Volume 1
Issue 02
Jan 12, 2012
DEVELOPMENT TIMES International Development and Global Issues
Two Billions and Counting: Challenges In Fighting Global Poverty The Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy for Reducing Poverty: A Failed Promise
Challenges at the Cutting Edge of Fighting Global Poverty
Eternally Stagnant Recruitment and Some Ideas to Overcome It
Kenya's quiet revolution
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IN THIS ISSUE Two Billions and Counting: Challenges In Fighting Global Poverty 5 Challenges at the Cutting Edge of Fighting Global Poverty
by Jeffrey Sachs 7 The Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy for Reducing Poverty: A Failed Promise
by Aneel Karnani 9 My Take: Kenya's quiet revolution
by Johannes Zutt 11 Interview: Poverty is behind Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters
by Journal of International Affairs 13 Top News: Aid cuts to middle-income countries worsen global poverty and ill-health
by the Guardian 14 Book review: The White Man's Burden (William Easterly, 2007)
by Prakash Loungani 16 Career Talk 18 Selected Books 19 Job Opportunities
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Development Times is a platform to share ideas and knowledge on international development and global issues. It is published every Thursday and distributed electronically to subscribers. To download a PDF copy http://devtimes.devj.org/ download/ To subscribe to Development Times, visit http://devtimes.devj.org/ subscribe To order print issues Email Print-devtimes@devj.org
EDITOR’S CORNER: A WORLD FREE OF POVERTY?
I
n 2000 at the UN Headquarters,
quate housing, and security. It is about inter-
world leaders adopted at the Millen-
national peace and stability because poor
nium Development Goals to seek to
countries are at greater risk at falling into
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by
conflicts. An innovative approach to tackle
2015. The strategy was to fight poverty in its
these challenges is to build programs based
many dimensions through eight goals and
on developing countries' specific needs and
targets. Twelve years later, there still more
priorities. The international community is
than two billions poor around the world. It
addressing these issues through global part-
is clear that great progress has been made,
nership and in a comprehensive manner.
and the goal of reducing absolute poverty by
This partnership is essential because address-
Or visit this link
half is likely to be achieved by 2015. But
ing these significant issues is beyond one
some of targets might be missed unless con-
country‘s means. But to attain a lasting drop
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crete actions are taken to tackle some press-
in the number of poor in developing coun-
ing issues. These issues include child mortal-
tries, it is critical to put much more emphasis
ity and maternal health. Also, cutting abso-
on strategies that will spur a sustained eco-
lute poverty by half is a challenging goal for
nomic growth. Only a real growth per capita
SSA. This is about restoring human dignity,
in the long term can free a country from
enabling people to access basics needs such
poverty trap.
Or visit this link http://devtimes.devj.org/ print To submit articles, book reviews: Email devtimes@devjorg
For any inquiries: Info-devtimes@devj.org
as better education, health care, food, ade-
Article
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January 12, 2012
Challenges at the Cutting Edge of Fighting Global Poverty partner with scientists at Columbia University and elsewhere to design new approaches to long-standing problems: how to control malaria, how to improve soil nutrients, how to bring information technology into the schools and clinics, how to mobilize community health workers effectively. In medical school, the young doctors have the slogan, "See one, do one, teach one." The idea is learning by doing. Students watch a medical procedure; then they are asked to do the procedure, under the preceptor's supervision; finally they are asked to teach the procedure to the next crop of students. The learning proceeds very quickly. That is how a generation of clinicians obtain their training.
by Jeffrey Sachs
Photo by Henny Boogert
T
he Millennium Village Project (MVP) was launched in 2005-6 in order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals in the poorest regions of rural Africa. A dozen clusters of villages around Africa have adopted bold and novel strategies to overcome poverty, hunger, and disease. Halfway through the ten-year project, the results are very exciting: agriculture production is up significantly, free basic health care is in place, malaria is coming under control, many more children are in school, and farmers are organizing cooperatives to diversify their crops and raise incomes.
The core idea of the project is that poor rural communities can take on several initiatives simultaneously in a strategy that is sometimes called "integrated development." In the case of the Millennium Villages, five areas of community life are prioritized: agriculture, health, education, infrastructure, and business development. By investing simultaneously across these sectors, the communities make progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and the escape from poverty. Development leaders in Africa take the lead, with the partnership of many organizations and businesses. Scientists in Africa
DEVELOPMENT TIMES
The Millennium Villages work in a similar way. The villages serve as a kind of model for the neighborhood and the country. The villages take proven interventions from past experience -- for example using bed nets to fight malaria -- and implement the intervention. They establish a system for implementation, do it, and then teach it to their neighbors. The successes serve as a leading edge for national programs to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The project has its share of critics and skeptics. This is natural. We in the project are making a strong claim: that development aid and partnerships can break the cycle of hunger, disease, and poverty if properly deployed. The experience in the Millennium Villages will help to answer the feasibility of rapid progress against long-standing scourges. The skeptics argue many points. They say that progress is not fast enough. They say that progress is not special to the Millennium Villages but is occurring in the neighboring villages. They say that the pro(Continued on page 6)
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gress is occurring but is too expensive to replicate and take to scale. We believe that all of these arguments are being disproved, yet we are the first to say that "time will tell."
Issue 02
show how to introduce these interventions in a systematic way, for example, how to distribute bed nets in a manner that leads to their high rate of utilization. (One key, we found, is the deployment of community health workers).
Half way through the 10-year project, we have found that certain important things can be accomplished very quickly. Malaria deaths and disease can be reduced within a year or two. Access to other basic health interventions for mothers and children can be improved.Agriculture production can increase significantly. Hunger can be reduced, especially the kind of chronic hunger (resulting in "stunting" of growth) that can lead to a lifetime of disabilities.
In a recent article in the Economist, several wrong claims were made about the project based on an unpublished paper. One claim is that the project is not work-
Other things take more time. Poverty comes down less quickly than food production goes up. Even when farmers double or triple their production of grains, they may remain below the poverty line. The bigger gains in income require more crop diversification and local business development, a process that can require several years and more organization by farmers.
ing since the progress in the Millennium Villages is also occurring in the neighboring villages, albeit at a slower rate. This is a mistaken criticism. The project itself has been encouraging the take-up of a range of interventions (bed nets, fertilizer, high-yield seeds, new diagnostic methods, and so forth) in neighboring villages and at the national scale. In fact, the Millennium Village Project in Kenya directly supported the procurement and distribution of 160 tons of fertilizer and 22 tons of seeds to two of the neighboring "comparison" villages included in this paper. Rather than undercutting the point of the project, progress nearby the Millennium Village sites often helps to prove the point.
