This morning I was scheduled to give a presentation for the staff of a joint Malawian-German initiative looking at democratic decentralization in Malawi. At 7:00am, as I was putting some finishing touches on my powerpoint, a moment of panic struck: I didn’t know where their office was.
Luckily this was easy to solve – a quick phone call and I got some directions.
“Go to City Center. Do you know where the British Council is? Follow that road, turn right at the T-Junction…”
As the directions continued, they started to sound familiar – I knew this place. The building I was looking for was the same building where the old Canadian High Commission and CIDA offices were located.
I’m speaking in the past-tense of course because almost one year ago Canada closed its High Commission Malawi, and dramatically reduced the staffing levels at the CIDA office. This was part of a broader shift of our development funding away from low-income countries in Africa and towards countries with strategic commercial/military relevance. In total 8 African countries were dropped from Canada’s development priority list (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Zambia). Meanwhile, Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Peru, Sudan, the West Bank/Gaza, and “the Caribbean” (not actually a country) were added to the list of priority recipient nations.
CIDA Priority Countries Circa 2008
CIDA Priority Countries Circa 2009
At the time I protested this decision a lot. I believed, and still believe, that it represented a prioritization of development assistance based on narrowly conceived national interest, rather than one based on the need for, and effectiveness of, development assistance in various countries.
However, now I’m starting to see bigger issues behind this. It’s not enough to advocate for Canada to return to some of the African countries that we abandoned. We need to advocate for CIDA to make better and more transparent decisions on a broader level. Of course I want CIDA back in Malawi, but that’s in part because I live and work here. There are 53 countries in Africa, and needy countries in other parts of the world as well, so we need more than just a dialogue around narrowly conceived interests – my own or my current government’s. CIDA just desperately needs to get better and more transparent – individuals decisions are secondary.
Enter ACT, an EWB initiative that crossed my desk(top) for the first time in detail this morning. People who know me know that I don’t blindly support every EWB initiative, but I think this one looks pretty great.
It advocates for reforming CIDA in three major ways:
Accountability. CIDA should start systematically and publically tracking/reporting on an international commitments we make, and the government should establish an arms-length organization to evaluate CIDA-funded projects, rather than having CIDA organize the evaluations themselves (as is currently the case).
Creativity. CIDA should set up a fund to finance innovation in the implementation of development initiatives, to complement on-going research of a more academic nature. Implementation is really where most development ideas break down, so innovation and learning about implementation is definitely needed.
Transparency. CIDA should publish comprehensive data (including financial data) about all of its projects and programs. This data should be available on the CIDA website.
These ideas are, for the most part, extremely simple. The points about accountability and transparency should be non-issues – given the amount of tax-payer money involved it’s amazing that these things aren’t happening already. The point about creativity might be more open to debate, but probably won’t be debated much by people who actually work in development – given that implementing development programs is all about implementation (duh) it’s a startlingly under-prioritized area.
This campaign is gaining momentum in the lead-up to the G8. Please check it out (and get involved!) if you have a chance. Doesn’t take much to sign a petition, bonus points for writing your MP! (Double bonus points – leave a comment on here to let people know you wrote your MP.)
Barefoot Economics 