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April 2012

One Woman's Return from the Diaspora

Richard Cambridge's picture

I met Roselynd Laubhouet in 2004 when, as a recent graduate, she accepted an assignment as a Junior Professional Associate with the World Bank's Africa Region in Washington, D.C.  From day one, it was evident that Roselynd was special. Being an entrepreneur at heart, she was filled with dreams, aspirations, and a passion for her home country of Senegal (and her continent) that set her apart. 

When Roselynd and I reconnected in Abidjan last December, eight years after our first meeting, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that not only had she moved home to Senegal, but she had also started a successful international business. The journey from bureaucrat to entrepreneur was not easy, but it was clear that--having returned home--Roselynd was realizing her dreams.

I was curious to learn the secrets of her success, to understand the challenges facing returnees, and gather any advice for other Africans in the Diaspora considering a return.  Roselynd was kind enough to share her experiences with me in the hopes that other young women in the Diaspora might be inspired to follow in her footsteps.

Baseball and the City: Happy 100th Birthday to Boston's Fenway Park!

Artessa Saldivar-Sali's picture

Fenway Park, Boston, USAs a graduate student in Cambridge, Massachusetts living outside my home country Philippines for the first time, attending Boston Red Sox games at Fenway Park marked the beginning of my initiation into American life — and that most American of pastimes: baseball. Fenway Park (the country’s oldest ballpark) turned 100 years old last Friday (April 27, 2012). It is a wonderful icon of the enduring nature and magnetic power of cities.

Fenway Park (like the city of Boston) is small, expensive, and still has infrastructure from 1912. The bathrooms, parking, and other amenities don't always work (again, like many great cities). But overall, this urban gem is the best place to watch a baseball game — despite the 86-year drought in World Series championships.

Stark evidence on the jobs quality-quantity trade-off: Evidence from migration

David McKenzie's picture

“More and better jobs” is a goal for many policymakers around the world (along with part of the title for a recent World Bank South Asia flagship report on employment). How to create “good jobs” is a key question that the next World Development Report is also expected to help answer.

Water: A Limited Resource for Kakuma Refugees

Vestine Umubyeyi's picture

Water is the source of life. Everyone depends on it, including the Kakuma refugees. In a desert environment, with no direct water source and reliable rainy season, the residents of Kakuma (locals and refugees) have great difficulty obtaining the water they need to survive.  The United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), in conjunction with the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), is assisting the people by trying to find solutions to create water points and establish proper hygiene and sanitation systems to safeguard the health of the people.

Prospects Weekly: Headwinds from Euro Area likely to persist through the second quarter of 2012

Latest business surveys for the Euro Area suggest that the nascent recovery in activity in the region may be shortlived. Recent data suggests that Euro-Area deleveraging has had a negative impact on trade finance, but that trade finance availability should firm during 2012. Developing countries have made substantial progress toward reducing global poverty, but progress reducing child and maternal mortality rates (two factors closely linked to nutrition) has lagged.
 

Headwinds from Euro Area likely to persist through the second quarter of 2012. After Euro Area industrial production accelerated through February 2012, recent business surveys have taken a turn for the worse, suggesting that the recovery in activity may be short lived. Markit’s Purchasing Manager’s Index for both manufacturing and services in the Euro Area dipped deeper into contractionary territory in April. Although not conclusive, the decline suggests that the ongoing banking sector deleveraging, fiscal consolidation, rising unemployment, high-oil prices, and recent renewed concerns on Euro Area sovereign debts will continue to weigh on real sector activity in Q2. Continued European weakness bodes ill for developing country exporters.

 
Trade finance for firms in developing countries appears set to firm after recent weakness. European banking-sector deleveraging cut into trade finance flows as measured by Dealogic in the second half of 2011. Europe (includes both high-income and developing European economies) had been hardest hit, with Q1 2012 flows well below the levels observed even in Q4 2011, when European trade activity was falling at a 29.5 percent annualized pace. In developing regions the story is more mixed. In East Asia and Latin America the data shows some pick up perhaps reflecting entry of regional banks into the trade finance arena. In the Middle East the dissipation of some of the turmoil associated with political change in North Africa has supported flows. Trade finance flows to Africa are also up slightly. However, in South Asia, which witnessed a sharper Q4 2012 trade contraction, flows remain down. A recent ICC-IMF survey observed that the majority of respondents expected an improvement in the outlook for trade finance in 2012.