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high-value products. Inevitably our public statements are ahead of the scientific publications coming out of the project. That is the result of the policy intention to speed scaling up of the types of interventions demonstrating success in the project. We are working with the host-country governments in real time to scale up the promising interventions, and we also proceed with the scientific process, with its very careful measurement, peerreview and rigorous approach to documentation and publication. Critics are keeping the project on its toes, and we are appreciative of that; it is important that we present detailed evidence that measures the progress in the villages.
“... Poverty comes down less quickly than food production goes up. Even when farmers double or triple their production of grains, they may remain below the poverty line. ‌â€?
Our tendency in the Millennium Villages is to move with all responsible haste. There is no time to lose. If something is working, we work quickly alongside many partners to help the host country to scale it up. For example, when a massive distribution of bed nets in 2005-6 brought malaria down rapidly, we and other partners urged the host countries to take these measures to national scale, and many have done so. Many critics are complaining, "Not so fast." They want years of more testing. However, the kinds of interventions being implemented in the Millennium Villages are generally well proven but underutilized. The Project's contribution alongside government partners is to
Another claim, even more outlandish, is that agriculture production is going up sharply but poverty is remaining entrenched. That is not our finding. We are finding that poverty is coming down, albeit less rapidly than grain production has risen. It is taking time for farm households to diversify their incomes, achieve creditworthiness, and establish cooperatives that can help to finance, produce, and market a wider range of
DEVELOPMENT TIMES
Please stay tuned. Watch the results and the debates. Most importantly, join the process with new ideas, technologies, and approaches. This is a learning process, not a rigid blueprint. Literally dozens of organizations are contributing to the progress we are seeing. We believe that a new, more coherent, more organized, and more accountable process of local development is taking shape, not only in the Millennium Villages Project, but in many other integrated rural-development projects like it. The revolutions in information and communications technologies in particular are permitting advances in every area of life -- health, education, agriculture, business, infrastructure -- to enable breakthroughs unimaginable even a few years earlier. We are optimistic and pleased that major advances are now underway, yet time, evidence, and the extent of poverty reduction will provide the ultimate verdict. Jeffrey Sachs is Director, Earth Institute at Columbia University. This article This originally appeared in the Huffington Post .
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How To: Development Strategies Strategies to Reduce Poverty? In general, to reduce poverty, it is critical to promote pro-poor growth, invest in institutional development, promote sustainable environment. To be specific with respect to the first two points:
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January 12, 2012
The Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy for Reducing Poverty: A Failed Promise
The government must seek to expand the role of the private sector in the economy, facilitate the development of a market which creates the enabling environment for Small and medium enterprises (SME) to grow, because the private sector and SME in particular stimulate economic growth, create jobs and other opportunities for the poor. Therefore the government should refrain from controlling directly economic activities, in other words, it must engage in the liberalization of the economy and the deregulation of prices. In addition, it should
Create an enabling environment for
private sector development, which include public investment in infrastructure and human capitals, Create an enabling environment for savings and private investment, which includes strong and reliable financial institutions. Increase the productive capacity of agriculture and the income of people working in these areas. Facilitate the emergence of markets where women and minorities groups, small farmers, small and local enterprises, can have the opportunities to access financial and human resources, to compete and earn money
Because trade has emerged as a major contributing factor to economic growth, developing countries need to be supported with preferential market access, such as reductions in tariffs, duty-free, quota-free market access
Allow all groups, including local communities, women, to participate in the development process by integrating their needs and priorities into national development programs and policies
Invest in institutional development, which involves improving governance. The strategy is to reform institutions so as to promote transparent, efficient, accountable institutions.
In the financial sector, the introduction of additional prudential measures in the banking system to influence the structure of the net financial inflows. This includes new regulations concerning the liquidity structure of bank‘s asset and liabilities that will favor long term capital inflows to commercial banks at the detriment of short term capital inflows.
by Aneel Karnani
A
libertarian movement that emphasizes free markets to reduce poverty has grown strong in recent years. The think tank World Resources Institute advocates „development through enterprise‟ and emphasizes business models driven by a profit motive that engage the poor as producers and consumers.
in the free market economy. Prahalad (2005) explicitly urges us, in the very first para-graph of his book, to recognize the poor as ―resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers‖. However, the rest of the book does not provide any empirical support for this assumption about the behaviour of the poor as consumers and as entrepreneurs. Having designated 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit, the United Nations declares on its website, ―currently, microentrepreneurs use loans as small as $100 to grow thriving business and, in turn, provide [for] their families, leading to strong and flourishing local economies.‖
The Private Sector Development network, part of the World Bank, focuses on private sector led growth in developing countries. CK Prahalad (2005), a prolific exponent of this perspective, argues that selling to the poor people at the ‗bottom This is hype and of the pyramid‘ (BOP) the United Nacan simultaneously be tions provides no profitable while help―... I will argue that the view empirical eviing eradicate poverty. of the poor as “resilient and dence to support The BOP proposition its bold assertion. creative entrepreneurs and has caught the attention of senior execuvalue-conscious consumers” I will argue that tives and business is empirically false. This rothe view of the academics. Many mulmanticized view of the poor poor as ―resilient tinational com-panies and creative endoes not help them, and ac(such as Unilever and trepreneurs and SC Johnson) have tually harms the poor. . …‖ value-conscious undertaken BOP iniconsumers‖ is tiatives while some of empirically false. the world‘s top CEOs have discussed this This romanticized view of the poor topic at recent sessions of the World does not help them, and actually harms Economic Forum. Several business the poor. First, it results in too little schools (such as the University of Michiemphasis on legal, regulatory, and social gan and the University of North Caromechanisms to protect the poor who lina) have set up BOP centres. are vulnerable consumers. Second, it results in overemphasis on micro-credit This libertarian approach to reducing and under-emphasis on fostering modpoverty necessarily assumes that the poor (Continued on page 8) are fully capable and willing participants
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ern enterprises that would provide employment opportunities for the poor. More importantly, the BOP proposition grossly under-emphasizes the critical role and responsibility of the state for poverty reduction.
Issue 02
spend their limited income and are, in fact, value-conscious consum-ers; the poor themselves are the best judge of how to maximize their utility.
