World Bank Project Map

This week in class we discussed more about mapping as a humanitarian and development tool and in my limited research on this subject I stumbled upon a very interesting project that the World Bank implemented in 201o that they refer to as a Mapping for Results platform. This project involved the team has analyzing more than 2,500 World Bank-financed projects and geo-coding more than 30,000 locations spanning 144 countries. This project also overlays country maps with poverty and Millennium Development Goals data, with the geographic locations of donor-funded projects, enhancing our ability to monitor development impact and improve transparency and social accountability. This information is available to anyone who goes on to the webpage, and clicks on the country or region of their choosing. In having this information about development projects available to local people the World Bank hopes to foster greater transparency and accountability by encouraging citizens and stakeholders to give feedback on projects. This tool also allows donors to map a project’s progress without contacting project managers.

The main page shows a world map with green dots that you can click on and get more information about a specific coutntry. For example Uganda’s map looks like this:

This shows all of the different projects financed by the World Bank, a total of $1.7o billion, and divides them by sector (red with white cross is health, purple is public administration, green is agriculture). You can also sort the map by looking at a base of malnutrition, infant mortality, and maternal health, and it will show the changes being made in those fields. The map can also be looked at by sector (the map above) or by count, which shows the number of projects being implemented in a region.

I found this to be very interesting and eye opening to be able to see all of the development projects being implemented in a region by one funder. This can be a great resource to people living in a region who are able to look at how and where their development needs are being meant and also for people looking to start a project can come into their research with more of an idea of how many similar projects are already underway.

ICTs and the Achievement of the MDGs, and Goal 3 in Particular

One certainty is that there will be no adequate measurement or tracking of the relative status of women without the application of ICT… Moreover, it is only by the application of ICT that there is any hope of adequately unravelling the complex casual patterns in gender discrimination and of planning effective public gender policies”.

As discussed previously in both class and on this blog, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out to eradicate poverty by 2015. Goal 3 is to “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women”, and more specifically to eliminate the gender disparity in primary and secondary education. This is important because gender equality is fundamental to international development and poverty eradication. However, in his article, ICTs and MDGs: On the Wrong Track, Richard Heeks points out some of the main issues with MDGs, most specifically that they don’t use or address ICTs.

Since the creation of the MDGs, there seems to be a consensus on the idea that ICTs can help women achieve equality (despite the current inequalities in ICT access). One report by the UNDP’s Central and Eastern Europe Office titled Bridging the Gender Digital Divide analyzes the relationship between gender and ICT and makes a series of recommendations for the UN. One of their main recommendations is to “Deepen knowledge on the link between ICTs and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals”, specifically relating to Goal 3. The report says that ICT “can serve as an invaluable tool for those striving to meet the target and to improve their performance for these indicators”. Moreover, they would like more attention to be given to integrating gender with Goal 8 (Develop a Global Partnership for Development), which would mean ICT benefits for everyone.

Other recommendations include a “gender-focused ICT assessment” to identify which technologies are most user-friendly, commonly used, and accessible for women. For example, older technologies are often cheaper and therefore more accessible for women. Both this report, along with another report by Nancy Hafkin and Sophia Huyer, discuss that the main problem is the lack of gender ICT statistics available. The UNDP article writes, “The lack of data is a fundamental constraint for evaluating the gender impact of ICTs and women’s position in the ICT sector”. Therefore, they recommend a more extensive assessment to discover which strategies can be used to eliminate gender inequality through the use of ICTs.

Obama on MDGs and a New Initiative

With 10 years down and just five years before our development targets come due, we must do better.  – President Obama

On September 22, 2010, President Obama made a speech in New York at the Millennium Development Goals Summit. While saying that there has been progress towards achieving the MDGs, Obama says that the progress has not come fast enough. He announces that the old tactics towards development are not enough, and that “If the international community just keeps doing the same things the same way, we may make some modest progress here and there, but we will miss many development goals.  That is the truth”. Based off our discussions in class, this is good news. Richard Heeks’ article “ICTs and MDGs: on the wrong track?” addresses some of the main issues with the MDGs, most importantly that there they don’t use or address ICTs.

