“DR Congo: Beyond the 2011 Elections” Panel 1: Théodore Trefon

On 14 February 2012 the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Oxford Central Africa Forum, and the Royal African Society hosted two panel discussions on the recent elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Please read the requisite introduction and disclaimer related to my note-taking here.

This post is a summary (not a transcript) of Théodore Trefon’s comments from the first panel. The rest of the speakers’ comments, and the Q&A sessions, will follow shortly in separate posts.

Comments in brackets are mine.

Panel 1: The Elections and the International Community

Théodore Trefon, Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa

Théodore Trefon is a Congo expert specializing in the politics of state-society relations. He has devoted the past 25 years to Congo as a researcher, lecturer, author, project manager and consultant. He heads the Contemporary History Section of the Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa and is Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Boston University Brussels. Trefon is also the author of Congo Masquerade: The Political Culture of Aid Inefficiency and Reform Failure (African Arguments / ZED Books).

[From Royal African Society event announcement, here]

Moderator:

Just to begin, let’s think about this discussion in the context of the death of Augustin Katumba Mwanke on Sunday, who handled the mining contracts in the Congo.

Théodore Trefon:

Elections and their impact: the question is, do elections in the Congo matter? The answer is both yes and no.

Why yes?

Elections are part of the democratic process. There was some popular enthusiasm for the elections, with people braving bad weather and waiting in line all day to vote. Elections are also a sign of political maturity, a manifestation of political sovereignty, and affirmation of national sovereignty. It reflects respect for international commitments. Electoral mobilization contributes to political awakening in remote areas. In the DRC, there was re-distrubution of parliamentary seats, and some regime strongmen were not re-elected (Thambwe, Endundo, Kabwelulu).

Why no?

For one thing, the 2005-2006 electoral cycle was incomplete. Local elections were never held, so the country went into a new phase in 2011 without finishing the 2005 process. If there’s no accountability between local populations and local representatives, there’s no hyphen between local people and the people in government. The same mistake was reproduced in 2011. Furthermore, the elections were chaotic. There was also pre-electoral manipulation and changes made to the constitution [I believe he is here referring to changes in the electoral law made in January and June 2011, but not sure which he’s referring to or if he’s referring to both]. The membership of the electoral commission was changed [see here and here], which also led to questions of credibility locally and internationally. You have a president who is increasingly marginalized and vulnerable, and thus a political stalemate: who is in control? Who is running the country?

How power is organized in Congo is extrememly fragmented. With major institutions like the World Bank, do they know what’s going on in other sectors, like public health, and with other organizations? There’s a lack of coordination and communication between people in the government and among different sectors. Then there is Kabila [Joseph Kabila, the President], who was seen at the home of Katumba after he died. This was the first time Kabila has been seen since January 5.

Since time is short, I’ll start with my conclusions. There are three possible political scenarios that could emerge:

1. Kabila remains in power, controls the parliament, manipulates international partners, and it’s business as usual. In my opinion this is the most likely scenario.

2. Kabila remains in power but comes under pressure by opposition forces and civil society, and the opposition gets organized for elections in 2016. I think the UDPS [the main opposition party] regrets not being able to capitalize on political relationships in parliament as a result  boycotting the 2006 elections. In this scenario they’ll look to have a greater effect in 2016.

3. Kabila is ousted by coup or assassination and Congolese sovereignty erodes.

Since 2001 international partners have devoted a lot of funding and diplomatic effort to bring about positive change. But just because there were elections doesn’t mean things will move ahead. So what are the major challenges? There have been a lot of efforts with international partners, but little tangible success. According to Human Development Index indicators and transparency rankings, Congo is still low or has even declined. It seems we’re in a situation of change without improvement. Reform failure in past ten years is a shared responsibility.