Only the expenditure patterns of the poor, and not their utility preferences, can be “... The poor, in fact, are vulThis is not to directly observed. nerable due to lack of educaadvocate a reThe BOP propositurn to states tion assumes—on tion (often they are illiterpolicies that ideological ate), lack of informa-tion, have stifled ecogrounds, and withand other economic, cultural nomic growth. out empirical eviand social deprivations...…” Contemporary dence—that the economic hispoor must be tory suggests that the market system is the maximizing their utility preferences, and best way to achieve overall growth and that these preferences are congruent with development. But that does not mean that the true self-interest of the poor. This is there is no role for the state. Rajan and free market ideology taken to a dangerous Zingales (2003, 293) persuasively argue extreme, and harms the poor. Even a stalthat ―markets cannot flourish without the wart proponent of neo-liberal policies like very visible hand of the governments.‖ The Economist concludes that the poor do There is a need to impose some limits on make choices, and the empirical evidence markets to prevent exploitation of the suggests that ―they are not always the best poor (Karnani, 2007b). Another vital role ones‖ (The Economist, 2007). I will argue of the state is to provide basic services below that the assumption that the poor such as infrastructure, public health and are value-conscious consumers is empirieducation. Both these responsibilities of cally false; additionally, it is morally probthe state are even more critical in the conlematic. text of poverty reduction. The poor, in fact, are vulnerable due to The Poor as Value-Conscious Consumers lack of education (often they are illiterate), The BOP proposition views the poor prilack of informa-tion, and other economic, marily as potential consumers i.e. as uncultural and social deprivations. A person‘s tapped purchasing power. Providing inutility preferences are malleable and shaped creased consumption choices to the poor will increase their welfare, assum- “... The poor lack self-control and ing rational consum-ers. It is almost an yield to temptation. They seem to ―item of faith‖ among development be aware of their vulnerability to economists that the poor act rationally temptation ...” (The Econo-mist, 2007). Some civil society organizations have argued that by his or her background and experience, targeting the poor as a market might cause especially if he or she is disadvantaged them to wastefully spend part of their (Sen, 2000). It is not appropriate to assume already meager income on low priority that the poor‘s expressed preferences are products and services (for example, Clay, truly in their self-interest. We need to look 2005: chapter 5). Hammond and Prahalad beyond their expressed preferences and (2004) dismiss such arguments as patronfocus on people‘s capabilities to choose the izing and arrogant; how can anybody else lives they have reason to value. Amartya decide what is best for the poor? The Sen (2000: 63), the Nobel Prize winning BOP proposition argues that the poor economist, eloquently states: have the right to determine how they
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―The deprived people tend to come to terms with their deprivation because of the sheer necessity of survival, and they may, as a result, lack the courage to demand any radical change, and may even adjust their desires and expectations to what they unambitiously see as feasible. The mental metric of pleasure or desire is just too malleable to be a firm guide to deprivation and disadvantage. … Social and economic factors such as basic education, elementary health care, and secure employment are important not only in their own right, but also for the role they can play in giving people opportu-nity to approach the world with courage and freedom.‖ Empirical Evidence Unfortunately, there are few micro-level studies on the purchasing behavior of the poor. In an excellent sur-vey of research on the consumption choices the poor make, Banerjee and Duflo (2007) show that the poor spend a ―surprisingly large‖ fraction of their total income on alcohol, tobacco, and entertainment (whether televisions, weddings, or festivals). The poor enjoy such products as much as affluent people do, and maybe even more so, given their rather bleak lives of the poor. It is easy to rationalize any particular consumption choice of the poor. But, it is problematic that the poor do not spend enough on their own nutrition, health and education. One survey of the poor in Udaipur in India found that 55 per cent of the adults were anemic and that 65 per cent of adult men and 40 per cent of adult women were underweight (Banerjee, Deaton, Duflo, 2004). The typical poor household in Udaipur could spend up to 30 per cent more on food than it actually does, just based on what it spends on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals. Meenakshi and Vishwanathan (2003) find that the poor are buying less and less calories over time. Partly as a result of this general weakness, the poor are frequently sick. Banerjee and Duflo (2007) speculate (Continued on page 17)
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my take
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Kenya's quiet revolution by Johannes Zutt
K
enya is in the midst of a quiet revolution—but many people, even in Kenya, seem to be unaware of it, or the enormous governance improvements that it is likely to bring. We saw a new Kenya emerging last Friday when President Kibaki presided over an historic event that was hard to imagine in the old Kenya: the launch of a government website,www.opendata.go.ke , that makes enormous volumes of government data available to the public in user-friendly formats. For the first time in Kenya‘s history, core government data on population, the budget, education, health care and other public services are available to policy-makers, researchers, ICT developers, and citizens in an easily-accessible format. This portal is one of the first and largest government portals with reusable data in sub-Saharan Africa, making Kenya one of the world‘s leading exemplars of open data (see Time magazine's ―... For "Silicon Savanna").
form. To implement the new constitution, the government is working on about thirty pieces of legislation—on vetting judges, appointing a supreme court, regulating political parties, enhancing police oversight, strengthening public sector ethics and anti-
the first time in Kenya‟s history, core government data on population, the budget, education, health care and other public services are available to policy-makers, researchers, ICT developers, and citizens in an easilyaccessible format …‖
But many observers of Kenya are unimpressed. Why is that? Fighting corruption remains Kenya‘s largest challenge, but progress remains limited. The newspapers are full of articles about wealthy and well-connected politicians and private citizens facing serious corruption charges but somehow avoiding punishment. For example, an MP was recently put on the US government‘s Drug Kingpin list, but the Kenyan police subsequently cleared him of any involvement in illicit drugs (see the Wall Street Journal blog). If there is a revolution underway, it doesn‘t seem to be reducing corruption, and so I can understand why some of my donor friends conclude that nothing is changing. But that conclusion would be wrong. Since Kenyans approved a new constitution in August 2010--by a two-to-one margin— Kenya has entered a period of major re-
corruption efforts, modernizing public financial management, addressing land issues, and devolving government to local levels— to name a few. If that is not reform, I don‘t know what is. The process can be messy. The new constitution left many policy gaps, which the implementing legislation needs to fill. Those for and against the new constitution take different positions on filling those gaps—reopening some of the very same issues that the new constitution is expected to close. Brinkmanship is not unusual. But is anyone surprised by this behavior? Do politicians in other countries stop
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bickering between elections, or avoid extreme positions? No. Legislators in the USA still can‘t agree on a new debt ceiling, and some Republicans (see Paul Ryan interview) are even suggesting that default would be good for the country! Politics does not end at the ballot box. Political differences continue to be asserted, and compromise can be hard to find. Yet, compromise will be found in Kenya, and the new constitution will provide powerful guidance. Like any constitution, Kenya‘s has room for different interpretations, but it is not endlessly flexible. It will result in stronger checks and balances, a weaker executive, a more powerful legislature, a new judiciary, devolution to 47 counties, and improved citizen rights—however much the politicians may argue over the details. Just in the last few weeks, Kenyans have seen how the new constitution is creating a new Kenya. The old Kenya was evident at the beginning of the year, when the executive tried to appoint a new chief justice without consultation. Public criticism ended that process, and the candidate‘s name was withdrawn. Later (Continued on page 12)
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interview
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Issue 02
UN Radio: Poverty is behind Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters by Patrick Maigua This interview was conducted by UN Radio's Patrick Maigua in Geneva after earthquakes hit the capital of Haiti.
