Wednesday, January 12, 2005
World Bank President Election Site
I stumbled across this webiste this morning, which shows the growing influence of Civil Society in questions of international development politics. It's about the election process & candidates for the position of the World Bank President (because James Wolfensohn has definitively announced he is going by June 2005).
If Civil Society may not yet have sufficient power to influence the decision itself, it can certainly contribute to making the process more transparent!
WorldBankPresident.org
Who do you think will be the next President and in what direction will he guide the Bank? Wolfensohn went towards the "Knowledge Bank"... Will the next President have the wisdom to go towards a "Wealth Facilitator's Bank"?
If Civil Society may not yet have sufficient power to influence the decision itself, it can certainly contribute to making the process more transparent!
WorldBankPresident.org
Who do you think will be the next President and in what direction will he guide the Bank? Wolfensohn went towards the "Knowledge Bank"... Will the next President have the wisdom to go towards a "Wealth Facilitator's Bank"?
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Donor funding is often undesirable
Lately I had a discussion on the bytesforall mailing list about the dangers of donor funding, particularly in Information and Communication Technology for development projects (ICT4D). I tried to show why entrepreneur-based approaches in offering ICT services in financially poor areas are in many (of course not all) instances better:
If I am an entrepreneur or company I will offer my customers a service they a) need and b) are willing to pay for. As a consquence, if the services are useless nobody will buy and if they are too expensive nobody will pay. Hence, the entrepreneur or company will either adapt his product or lower the price. If not, he will go bankrupt...
In the case of the Grameen Village Phone project the rural poor were willing to pay a certain price for access to communication for various reasons.
Now, in many donor-funded projects these incentives are just inexistent... That is simply a fact. There is little reason to a) automatically adapt the service to the needs of the "customer" and b) do it at reasonable cost (i.e. price)... As somebody lately told me: donors often have their own agenda and goals that do not necessarily coincidence with those of the communities they address.
Following from this I conclude: Donor-funded ICT4D projects should only concentrate on areas where market mechanisms don't play and where there is little opportunity to build on a sense of entrepreneurship and ownership.
If I am an entrepreneur or company I will offer my customers a service they a) need and b) are willing to pay for. As a consquence, if the services are useless nobody will buy and if they are too expensive nobody will pay. Hence, the entrepreneur or company will either adapt his product or lower the price. If not, he will go bankrupt...
In the case of the Grameen Village Phone project the rural poor were willing to pay a certain price for access to communication for various reasons.
Now, in many donor-funded projects these incentives are just inexistent... That is simply a fact. There is little reason to a) automatically adapt the service to the needs of the "customer" and b) do it at reasonable cost (i.e. price)... As somebody lately told me: donors often have their own agenda and goals that do not necessarily coincidence with those of the communities they address.
Following from this I conclude: Donor-funded ICT4D projects should only concentrate on areas where market mechanisms don't play and where there is little opportunity to build on a sense of entrepreneurship and ownership.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Why not learn from modern management theory?
The efforts of the international community when it comes to development are respectable but not impressive. However, the results are largely disappointing. William Easterly, for example, documents this failure in his book "The Elusive Quest for Growth".
I believe this non-performance of development work is mainly due to the focus of development institutions on macro-economics and a bird's eye view of policy making in general. With no means I want to state that these are not of importance, yet I think they are only part of the story. Focusing on this macro-view is as if we would believe that an economy with a sound policy framework wouldn't need any companies and knowledgeable managers and entrepreneurs to function.
So I think the development community should complement their macro-view with a micro-view. For example why not learn from modern management theory? A concept that is currently en vogue is the empowerment of employees to foster innovation and rapid response to market changes. It's all about respecting an employee's knowledge and competencies and giving him the space to own a part of a company's performance by giving him the power to act. One hugely successful "development initiative" that has built on ownership is the Grameen Village Phone project.
Another concept from management theory is knowledge management. The World Bank is currently trying to apply this concept by repositioning itself as a knowledge bank. Another place where knowledge management has had an impressive, yet small, impact was at UNAIDS. Through a partnership with BP they introduced modern management tools to empower knowledge exchange between communities in order to reply to AIDS.
The application of modern management theory and tools in International Organizations and NGOs is still rare but in my opinion essential if we want to achieve results in development.
I believe this non-performance of development work is mainly due to the focus of development institutions on macro-economics and a bird's eye view of policy making in general. With no means I want to state that these are not of importance, yet I think they are only part of the story. Focusing on this macro-view is as if we would believe that an economy with a sound policy framework wouldn't need any companies and knowledgeable managers and entrepreneurs to function.
So I think the development community should complement their macro-view with a micro-view. For example why not learn from modern management theory? A concept that is currently en vogue is the empowerment of employees to foster innovation and rapid response to market changes. It's all about respecting an employee's knowledge and competencies and giving him the space to own a part of a company's performance by giving him the power to act. One hugely successful "development initiative" that has built on ownership is the Grameen Village Phone project.
Another concept from management theory is knowledge management. The World Bank is currently trying to apply this concept by repositioning itself as a knowledge bank. Another place where knowledge management has had an impressive, yet small, impact was at UNAIDS. Through a partnership with BP they introduced modern management tools to empower knowledge exchange between communities in order to reply to AIDS.
The application of modern management theory and tools in International Organizations and NGOs is still rare but in my opinion essential if we want to achieve results in development.
