How to spend aid in fragile countries

The classic dilemma in figuring out how to spend aid money is the trade-off between:

     a) achieving scale and sustainability by supporting national government systems (but losing control), and

     b) keeping more direct control by working through NGOs, but sacrificing scale and sustainability.

This trade-off is less acute when the recipient government is an effective service provider and respects human rights. Often however the countries that most need external assistance do so in large part precisely because they aren’t blessed with well qualified governments.

One possible solution to this dilemma is providing mass cash transfers - a route to supporting poor individuals whilst side-stepping their government. Another (neglected?) route is supporting local service providers directly. An example of this is the Girl’s Education South Sudan provision of ‘capitation' grants to schools (full disclosure, I was hired to do some analysis). This pipe provides both government and donor (currently DFID) finance direct to the school bank account (held by the school’s governing/managing committee).

Here is a ring-fenced pipe, separate from the main government treasury, at scale, that can send money direct to every school (whether public or private) in a country, with receipts, full government engagement in delivery, in-person monthly reporting, and disaggregated real-time data. All of which potentially an exciting opportunity for donors if they want to fund education in emergencies.

What does the money do? Overall measured enrolment has been trending upwards over the last few years. My analysis suggests that at least some of this aggregate enrolment growth can be attributed to the grants. First, looking at the individual school level, schools tend to report higher levels of enrolment and attendance the year after receiving a grant, after allowing for school fixed effects by conditioning on past attendance or attendance. Second, I exploit a natural experiment whereby the government-financed component of the grants (not the donor-financed component) was arbitrarily held up by state governments for a set of (~control) schools that had gone through all the same hoops as some other (~treatment) schools that did receive the grants. The estimated effect of receiving grants on enrolment and attendance levels remains similar. Similar gains are found for schools that qualified to receive cash transfers for girls. The results are robust to measuring enrolment using the national remote SMS reporting system (sssams.org), or the smaller in-person sample survey.

What about learning outcomes? The focus of the cutting edge in global education research is rightly on what kids actually learn at school rather than just getting bums on seats. But there are still a few countries, including South Sudan, where access and enrolment in school is still a major issue. You should probably take most statistics on South Sudan with a grain of salt, but one estimate of the Net primary enrolment rate is just 43%, which is really pretty low.

However, one of things that does seem to really matter for student learning outcomes is how teachers are motivated and held accountable. Private schools tend to get more effort out of their teachers, largely because they are paid directly by the school and not by a remote government office. For example in Uganda, teachers in private schools spend more time in the classroom teaching than their counterparts in public schools. But this isn’t an inherent feature of the ownership and management of public versus private schools. In principle all public teachers could be hired and paid directly by schools, financed by a single central government school grant, rather than all teachers being put directly onto a single national payroll. This might inadvertently be happening in South Sudan anyway, as recent rapid inflation is reducing the value of local currency denominated teacher salaries, whilst the donor (hard currency) -financed school grants maintain more of their absolute value (and increase in value relative to teacher central payroll salaries). Shifting more funding directly to schools and allowing the list of eligible schools to include non-state providers could open the door to quality-focused international NGO chains such as Peas.

Table: Uganda Primary School Service Delivery Indicators

It’s very easy to just be incredibly depressed by news coming out of South Sudan, including warnings of a potential new genocide, but as ever, sanity lies in the stoic serenity prayer - we should focus on what we can change (and on the evidence needed to enable the distinction be made between what we can and can’t change).

Graduate Jobs in South Sudan

Looking for your first job in international development? Charlie Goldsmith is hiring in South Sudan;

"International development work is generally best done by people of the country in question: there is no shortage of talent in and from any of Somalia, South Sudan, DRC, or any other FCAS place you might name, only the conditions in which it might be deployed and developed. 

But there is still a role in development work for people from the Global North if they have the right skills, the humility, understanding and connection to apply them well where they are sent, and hopefully the intention to continue to apply them in this work for the medium term. That doesn’t just mean water engineers and hard-bitten Treasury hands, it can also mean the high-achieving, high-potential generalists/fast-streamers that any organisation, the world over, would be glad to have. 