Earthquakes like the one that hit the capital of Haiti, are hard to predict, but that does not mean we cannot be prepared for them, says the Director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Many poor countries have made advances in disaster preparedness, including Bangladesh, Cuba and Mozambique, and Salvano BriceĹˆo told UN Radio's Patrick Maigua in Geneva, Haiti should join them.
Briceno: The major problem of course is that Haiti is extremely poor and it's poverty that is at the core of all of these disasters. An earthquake like this or a hurricane like the ones that have hit Haiti, do not cause the same damage in other countries, even very close countries like Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic. They are also hit by hurricanes every year and they don't have casualties, while Haiti has thousands of casualties usually when a big hurricane hits. So it is mainly the vulnerability of Haiti. Maigua: What do you think will be the immediate needs in Haiti after this disaster?
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BriceĂąo: The main need of course is rescuing and searching for people that are trapped and to get as many survivors as possible. But immediately, Haiti has to give a priority to risk reduction, to reducing risk. This has to be in the legislation, in the policies. It's not just relief. The problem is that once the relief operations pass, governments tend to forget and then to just want to prepare for the relief of the next disaster, and not to reduce the risk, so reducing risk has to be made a priority by the President, by all the ministers and by the donor countries. Haiti is a country that has a small population, a small size. It should be much simpler to deal with it than other larger countries in Asia, Africa or Latin America that have similar problems. Maigua: When a disaster such as this happens in a poor country, reconstruction after always involves the construc(Continued on page 12)
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tion of very poor houses. Briceno: This is precisely one of the great challenges, and we have a major programme. We're actually having a meeting on that in Japan, in Kobe, in this moment, in this week. They are dealing with the recovery efforts after major catastrophes. The challenge is to recover and reconstruct with risk reduction approach, in other words building-back-better. There is a lot of money that is going to be poured into Haiti, as it happens there is every time after a disaster. But that money, instead of used to give people just any house, or just any livelihood, they should be done with risk reduction approach. It can be done. Educating the people and training them and giving them the resources to understand the risk. People understand very well when they are explained what the risk is. This is not the first poor country that is dealing with this. We have Bangladesh that has dealt with this, is one of the poorest countries in the world and they have reduced mortality enormously by just making people aware of the risk. Cuba, Jamaica, Vietnam, Mozambique - there are many poor countries that already have reduced risk by just getting people more aware, improving the early warning systems, dealing with the material construction and building codes, but enforcing them and making people aware of them. Cause it's not the government that has to enforce the codes, it's the people, when you buy a house, when you - same way that we all take care of a car, when we buy it, that the brakes work. Nobody's going to buy a car without brakes. When people buy houses they must be aware that the house can withstand an earthquake or a hurricane or a fire or other hazard. So this awareness about the risk is essential, but of course early warning systems also - the whole preparedness programmes, people need to
Issue 02
be prepared to respond to these disasters, not just wait till the government or an aid agency will come and help them. The first aid in any of these disasters comes from each individual themselves, the family, the neighbours. So organizing that community -based-preparedness programmes is another major effort of reducing risk. Maigua: The tsunami warning system seems to have become very effective. Is it possible to have an early warning system for earthquakes? Briceno: With earthquakes it's much more difficult, of course, because earthquakes happen very quickly and the impact is felt immediately, so it's not like earthquakes that take some time to reach the coast. By the way, I should say that the tsunami alert system in the Caribbean worked very well for this earthquake. There was a tsunami alert given immediately, just a few minutes after the earthquake and all the countries around: Cuba, the United States, the Dominican Republic got prepared for a tsunami. So the tsunami alert worked in this case. It just happened that there was no big tsunami, only some 20 centimeters in some places, which is really nothing. So, it is a different type of impact. The best awareness about earthquakes, the best warning system is for people to be aware of the construction of their houses, of the schools where they send their children, and, above everything, the hospitals. It is very sad to see one of the main hospitals in Haiti was totally destroyed - a children's hospital - and that creates a bigger disaster because then people die because of lack of attention, not just because of the earthquake itself. So giving priority to hospitals, schools to protect the children, and that everybody is aware of their houses and offices and buildings in general. As I said, it's the poorly-built buildings that kill people, not the earthquake.
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in the year, applicants to the position faced the scrutiny of a reviewing committee—not in camera, as in the past, but in front of the cameras (see KTN clip), and so in front of the citizens as a whole. The new chief justice seems to be cut from a different cloth than his predecessors—a point that he himself emphasized, when he was sworn into office without having donned a justice‘s traditional wig and robe. The new constitution also says that all Kenyan citizens must pay taxes on their income. You can see the old Kenya when MPs insist that this provision does not apply to them—a Minister even argued that MPs are too poor to pay taxes, evidently forgetting that Kenyan MPs are among the best paid in the world, earning more in a day than the average Kenyan earns in a year! But the new Kenya is visible too. Under tremendous public pressure from ordinary Kenyans who are demanding compliance, key government officers such as the President and the Prime Minister have duly paid, sounding the death knell of one of the MPs‘ most treasured perquisites. Some of my donor friends are not impressed. ―It‘s the same old crowd in control‖, I hear them saying. ―Corruption is worse than ever—last month 100 officials in the Ministry of Education were implicated in misappropriating monies intended to educate schoolchildren. Besides, you have the ICC investigating Ministers for committing crimes against humanity after the 2007 elections. Nothing has really changed.‖ Well … yes and no. It‘s true that the same old crowd is in control, that corruption remains Kenya‘s biggest problem, and that some government officials continue to betray the trust of the citizens. But it is different today. The people have spoken. They enacted a new constitution. They are demanding accountability, and they are getting it. Ten years from now, Kenya will be a different and better place.
