Feeding the Beast

No, this isn't another post about the Easterly-Sachs mudslinging. It's a post about chimpanzees! And it belongs on this blog because MDG number 7 is about environmental sustainability. And because I got to chat to a bunch of people who know tons about what the Congolese government is doing to protect the environment.

JACK gets a nomination for the coolest place in Lubumbashi. Only opened 2 years ago, they already have 25 chimpanzees rescued from traffickers, with a rehabilitation programme and the creation of a sanctuary underway.

Did you know that there are only about 200,000 chimpanzees left, and about 40% of them live in the DRC? And you can still find chimpanzee meat in the Lubumbashi market. The elicit trade in chimpanzees is so lucrative for some that the sanctuary was set on fire, killing two babies, in the early work of the project; in spite of a tough start, they're moving ahead with an impressive project. Kudos to these guys for the great work they're doing in difficult circumstances.

Poetic interlude

Kiwis inspire
Verse to explain global trade.
Why Portuguese tea?

A street by any other name

Usually I have trouble finding my way around a new city because, first, my sense of direction is crap, but also because I don't know the vocabulary used to describe the city. Various shops/ plazas/ trees/ soccer fields become landmarks, and my foreign description of street names rarely makes sense to taxi drivers. Not the case here. EVERYONE insists on giving directions according to the name of the street. I know the downtown area pretty well by now, and if someone were to say 'across the street from the vodacom shop,' or 'next to the bank', I'd know where to go. However, instead I'm told about the office that is 'at the corner of rue Kassaboubou and Kabangu'. First of all, street maps of Lubumbashi are hard to come by. Secondly, street signs themselves are scarce. What few there are have dark yellow stenciled letters on a bright blue background with a red border (pictured. Seriously. Can you read that??). I go everywhere on foot and they're hard to read! I wonder what the motorists do. Of course, maybe I'm just making excuses for my bad sense of direction....

What Glaeser says about Indian cities

Edward Glaeser went to India, and wrote about basic services! He makes

a moderate, and only somewhat facetious, libertarian progressive proposal. Unless a government manages to provide clean water to its poorest citizens, it should refrain from any new barrier to international trade, complex nationalization scheme or draconian zoning laws.

Throughout, he makes a bunch of references to western urban planning a century or two ago, which is a no-no in my book, but I like the link he makes here and there between basic service provision, and larger transformations of urbanisation and governance. I'm finding this particularly hard to come by here, with people talking about decentralisation and public services like they're happening in different countries. All the discussions about 'governance in post-conflict DRC' would be much more interesting to me if they talked less about political parties, and more about clean drinking water.

Academia's arguments

Bill Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs are arguing so enthusiastically in the blogosphere that they are making new parts of speech out of each other. It's heartening that two such fabulous intellects are so passionate about making change happen. What's discouraging, though, is that they both seem more interested in arguing than problem solving.

Sachs says, people living in Africa are poor because of an unfortunate confluence of geography, history, and a complex mix of other things. People are literally dying of poverty. The aid that's being given isn't anywhere near enough to fix these things, that's crap. Solution: more aid.

Easterly says, people living in Africa are poor because of an unfortunate confluence of history, weak institutions, bad governance, and a complex mix of other things. People are literally dying of poverty. The aid that's being given to governments isn't making it to the people, that's crap. Solution: better aid.

Coincidentally, I find Easterly's assessment more interesting, but I'm let down by his conclusion. Giving aid to poor people (instead of poor governments) is a good way of making sure some of the short term objectives of aid are met - it's good when people can buy medicine, eat more nutritious food, and send their kids to school. But, it doesn't do much to fix the bad institutions, thus falling short of Easterly's own definitions of good aid. Even with Easterly's institutionalist understanding of the world, it's hard to argue with Sach's conclusion: levels of aid are scandalously low. When we know what works, and we can muster the political will, we should do more.

Governments have fallen radically short even of their own modest commitments. People living in many countries in the world are facing huge challenges of ineffective and corrupt governments, inadequate transport infrastructure, unfair terms of trade, gender inequality, and on and on. We need more AND better aid. The question isn't which is more important, given the information we have about the way the world works. There's a pretty high level of agreement (at least in civil society, if not in academia) about what is needed. The real issue is how we can make the change happen. Both Easterly and Sachs are disappointingly quiet on this.

secret society of NGOs

I wanted to compare pictures of the World Vision office and the mayor's office in this blog post, but I wasn't allowed to take a picture of the mayor's office. So, this is the World Vision office. If anyone knows someone who works here, please hook me up; I'm dying to learn about what goes on there, and am unable to get permission to talk to anyone inside, even with my litany of documentation.

Creative Methods

Not only does the strike continue, but the only person at the university seemingly able to provide me with an 'attestation de recherche' is travelling. Without it, there isn't a reception desk in the whole town I can get past. So, week three is well on its way without a single one of the planned interviews in sight. I'm sure it's a blessing in disguise, since I've now had the chance to get to know all 7 communes in the city, and kick back and drink a Fanta with a number of teachers, ministers, shopkeepers, bourgemestres, and others on the front lines of service delivery. In fact, the best 'interview' I could imagine was at a bar. I'm going to have to get creative with how to pitch this back in Joburg, since the kind of information I'm ending up with is at best a distant cousin of what's in the research plan.

The secret society of mayors

When I say I'm studying urban governance, it's automatically politicized. Expected conversations are about power, and politicians, and there is a great deal of suspicion about sharing information that could be sensitive. Everything is steered carefully away from touchier aspects of governance, like the way resources are distributed, and the way decisions are made. When I say I'm studying public services, I get some kind of wild-card exemption from politics that is apparently granted to the 'technical sectors.' The health, and water, and education budgets are laid out on the table, and before anyone blinks, we are well into open conversations about the way resources are distributed, and the way decisions are made....Even in academic literature, in writing about the administration of public services it seems like mentioning power (and people) are optional. Am I missing something? Is there some special thing people who govern urban spaces do that has nothing to do with resources? I'll start keeping an eye out for a secret handshake.

Striking Out

Welcome. I will be writing mostly about my research interests, which include poverty and inequality, migration, decentralisation, public service delivery, and the MDGs.

I arrived in Lubumbashi 2 weeks ago for fieldwork. I spent the first week talking to professors at UNILU, fishing through libraries, and getting to know the city. Week two was reserved for meeting with government officials in all of the various municipal service sectors. However, they have been on strike. This has given me the chance to do all kinds of things that I'm sure will prove central to my research, like visit the art museum and the zoo, find a Swahili teacher, and start a blog.