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?

2 Lessons from Tunisia

First, the west is wrong to think of old dictators as useful allies.

our second lesson is that  leaders of extraordinary tenure are rarely good for their own countries.

In sum, little good comes from allowing a president to remain in power much longer than a decade.  That is why I have long argued that the imposition of presidential term limits is perhaps the single most important measure to improve the governance and economic performance of developing countries.

Nicholas van de Walle, who I believe is probably one of the foremost Africanist political scientists

Reintegrating rebels

Via the Monkey Cage, a clever new paper assesses the impact of a World Bank reintegration program for ex-combatants in Burundi. The paper uses a quasi-experimental design, exploiting the unplanned random execution of the project (at the individual level) resulting from a contract delay with one of the implementing partners.

The results found that the economic assistance targeted at these individuals did improve their economic position, it did little to affect their political and social reintegration.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results of Chris Blattman’s project with IPA doing a full-on randomisation of a reintegration project in Liberia.

HT: TH