. Salvano Briceño heads the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
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Johannes Zutt is a World Bank Country Director for Kenya, Eritrea, and Rwanda D ev Tim es
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TOP NEWS
Aid cuts to middle-income countries worsen global poverty and ill-health by the Guardian Donors must adjust to the reality that countries seemingly on an upward trajectory are often the worst hit by poverty and disease. What do the EU, the
Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria, and the World Bank's International Development Association have in common? All of them want to save money during a fiscal crunch by cutting off aid to middle-income countries (MIC). It may sound a sensible response, but it means disconnecting foreign aid from most of the world's poor and sick. International donors need to eschew knee-jerk reactions and get more sophisticated in their thinking. Rather than simply withdrawing when they can't spend dollops of money, they need to use the newfound wealth in MICs as the entry point for rethinking forms of support. The EU's Andris Piebalgs argues: "Some countries can now afford to fight poverty themselves and, as a result, this will allow us to focus on places that need more of our help. "Of course, I am aware that poverty pockets exist in middle-income countries, and will continue to co-operate with these countries on many urgent issues such as the fight against HIV and Aids. But in reality, EU aid levels are not high in comparison with the budget of these countries, and can have higher impact in least developed countries." But Piebalgs has got his numbers wrong (and a third of "least developed dountries" are now richer than the middle-income country threshold). There aren't "pockets" of poverty in MICs: by income, most of the world's poor live in middle-income countries. The global distribution of malnutrition also points towards MICs, as do multidimensional measures of pov-
erty and global disease and death figures. So if aid agencies pull out of middleincome countries, they're disconnecting from the majority of the world's poor and sick. This problem is only going to grow. There are only 35 low-income countries (LICs) left, and estimates – based on IMF growth projections, and compiled by Todd Moss and Benjamin Leo of the Centre for Global Development – suggest that the number of countries classified as LICs will continue to fall drastically. By 2025, it is estimated that only about 20 will remain, most of them fragile states. At least three factors support the development of a more sophisticated approach, one that includes a sliding scale on financial contributions between donors and MICs based on needs, resources and capacity. First, most large MICs consist of a small number of high-income regions (with MIClevels of per-capita income) surrounded by low-income regions (with LIC-levels of per -capita income). For example, per capita income in a number of Indian states is similar to sub-Saharan Africa. What's more, health expenditure is typically controlled by the central government, perhaps leaving spatial inequalities unaddressed in terms of the distribution of funds to subnational units. Average spending levels on health can be low at sub-national level, for instance, but is it the fault of the poor and sick if they live in the poorer provinces of MICs? Second, many LICs face profound governance and corruption challenges, ones that can actually be helped with modest donor accompaniment and support. Nigeria is a wealthy, oil-producing country, with a national government that, on paper, is com-
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mitted to all the right things. But the capacity at federal level to assure public spending accountability in states is minimal, incentives are misaligned and – as a result – diseases like polio, eliminated in much poorer countries, are on the resurgence. Nigeria doesn't need donor money, but it could use better measurement, accountability and visibility – all things that donors are able to support. Third, donor countries give aid for a purpose. Politics aside, donor countries wish to obtain the biggest bang for their buck in poverty reduction and disease control. These big bangs are not to be found in LICs, where the capacity to take on new technologies and sustain their financing over time is limited. Consequently, value for money may well be higher in MICs, where poverty and disease are concentrated, but where capacity is sufficient – if motivated and measured – to deliver results. Donors could develop a sliding scale on financial contributions, but it's not only about money. There are plenty of good things they could do in MICs at a reasonable price. They could support purchasing clubs through existing multilaterals like Unicef in order to achieve economies of scale in the purchase of health products like bed nets and vaccines. They could create incentives and provide direct support for more regular, high-quality measurement of births and deaths, allowing planners to dimension the scope of health problems and identify better solutions. They could support the thinktanks and public budget watchdogs that assess government commitment to reducing poverty and improving health. They could develop national debates with the emergent middle classes on why paying more tax might be in everyone's interest. In short, donors that pull out of middleincome countries need to think beyond just spending money. Pulling out of MICs doesn't make sense if the mission of aid agencies is to reduce global poverty and ill-health. This post was originally published in the Guardian
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Book Review The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (William Easterly, 2007) Reviewed by Prakash Loungani, International Monetary
writes, ―received more than 15 percent of its income from foreign donors in the 1990s,‖ but that ―surge in aid was not successful in reversing or halting the slide in growth of income per capita toward zero‖ (p. 45). Easterly suggests that the lack of growth in many developing countries is due to bad government, not to inadequate foreign aid. ―One gut instinct that many people have about the poverty of nations is probably close to the target: it‘s all politics‖ (p. 115). Nearly all of Easterly‘s conclusions serve to highlight the prescience of Bauer‘s work, which makes the book‘s solitary reference to Bauer seem rather stingy. Start with the term ―foreign aid.‖ In ―Development Aid: End It or Mend It‖ (International Center for Economic Growth, Occasional Papers No. 43, 1993), Bauer railed against calling it aid because ―it promotes an unquestioning attitude. It disarms criticism, obscures realities, and prejudges results. Who could be against aid to the less fortunate? The term has enabled aid supporters to claim a monopoly of compassion and to dismiss critics as lacking in understanding and sympathy‖ (p. 2).
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n 1982, Peter Bauer coauthored an article with the title ―Foreign Aid Isn‘t.‖ This title could serve as an apt summary of William Easterly‘s new book. Easterly, an economics professor at New York University and formerly a senior research economist at the World Bank, argues that foreign aid is neither necessary nor sufficient to raise living standards in developing countries. It is not necessary because several countries have been able to raise standards without a big aid-financed push— Korea is an obvious example. And it is far from sufficient because many countries have remained mired in poverty despite receiving substantial foreign aid. ―The typical country in Africa,‖ Easterly
Bauer then went on to note the more substantive criticism that ―the term also clearly implies that the policy must benefit the population of the recipient countries, which is not the case.‖ Easterly agrees: ―The West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades,‖ he writes, adding that he feels like ―a Scrooge‖ for pointing out that all this ―well-meaning compassion‖ has brought about little improvement in the lot of the world‘s poor (p. 4). Next consider what Easterly calls ―Legend Part One,‖ the claim that the poorest countries are stuck in a ―poverty trap‖ from which they cannot escape without an aid-financed big push. The legend, says Easterly, is propagated by the likes of Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, who wrote in
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The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Penguin Press, 2005): ―When people are . . . utterly destitute, they need their entire income, or more, just to survive. . . . They are too poor to save for the future and thereby accumulate the capital that could pull them out of their current misery‖ (pp. 56 –57). Easterly vs. Sachs is a rematch of Bauer vs. Samuelson, circa 1950s. In the second edition his popular introductory economics textbook (Economics: An Introductory Analysis, McGraw Hill, 1951), Samuelson wrote that ―[the backward nations] cannot get their heads above water because their production is so low that they can spare nothing for the capital formation by which their standard of living could be raised‖ (p. 49). Bauer, in Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965) noted that this thesis was refuted by the ―very existence of developed countries, all of which began by being underdeveloped, but it is refuted also by the rapid economic advance of many underdeveloped countries in recent decades‖ (p. xiii). Likewise, Easterly‘s questioning of ―Legend Part Two‖—the claim that poor growth is due to a poverty trap rather than bad government— echoes Bauer‘s writings. But to say, ―It‘s all in Bauer‖ is not to deny that Easterly‘s book is invaluable in providing new examples that show the continuing relevance of Bauer‘s work. Easterly also offers a useful summary of the latest studies in the ―long and inconclusive literature‖ that uses statistical tests to demonstrate an effect of foreign aid on growth. While the book‘s main targets appear to be Jeffrey Sachs, the United Nations, and bilateral aid agencies, international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the IMF that make loans to low income countries also come in for
strong criticism. Though these loans are made conditional on countries carrying out agreed reforms, Easterly questions how effective this ―intrusive and complex conditionality‖ turns out to be in practice. One reason why conditions are ineffective is that ―each loan is an attempt to engineer paradise rather than do piecemeal reforms‖ (p. 234). Another reason conditions fail is that the World Bank and the IMF get involved in poor countries that are very ―politically and institutionally dysfunctional.‖ He offers a number of examples of what he considers the ―IFIs‘ worst cases: coddling awful gangsters who just call themselves a government‖ (pp. 152– 53). Can the problems with aid be fixed? Easterly‘s book concludes with the obligatory chapter on solutions, but it‘s clear his heart isn‘t in it: ―If you think I will now offer a utopian blueprint to fix aid‘s complex problems, then I have done a really bad job in the previous chapters at explaining the problems with utopian blueprints‖ (p. 367). He advocates piecemeal interventions, such as the cash grants given out under Mexico‘s PROGRESA scheme, and stresses the importance both of obtaining feedback from the poor on whether the interventions are actually helping and of holding the aid agencies accountable for when they are not. He also proposes issuing ―development vouchers‖ that the poor could use to choose both the public goods they wanted and the aid agency they wanted to deliver the goods. ―Giving vouchers to the poor may be the stupidest idea ever,‖ he concludes, ―except for all the ideas that have already failed in foreign aid‖ (p. 379).