With that, Obama announced in this speech a new US Global Development Policy.  Both his speech and the new policy specifically address using technology towards development. The President remarks that aid alone is not equal to development, and that we must remember the lessons from the Green Revolution to achieve sustainable development. One policy is to “Invest in game-changing innovations with the potential to solve long-standing development challenges”. One way to achieve this is to increase investment in innovations for development technologies such as “vaccines, weather-resistant seed varieties, and clean energy technologies”.

It is a relief to see that relying simply on the MDGs is no longer the main objective of our government. Obama assures that the US will continue to be the leader in development, and therefore must change and re-vamp our policies to do so, including the implementation and use of ICTs.

Case Study on the Problems Faced in the Pacific Islands While Trying to Improve Education

As many people already know, in 2000 at the beginning of the Millennium, the United Nations held a summit in New York and adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration and agreed that the world’s leading developed countries should work together to decrease world poverty.  Each of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had different targets to reach by certain deadlines, the final deadline being in 2015. The different MDGs range from general poverty and education to health and environmental issues, as well as a Global Partnership. While the MDGs are created as a way for the United Nations and countries to follow a set plan of action there are no rules on how to approach these goals. National organizations, local or national government as well as non- profit organizations create projects throughout the world as an attempt to help reach these millennium goals.

In Tim Unwin’s chapter 5 of ICT4D:Information and Communication Technology for Development, he discusses the strategies and policies necessary for ICT4D to be successful in developing countries. He differentiates strategies being the “strategic approach to the use of ICTs in development” and ICT policies being “used to refer to the implementation of policies geared to specific issues” (Unwin   150). He explains how e-strategies and how ICTs can work to help further improve the development goals. While he discusses ICT strategies and policies in different regions of the world, one that he played special attention to was the Asian- Pacific region. The UNDP’s Asia Pacific Development Information Programme was created in 1997 to “improve access and application of ICTS for social and economic development” (Unwin 152). While Unwin and the UNDP explain that ICTs are an important tool in the development of a nation especially in relation to some of the MDG goals such as Universal Education.

In the Case Study: ICT and education strategies in the Pacific written by Michael Trucano, he discusses the many challenges that the small islands of the Pacific would face while trying to improve access to networks and computers to local schools.  The Pacific Islands are affected by a variety of environmental issues that sometimes threaten to put certain islands underwater. However the potential that ICTs can help improve these challenges as well as Education has become an interest for the government agencies in these islands. Computer access is very expensive and because of the islands geographic remoteness Internet access is very poor. However, education policymakers want to make ICTs more accessible to education services in order to improve training as well as “building stronger ties”. One initiative that was created in 2001 is People First Network (PFnet) of the Solomon Islands, which sets up an e-mail system that provides access to remote areas. This project is an example that shows that although there may be some challenges within ICT initiatives, improving access can further improve education and help diminish illiteracy rates, provide education in all remote areas of an Island, and provide proper training and activities for teachers. The use of ICTs is indeed very useful for the Millennium Goal of approaching Universal Education and e-strategies should be approached the right way in order to overcome the obstacles.

Beyond 2015

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals aim to end poverty and hunger, provide gender equality, environmental sustainability, universal education, and a global partnership, improve child and maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS. These goals are ambitious and if achieved would radically change the world. Considering the prevalence of these issues in the world today, it seems that reaching these goals for every single country is a long way away. However, the target date for these goals is 2015, only two years from now.

Considering that even many of the most developed countries are far from reaching the MDGs, it is extremely unlikely that these goals will be universally met. So what next? The issues that the MDGs address will still be there in 2015 so what will the new plan be? Is there a new plan?

The organization, Beyond2015 seeks to answer these question. Beyond2015 is group of over 500 of over 500 organizations from a wide range of countries that campaigns for “a global development framework after the Millennium Goals.” Beyond2015 hopes to ensure that global civil society is included when forming the post-2015 agenda. The organization’s “must haves” for designing the new goals are leadership, legitimacy, substance, and accountability. The current MDGs find many of their flaws in their lack of ability to adapt to the needs of individual countries and in their lack of accountability. There wasn’t any real pressure on countries to push to meet these goals. The “must haves” of Beyond2015 exist to make the design and implementation of the post-2015 agenda  more affective, attainable, and enforceable than the current MDGs.

