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Category: Development

Published January 24, 2011

Development Policy Quote of the Week

“[I]n the world of development, good intentions can often have negative consequences. Unfortunately, the result of such good works is that many villagers now see volunteers and development workers as little more than easily tapped sources of funding for projects that, if the communities were truly interested, could have been initiated by the villagers themselves. (…) Economic development is a relay that takes place over generations, and no single runner can expect to finish the race. Members of the Peace Corps do the most service where they cheer, but do not lead, local development activities.”

— Robert L. Strauss, former Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia and former Peace Corps country director in Cameroon, in response to a New Yorker article on Peace Corps volunteer Rajeev Goyal.

Published January 22, 2011

Microfinance: The Conversation So Far

I started the year by blogging about microfinance, discussing the institution’s woes after coming across an article in the New York Times that did the same. A few days later, I snarkily posted about the good news being that microfinance research was not as bad as medical research.

I am not an expert on microfinance. The last time I conducted any kind of research on the topic was for my Masters thesis at the Université de Montréal, which I hope no one ever reads given how embarrassingly bad it was. My knowledge of the institution comes from reading working papers and journal articles on the topic, a module on which I teach each fall in my development seminar.

Consequently, a friend of my wife’s and mine who has been working in the microfinance industry for a while now took me to task and wrote a lengthy reply on Facebook to my initial posts. Given how insightful his detailed response was, I asked him if I could blog it, and he agreed under the condition that he remained anonymous. The five most important points he made in his response follow.

  1. The Opposition is Politically Driven
  2. The Evaluation Timeframe Matters,
  3. The Poor Deserve Financial Services
  4. Governments Need to Regulate the Industry
  5. Microfinance is Here to Stay

These five posts represent my very modest contribution — with the help of a friend — to the policy discussion surrounding microfinance. If you have an interest in the topic, I strongly encourage you to follow senior Center for Global Development senior fellow David Roodman’s blog, in which he shares his insights while writing a book on the impacts of microfinance. I have a feeling his book will be required reading in my development seminar when it comes out.

Published January 21, 2011

Brookings Africa Growth Forum

Blogging has been light this week because I spent three days in Washington for the Brookings Institution’s first annual Africa Growth Forum, at which I was presenting my paper on the welfare impacts of contract farming. My slides are available here.

The conference was very interesting, as each session tried to include two presentations: one by an African researcher, and one by a non-African researcher. Most of the discussions following presentations focused on the policy implications of the research papers just presented, which was a nice change of pace from the discussions following presentations at most development conferences and development seminars.

My personal highlights of the conference (and it was one of those conferences where I had to make difficult choices as to which session to attend at any given time) were Nathan Nunn’s presentation of his paper showing how gender roles may have originated in whether an ethnic group used the plough, Stefan Dercon’s presentation of his work on insurance for funeral groups (iddir) in Ethiopia, and World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s remarks during dinner on Wednesday, in which she discussed how food price volatility was one of the most important issues facing development policy makers. I wonder whether she meant truly meant food price volatility, and not rising food prices, however.

I also had the pleasure of meeting several people at a tweetup of people with an interest in development policy organized by Owen Barder, where I had great conversations with several like-minded individuals.