gera

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/11/25/an-urgent-appeal-from-rav-casley-gera/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/10/23/sachs-on-sustainability-in-st-pauls/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/10/23/sachs-on-sustainability-in-st-pauls/#comments Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:34:14 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/?p=25 Ah, St. Paul’s Cathedral! Icon of old London, shrine to the survival of the human spirit, blah blah. What better place to hear Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist, brain of the Make Poverty History campaign, and all-round Bringer of Solutions to Difficult Problems (oh yes, and Chairman of Columbia University’s Earth Institute), explain to us the route to a sustainable future? Except, of course, it’s actually a crap place. Because the same incredible size that gives it its majesty and overwhelming sense of solidity and timelessness also makes it a bloody echo chamber, and Jeffrey Sachs has a surprisingly booming voice.

Still, once I’d tuned my ears to pick out the words from the echoes, it made for an interesting evening. In addition to the surprising baritone, Sachs is taller than I expected, and generally less mild-looking. And his words, too, were surprisingly muscular.

Much of his 30-odd minute talk was taken up with recounting his polished summary of modern economic growth, with emphasis on the staggering increase in economic activity since the Industrial Revolution. In The End of Poverty, he talks about a 49-fold increase in total economic throughput since 1800. Tonight, he mentions 100-fold. I suspect that’s a slightly different measure, rather than new evidence having increased the figure. But who knows?

He quickly moves on to the central concern of, well, me, and I’m sure much of the audience. Is “sustainable development” really at all possible? Meeting the rich world’s current needs sustainably is looking nigh-impossible at the moment. Once Sach’s plans to plug the poorest countries into the engine of economic development takes off, surely there’s no hope?

Sachs tackles the issue with his tried and tested approach: just crunch the numbers. If the poor catch up to a large extent with us, in terms of economic throughput, and we stay roughly the same, that will mean a four-fold increase in total economic activity. Couple that with the predicted 50% increase in world population, and you’re looking at a six-fold increase in economic activity by mid-century - from a base that is already too high.

Well, that’s fairly depressing. But Sachs has no truck with the doom-and-gloom tone that tends to dominate debate about climate change. “It is possible,” he insists. “We’ve got to this point purely by absent-mindedness.” If we actually apply ourselves to the problem, he argues, there’s every chance of a solution. It’s clear he sees technology, rather than some of the lifestyle changes proposed by the traditional green movement, as the answer - he namechecks carbon sequestration and nuclear as two of twenty possible technological solutions currently being worked on.

What’s lacking, Sachs argues, is the political will. And it’s here that the muscular part comes in. Sachs rips into the War on Terror, calling it a distraction from the real issues at hand. “The War on Terror is about 27th on my list of international priorities,” he asserts, and argues that our response to 9/11 missed the opportunity to spur progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. He more than once calls the Iraq war “stupid,” and takes a potshot at George W. Bush, explaining,

right now we’re driving towards a cliff… but it’s not too late to grab the wheel and turn the car around. Right now, President Bush’s hand is on the steering wheel, so, yes, I’m worried. But we can turn the wheel around ourselves.

Sachs doesn’t get the opportunity to go into detail about the technologies and practical solutions he’s mentioned, partly because of some slightly off-topic questions from his debate partner, Nicholas Sagovsky (the version of this post on my personal blog has more on Sach’s general political views expressed this evening). He does answer a technical question about carbon sequestration, the details of which I won’t go into here because (a) it’s not really our remit, and (b) I didn’t understand a word of it. But overall, this is more of a general overview of Sach’s thinking on the issue, rather than a detailed explanation. What’s clear, and heartening, is that he really does think we can score the double-whammy - to bring the full benefits of modern economic growth to everyone, and make them compatible with humanity’s continued existence on the planet.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/10/23/sachs-on-sustainability-in-st-pauls/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/21/my-brain-is-tired/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/21/my-brain-is-tired/#comments Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:31:53 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/21/my-brain-is-tired/ Over the last week I’ve read a load of essays on everything from the structure of dictatorial power to the effectiveness of participation methods in poverty measurement. Frankly, I didn’t understand much of it. There was a lot of debate about how many extremely poor people there are, and I’ve written a short essay about that. Otherwise, the debates seem focussed on the issue of trade. Essentially, the pro-globalisers point to the success of Asia, which was as poor as Africa thirty or so years ago, as an example of how trade can end poverty. Africa is poor, they argue, because it hasn’t been plugged into trade. Further evidence comes from the fact that over the last twenty years, the period when globalisation has really taken off, poverty has gone down. Other economists question the figures that supposedly show this, arguing that if you take China and India out of the picture, poverty has risen; and that China and India’s success isn’t down to globalisation.

I’m going to have to look into this in some detail, I think. But I want to understand debt and aid first, because I think they may be simpler. More generally, I’m conscious that I keep talking about the ‘Make Poverty History proposals’ and the ‘G8 proposals’ as if they were one and the same. But of course, they’re not, and neither are they the only proposals put forward in 2005.