But for those bright young people, getting into international development is not always straightforward: it can seem unwise to set off to a fragile state with no particular fixed plan, as many of those now working in this sector first did; getting to, and staying in, some of the places we work is expensive even if you do have systems already set up, let alone if you’re doing this the first time, straight out of College. 

This Autumn, we are therefore going to be looking to hire up to six CGA Fellows to send to South Sudan, who will be either immediate or fairly recent graduates."

South Sudan: A Cartoon History

This is amazing: an actual real cartoon history of the latest round of civil war in South Sudan, words by Alex de Waal. (via Tom)

"That UN -- I will shut it down"

A gloriously unhinged rant from South Sudan's information Minister. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad (via: Dustin Johnson). 

In remarks yesterday, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Michael Makuei slammed not only the United Nations but also local media houses, East African ceasefire monitors, and Human Rights Watch, which he described as an organization of blood-sucking liars. 

... 

Makuei said he told [Al Jazeera correspondent] Adow that he was "lucky" not to have been imprisoned "like the man in Egypt" -- a reference to Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste. 

... 

"We will write to you today, officially, giving you the final warning, because this has been repeating itself -- I have been calling you, your people, your muzungus [i.e., white people] have not been reporting to me, they resist coming to me because they believe that they are UN. Huh? that UN -- I will shut it down," he said. 

... 

"These are people who must make their living by sucking the blood of others," he said of Human Rights Watch. "Mosquitos," added Cabinet Minister Martin Elia, concurring.
"Mosquitos, yes," said Makuei.

Good news from South Sudan

Charlie Goldsmith emails with updates on the Girl's Education South Sudan project:

"Our majority-South Sudanese team are proud that South Sudan, which has been so beset by trouble in the last year, has the chance to show positive ways in which it is a world-leader. 

Charlie Goldsmith Associates have been particularly involved on design, technology for, and delivery of: 

• The South Sudan Schools Attendance Management System, through which enrolment and attendance of individual pupils - almost 900,000 of them by now - from top to bottom of the education system is recorded, with schools asked to report daily to a freephone number through SMSs from teachers’ own phones.

• Cash Transfers to individual girls in P5-S4 and their families: more than 50,000 will be made in 2014, and around half a million, to 200,000 individual girls, by 2018. In 2015, we expect payment of the majority of these to be by M-Money. 

• School capitation grants to fund investments in quality: almost 3000 schools have been approved to receive these grants, having passed hurdles including opening a bank account, and making a school development plan and budget, and there have been outstanding examples of value delivered, notably in terms of economical construction. GRSS is now looking at rolling this model of funding direct to service delivery units across to the health sector. 

• A multi-year programme of investment in knowledge, evidence and research, much of it delivered by our specialist partners Forcier Consulting and, earlier on, Education for Change, including detailed school and household surveys, learning assessments, and a major subnational PFM performance survey.

The Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) budgets to spend 60m SSP of its own money a year (roughly £12m GBP) on school capitation grants, as part of the wider Local Services Support programme, supported by among others, the ODI Budget Strengthening Initiative. It's worth highlighting that this £12m a year spent by the government of South Sudan is slightly more than the DFID project itself (£60m over five and half years - a great example of leverage and sustainability where aid money can help to increase the effectiveness of potentially much larger government spending. 

You can find some examples of practical good news that has resulted - girls with the resources to be in school, teachers paid, classrooms and latrines quickly and cost-effectively constructed - and scans of how each school has budgeted to spend its capitation grant, including detail down to the cost of a latrine in a given school, and the accountability now being returned by schools.

In addition to the CGA work, other members of the consortium are delivering really exciting things too, particularly interesting are the BBC "Our School" programmes in local languages. Since they have one programme per State per topic, and have done about 14 topics this year, it is really quite a significant library of decent resources of people saying sensible things about education, including the practicalities, not just the slogans, in their own language. In due course, the project is going to do important things on in classroom education quality too. 