In the context of patrimonial politics, and the high economic stakes, do Congolese authorities really want change? Does the international community want a strong and independent Congo? We’ve had 50 years of Cold War manipulation and other involvement [by the West]. Reform has been handicapped by overwhelming challenges, crisis is historically entrenched, politics and society are complex, and the country is vast and very diverse. MONUSCO’s role has been limited and its claim to fame is that it’s the best airline in Congo. Rwanda is also a challenge, but I don’t want to say that’s the sole reason why there’s not change.

It’s impossible to address all challenges at the same time; everything is a priority, but where to start? Where’s the financial committment? Many strategies make sense at a theoretical level, and there are many great experts working on these challenges, but implementation seems unattainable.

There are two missing links:

1. Adequate administration and lack of an honest, motivated, well-paid cadre of civil servants. [PowerPoint presentation shows photo of a bare office with a few administrators standing around a table.] Where are the phones, the computers, the chairs?

2. Adequate involvement of a vibrant and independent civil society.

Kabila is too weak to share power. Look at the idea of power sharing; the state has to be strong. A vulnerable and fragile state will not be willing to share power; it wants to capture and consolidate power, and once solidified, then you can start sharing. Right now we’re still in the phase of regime consolidation, which is why ciivl society wasn’t able to play a big enough role.

There are success stories too, but they’re problematic. There are many NGOs, IGOs, and other organizations acting on behalf of the state. They replace the state and this perpetuates dependency. And when things go wrong, it’s never the fault of government authorities; it exonerates authorities from responsibility. Security sector? That’s up to the UN. National parks? That’s up to American environmental NGOs.

Final thought: Congo is on the move, but where is it going?

[Power Point shows photo of a woman on a bike, riding away from us, on a path in the forest.]

“DR Congo: Beyond the 2011 Elections”: Two Panel Discussions

Introduction

Absent the ability to live-tweet at this event (I picked out a hashtag and everything!), I’ve decided to do the next best thing – take good notes and blog about it. (Many thanks to @PonyTree’s tweets, which have helped me fill in some blanks and jog my memory.) The coming series of blog posts will outline two panel discussions hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Oxford Central Africa Forum, and the Royal African Society on 14 February 2012.

For each post I’ll start with the Royal African Society’s bio(s) of the speaker(s), cut and paste from the RAS event description (the event description is here, but not sure how long that link will stay active). The line-up was switched around a bit because some speakers weren’t able to make it. I’ve re-arranged them in the right order below.

Here’s the Disclaimer: I will provide the results of my most valiant efforts to decipher my notes and remember what was said. So please bear in mind that I undoubtedly missed some things (especially as the evening wore on and discussions moved more rapidly), and I don’t discount the possibility that I may have misinterpreted some things as well. It was also very difficult to hear audience questions and, at times, the speakers’ comments. This series of posts may look like a transcript, but will be far from any such thing and won’t read like a transcript normally would. It’s simply easier and faster to clean my notes this way and I’m too lazy busy with my research to make intelligent summaries. (Anyone who was there, please tell me if I made any awful mistakes, I welcome corrections!) I also, unfortunately, didn’t seem to catch who the two moderators were, so they are just referred to as “Moderator.” I welcome enlightenment on this, again, from anyone else who was there.

I’ll break the discussions and Q&A sessions up into digestible pieces, probably into about eight blog posts.

Finally, I’ll provide some links to stories in the news here and there, for easy reference. The speakers and audience members were all well informed and there were many references made to people, places, and events for which some readers might like some context. The first actual post will follow shortly after this introduction.

Enjoy!

Panel 1: The Elections and the International Community

Théodore Trefon, Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa

Théodore Trefon is a Congo expert specializing in the politics of state-society relations. He has devoted the past 25 years to Congo as a researcher, lecturer, author, project manager and consultant. He heads the Contemporary History Section of the Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa and is Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Boston University Brussels. Trefon is also the author of Congo Masquerade: The Political Culture of Aid Inefficiency and Reform Failure (African Arguments / ZED Books).

Marco Jowell, School of Oriental and African Studies

Marco Jowell is a former Senior Research Analyst at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with a particular focus on Central Africa. He is currently a doctoral candidate at SOAS.