 
Developing countries make progress towards the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). Two of the MDGs (benchmark development objectives for the year 2015 set by the UN in 2000) have been met, with a halving of global poverty rates and of the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. However, MDGs closely linked to food and nutrition are lagging. One conservative estimate suggests that over 200 million children under five years of age in developing countries fail to reach their cognitive development potential because of risks of poor nutrition and poor health. Despite its critical role, only about 0.3% of aid flows are oriented toward nutrition. In recent years, progress has been further complicated by high food prices, which affect diet quality, real-incomes and access to quality of care for infants and young children.

 

Download the Prospects Weekly as PDF here.

India-Pakistan Trade: Making Borders Irrelevant

Tara Beteille's picture

In our blog post last November, we discussed Pakistan’s decision to grant India most favored nation (MFN) status. We were hopeful about the gains from easier trade between the two, but noted the many stumbling blocks in between. In the past 20 weeks, both countries have made serious efforts to address these blocks. Things are looking good. Here is an update.

Both countries mean business

In addition to the goodwill gesture of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visiting India this April and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh considering visiting Pakistan, important issues addressed include:

  • Pakistan issued an order in March 2012 to move from a positive list of 2,000 items for India to a negative list of 1,209 banned items. Pakistan intends to phase out the negative list altogether and formally give India MFN status by the end of 2012.
  • India, which formally granted Pakistan MFN status in 1996 (but maintained barriers) has agreed to reduce its sensitive list of 865 items by 30% within four months. India has also agreed in principle to allow Pakistani foreign direct investment in the country.

Building Accountability in Tanzania: Applying an Evolutionary/Venture Capitalist Theory of Change

Duncan Green's picture

I’ve been catching up on our accountability work in Tanzania recently, and it continues to be really ground-breaking. Rather than churning out the standard logical framework of activities, outputs and predicted outcomes before the project even starts, the programme, known as Chukua Hatua (Swahili for ‘take action’) uses an evolutionary model of change (try out numerous approaches, drop the less successful ones, scale up and develop the winners). It’s more like a venture capitalist backing ten start-up firms knowing that most will fail, but some will win big. This has been possible partly because DFID has been willing to fund such an experimental approach as part of its ‘Accountability in Tanzania’ (AcT) programme (props to them).

18 months into the programme, it’s good to see that Chukua Hatua is, errmm, evolving, according to programme coordinator Jane Lonsdale.

The first phase piloted six approaches:

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Brookings
Communication Technologies: Five Myths and Five Lessons from History

“Mobile phones in the developing world have myriad uses: banking services, reminders for medicine regimens, e-governance, and more. This is a far cry from a generation ago when 99 percent of the people in low-income countries lacked POTS, or “plain old telephone service.”

Information and communications technologies are now indispensible for development, prioritized through varying levels of market-driven measures and participatory politics.  From international organizations to local administrations, the importance given to these technologies for development today is a counterpoint to the immediate post-colonial era when telephones were considered a luxury and nationalized radio broadcasting was used for bringing “modern” ideas to populations. Along with policy changes, the move toward market forms works to ensure that people have phones and access to communication infrastructures, in turn providing incentives for entrepreneurs and political brokers to develop applications for delivery of social services and provide alternatives to users who in an earlier era lacked even basic access to these technologies.”  READ MORE

Better Together: The Networked Path to Financial Literacy

Margaret Miller's picture

This post concludes our Closing the Gap: Financial Inclusion blog series, which shares the views of selected experts and practitioners on different financial inclusion topics.

The field of financial literacy and capability has many open questions in terms of priorities, what the most effective interventions are and even basic measurement data and evidence of impact. However, one aspect of this topic where there is growing consensus relates to the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships that leverage both public and private sector actors, as well as civil society.

As in any significant endeavor that attempts to change or reinforce consumer behaviors (encouraging savings, promoting prompt repayment of loans, taking steps to mitigate risk such as diversification of assets or buying insurance) communicating through multiple channels and partners can strengthen the effectiveness of the message. Figure 1 below shows the many types of stakeholders that may be involved in the development of financial literacy and capability programs and policies. These span the gamut from central banks and ministries of finance to commercial banks, microfinance institutions and other providers, schools, religious institutions and media firms.


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