Using innovative technology elsewhere

We think some of these approaches and tools are broadly applicable:

• Monitoring enrolment and attendance at an individual level, in near-real time, on a public website (data on individuals can only be accessed by permissioned login), is a step of assurance and usefulness of data that goes beyond what some EMISs offer.

• Getting funds direct into the hands of individuals and down to bank accounts of service delivery units like schools and primary health care units, gives country governments and their partners assurance that funds have reached their destination, and sets good incentives for funds to be used correctly, and the leverage and information to follow up if there is a problem. Putting funds to individuals and schools and clinics at local level stimulates the local economy, and, in particular, financial inclusion - in South Sudan, Eden Commercial Bank are opening five new branches in County towns during 2014, driven partly by the additional transaction volume provided by capitation grants and cash transfers, and other banks have set up travelling account opening services. 

• The technology approach is designed for a low-connectivity/not-always-on environment, and for users using their own mobile phones/devices.

These approaches are operationally effective, and showing promising signs of effect on retention and enrolment, in South Sudan: how much more might they achieve in an environment where there were fewer barriers to accessing public services?"

Value for money in technical assistance to governments

The DFID project completion report is out (here) for the South Sudan ODI fellows from 2009-2012. It's pretty good. (this doesn't include my cohort).

the fellows delivered - and exceeded - the desired outputs and the programme has achieved - and exceeded - the desired outcome, at slightly under budget. Given the minimal oversight given to this programme by DFID South Sudan, a large part of the credit must go to the project partner, ODI, at least in respect of its selection and briefing of the fellows, who were very well suited to the tasks in hand. The majority of credit must, however, go to the fellows themselves, for undertaking their work professionally and working to sustainably build colleagues’ skills and capacity. 

Taking into account all of the evidence gathered in this review it seems clear that the ODI Fellowship for the Government of Southern Sudan programme delivered very strong VFM over the review period 2009 - 2012. It is an impressively performing programme, particularly given the difficult context to deliver results in South Sudan that it managed to overcome - if anything performing better in value for money terms than the global ODI programme did in more benign environments. 

This review found that the programme was implemented to expected timelines and budgets, with strong performance by the fellows translating into very strong performance on value for money metrics. The programme over-achieved in relation to the desired outputs and outcome, while making a small cost saving.

Development as... a better postal service

Francis from Oregon writes:

"I am a young postcard collector working on a geography project. For this project, I would really love a postcard from Sudan or South Sudan. 

Do you know of anyone who would be happy to send me one? I would be so happy and grateful for your help. 

Of course in return I would be more than happy to send the sender a beautiful postcard (or anything else they might need) from Oregon in the U.S. 

Francis from Oregon http://the-geo-nerd.blogspot.com"

So if anyone in South Sudan wants a penfriend, there you go. All I can offer is some post-related development marginalia.

First, the speed and reliability with which post services deliver letters is a reasonably reliable indicator of state capacity more generally. Countries which are members of the International Postal Union agree to return any misaddressed letters to the sending country within 30 days. So a team of economists sent letters from the US to fictitious addresses in 159 countries (10 letters per country), to see how fast they came back. The results tally pretty well with expectation, Finland and Norway sent them all back, Sudan and Somalia sent back none. And the time it took correlates with other measures of government capacity. They go on to make an important point:

"we used these measures to argue that an important reason for poor government in developing countries is not corruption or patronage, but rather the same basic low productivity that plagues the private sector in these countries as well.   Such low productivity is related to inputs and technology, but also to management.    In some ways, it is not surprising that a measure of the quality of government constructed to be free of political influences in fact correlates with standard determinants of productivity; yet it is still important to recognize that not all bad government is caused by politics."

In addition to furthering our understanding of governance and state capacity, post offices play an important immediate role in providing financial access in many countries, particularly for the poor, the less educated, those not working for a wage, and those living in rural areas.

Coach Zoran and his African Tigers

A new documentary, about the first ever manager of the first ever South Sudanese national football team. His name is Zoran, and he swears like a trooper. It's an entertaining story, filmed in 2012 and set against the backdrop of some beautiful footage of Juba amidst the excitement and optimism of independence (in 2011). Particularly poignant due to the recent return to conflict.