Kris Berwouts, Independent Expert on Central Africa

Kris Berwouts studied African languages and history at the University of Ghent in Belgium. Over the past 25 years, he has worked with both Belgian and international NGOs on peace and reconciliation, security and democratic processes. He was the director of the Belgian-based European Network for Central Africa (EurAc) between 2007 and 2012. Now he works as an independent expert on Central Africa.

Panel 2: The Future of Congo Post-Elections

Madame Marie-Thérèse Nlandu Mpolo Nene, human rights lawyer & political leader

Marie-Thérèse Nlandu is a leading human rights lawyer from the DRC. She is also the President of Congo-Pax, the Party for Peace in Congo. Due to her work as a political leader and lawyer, Marie-Thérèse has been in exile twice: From 1993-2002 in Belgium and from 2007-present in the UK. In November 2006, Marie-Thérèse was arrested by agents of the Special Services police and charged with “organising an insurrectionary movement” and “illegal possession of firearms”. She was subsequently detained in Kinshasa’s central prison and became an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. Pressure from Amnesty International and other human rights groups allowed for her eventual acquittal and release. Marie-Thérèse is married with 4 children.

Eric Joyce MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Eric Joyce has been a Member of Parliament for Falkirk since 2005. As well as having an interest in defence and military issues, Eric is also interested in Africa and development issues and he is currently the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

Harry Verhoeven, Oxford University

Harry Verhoeven has just finished a doctorate at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, St Cross College. Harry has a keen interest in the issues of regional conflict, relations between regimes and rebel movements and natural resources, writing on Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. He is the Convenor of Oxford University’s China-Africa Network (OUCAN) and Oxford’s Central Africa Forum (OCAF) and is writing a book on the internal dynamics of Africa’s Great War.

Biographical blurbs taken from Royal African Society event announcement and not composed by me.

Flag of DR Congo

“Everything We Did, We Did For Us”: Diplomacy and Humanitarian Aid

I am just listening to my NPR Fresh Air podcasts this afternoon, and would like to share some quotes from the very interesting interview with Peter Van Buren, a veteran Foreign Service officer who “was sent to Baghdad as part of a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team, where he was in charge of a group trying to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and economy.” His new book is called We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. You can listen to the whole interview here, and I highly recommend that you do.

His descriptions of the American military presence in other countries is disheartening for someone like me who believes that the US is capable of doing a lot of good without being careless as it attempts to do so. But he goes on to discuss a number of other challenges that confront the diplomatic corps. Below are some choice quotes.

We were never able to do things on a large enough scale to make a difference, because the thinking was never long term. Everyone in Iraq was there on a series of one-year tours, myself included. Everyone was told that they needed to create accomplishments, that we had to document our success, that we had to produce a steady stream of photos of accomplishments, and pictures of smiling Iraqis, and metrics of charts. It was impossible under these circumstances for us to do anything as long term as a water and sewer project.

…

We rarely thought past next week’s situation update. The embassy would rarely engage with us on a project that wasn’t flashy enough to involve photographs or maybe bringing a journalist out to shoot some video of something that looked good.

…

One colonel that I worked with decided that the best way to win hearts and minds was to give away stuff. Everybody likes free stuff. He characterized this as a humanitarian gesture, and the project was called HA, Humanitarian Assistance. What would happen is the Army would load up some trucks with food bags. The amount of food in there might’ve given a family of four a meal or two, it was nothing special, nothing elaborate. He would load up these food bags, drive out to some village, and hand them out to people.

What you saw in these instances was very interesting. If you imagine yourself as a camera and you focused very closely, you saw happy smiling soldiers handing food bags over to young children or women who were smiling as they accepted them. If you zoomed out a little bit, you found that the soldiers who weren’t in camera range were probably not smiling. You zoomed out a little further, you found that the Iraqi men would stay in the background and give us kind of hard stares. This is a country where pride, where self-image is very important to people, and being handed food by Americans who had invaded their country and in many cases caused damage and violence around them, was a shock to the Iraqi people, was a blow to their pride.

