JonCamfieldBlog

I got to attend a lecture by William Easterly on his new book, focusing on whether or not foreign aid can affect world poverty (spoiler: the past 5 decades don't give a very encouraging answer, but there are some possibilities). I can't recommend his books highly enough for people to get a good, independent, but very well argued critical perspective on the "Washington Consensus" model of development. I'm not going to repeat the majority of his points on accountability and feedback and such, as they're well-argued in his books. One quick point, however, that really boils a lot of current development practice down to a coherent, easy-to-present, forehead-slappingly obvious critique that works really well against specifically the groups of people sabre-rattling for the Bank model.

The "Washington Consensus," even in the radical new forms of foreign aid such as the Millennium Development Goals, are economic plans put together by the top experts in the field esconced in Washington, DC, to be implemented in various countries worldwide. What does this remind us of? Central Planning, which has worked so well as an economic development and manangement policy historically.

Posted by Jon at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Now, normally this isn't something I'd sign on with, but Global Voices Online is hosting a video log of human rights abuses. Some shot with cell phones, others with home video cameras. I think it's a splendid idea. This is a different side of "development;" it's not so much worrying about capacity building as it is stopping monstrosities, and any outlet to raise awareness of these abuses I feel is worthwhile. This one, from a smuggled DVD, shows police cracking down on a peaceful union protest in Zimbabwe"

Posted by Jon at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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There's a developing thread at Engadget about the branding efforts on the OLPC, as well as some argument to its utility. I of course jumped in, responding to someone talking about the value of laptops as a self-help style tool:

...just sending them supplies doesn't solve anything...

But just sending them laptops will? Remember that the minimum order for these things is 1 million units. Even at $100 each, that's a USD $100MM budget item, which is not a figure to laugh at if you're already a debt-strapped developing nation. And then what do you get? Your country, which has just paid out $100MM, gets a million laptops. They won't distribute themselves, they won't automatically train teachers and community leaders, they won't automatically create Internet connections. Sure, the idea is for a device for children to self-teach, the old "fire" theory of education, but I posit that some structure, some mediation and guidance will be needed, or these will mostly end up gathering dust, or on the black market. So on top of that $100MM, you still need to create some ways to encourage diffusion and usage of the laptops - some training (probably training of trainers, who then go out and train more), creation and support of local "communities of practice" for cross-training/self-help among peers, and some locally relevant content and a distribution method for said content. Textbooks, music, movies, children's stories/production; these are inherently network devices and benefit greatly, exponentially even, from increased network size - even if that network is a 28.8kbps GPRS connection or a sneakernet.

Don't get me wrong, I think the OLPC guys have done a fantastic job at developing a machine that's useful in developing-world situations (I've done ICT and Dev work, I've seen many of the challenges, and the OLPC addresses an impressive swath of them), but this attention to detail can't stop when they roll off the production line, there has to be a diffusion strategy that's tailored to country- and local- situation-specfic challenges and opportunities.

Posted by Jon at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I used to use recipes as a good, non-new/Internet-y example of how you can still make profits (recipe books) with no attempt at copyright enforcement (who cares if you share the recipes, as long as you're not duplicating the whole book and re-selling it competitively, each individual recipe is like an advertisement for the publisher's entire series of cookbooks.

Oh well

Posted by Jon at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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