“Author Archive”
Stories written by Roving Bandit
By Roving Bandit
Adventures in fact-checking exfam lefties Swati Narayan on Duncan Green’s blog celebrates a new law passed in India reserving 25% of private school places for underprivileged kids. As part of the deal, the government reimburses private schools, but only at the level of government per pupil funding rather than necessarily the fees charged by private schools. Swati writes: The Act is categorical that the state will reimburse private schools only based on what it spends per pupil in government schools, which is typically much less. For-profit private schools are therefore keen to pass on the burden and increase their already inflated fees for the remainder of the class. Are those fees really inflated?
May 16th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
This is a guest post from Ben French (a policy adviser formerly based in Juba) Following two short recent visits to Myanmar where I was looking at the Public Financial Management (PFM) and Planning aspects of Myanmar’s reforms, I kept encountering the same question: How to balance coordination between donors with the need for a rapid and flexible response to reform? The PFM reform programme in Myanmar has strong government leadership and appears to be off to a good start. In line with best international practice, development partners, under the leadership of the World Bank, have taken the initiative to coordinate amongst themselves. This has been followed by the establishment of a donor-government PFM working group. Almost all donors interested in the sector have aligned behind this which is very much to the credit of both the government and the World Bank.
May 16th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
I need to get some of this stuff out of my head to make some space in there for my actual day job. Since the clusterfuck David Goodhart book-copy-and-pastes op-eds started coming out a few weeks ago my head has been all fogged up with rage. Half of the frustration is simply how poorly he structures his arguments. So here is some structure. At the highest level there are two things to care about 1.
May 7th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Some analysis from the Sudd Institute: (via John Ashworth) Barely three months after the oil shutdown, the whole nation started to feel the resultant pinch of economic hardships. Salaries of civil servants were no longer coming regularly and the monthly allowances that used to cushion up the low salaries of the civil servants were discontinued. The dollar appreciated against the South Sudanese pounds and was in unprecedented shortage, forcing the market into an abrupt shock; prices rose; and the purchasing power weakened. As well, violent crimes increased, with armed robbery becoming the order of the day.
May 7th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
A Nigerian and an Indonesian attend a foreign university together in the 1960s and become friends. After graduation, each returns home to join the government. Several years later, the Nigerian visits his colleague in Jakarta, and finds him living in a big, luxurious house with a Mercedes car parked outside. ‘How can you afford such a nice house on a politician’s salary?’, asks the Nigerian. ‘Do you see that road?’, replies the Indonesian, pointing to a magnificent highway outside
May 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Drawing on original research and numerous case studies, Collier explores this volatile issue from three unique perspectives: the migrants themselves, the people they leave behind, and the host societies where they relocate. As Collier shows, those who migrate from the poorest countries, primarily though not exclusive the young, tend to be the best educated and most energetic in their cultures. And while migrants often benefit economically, the larger impacts of mass migrations remain unsettling. The danger is that both host countries and sending societies may lose their national identities– an outcome that Collier suggests would be disastrous as national identity is a powerful force for equity.
April 29th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
If you were looking for a definitive overview of African Politics, you could probably do worse than this new volume, edited by Nic Cheeseman, David Anderson, and Andrea Scheibler. 32 chapters covering the State, Identity, Conflict, Democracy, Development, and International Relations. For more, here is Andi writing at Democracy in Africa: The Handbook, published last month, is the product of a collaboration between 35 established and emerging Africanist academics. Three years in the making, the Handbook is arguably the most comprehensive overview of African politics currently available on the market and we hope it will become a standard reference book for students seeking to understand the development of, and transitions within, contemporary Africa. …
April 28th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
the true enemy of our threatened wildlife like the nightingale is not housing but agricultural intensification … There is now more bio-diversity in back gardens than on English farms. … Intensively farmed land has a negligible – even negative – environmental value and is almost sterile from the point of view of wild life; take a look at the 2011 National Ecosystem Assessment. That is the sort of land we should be allowing houses to be built on
April 27th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
It’s been a while since I’ve beaten on the Guardian (I love you really Guardian, you’ll still my main newspaper, despite the typos in 3 out of 3 articles I read the other day). But really: Stowaway from Angola highlights airport security problems Police continue to try to identify man who fell from BA plane on to London pavement, the second African stowaway in recent weeks Personally, I’d say that the story of a young man in his 20s, wearing a grey hoodie, jeans and trainers, who was so desperate for the chance of a better life that he risked and lost his life by sneaking into the hold of an aeroplane bound for London, mostly highlights the utterly grotesque global inequality that we choose to tolerate because they are mostly out of sight and out of mind, and we are worried about the impact of all these foreigners on our precious “community” or some other vague bullshit. Not fucking airport security.
April 25th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Almost as scary is his insider’s view of international organisations’ lack of readiness to deal with such threats. He questions the future effectiveness of the UN, and the legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, created at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. “The picture of global governance today is one of duplication, ambiguity, overlap and confusion,” he concludes. Tax-free salaries and comfortable career paths encourage entrenched views and organisations out of step with modern working practices. Pretty damning, from the FT review of Ian Goldin’s new book
April 25th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Oh and just to add additional insult, Simon Jenkins thinks we should be prioritising habitat for 180 nightingales over houses for around 15,000 people, valuing each nightingale at nearly 100 people. I’ve got nothing against nightingales, but do they each really get priority over a hundred people?
April 20th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Apologies for being such a bore, but it drives me nuts that we aren’t building enough houses in this country. Every year there are twice as many new households as there are new houses built. Every year. This is the first lesson of economics – prices are set by supply and demand – if demand continues to outstrip supply twofold every year then prices will continue to increase and houses will continue to be split into ever smaller fragments. I rented a beautiful apartment last month from a young married couple, both Oxford graduates, one of them a doctor
April 20th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
Ugandan journalist Daniel Kalinaki posted this exam from the Kampala International University on his twitter feed a couple of weeks ago, and it has been a bit stuck in my head. Is this really real? Is this normal? Their wikipedia page says that KIU is ranked 58th out of African universities.
April 17th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
By Roving Bandit
I don’t think I’ve seen any proper discussion of the composition of UK public spending amongst the current debates on cuts and benefits, so here are a few charts from the IFS. From a 2009 survey of public spending you can see what the main categories are – social security, NHS, education, and defence. Then this observation compares mid-Labour pre-crisis spending in 2003 to estimated spending by the end of the current government in 2007. They aren’t all that different, except for increases in health spending, pensions, and debt interest. Finally this 2012 survey of the benefit system breaks down the largest category, social security, into recipients.
April 5th, 2013 | Posted in Aid & Development | Read More »