…

Chances are your listeners thinking about this constitutes the only time anything was evaluated, what we did there. The entire process was one of improvisation, of “please do something, because something might work.” There was never anybody who said “Hey, that’s not working, let’s not do that again” or “This seems to have promise, let’s keep doing that.” What we did was never examined, never looked at. There was no sense of output. Everything we did, we did for us… The sense was it wasn’t about the Iraqis, it was about us.

Van Buren raises tons of issues that concern humanitarian assistance and the ethical dilemmas associated with it, including lack of understanding of local context, local knowledge, and local economies – from accidentally driving entrepreneurs away from their businesses to collect garbage, to mistakenly applying the notion that chicken should be packaged rather than being bought live in a market, to buying $5 million worth of a water purifier that ended up being useless in Iraq because of the salt content of the water.

Personally, I think all of this coming after an invasion and war adds all kinds of extra problems. Van Buren, in fact, refers to embassy work as the “benign side of empire.” But it strikes me that in one interview Van Buren can touch on so many of the issues I’ve seen raised since I started following the #SmartAid discussion just over a year ago.

What do you think? Do any of these issues resonate with you and the problems you come up against in aid work? One of the problems Van Buren identifies is that the system encourages individuals to follow procedure, do what they’re told, and not rock the boat. But structure is important. So how do we get around these structural barriers when something needs to be done differently, and how do you ensure that an alternative strategy will not also find alternative ways of screwing things up?

The Danger of a Single Story

I periodically listen to this talk by Chimamanda Adichie, a former classmate and a friend of mine, called “The Danger of a Single Story.”  (You can watch it here.)

This evening, this quote is sticking with me.  It comes after she tells the single story she had of the houseboy her family hired, who she was only told came from a very poor family:

… Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me.  She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language.  She asked if she could listen to what she called my ‘tribal music,’ and was consequently very dissapointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey…

What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me.  Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa. A single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way. No possibility of feelings more complex than pity. No possibility of a connection as human equals.

And, while I’m at it, one of my other favorite bits:

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is “nkali.” It’s a noun that loosely translates to “to be greater than another.” Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali. How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story.  Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

And this one reminds me of the suggestion someone put forward, reported by Linda Raftree on the Africa Gathering London conference, that “African newspapers should use photos of drunk, vomiting Brits to illustrate stories about parliament“:

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called “American Psycho,” and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

The upshot, according to Chimamanda: “The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

In Honor of Douglas Adams This Towel Day

I happened to be reading The Salmon of Doubt last night, and came across this gem, which called to my mind, 12 years later, such developments as wireless internet, social networking, Google Earth, crisis mapping, applications like Ushahidi, GPS navigation…  What hit me strongest while reading it was that he essentially predicts the creation of platforms like Ushahidi:

It would be interesting to keep a running log of predictions and see if we can spot the absolute corkers when they are still just pert little buds. One such that I spotted recently was a statement made in February by a Mr. Wayne Leuck, vice-president of engineering at USWest, the American phone company. Arguing against the deployment of high-speed wireless data connections, he said, “Granted, you could use it in your car going sixty miles an hour, but I don’t think too many people are going to be doing that.”  Just watch. That’s a statement that will come back to haunt him. Satellite navigation. Wireless Internet. As soon as we start mapping physical location back into shared information space, we will trigger yet another explosive growth in Internet applications. At least, that’s what I predict. I could, of course, be wildly wrong.

Douglas Adams, in the Independent on Sunday, November 1999

If he were around today, I think he would be thrilled, though not surprised, to see so many students with their own “portable” computers (see Salmon of Doubt page 89, where in 1989 he refers to his “portable Mac” and follows up with the comment “I know, I know, you hate me”) accessing wireless internet where they have a universe of information at their fingertips.  I wonder what he would have to say about the way the Internet has been used to connect like-minded people horizontally, and how social networking tools created the space in which revolutions could be coordinated and launched– and repressed.  I wonder what his contributions would have been to art, science, design, crisis mapping, interactive literature, and who knows what else.  I wonder what kind of toys and gadgets he would be bragging about in newspapers, saying how they give the term “disposable income” a whole new meaning for him.