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Quick Facts: Poverty around the world ■ More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day ■ Every year eleven million children die— most under the age of five ■ 114 million children do not get even a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate. ■ Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday. ■ Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus. ■ Each year, approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result. ■ More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day...300 million are children. ■ Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5. ■ More than 2.6 billion people—over 40 per cent of the world‘s population—do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water. ■ Four out of every ten people in the world don‘t have access even to a simple latrine. ■ Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases. ■ More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-today basis. ■ More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education. ■ If a girl is educated for six years or more, as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates, will dramatically and consistently improve. ■ Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated. ■ AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling. ■ The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education. ■ Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day—an estimated 529,000 each year—from pregnancy-related causes. ■ Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendants. Source: Poverty quick facts from the millennium project
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Career Talk Eternally Stagnant Recruitment and Some Ideas to Overcome It by Kevin Wheeler
Recruiting never seems to change very much. As I have often written, even with computers, smart phones, cheap video, big bandwidth, and years of accumulated experience, the way we look for people and select them looks very much the same as it looked 50 years ago. The question is: why haven‟t these tools and technologies made any significant difference? If we look at other professions, it is clear that technology is not what makes the real difference. Take building as an example. Using only primitive hand tools, carpenters and masons from Roman times on crafted buildings that are enduring and emulated. The construction methods they used are studied and copied, while their tools gather dust in museums. Chinese accountants used abacuses to keep their books and sailors had glorified rowboats to explore the world‘s oceans. It turns out that knowing how to do something is a far more critical skill than what tools are used to do it. Tools do not cause change and transformation, but methods and processes do. The skills involved in building, accounting, or sailing are what make the difference between success and failure and often between life and death. Those who have improved the methods of building — the ones who figured out how to build skyscrapers and elevators — have contributed more to our progress than have the tools they used. Technology saves labor and time and often
lets us do things we could not do with our own muscles or brains, but it is not a substitute for core knowledge or for understanding how to do something or for human behavior. And that is most likely why recruiting has not changed. While recruiters have many new tools, they are using traditional processes and methods without much innovation. This is most likely because, despite the hype about a talent shortage, there is really not a major problem finding talented people. If fact, most recruiters would be bored if their job became too easy — and many enjoy the hunt. Innovation usually occurs when there is an unsolvable problem or a major problem or a crisis, and recruiting has yet to run into any of those. But what could be is still interesting. What would an efficient, updated recruiting process look like? Here are a few ideas that I think might work. If anyone has already tried them or plans on giving them a try, I would like to hear from you in the comments section. Idea 1 Stop any branding activities and focus totally on referrals. If you are in a nationwide or global firm with a known reputation, branding is a secondary concern. You already attract people because of your product or service brand and most likely have a pipeline of good candidates. Whenever you have an opening, just let employees know and ask them to use their networks to bring in any additional people you might need. Referrals are free, fast, and effective. Incentives are not really needed and may actually cause employees to reach out to less-than-optimal candidates in the chance of getting whatever reward your offer. Instead give the employees who refer the best candidates, whether they are hired or not, a title such as ―Preferred Referrer‖ or
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―Trusted Referrer,‖ and give anyone they refer priority consideration. This will incentivize others to become a titled referrer and raise the bar on the type of candidates you get. Idea 2 Use online assessments and reduce interviews. Forget screening interviews, meet and greets, and extensive resume reviews. Instead invest in developing one or two screening tests that can be given online, are scored instantly, and provide both you and the candidate with feedback. These kinds of screening tools can reduce your workload, improve the candidate experience, and result in much better candidates. The challenge is to develop the right tests that actually screen for the characteristics that are important for the job or for the organization. There may need to be several tests for different positions or levels, but none of this is more costly or time-consuming than endless phone screens and interviews. I would go so far as to say that recruiters should never interview anyone in person. By implementing online screening and eliminating face-to-face interviews, you could potentially expect a recruiter to handle 20-50% more open requisitions. There are many firms who can do this for reasonable costs, and the online testing and screening business is growing rapidly. Charles Handler, one of the other writers on ERE, has just released a book cataloging and commenting on most testing services available today. Idea 3 Use video interviews heavily. Video interviews are a powerful and effective way to do more with less and improve legal compliance. Video interviews are no longer taboo, and many candidates find them much more effective and less stressful than face-to-face interviews. Face(Continued on page 17)
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to-face interviews are expensive and time consuming and most of the time lead nowhere. Probably 75% of all interviews do not lead to an offer because of poor screening and poor candidate qualification. By conducting one live interview that is recorded, many people can view the same interview and evaluate the same responses. This leads to consistency, the lack of which is the greatest legal issue with multi-person, live interviews. By recoding the interview, there is proof that the interviews were done legally and that no discrimination occurred.