Beyond2015 is also a great resource for reports and videos that have to do with the post-2015 agenda. This video discusses the UN view of how countries should move on from 2015. The video talks about designing a new social contract and finding a balance between human and environmental issues. It seems like the UN and Beyond2015 have the right ideas so hopefully this time around they will be able to create a more reasonable time line and make a plan that is more individualized to each country so that they have a higher probability if success.

MDGs Ignore Basic Aspects of Development

After discussing Richard Heek’s article “ICTs and the MDGs: On the Wrong Track?“ this past Tuesday, I found myself wondering why I had never questioned the MDGs before. They’ve always seemed like such a positive approach to unite countries and collaborate on improving lives globally.  Furthermore, having been developed in such a formal manner, there was also the aspect of authority that comes with the UN and other “Global North” countries. In my research quest to find similarly critical perspectives, I ran across an online article on UK-based non-profit “Share The World’s Resources” web-page titled Millenium Development Goals Need More Emphasis on Human Rights. In this 2010 Article, author Olivier De Schutter details the reasons why the MDGs are failing so miserably right now and I must say, I whole-heartedly agree with Schutter’s “root-causes” approach.

Schutter’s article begins with a short review of the most recent World Leader gathering in New York in 2010 to review MDG progress and continues with an explanation of what the MDGs are and how they were created in the first place. The first argument, as stated in the title, slashes the MDGs focus on eradicating the world’s greatest challenges (poverty, lack of adequate food and water, and poor education) without specifically identifying and tackling their root causes. Instead of throwing money into more and more programs that effectively “should” alleviate global concerns, why not take the time to strategize a process that involves the citizens of the countries the UN is attempting to improve. This is why Schutter delves into the analysis of human rights as the baseline objective before tackling other development issues.

“Another major deficiency of the MDGs is their failure to recognize human rights as essential to any sustainable development strategy. Human rights are not just symbols; they are also tools. They are valuable because they are operational (Schutter 2010).”

Current obstacles to development include the unfair competition of international trade, limitations for civic participation, and the complete lack of a framework or model from which these obstacles can be overcome. I believe that before further aid can be handed out and before more “Band-Aid” programs are enacted, there needs to be an analysis of all conditions in a country (economic, political, medical, environmental, etc.) before concrete goals can be achieved. Thinking back to Heeks’ article, MDGs cannot continue with the say “one-size-fits-all” mentality or else we are dooming ourselves to failure. Schutter continues along these lines with “Accountability mechanisms should be established, allowing victims to hold governments responsible for their failure to take action. This removes the stigma of charity and it is empowering for victims. Instea of being helped because they have unsatisfied needs, they are granted remedies because their rights are being violated.” Overall, I must agree with the opinions of both Heeks and Schutter that the MDGs at the current moment are very poorly planned and until a more defined framework that can be adjusted based on the environment can be created, they are unlikely to be completed.

References: Schutter, Olivier De. 21 September 2010. Share The World’s Resources, “Millenium Development Goals Need More Emphasis on Human Rights.”

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

The efficacy of the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, was a point of discussion for this week’s ICT4D course.  The case was made that the impetus for the MDGs was an end in and of itself for the simple fact that, regardless of the final status of the goals, the process of measuring progress (and in some cases, the lack thereof) created resources, networks, and for the first time coalesced a wealth of statistical information that the world simply lacked prior to the launch of the MDGs.

While this is a rewarding byproduct of the MDGs, a recent article I came across in Foreign Policy raised doubts to even this saving grace.  The article “We Have No Idea if Africa Is Rising” by Morten Jerven shifted the debate from whether or not Africa is in fact economically rising to simply questioning the validity of the supposed statistics on which we base our analyses.

As the article begins, Jerven asserts the following :

Some commentators argue that African economies are destined to remain trapped in the bottom billion unless some sort of fundamental change occurs. Others beg to differ, speaking of a continent that’s showing every indication of rapid progress. Yet, despite their wildly different interpretations, what’s striking is that both camps base their arguments on the same set of numbers.