Douglas Adams is by far one of the most broadly intelligent, funny, down to earth, complex yet simple human beings I have ever heard of.  His philosophy seemed to penetrate everything he did.  The way he wrote about the absurdity of our existence was ingenious, because it was at once hilarious and not depressing– and yet totally true to life.  It saddens me that I’ll never be able to look forward to a new book, a new essay, a new philosophy, a new bit of tech news, a new subtle piece of social commentary disguised as science fiction, a new poke in the ribs and knowing chuckle to fans over some recently demonstrated bit of human peculiarity.  But I’m glad he stuck around long enough to stress to everyone the importance of always bringing a towel.

Photo of Douglas Adams by: Michael Hughes (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Hard Hitting Coverage of Obama’s Middle East Speech by Carol Gallo

It got some laughs on Twitter.  Enjoy!

Three Cups of Tea: A View From Waziristan

I wasn’t going to get involved in the whole Three-Cups-of-Tea-Mageddon.  (You can find links to 130 and counting blog posts here courtesy of the very excellent Good Intentions Are Not Enough site.)  I was like “okay, the guy’s a douche and he made a bunch of money off of his douchery, next conversation please.” But then I heard from a friend of mine who has a particularly interesting perspective: he’s from South Waziristan.

He said that he had heard of Three Cups of Tea when it was published, but that he had never gotten around to reading it as he was busy with the demands of getting a university education.  (Okay, he didn’t say it sarcastically. That’s my garnish, if you caught it— and he’d be the first to admit that he is unusual in this respect compared to most other young people from Waziristan.)

When this Mortenson kerfuffle broke and my friend had a chance to read some of the stories about what was wrong with the book, many including excerpts such as those quoted by Aid Watch, he told me he was “shocked” by the portrayal of Waziri men.

He told me about the cultural implications of the saying that the title of the book got its name from, at least from his perspective as a young Waziri man.  He said that according to the Wikipedia entry on Three Cups of Tea, the expression comes from a Balti proverb: “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honoured guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family…”

He told me: “Carol, with full confidence I would like to say that you will have not to wait till the thrid cup when you come in contact with the Waziri tribe… You will become a member of the family on the first cup of tea.  Once you come to their home, then your safety and welfare is something sacred to them.  Their culture, custom and tradition require them to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of their guest.  This is the reason why I am being proud to be a Waziri.”

I asked him if it would be okay for me to share some of his thoughts and some of his words on Usalama, on condition of anonymity, and he said yes.  He said it would be “a good thing for people to know what the facts [are]… The outside world looks at us with a specific lens, and we are unable to counter [those perspectives], as we do not have proper exposure” and it can be very dangerous to speak out on many issues.

He stressed the importance of mentioning in this blog post that “this perspective is from Waziristan.”

I could frame this with my own analysis or try to contextualize, as my friend’s perspective is obviously also informed by his own background—but: 1) I’m not that interested in the Mortenson thing and 2) I’ll leave that to you—the whole point of this post was to provide an anonymous platform with which to present a young Waziri’s thoughts on Three Cups of Tea, not mine.

My friend says he now plans to read the book for sure.

Questions from Europeans and Americans to Kenyan Tourism Site

Original Lead-In: These questions about Kenya were posted on a Kenyan Tourism portal and were answered by the website owner.  I came across them through a Kenyan classmate of mine at Yale.

Update: Thanks to my ever clever friends on Twitter, particularly Brett Keller, it quickly came to my attention that the whole Q&A is a hoax.  See, for example: http://www.snopes.com/travel/foreign/olympics.asp.

