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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.

One
The Promising Game-Changers in Global Development: Social Innovators

“Turning on a light, warming a house, and using an appliance are activities that most of us take for granted. But in many parts of the developing world, access to electricity is scarce. Enter “sOccket,” a soccer ball that harnesses the kinetic energy of play to generate electricity. When kicked, it creates energy that can be stored and then used later to charge a battery, sterilize water or light a room.

SOccket has received a lot of attention recently – from the likes of Aneesh Chopra, the first White House chief technology officer, to former President Bill Clinton, who called sOccket “quite extraordinary.” The attention isn’t surprising – the invention is clever, it’s creative, it’s relatively cheap, and it takes on one of the biggest challenges in the developing world.”  READ MORE

Mentoring Local Organizations - Here’s How!

Jennifer Lentfer's picture

Mentoring has become a very important means for social entrepreneurs to gain skills from an experienced entrepreneur. It has become one of the most effective ways to build an organization's capacity. Mentor's can give advice, encouragement and leverage their contacts to help an organization grow. Jennifer Lentfer offers some practical guidelines for developing an effective mentor relationship.

Stronger, more sustainable community-based organizations can contribute to a more effective and participatory civil society response to the needs of vulnerable people in the developing world.

Donors can support organizations even at the beginning stages of organizational development with an intent to leave groups stronger than when they first entered into partnership. Different types of capacity building activities such as mentoring relationships and exchange visits between organizations can offer the most relevant and supportive technical assistance through sharing on-the-ground experience among organizations at all levels of organizational development.

More Effective Aid: Don’t Just Develop Capacity – Unleash It

Tom Grubisich's picture

Photo credit: OECDThe authors of this post, Tom Grubisich and Jennifer Lentfer, will be co-moderating the session “Winds of Change: Will They Bring a New Paradigm to Development Assistance?” at the Civil Society Forum of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings. Here is the full schedule of sessions with the Civil Society Forum. The session will be held on Friday, April 15, at 2 p.m. in the C1 Level of the Main Complex of the World Bank (room 100). A livestream of the roundtable will be available and you can also follow the discussion that day on Twitter via #windsofchange.

The Arab awakening in North Africa and the Middle East is shaking up what has been a slow-moving effort to reform the effectiveness of development aid. The awakening and aid reform share common goals – affirming human rights, social justice and transparency. As events in the Middle East continue to fundamentally reshape society, we must ask: How can development assistance also be reshaped to put more power in the hands of the people?

The Revolution Will Not Be Donor-Harmonized

Shanthi Kalathil's picture

It's hard not to be inspired by Nick Kristof's article on "The D.I.Y. Foreign Aid Revolution" in the New York Times. His detail-rich story of energetic, socially conscious people routing around the bureaucracy of large aid organizations to tangibly and directly improve people's lives in the developing world is both important and thought-provoking. And it helps reframe the ongoing debate about the effectiveness of development assistance from one of "nothing works" to "there are so many ways to make this work."

Results’ Agenda and Economists

Eliana Cardoso's picture

In the book, The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen motivates the discussion on the importance of processes and responsibilities by relying on an example. In the Gita (part of the Mahabharata), on the eve of the crucial battle episode in the epic, Arjuna expresses his doubts about leading the fight which will result in so much killing. Lord Krishna, tells him that he, Arjuna, must perform his duty, that is, to fight. And to fight, irrespective of the consequences.

Krishna’s blessing of the demands of duty is meant to win the argument from a religious perspective. But most of us would share Arjuna’s concerns about the fact that, if the war were to occur, with him leading the charge on the side of justice and propriety, many people would get killed. He himself would be doing a lot of the killing, often of people for whom he had affection.

Infant mortality rates in Africa will increase by 30,000-50,000 - Girls will fare worse

Norbert Schady's picture

The impact of the global financial crisis on infant mortality is a topic of great policy importance. However, estimates of the likely impacts of the crisis, cited by international institutions and in the popular press, differ wildly.

This blogpost summarizes the main conclusions from some of my own recent research on this topic, jointly with various colleagues.

These conclusions include:

Education and Finance in Africa

Shanta's picture

At a recent conference that brought together African Finance and Education ministers, the keynote speaker, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, finance minister (and former education minister) of Singapore gave a beautiful speech about Singapore's experience that contained some potentially difficult and controversial messages for Africa.

Why Don't We See Poverty Rates Converging?

Martin Ravallion's picture

Sub-Saharan Africa now has the highest incidence of extreme poverty, such as judged by the World Bank’s $1.25 a day poverty line. Granted, Africa has shown encouraging signs since the mid 1990s of reversing its past record of relatively poor performance against poverty.

How have policies and institutions in low-income African countries fared?

Shanta's picture

Last Friday, the World Bank released its Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) of low-income countries.  While the assessments are mainly used to determine the allocation of concessional IDA resources to poor countries, they can also provide a useful picture of the evolution of policies and institutions in Africa, as a r

Critiques from inside the World Bank

Shanta's picture

While my blog posts seemed to elicit a fair number of comments, I had been wondering how many of them, if any, were coming from my World Bank colleagues. Last Friday, I got to find out. Our Internal Communications department ran a story on the Bank’s intranet with the headline “The effects of the global recession on Africa will be permanent, says Africa Chief Economist.” The story then linked to my blog post, “Why aid to A

Pourquoi il faut augmenter l'aide en faveur de l'Afrique

Shanta's picture

Dans les pays riches, lorsque le taux de croissance économique diminue de 3 ou 4 points, les individus perdent leur emploi et, probablement, leur maison, mais ils les retrouvent lorsque la reprise économique intervient. Dans les pays pauvres d’Afrique, les enfants sont retirés de l’école — et sont privés de la possibilité de devenir plus tard des adultes productifs. Dans certains cas, les enfants meurent avant d’avoir eu la chance d’aller à l’école. Si l’effondrement actuel de la

Why aid to Africa must increase

Shanta's picture

In rich countries, when economic growth declines by three or four percentage points, people lose their jobs and possibly their houses, but they regain them when the economy rebounds. In poor African countries, children get pulled out of school—and miss out on becoming productive adults. In some cases, children die before they have a chance to go to school. If t

On Aid to Africa

Tijan Sallah's picture

Dambisa Moyo' book "Dead Aid" is gaining influence among African leaders (I wanted to point to President Kagame's thoughtful commentary in the FT). I would like to add the following comments. Volumes of aid to Africa per se are not the issue; instead the issue is the quality of political leadership and the effectiveness with which aid is put to in Africa to support the continent's development. &nb

Africa: Least integrated but worst hit by the crisis

Shanta's picture

Even though it is the least integrated with the global economy, Africa may be the worst hit region by the global economic crisis. Each of the four channels through which the crisis is affecting Africa has a particularly nefarious impact. 


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