The crux of Jerven’s argument seems to rely on the recent phenomena of “GDP revisions” in African countries. As he cites:

In November 2010, the statistics office of the government in Ghana announced that it was revising its GDP estimates upwards by over 60 percent, suggesting that previous estimates had left out economic activities worth about $13 billion. After the revision a range of new activities were accounted for, and as a result Ghana was suddenly upgraded from a low-income country to a (lower) middle-income country. In the fall of 2011 Nigeria also announced an upward revision of its GDP. This revision isn’t complete yet, but once it is it’s likely to cause a similarly large jump in growth figures. Several observers have raised the possibility that such a revision could actually double Nigeria’s GDP — which, given the size of Nigeria’s economy, would bump up the size of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy by more than 15 percent. Just to give some perspective: The value of the increase would be roughly equivalent to 40 Malawi­sized economies.

According to Jensen, the agencies that oversee much of the statistical evidence the International Development field basses its assessments on, such as the World Bank, have began to question many previously held beliefs about African trends and, most worrying, have replaced their projects with clouds of confusion and doubt.  To say the least, the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa has referred to this recent perceptual shift as “Africa’s Statistical Tragedy.”

Jerven also contends that this is nothing new for Africa.  As a scholar who has written books that take an in-depth look into the methods used by governments and organizations to collect data in Africa, Jerven has found a common thread of diminishing statistical quality since independence for the African nations.  As he writes:

Upon achieving statehood, African states moved to expand their statistical capacity. They performed population censuses, business surveys, and agricultural censuses. But their ability to do this was hit hard by the economic crisis of the 1970s. The administrations faced large external imbalances, high rates of inflation and general shortage of funds which weakened government bureaucracies around the region, leaving many of them unable to measure their economies. Moreover, the statistical offices fell into further neglect during liberal policy reform that followed the economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s (the period of “structural adjustment”).

On the subject of ICT4D, these revisions and “new methods are capturing a whole range of fresh numbers, such as data from telecommunications (mobile phones) and the service sector.”  What’s more:

[A] great part of the recent growth derives from appropriately recorded growth in external trade, but exactly how this growth relates to the domestic economy, and to economic development more generally (including poverty reduction), remains pure speculation.

Some scholars have suggested looking at alternative measures. We could, for example, compile new estimates based on the ownership of goods such as television sets, fridges, and automobiles — which imply that African economies have been growing three times faster than the official figures.

In short, we simply don’t know how Africa is doing.  Really, the whole article is well worth the read for those in International Development and should give pause to how much weight we attribute to the next statistical report out of Africa.

MB

iREAD Pilot Project in Ghana

I read about a project from the WorldReader e-Reader Pilot in Ghana.   As part of the Millennium Development Goals to achieve universal education, the project distributed e-reader technology to Ghanaian primary, junior and senior school students.  After extensive evaluation of the iREAD (Impact on Reading of E-readers and Digital content) Ghana Pilot Study showed much of the projects initial success as well as challenges to address in the future.  The e-reader allowed students to gain immediate access to academic and personal reading material including books, textbooks, magazines and various articles.  Access to these materials allowed students to a have greater number of texts, which were previously limited to the resources available in their local library.  On average, students had 107 books on their e-reader over the course of the project.  The initiative also put a large emphasis on Ghanaian books, allowing students to gain access to culturally relevant information as well as outside resources.   In addition to the immediate impact on students, teachers also reaped benefits by accessing current textbooks and carry out research to prepare lessons rather than relying on outdated and limited textbooks.

The outcome of the pilot study revealed the project increased student’s enthusiasm about reading and simultaneously allowed students to develop useful ICT skills.  Students in primary school exhibited improved standardized tests scores, while older students did not display significant gains as a result of the technology.  Unexpected challenges in the project included technical problems with the e-reader (about 40% of the e-readers broke), which hindered the long-term success of the project. In addition, the article also suggests that a lack of ICT knowledge and low literacy rates led to the accidental deletion of material and an increased distraction from its entertainment functions.

While the project has initially revealed some promising results, several common challenges (breakages, literacy, electricity, Internet) stand in the way of the e-readers practicality and sustainability to increase literacy rates and improve educational opportunities in the developing world.