Just as I was about to delete this post altogether, I saw a note from Tom Murphy to keep it up solely based on the fact that it is funny.  I decided I agreed with him and didn’t delete it.  And because I totally bought the whole thing, based on my day-to-day interactions with Americans and their completely inaccurate presumptions about Africa (and my classmate from Kenya also believing it to be real), maybe it does actually speak to many of the stereotypes that Westerners have about Africa.  And, just as relevant, maybe it speaks to many of the stereotypes out there of Western tourists, as Brett pointed out.

In any case, these are some questions you can ponder as you chuckle at the Q&A below:

Q: Does it ever get windy in Kenya?  I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see elephants in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Nairobi to Nakuru – can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it’s only two thousand kilometres….take lots of water.

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Kenya? (Sweden)
A: So it’s true what they say about Swedes.

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Kenya?  Can you send me a list of them in Nairobi and Mombasa? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about Koala Bear racing in Kenya? (USA)
A: Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific.  A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe which does not…oh forget it.  Sure, the Koala Bear racing is every Tuesday night in Koinange Street.  Come naked.

Q: Which direction is north in Kenya? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we’ll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Kenya?  (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Do you have perfume in Kenya? (France)
A: No. We don’t stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth.  Can you tell me where I can sell it in Kenya? (USA)
A: Anywhere where a significant number of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in Kenya where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Kenya? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.

Q: Are there killer bees in Kenya? (Germany)
A: Not yet, but for you, we’ll import them.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Nairobi and is milk available all year round?
A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter-gatherers.  Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Kenya who can dispense rattlesnake serum.  (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All Kenyan snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I was in Kenya in 1969 and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Mombasa.  Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, but you will probably still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speek English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first

Mbuyuni Development Youth Group: A Contribution to A Day Without Dignity

This post is a contribution in support of the Day Without Dignity counter-campaign proposed by Saundra S. at the blog Good Intentions Are Not Enough.  Please read the post about the counter-campaign at the link above, and please see the post that showcases and summarizes all the Day Without Dignity posts here.

In the summer of 2008 I got a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to study Swahili with Yale in Mombasa.  While there, I became friends with a shop owner who spent all of his spare time on the weekends administering a community based organization in his town about 45 minutes by matatu outside Old Town.  He invited me up for a visit.  The organization, Mbuyuni, works on a number of small-scale projects in the neighborhood, including clean up, trash collection, and recycling.  They also run a tree nursery, make soap to sell from the arobaini trees in the neighborhood, and assist with the neighborhood’s school for children that can’t afford school fees or for whatever reason can’t go to the primary school just down the road.

Mbuyuni needed things.  They needed work gloves, work boots, office supplies, and an mkokoteni (hand cart, seen in photo below, which they were only renting at the time).  Without having been to visit them, however, I wouldn’t have been able to even guess about the things they needed.  The next time I went with my Swahili professor to Nakumatt, the large supermarket in Mombasa, I picked up some of these things for them.

The photo above of one of Mbuyuni’s volunteers is pretty representative of the attitude and enthusiasm with which the group approaches their work.  The area is pretty rural and “poor” in terms of cash income and capital, but people in the neighborhood were happy and generous, didn’t have mortgages and student loans to worry about, and were in need of administrative and technical skills more than anything else.

In the photo above, an Mbuyuni volunteer shows me his rubber sandals.  This kind of footwear is very popular and very available in the region, and is perfectly suitable for walking around Mombasa and the neighboring villages.  Plus they’re easy to wash.  The group emphasized to me their need for work boots and work gloves, which would allow them to safely navigate the pieces of broken glass and other debris they sort through as part of the garbage collection and recycling work they do every weekend.  At no point did they request or suggest that people from half-way across the world send worn out second hand boots or cheaply made cloth shoes liable to fall apart after a few days working in them.  In fact, their primary interest in me was the following:

• My ability to draft prose in English, particularly grant proposals
• My computer skills and ability to assist them with typing and printing documents instead of, for example, trying to submit proposals on paper that were drafted in pencil
• Taking and printing photographs for them to use in showing potential donors what kind of work they do
• My leverage as an American to make contacts with companies and people in the US that might want to buy their soap, baby trees and plants, and jewelery they fashioned out of plastic debris and coconut shells from the garbage clean up.