that one cause of this surprising underspending on nutrition is the ―growing availability of consumption goods.‖
Idea 4 Train recruiters and hiring managers thoroughly on closing candidates. Make sure every recruiter and as many hiring managers as possible know how to identify potential acceptance issues and how to overcome objections. Most acceptance failures are because someone — a recruiter or a hiring manager — did not pick up on signs that a candidate had reservations or issues that would be difficult to overcome: perhaps a reluctant spouse, a nagging doubt about the organization or the project, a desire to stay at their current employer, and so on. It takes practice and training to notice these things and many recruiters are not well trained to not only notice the potential problem, but to deal with it. I often recommend that recruiters take a traditional sales training class where these skills are and the methods to overcome them are taught. Idea 5 Communicate with mobile technology and via social media. Getting feedback to candidates regularly and fast is one of the ways to differentiate your organization from other and to get firstmover advantage with a candidate. Most candidates today are more than willing to receive feedback and updates via their Facebook, LinkedIn, or other accounts. Email is fine, but experiment with other methods that cut down the time you spend and get the word out faster. Hiring managers should consider interviewing candidates using Skype or other tools. You could develop a mobile app to provide feedback or updates. There are probably at least a dozen more ideas that you could try that would lower costs, improve speed, and provide higher quality candidates. But, then again, by doing it the way we always have, we ensure job security — for a while. Kevin Wheeler is the President and Founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc Website: http://www.glresources.com. Submit your articles at http://devtimes.devj.org/
The poor lack self-control and yield to temptation. One cause may be that the poor typically do not have bank accounts, and keeping cash at home makes it harder to exercise self-control. The poor seem to be aware of their vulnerability to temptation. In a survey in Hyderabad, India, the poor were asked to name whether they would like to cut particular expenses, and 28 per cent of the respondents named at least one item (Banerjee, Duflo, and Glennerster, 2006). The top consumption items that households would like to cut are alcohol and tobacco, mentioned by 44 per cent of the households that wanted to cut consumption. Then came sugar, tea, and snacks (9 per cent), festivals (7 per cent), and entertainment (7 per cent). The evidence suggests that the poor lack self-control, yield to temptation, and spend to keep up with their neighbors (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007). In this, they are little different from people with more money, but the consequences of bad choices are clearly more severe for the poor. Efroymson and Ahmed (2001) tell a moving, but not uncommon, story of Hasan, a rickshaw puller, who spent $0.20/day on tobacco. When asked if his three children ever eat eggs, he exclaimed, ―Eggs? Where will the money come from to buy them?‖ If Hasan did not buy tobacco, each of his children could eat an egg a day, or other nutritious foods, and be healthier as a result. For the more affluent, the consequences of smoking are not as bleak as children‘s malnutrition. There is much evidence (for example, Luttmer, 2005, and Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999) from economics and psychology showing that people derive satisfaction not just from their own consump-tion, but also from faring better than their peers. Fafchamps and Shilpi (2008) show that this is equally true for
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the poor. Keeping up with the neighbours seems to be a pervasive trait cutting across income brackets. Poor people in Nepal were asked to assess whether the levels of their income as well as their ‗consumption‘ of housing, food, clothing, health care, and schooling were adequate. The answers to these questions were strongly negatively related to the (average) consumption pattern of other people living in the same village. Spending on festivals accounts for a surprisingly large part of the budget for many extremely poor households living on less than $1 per day per person. In Udaipur, more than 99 per cent of the extremely poor households spent money on a wedding, a funeral, or a religious festival (Banerjee, Deaton, and Duflo, 2004). The median household spent 10 per cent of its annual budget on festivals. In South Africa, 90 per cent of extremely poor households spent money on festivals. In Pakistan, Indonesia, and Cote d‘Ivoire, more than 50 per cent did likewise (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007). Spending on festivals is a form of entertainment, especially in the absence of movies and television, and provides rare respite from the bleakness of life. The need to spend more on entertainment appears to be strongly felt. One reason this may be so is that the poor want to ‗keep up with their neighbours‖. The empirical evidence does not support the romanticized view of the poor as ‗value conscious consumers‘. The problem is that the poor often make choices that are not in their own self interest. The rich also often make choices not in their own self interest, but the consequences are not as severe in their case.
Aneel Karnani is Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. You can contact him at akarnani@umich.edu. D ev Tim es
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Blogs & Communities Active Learning Network For Accountability And Performance In Humanitarian Action www.alnap.org/
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Selected Development Books Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding And How We Can Improve the World Even by Charles Kenny , 2011
Aid Watchers www.aidwatchers.com/
As the income gap between developed and developing nations grows, so grows the cacophony of voices claiming that the quest to find a simple recipe for economic growth has failed. Getting Better, in sharp contrast, reports the good news about global progress. Economist Charles Kenny argues against development naysayers by pointing to the evidence of widespread improvements in health, education, peace, liberty--and even happiness. Kenny shows how the spread of cheap technologies, such as vaccines and bed nets, and ideas, such as political rights, has transformed the world.
Amnesty International www.livewire.amnesty.org/ Center For Global Development www.cgdev.org/section/opinions/blogs Center For International Private Enterprise (Cipe) www.cipe.org/blog/
He also shows that by understanding this transformation, we can make the world an even better place to live. That's not to say that life is grand for everyone, or that we don't have a long way to go. But improvements have spread far, and, according to Kenny, they can spread even further.
Civil Society Watch www.cswatch.org/ Communities Of Practice www.reliefweb.int/rw/hlp.nsf/db900ByKey/ CoP_Home?OpenDocument Conversations For A Better World www.conversationsforabetterworld.com/ Dani Rodrik'S Weblog www.rodrik.typepad.com/ Devex www.devex.com/ Devj Connection www.devjconnection.com/ Disasters Emergency Committee www.dec.org.uk/ Economonitor www.economonitor.com/channel/emergingmarkets/ Eldis Communities www.community.eldis.org/indexhome.html Freedomhouse www.blog.freedomhouse.org/ Genardis www.genardis.apcwomen.org/en/frontpage Global Development Network www.cloud2.gdnet.org/cms.php? id=gdn_development_research Global Development Talk Point www.guardian.co.uk/globaldevelopment/2010/sep/14/globaldevelopment-talk-point Global Humanitarian Assistance www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/ Globalintegrity www.globalintegrity.org/blog
Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2010
The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide than any crisis since the Great Depression. Flawed government policy and unscrupulous personal and corporate behavior in the United States created the current financial meltdown, which was exported across the globe with devastating consequences. The crisis has sparked an essential debate about America‘s economic missteps, the soundness of this country‘s economy, and even the appropriate shape of a capitalist system. Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is ―an insanely great economist, in ways you can‘t really appreciate unless you‘re deep into the field‖ (Paul Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those ―too big to fail,‖ while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new ―bubble capitalism.‖ Ranging across a host of topics that bear on the crisis, Stiglitz argues convincingly for a restoration of the balance between government and markets. America as a nation faces huge challenges—in health care, energy, the environment, education, and manufacturing—and Stiglitz penetratingly addresses each in light of the newly emerging global economic order. An ongoing war of ideas over the most effective type of capitalist system, as well as a rebalancing of global economic power, is shaping that order. The battle may finally give the lie to theories of a ―rational‖ market or to the view that America‘s global economic dominance is inevitable and unassailable. For anyone watching with indignation while a reckless Wall Street destroyed homes, educations, and jobs; while the government took half-steps hoping for a ―just-enough‖ recovery; and while bankers fell all over themselves claiming not to have seen what was coming, then sought government bailouts while resisting regulation that would make future crises less likely, Freefall offers a clear accounting of why so many Americans.
