Kinshasa Kids

Best aeroplane movie I've seen in a while, following the adventures of some street kids in Kinshasa who start a rap group.

My favourite scene:

Kid 1: What I want is to start a music band so I can escape to Europe. 

Kid 2: I want to be a policeman so I can steal in peace. 

Kid 3: Ah, you have to be a politician to steal with ease!

Blood cheese

Leading politicians and military commanders on both sides of the conflict own the cows that Eugene needs to make his cheese. 

... 

'So, in a way, your cheese is helping fuel the conflict? In the same way that conflict diamonds are called blood diamonds, we could call your cheese "blood cheese"?' I ask him with a cheeky smile. 

He smiles, too, and, leaning back, draws his arm in an arc towards the lake.
'What do you see?' 

... 

Eugene gently points out that all those villas, all the petrol stations, truck companies, this hotel, belong to warlords with ties to different militias or to the Congolese army. Nothing has really changed. The UN peacekeepers are the biggest customers in town for villas and petrol and vehicles. They are pumping the most money into Goma's economy, which keeps all these armed groups in business.  

'I am not into politics', he says. 'I am just a businessman. You cannot make or trade anything in Congo that does not somehow put money in the wrong hands.'

Fascinating stuff from Ben Rawlence's new book 'Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War'

Cash Transfers in Congo

One of the main challenges of the Concern (and other) humanitarian programmes in the Eastern Congo is that even if they wanted to give out cash rather than goods or vouchers, the security situation is too fragile and there are no banks outside of Goma.

The BBC World Service Africa Today podcast reports that a truck belonging to the Banque Internationale pour l'Afrique au Congo was just robbed of $1 million in broad daylight in the middle of Goma, the driver and a bystander shot and killed. What a mess.

Underpants Gnomes in Rwanda

One of DFID's many genuinely excellent initiatives is requiring a detailed business case for all of its new programmes, so that there is a carefully thought through theory of change before any money is spent on implementing something new.

However a friend-known-to-be-witty suggests by email that DFID's theory of change for suspending aid to Rwanda seems to be pure underpants gnomes:

1. Aid to Rwandan domestic programmes is stopped
2. Rwanda stops alleged support for M23

3. ??????

4. Peace in Eastern Congo, and free ponies for everyone!!!!

Any better ideas?

Mapping rebel groups in the Congo

A bit of perspective - if M23 totally disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, there would still be more than 25 armed groups operating in the eastern DRC. All Rwanda's fault?

via BBC - Hattip - someone on my twitter feed

What about diplomacy?

Finally, cutting aid just strikes me as a fundamentally lazy and cowardly choice. If you want to achieve political goals, how about bothering to spend the time engaging politically and talking to people? Diplomacy brought peace to Northern Ireland and diplomacy brought a 2005 peace agreement to North and South Sudan. That meant long hours of hard work, and real political commitment. How many international leaders have even been to the DRC? Maybe if the collective international political community had demonstrated even the slightest regard for the people of the DR Congo through any actual tangible action then all of this posturing wouldn't leave such a bad taste.

Social protection in Congo (Brazzaville)

Colleagues Anthony Hodges and Clare O’Brien have a new working paper out with Lisile Ganga from UNICEF on possibilities for social protection for the Republic of Congo. The bottom line - universal child allowances are affordable and would have a huge impact on poverty.

The Republic of Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, is a country with striking contrasts between its status as an oil-rich, low middle-income country and its high levels of poverty and child deprivations. Social protection provision is largely limited to a small minority in the formal sector of the economy. 

This paper presents the results of quantitative micro-simulations on the cost, impact and cost-effectiveness of different policy options for cash transfers in Congo, including universal and targeted child allowances, old-age pensions and disability benefits, along with an analysis of the existing social protection system, the policy framework and institutional capacity. 

While a poverty-targeted child allowance would be the most cost-effective option, in terms of cost per unit of reduction in the poverty gap, institutional and technical constraints make large-scale poverty targeting unviable in a country with very weak governance. Universal categorical approaches would be much simpler to implement, while still being financially feasible given Congo's substantial fiscal surplus (14% on average in 2006-10). Under the assumptions employed for the simulation, a universal allowance for children under 5 would reduce the national poverty headcount by 9% while costing only 0.7% of GDP.

Doing governance is hard #163826353

First the good news: a new evaluation report from a community driven reconstruction programme in Eastern Congo (HT: Sarah Bailey) shows yet again that it is possible to evaluate messy hard-to-measure governance interventions using rigorous quantitative methods. IPA and JPAL have an evaluation of a similar programme in Sierra Leone.

Now the bad news: this kind of design only works with interventions at the local level because you need a large sample size of units - in this case villages. National-level interventions give you a sample size of one, not very conducive for quantitative analysis.

And the worse news: these local level governance interventions don't seem to work. Both this Congo study and the Sierra Leone study find no improvement in local governance.

Now for some better news: we actually already know what a lot of the national-level governance interventions that need to be done are. They are boring. Things like audits of government accounts. South Sudan has finally just published the audit of the 2007 accounts, to apparent astonishment and outrage by parliamentarians. It's pretty grim reading. Though I'm not sure how anyone is actually honestly surprised. Still, it's probably not totally outlandish to think that audits done a bit quicker than 5 years after the fact might improve budget governance.

And now for the worst news of all: much of this easy, boring, national-level governance stuff is around accountability - which means the national leadership intentionally putting in place limits on its own power. Binding its own hands. You have to be an incredibly enlightened leader to purposely reduce your own power. The whole point of the politics game is increasing your own power. Which means that you need people to demand accountability and force leaders into action. And despite all the talk about governance from the international community, we aren't really interested or able to be the ones doing the demanding.

Congo: Land of rape and rebels

As it turns out, large swathes of Masisi territory in North Kivu actually look a bit like a Microsoft Windows desktop. 

The interesting thing about such potentially dangerous places is that though the news reports can make them sound a bit terrifying, you don't actually really feel threatened in any way about 99% of the time. There is just a vague awareness that things could easily get nasty quite quickly, but the chances of that really happening are probably pretty slim.

This is of course speaking from the relative safety of being white and travelling everywhere with a very professional and security-conscious international NGO. Lots of people we spoke to in the villages complained that (roving!) bandits come and steal everything whenever they get any assistance. We did come across a couple of very friendly men with guns, wearing clearly not official national army fatigues, whilst carrying out interviews in a village. Who very politely asked if we were giving out cash, and if so whether we might prefer to give some to them than be shot. Pretty sure they were joking, at least about the shooting part. Very good natured, and certainly nobody got shot.

Finally, the cheese is great, but I didn't see anyone drinking Um Bongo. Did I miss anything?

Google weather forecast slightly off in Masisi

I was quite impressed when a quick pre-departure google search brought up the weather in Masisi immediately. 

I was less impressed when I arrived with waterproof boots and trousers to be told that it's the middle of the dry season. 

Probably the best Michael Jackson impersonator in Eastern Congo?

via AfricanHipHop.com

How to combat gender-based violence (Congolese heroes edition)

Mama Muliri responded to the threats by going to Lubutu herself and facing the tribal leaders eye to eye. As promised, they met her brandishing machetes and guns. They chanted threats, and they threw rocks at her. Still, she stood her ground, told them about the new constitution passed in 2006, and how the law now differed from the tribal customs. She demanded that they comply with the law, and asked them to attend a HEAL Africa conference on conflict transformation.

Daily Kos, via TexasisAfrica