A line of trees in Mbuyuni's nursery

I have been in touch with my friend from Mbuyuni since I got back, helping when and how I can.  The current project is one in which I will be helping the organization set up a blog in which it can discuss its work and its members can hopefully discuss some of their ideas about international development aid.  I’m currently in the process of exchanging ideas with the administrator of the organization and reviewing and translating materials they gave me written in Swahili.

I think the main point of all this is just to emphasize that you never know what people need unless they tell you– it’s not very constructive to send free things that are either unneeded or would take away from the local economy.  And I think that’s what the Day Without Dignity counter-campaign is all about.

That doesn’t mean you have to drop everything and devote your life to aid work or African Studies or anything like that.  But what would be good is if people– donors– would do some research and educate themselves about the organizations they give to and the people and places who are supposed to benefit.

Writing this on the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. feels relevant to me as one of his quotes has come to encapsulate much of how I see international development aid: “On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act…  True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.  It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Lifting the Poverty Curtain’s post for A Day Without Dignity also emphasizes that aid and charity are not solutions in themselves and that dignity plays a central role in what poor people know to be key in poverty alleviation.  (Please read the post, it is excellent.)  I have written previously about the need to change the way we think about “development” on a broad scale.

The bottom line here is that people who want to help should not fall into the Whites in Shining Armor trap.  On April 5, don’t go shoeless.  And don’t buy shoes made by an American company so that profits go to that company and potentially hurt local businesses abroad when free shoes suddenly become available.  Something you can do instead that would be more helpful is educate yourself about international assistance and afford the people you want to help a bit of dignity by acknowledging that they are not helpless, passive beneficiaries of your benevolence.

Reflections on DRI’s New Directions in Development Conference: Professor William Easterly

Below are some of my thoughts on Professor Easterly’s talk at the NYU Development Research Institute‘s New Directions in Development Conference on March 4, 2011. More posts to follow as they get written.

“From Skepticism to Development”

William Easterly, NYU Department of Economics

Professor Easterly’s talk was centered on the idea of challenging the notion of the “benevolent autocrat.”  He first outlined four biases that inform the notion that in order to stimulate economic growth, it helps to have autocratic leadership that can enact unpopular but necessary economic reforms.

First he challenged the claim that most big successes are autocrats by pointing out that this does not address the questions of whether most autocrats are successes or whether most failures are also autocrats.  He did, in fact, make the absolutionist claim that all failures are autocrats.  (Personally I have an aversion to absolute statements and am pretty confident I could come up with at least one exception to this—if I understood how “failure” was being qualified.)

So it was around this time I started wondering what exactly we were talking about when referencing “success” and “failure.”  It took me a while to understand that growth in GDP was the measure of success for this talk.  Another question that came to mind was how exactly are we qualifying “democracy” in its juxtaposition to autocracy. Professor Easterly cleared this matter up by describing it as “something sensible.”

The second bias he highlighted was that you hear more about autocratic successes than their failures; and the third was the “leadership bias,” in which people tend to attribute successes and failures to leadership even if there is a weak or absent relationship between the leadership and certain economic outcomes.  We tend to take leaders too seriously, Professor Easterly said, when it comes to autocrats and economic growth.  The fourth bias was the bias of the “hot hand”: that hot streaks will perpetuate themselves.  In this way we end up not giving leaders credit for what happens in the future; they’re praised for growth even if that growth can only be short term.

It is around this point that I began to get the feeling the “we” in Easterly’s talk is not Western scholars and social scientists in general, but Western economists— and maybe political scientists too, given that poli-sci seems to be getting more and more fixated with economics and economic models.  I know this because I have a background in the liberal arts, international law, and, to an extent, anthropology and history—and most of the biases that Easterly’s “we” apparently takes for granted are familiar to me as assumptions that should be questioned.

