August 2009

Much has changed in Zimbabwe since last November. There are signs of recovery following the return of price stability after full dollarization in January. However doubts about the political situation continue to obstruct further recovery.

The most visible sign of improvement is the demise of surreal hyperinflation which according to one estimate peaked at about 80 billion percent. Interestingly, full dollarization initially occurred not because the government chose it as a deliberate stabilization measure.  Exasperated residents simply abandoned the Zimbabwean dollar and moved on to using multiple hard currencies.  In January, the Government too abandoned the Zimbabwean dollar and started using the US Dollar and the South African Rand for both collecting taxes and spending.  Hyperinflation died a natural death in Zimbabwe, it was not tamed.

Editor's Note: Kusi Hornberger is an Investment Policy & Promotion Specialist with the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group.

Despite the recent downturn in global FDI flows and predictions of gloomier times to come for cross border investment flows, there has been a recent increase in FDI by wealthy investors from resource poor countries. These investors have been snapping up large plots of land in developing countries for the development of agriculture exports. For the most part the deals have come from wealthy investors or state development funds in resource-poor countries into poor resource-rich countries, such as the lease of 30,000 hectares by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development in Sudan.

Ernst & Young interviewed a large of number of managers and owners of companies around the world, first in January 2009 and again in June 2009 [1]. Companies were surprised by the speed and severity of downturn and the impact was more than expected in January 2009. Many respondents feel that the crisis has permanently changed their operating model (43%), the regulatory framework for their sector (45%) and risk management (56%). The compilation of their responses on the impact of and responses to the crisis is quite revealing. The main companies were surprised by the speed and severity of downturn and the impact was more than expected in January 2009; findings can be tabulated as follows

1. About 82% of respondents still having difficulty in accessing credit and this is impacting upon their investment strategy
2. Companies are facing heightened concerns over risks while managing their assets, and over likelihood of more regulations
3. Almost 9 out of 10 accelerating cost reductions through review of capital investment and employee reduction but only 67% have been in reducing costs, particularly through IT and real estate.
4. Companies using this crisis to outsource (23%) and for strategic acquisitions (34%). About 32% are disposing of assets to increase cash and liquidity.
5. Only 19% see growth returning during second half or 2009 and 38% in 2010.
6. Remaining respondents feel that future is bright later on.
7. In January 2009, only 20% planned for entering new geographic markets but by June 2009, 33% expect to.

Fighting poverty means helping women not as an afterthought, but as forethought. Women’s disproportionate share of the poor makes them a special demographic. And we’re targeting them more and more.

Last year, 45 percent of lending operations looked through a gender lens when planning their projects -- up 10 percent from the year before. Project planners ran gender assessments, set aside resources for gender initiatives and broadly incorporated gender into project components.

Enter the Web. Mouse over the infographic below to take a look region-by-region.

Source:
Feature- World Bank Increases Gender Support and Lending in Developing Countries
Report- Implementing the Bank’s Gender Mainstreaming Strategy: FY08 Annual Monitoring Report (PDF)
 

As part of Youth-to-Youth Community's Global Youth Conference 2009, the Y2Y Group is launching a 2009 Essay Competition on the theme of "Youth Entrepreneurship in times of crisis". There are great prizes to be won!

Further details are below and in the attached document.

Edit: The winning essays can now be found here.

With its massive talent-base, a unique ability to attract its best and brightest students to the engineering discipline, and the presence of some of the world’s leading companies, India has an enormous potential to modernize its economy through engineering education and technology.

However, I think the potential is not fully exploited. The majority of new engineers in India are superb at rote memorization useful to pass paper exams. Many students, however, are less skilled at solving real-life problems with creativity. Also they lack communication and team skills in order to succeed in a demanding international setting.

In his most recent TED talk, open data advocate Hans Rosling blasted the World Bank (and lauded the US government) on data sharing practices. Rosling said that while we at the Bank have some of the best researchers and the best access to data, we're not doing enough to share that data openly, and for free.

I've embedded the video below so you can not only see what he has to say about the Bank, but also hear about some of the great ideas he has about datasets and mindsets.

Of course, it looks like Rosling may have ignored some of our more recent efforts to get our data to the hands of the people: efforts like our recently revamped API, and even the new data section (with great visualizations!) of the new World Bank Climate Change beta site.

But Rosling does have a point: we need to be doing more to share our data in open and usable formats. The question is, how do we do that?

While we've had some interest in our data visualization tools and our API, use of these tools is still low, making it hard to justify spending more resources on data sharing. Sure, there's a hunger for it, but how do we make sure we're feeding the right appetite?

There are a few questions that I have — questions where the answers will probably help me make a stronger case for increased emphasis on open data:

1. What kind of data is the audience looking for?
2. What does the audience want to do with this data?
3. What are the best formats in which to release this data?
4. What can we do to make it more enticing for people to use — and share — our data?

Mr. Rosling: we hear your call for open data. And while we hope that some of the steps we've already taken are helping address the world's data sharing needs, do know that we're working on sharing even more.

We just need the community's help — not their derision — in answering some questions so that we can make it better.

Public deliberation as a political ideal represents the next frontier in democracy building. Public deliberation calls for dramatic changes in how political decisions are made. Through deliberative processes, citizens and not elected representatives, make decisions on how to manage their own resources. These decisions are reached according to the exchange of reasons and arguments that appeal to shared objectives or values. Decisions resulting from deliberation are more informed and rational. Under deliberative processes, political truths emerge not from competing ideas but through dialogue between citizens. Deliberative processes produce information as a by-product, not a precondition for participation.

An excellent special issue of the New York Times magazine on Women and Development  had an article on the “daughter deficit”—the phenomenon, observed in India and China, of many fewer girls than boys being born, and surviving to age 5.  Up to now, I had been thinking of this as an Asian phenomenon, associated with cultural values in India and China.  But the finding by my colleagues Jed Friedman and Norbert Schady, reported in this blog , that in Africa the mortality rate from a drop in income is about twice as high for girls as for boys, makes me think that the daughter deficit (or “son preference”) may be coming to Africa. 

Last year Bill Easterly came out with some harsh criticism of the development community after the release of the Growth Commission report. The crux of Easterly's complaint: "this report represents the final collapse of the “development expert” paradigm that has governed the west’s approach to poor countries since the second world war." But the problem of the expert is not one that is limited to development institutions—it is a problem faced by all large organizations.

I'm continuing to make my way through Clay Shirky's brilliant Here Comes Everybody, and here is another great passage:

It’s easy to say that we need to build broad coalitions to bring about sustainable pro-poor change.  Easier said than done.   In a piece entitled “Connecting Nature’s Dots”, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues that

“We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems – climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet – separately.  The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to diversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors.”

Why the disconnect?  One of the reasons Friedman and his interviewees offer is that when it comes to environmental preservation, the farther humans are from experiencing nature, the harder it is for us to make the connections among environmental issues and other relevant policy and practice domains.