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Job Opportunities Political Affairs Officer, P4 Organization: United Nations Location: New York Closing (UK): 02/26/2012 This post is located in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. The mandate and work of the Office derives from General Assembly Resolution 51/77 and subsequent General Assembly resolutions, as well as successive Security Council resolutions on children and armed conflict. The incumbent will report to the Special Assistant/Chief of Office and the SRSG depending on the assignment. Responsibilities Within delegated authority the Political Affairs Officer will be responsible for the following duties: • Reviews and monitors information on violations against children in the countries or region assigned; assesses trends; follows the implementation of recommendations related to CAAC from inter-governmental bodies. • Researches, analyzes and presents information gathered on the situation of children and armed conflict from diverse sources. • Drafts and edits reports for intergovernmental bodies, including the G.A., Human Rights Council and Security Council. • Liaises with Member States, other UN offices, NGOs and other partners in order to raise the profile of CAAC concerns.
• Participates in assigned Secretariat services required by the Security Council and to other committees and bodies related to its work. • Drafts briefing notes, correspondence, memos and other documents as required by the SRSG or other senior officials. • Acts as focal point on thematic issues of relevance to the Mandate of the Office and participates on behalf of the Office in inter-agency working groups on these. (e.g. POC, SV, C34 etc). • Liaises on a regular basis with the UN country task forces for monitoring and reporting in countries assigned, reviews and vets reports emanating from these and offers technical support as and when required. • Maintains contacts with other sectors of the UN, other international organizations and governments on coordination and policy matters, briefs representatives and provides as appropriate suggestions and recommendations. • Takes the lead in preparing the SRSG’s field missions, including developing concept notes, programmes, background materials, as well as reporting on outcomes and following up on commitments made. • Serves as team leader with responsibility for carrying out, in consultation with the Chief of Office, work coordination and administrative functions relating to the staff, planning and budget. • Trains and supervises new/junior staff. • Performs other related duties as required. Education Advanced university degree (Master‘s degree or equivalent) in social sciences, international law,
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international relations or related area. A firstlevel university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree. Work Experience A minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience in political science, international relations, international humanitarian law, disarmament, security, development management, conflict resolution or related area. Experience in conflict and post-conflict settings and experience handling child protection concerns is required. UN field experience in a conflict/post conflict setting, including in a UN peacekeeping mission is desirable. Experience supporting intergovernmental processes related to child protection matters at the Headquarters level is desirable. Languages English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this post , fluency in English (both oral and written) is required. Knowledge of French is required. Knowledge of another UN official language is an advantage. Special Notice Extension of the appointment is subject to Extension of the mandate and/or the availability of the funds. Apply at https://careers.un.org/lbw/ Submit your job ads at http://devtimes.devj.org/ D ev Tim es
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Investment Officer - Private Equity Funds
Director For Country Operations
IFC seeks to appoint an Investment Officer to join its Nairobi team. The Investment Officer will work across Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions as required. Duties and Accountabilities: • Undertake reviews of funds and investee companies and prepare supervision reports, including portfolio performance analyses in comparison to relevant benchmarks; • track and monitor compliance of portfolio companies and propose courses of action in the event of non-compliance; • analyze corporate financial data and other industry information to identify and monitor issues that may affect IFC‘s investments and recommend actions where necessary; • develop an understanding of the target countries in Africa, provide market intelligence, and develop strong business networks; • conduct market studies and help develop a pipeline of potential fund investments; perform research to determine the level of activity and attractiveness of valuations and returns of funds, define future trends, and identify best of breed managers; • undertake due diligence of potential fund investments; participate in the structuring, negotiating and execution of deals; • prepare investment review materials and presentations to investment committees to obtain investment approval and negotiate fund documentation; • communicate IFC’s strategy for funds and its rationale for engaging in specific transactions.
Qualifications • Minimum of a Master’s degree in business administration, accounting or other relevant discipline or equivalent experience. • Minimum of 10 years, senior-level experience managing complex health or development programs in developing countries on a similar scale. Significant operations and financial management experience in Kenya strongly preferred. • Experience managing significant USG-funded programs and comprehensive knowledge of applicable regulations and requirements. Demonstrated success and familiarity experience in Kenya is particularly relevant. • Demonstrated leadership and management skills; experience mentoring and supervising staff at all levels within the organization. • Strong leadership, analytical and organizational skills demonstrated by ability to work both independently and within a team, assess priorities, and manage a variety of activities with attention to detail. • • Excellent conceptualization, facilitation, and planning skills. Possess outstanding professional reputation and have strong demonstrated interpersonal, written, and oral presentation skills. Excellent demonstrated cross-cultural communication and active listening skills. Fluency in English.
Organization: International Finance Corporation (IFC) Location: Nairobi, Kenya, Closing: 01/31/2012
Read full post and apply at www.ifc.org (job#112507 )
International Consultant For Final Evaluation Of Cb-2 Project Organization: UNDP Location: Armenia, Closing: 01/31/2012 Competencies • Experience in monitoring and evaluating capacity development projects, particularly in the environmental information and monitoring systems areas for UN or other international development agencies (at least in one project); • Recent knowledge of the GEF Monitoring and Evaluation Policy; • Recent knowledge of UNDP’s results-based management policies and procedures; • Recognized expertise in the environmental information and monitoring systems fields; • Familiarity with environmental management, environmental information and monitoring systems legislation, policies and management structures in CIS would be an asset; • Conceptual thinking and analytical skills. Read full post and apply at http://jobs.undp.org/ cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=27155
Organization: Management Sciences for Health Location: Kenya, Closing: 01/13/2012
Read full post and apply at www.msh.org (job # 12-4541)
Senior Credit Manager
Organization: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (ERBD) Location: United Kingdom, Closing: 15 January 2012 Qualifications • Responsible for monitoring the financial and operating risks of a part of the portfolio of the Bank's signed projects. • Regularly review individual projects and counterparties, establish risk ratings of exposures, make recommendations for impairment, and from time to time provide input in the form of a credit note to the Operations Committee. • Identify and present trends in portfolio segments to feed into strategic overviews and planning. • Regularly review fair valuations of equity investments to establish fair market values in accordance with IFRS and other relevant guidelines. Make decisions on waivers and amendments on individual projects in line with Bank policy and procedures, including pricing changes and restructurings. • Participate in the preparation of a quarterly Risk Management document for reporting to the Board on risk measures across the banking portfolio and comment on individual high risk projects. • Ensure a close dialogue on individual projects as well as wider sector and accounting issues with Banking project operation leaders and members of the operations teams, including Corporate Recovery, and with other Risk Management teams and the Finance Department. • Provide input as appropriate into credit policy issues and internal methodology across various risk management topics. • Participates as appropriate on specific projects on a wide range of issues. Read full post and apply at www.erbdjobs.com (Ref#50005990)
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