Professor Easterly then listed four facts to dispel the myth of the benevolent autocrat:

1. Autocracies have lower growth on average compared to democracies, and higher variance in growth; (I briefly wondered how the Gini coefficient and other measures of inequality would fit into this)
2. Autocracies have lower income levels— “bad” institutions lead to low income (quotes are mine);
3. Global economic growth has historically followed the idea of individual rights;

Here I had a bit of a problem with the correlation/causality issue, even though I don’t think Professor Easterly was really trying to make a case for causation. What I had a bigger problem with was the fact that economic growth also historically follows slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation; and to me the connection there seems a little more concrete.  If you can exploit people overseas, you don’t have to exploit your own citizens at home so individual rights becomes more feasible.  The claim also omits the fact that the origins of “individual” rights— and by extension citizens’ and/or human rights— lie in paradigms and legal frameworks that advocated rights for particular groups of people at the exclusion of others, such as slaves or non-property owners or indigenous people or women.  Seems to me that, if anything, the correlation should be turned on its head—individual rights appear to follow economic growth, which was enabled by the denial of individual rights to people outside the sphere of political power.

4.  Even if there are some benevolent autocrats, it is doubtful that they provide a helpful model. (That I agree with 100%.)

Professor Easterly then highlighted four doubts that illustrate the holes in the benevolent autocrat theory:

1. How can we give credit to benevolent autocrats for economic growth when even the most prominent economists and scholars in the world have been unable to agree on or empirically establish what causes economic growth?
2. How can a centralized autocratic regime have the necessary local knowledge to affect economic growth at the national level?
3. Democracies actually contribute to the economic success of autocracies through FDI and other means.
4. Can autocracies “do” innovation?  (Quotes are mine.) According to Professor Easterly, you can’t plan innovation—it’s a surprise.  You stumble upon it and you need individual rights to create the environment for innovation.

Then, four surprises:

1. Countries’ top exports have changed drastically over the past ten years;
2. Public goods payoffs are often a surprise as they have unexpected repercussions;
3. Scientific discoveries often have surprise payoffs;
4. There are often surprises in the way these changes manifest at the local level

Professor Easterly then asked, shouldn’t we be skeptical? The answer, he says, is yes, but that there are three default positions in the face of skepticism:

1. Evidence: the evidence is, at best, inconclusive;
2. Ignorance: If top-down doesn’t work, then what’s needed is a system that doesn’t require that approach;
3. Values: Rights are an end in themselves; autocracy is not

An important point Professor Easterly made during the Q&A is that he was not trying to make the case that evidence shows democracies are more prone to growth; just that the evidence is inconclusive.

By and large I agree with Professor Easterly’s main points.  I am wondering where the phrase “benevolent dictator” came from because it seems like a contradiction.  To me it implies a scenario where basic human rights are generally respected, quality of life is high, and the government is autocratic.  “Benevolent,” after all, is defined according to the dictionary in my version of MS Word, as:

1. showing kindness or goodwill
2. performing good or charitable acts and not seeking to make a profit [1]

 

This hardly sounds like a recipe for disaster.  Kuwait springs to mind as an example; consistently ranking highly in the UNDP Human Development Index despite autocratic rule.  The general assessment of human rights in Kuwait is mixed—but for the most part severe abuses pale in comparison to a lot of other places.

The phrase “benevolent dictator,” then, seems inapt.  It was Pinochet and his collaboration with the Chicago Boys, which led to impressive (though short term) economic growth, that came to mind as Professor Easterly was giving his speech— and benevolent is the last word I would use to describe him.

To highlight my general agreement, though, I will end with an excerpt from the introduction to my Master’s thesis at Yale, written in the spring of 2009:

… the debate over whether democracy or totalitarianism is better for economic growth and development, with proponents on both sides, is out of date and misses the point.  Both sides have significant empirical evidence to back them up, indicating that context is key and regime type is not necessarily determinant.  What both sides of this debate should be aiming for is an analysis of how economic development on the one hand and respect for human rights and the rule of law on the other can be pursued in such a way as to be mutually reinforcing.

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[1] Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.