There are a collection of studies and reports, all published in 2005, all of which come to broadly similar recommendations. All call for around a doubling of aid; cancellation of debt for most poor African countries; and some reductions in key rich-world agricultural subsidies. The reports are:

• The Make Poverty History manifesto
• The report of the Africa Commission, the think tank of leading African brains (and Bob Geldof) set up by Tony Blair to lead the debate;
• The Final report of the UN Millennium Development Commission, the body set up to monitor and direct progress towards the Millennium Development Goals; and
• Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty. Sachs was the primary author of the UN report, and though this was not the only book on the topic published in 2005 by any means, it was by far the most high-profile (and the only one, as far as I know, Madonna has read).

So I think if I’m to find a way into this mass of division and disagreement, it must be to take these reports as a starting point. To understand more fully what they propose, and why they say it will work, and how they differ. Then it’ll be time to look at the criticisms of them, from both the right and the left*. You’ll be able to find my posts describing these reports under the category The Main Proposals.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Getting Started, Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/21/my-brain-is-tired/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/09/and-this-is-the-news/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/09/and-this-is-the-news/#comments Wed, 09 Aug 2006 21:47:55 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/09/and-this-is-the-news/ OK. So I spent an afternoon reading Guardian articles from 2005 about Make Poverty History, The Africa Commission report, and The Future Of Africa. What did I learn? Well, it just increased my sense that there’s massive disagreement about, well, just about all of it. It has, however, given me a slightly better idea of exactly what the disagreements are. The main bones of contention seem to be:

1. The effectiveness of aid. Charities and the UK government are quite positive about aid, and are determined there should be more of it. But some economists - and, interestingly, a lot of African commentators - see it as, at best, money wasted and at worst, basically an expense account for dictators.

2. The need for debt relief. This seems a little less contentious than the aid debate, but there’s still a lot of dispute. While charities argue debt relief is essential, economists say debt relief could cost Africa in the long term through reduced borrowing capacity, and that the money obtained could be even more prone to waste than aid money.

3. The role of trade. This is, I think, the area of most disagreement, with even the Make Poverty History coalition - the alliance of 150-odd charities that made up the campaign - divided over it. It’s all about “free trade” - that is, the gradual dismantling of barriers to trade such as import taxes, spearheaded by the World Trade Organisation. This is the process people who protest against “globalisation” are generally talking about. Some charities and commentators argue that this process disadvantages poor countries, and that they need to be free to protect their economies. These people often see the aid and debt deal struck at the G8 last year as essentially pointless or even negative, because it doesn’t undo and may even increase the globalisation “forced” on Africa.

Others, though, argue that in fact, free trade can work for Africa, and that liberalisation is overall a good thing. But, they argue, the west needs to hold up its side of the bargain, cutting its own subsidies to match Africa cutting theirs. Agricultural subsidies in particular come in for a lot of stick. Others still argue that liberalisation is such a good that most of Africa’s recent woes can be put down to a lack of it.

So it seems that underneath the apparent consensus that seemed to have developed around Live8 and the G8 lies a lot of disagreement. And it’s not just from the sources you’d expect. I thought there’d be lots of economists dismissing aid as waste and so on, and there are. But I was surprised at how many African voices in the media share what I of as quite hard-nosed views (it’s possible newspapers seek out Africans to make these points precisely because it has this effect of surprise). And I’m also surprised by the extent of what I suppose you could call left-wing criticism of the Make Poverty History proposals and the G8 deal that came out of them.

What’s also clear from my quick skim is: newspapers don’t know how to talk about this. I found myself getting really frustrated by the disjointed way the debates are reported. You’d get pages and pages of coverage of the Make Poverty History campaign, all essentially uncritical of its proposals, with so-called debate mostly taking the form of agonising about the number of black people on stage at Live8. Then, unconnected, an editorial arguing it’s all a waste of time because the only thing that will really end poverty is ending corruption. So you get “both sides of the story,” but no real debate; it’s impossible to compare the details of each side’s arguments to come to an informed conclusion. This isn’t a question of philosopy, after all; everyone agrees on the basic principle, that there’s a huge problem and something needs to be done about it. The disagreements are practical - they’re about what are the causes of the problem, and what solutions will work. To come to an proper, informed decision means knowing the facts, understanding the theories, and so on. It’s clear I’m not going to get to that stage by reading the Guardian. I’m going to have to delve into the academic debate right away. Fortunately, my friend Dave (he’s in the picture on the front page) did a development degree, and has a lot of essays he can lend me.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/09/and-this-is-the-news/feed/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/05/down-to-business/ http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/05/down-to-business/#comments Sat, 05 Aug 2006 21:27:01 +0000 Rav Casley Gera http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/11/05/down-to-business/ OK. This is going to take some planning. African development is, I’m beginning to realise, quite a big topic. So I think I’m going to do some general reading first, and try to understand what the big issues are. Maybe I’ll start by looking through some of the newspaper coverage from last year.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other posts filed under: Researcher's Log
]]> http://brasstacks.org.uk/africa/blog/2006/08/05/down-to-business/feed/