For a more thorough analysis of the iREAD project in Ghana, please check out this link.

Cartoon: A Critique of ICTs in the Developing World

The above cartoon depicts one of the main problems surrounding ICT4D projects – there are critics of these efforts who feel that ICT4D is not important when there are “more pressing” issues to be addressed. Who needs a computer when they can’t feed their family? But I think by now we’ve learned that the case is not that simple…

Last class, we talked about an IEG study from World Bank that supported ICT projects between 2003 and 2010. This study that found that there was a 70% failure rate in efforts to promote universal access to ICT’s. Reasons for such widespread failure are diverse – some projects are driven more by supply than demand. Others use a cookie-cutter approach that isn’t suitable for the local environment, or did not expect the gap between the project design and the realities of implementation, or funds ran out and the project was unsustainable, and so on.

So yes, many of ICT projects fail. And yes, combating hunger would seem more important than providing impoverished or marginalized populations with cell phones. But the distinction isn’t that simple. The video clip we watched identified a major explanation for ICT project failure to be that information or end results of the projects are not directly tied to improving economic conditions. While some ICT projects aim to increase universal access to ICT’s, there are also many projects that use ICT’s to address a specific condition that is of importance to local populations and can encourage other kinds of meaningful development. Take LifeLines India for example – as discussed in Unwin’s ICT4D, this organization provides a phone line that rural farmers can call (for a small fee) to have their specific agricultural questions answered. This service was used by over 100,000 farmers and caused between 25 and 150 % profit growth (as of 2009) for those who used it.

When we discussed the role of ICT’s in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals, it is obvious that designing proper development strategy should be the first priority – there needs to be a reason for applying an ITC to a problem. Those developing new projects need to think about what information or communication need is present in a specific community and apply the appropriate ICT, if that is deemed to be a viable and effective solution. Though the message in this cartoon is a huge generalization, it is a helpful reminder about how we should and should not be using ICT’s to pursue development agendas.

The Millenium Development Goals and Gender

Following the class discussion on the Millenium Development Goals, I was particularly interested in re-approaching them from a gender perspective. I agreed that the MDGs were well intentioned but not necessarily practical or realistic, however one of the more positive aspects was that it put various issues on an official development agenda. From this standpoint, it would seem beneficial that “promoting gender equality and empowering women”  (MDG3) was an issue that was given importance and included in the conversation.

One of the main criticisms I read, however, was that this reinforces the idea that the empowerment of women is a separate development issue, which is problematic because this often results in efforts at the empowerment of women being adressed as a less important concern which can only be catered to when there are already sufficient resources to address other, more important concerns. Furthermore, the failure to consider and integrate gender in ‘other’ development efforts results in less effective development overall; Development issues as well as development efforts affect the genders differentially therefore the lack of gender considerations lead directly to unequal benefit,.

This article  from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about gender inequality and the MDGs states, “We find that countries where social institutions are highly discriminatory towards women tend to score poorly against the human development targets used to track progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”  The article points out for example, that the issue of women’s access to land and credit is essential to addressing the eradication of hunger and poverty (MDG 1). Additionally, while the MDGs in general have received the criticism of being vague and not necessarily prescriptive, the goal of”promoting gender equality and empowering women” is especially so, compared for example to MDGs 4,5, and 6 which all pertain to different aspects of health and medicine – MDG6 even specifies certain epidemics which need to be addressed.

Important issues which directly impede the empowerment of women as well as the ability for overall progress in other respects, such as sexual violence against women, are not mentioned. This makes it particularly difficult to address MDG3, or even define indicators to monitor progress. Interestingly, much of what I read noted ICT as an important tool in working towards the empowerment of women. For example, there have been successful efforts to convey information about sexual and reproductive health and rights through radio campaigns, and the use of e-commerce has given women access to the global marketplace and taken down some of the societal if not necessarily structural barriers to equal economic rights, as noted in UNESCO’s report on gender and ICTs. Also, other technological innovations and initiatives have been directed specifically towards women’s safety, such as HarrassMap which uses Ushahidi’s crowdsourcing information technology to help prevent sexual harassment and assault.