It's available on the BBC iPlayer for the next month, watch it while you can (there are free VPN solutions for those not in the UK).

Cash transfers taking off in South Sudan

Tombura-Yambio Catholic Diocese launched a Conditional Cash Transfer project last friday - supporting 120 households looking after children whose parents have died of HIV/AIDS, with 200 SSP per month ($63/£38) each.

This is the second NGO-implemented one I'm aware of, after the Save the Children pilot in 2011 (incidentally, whatever happened to that?).

Meanwhile a new civil society initiative Fresh Start South Sudan calls for putting oil money directly in the hands of the poor.

Thanks to Tom for the links.

Addendum: A friend reminds me that DFID have planned cash transfers as part of the Girl's Education project - published details here on the very good DFID project tracker.

South Sudan: Safer (for aid workers) than detroit?

"There are 17,000 aid workers in South Sudan, making it one of the largest aid operations in the world. In 2012 there were 25 major attacks on aid workers ... With 9 murders of aid workers, that puts the aid worker murder rate in South Sudan at 53 per 100,000. How does this compare to the murder rates of other places?" 

From Aid Leap

South Sudan macro update

A friend writes:

"Sudan Tribune today reports that Sudanese Dinar is today at 8.2 to the USD in KRT, street, 4.4 official. SSP meanwhile at 4.something to the USD, street, and 3.2 official."

So whilst the Government of South Sudan continues to lose money to corruption through the fixed artificially strong exchange rate (last year Chris Adam and I estimated the cost to be around 12-15% of government spending), they aren't losing as much as North Sudan, who are really taking the piss.

And at least inflation seems to have stabilised this year after a huge increase in prices through 2011 and 2012.

Source: SSNBS

How many kids attended school in South Sudan today?

You'll soon be able to find out online from live SMS reports, currently being piloted in Lainya County near Juba (1,319 girls and 1,507 boys reported present so far today in case you were wondering, 84 girls absent and 136 boys absent), with plans to roll out to the whole country. Data is reported by state, county, and even by school. As CG says, "South Sudan may not be at the top on most things, but on SMS real time school attendance monitoring, we think we may actually be leading the world." Ana Fii Inni (I am here!) is a South Sudan Ministry of Education project being supported by the DFID Girl's Education Programme.

Unrelated, I'm also told that it is possible to procure schools through the church in South Sudan for half of the $30,400 figure reported here.

"God must be a white man"

An excellent, heart-felt lament in the Sudan Tribune from a man with what must be an incredibly difficult job, the Auditor General of South Sudan, Steven Wöndu.

Donors beware! The African big man eats without limit. He accumulates without consideration for the needs of others. ‘Enough’ does not exist in the dictionary. Africans in power do not want to consider the fundamental zero-sum concept that the more you scoop from the common pot, the less everyone else gets. They refuse to ponder the life or death consequences of misappropriating resources intended for interventions in maternal care, solid waste management, infant vaccination, and clean drinking water. They do not feel the danger of living in a massive mansion surrounded by tragic slums. In the rare event that an African big man visits a village, he would ‘donate’ a class room, or a clinic or a road that would never exist except in the government’s financial expenditure schedule of that year. The announcement of the fake donation is proof that the big men know the needs of their people. Why they choose not to do the right thing beats imagination. But then, they are modern African big men! 

We are very efficient in taxing our poorest people mercilessly. In Africa, a woman with three chicken eggs to sell because the baby has fever is taxed in the village market. Nobody knows the destination of Africa’s tax proceeds. We only know they do not go to municipal services. Municipal services my foot! In Africa, every upper class household is a municipality with a mayor, a generator, a bore well and a septic tank. In Africa top government officials proudly import 4-wheel drive SUVs duty free. 

In other parts of the world, corrupt officials risk prosecution, fines, imprisonment or even hanging. There is a judicial deterrent to graft. In Africa, impunity is the norm. In the best case scenarios, selective justice is applied. Only the ‘small fish’ see the jail house. Reports about major embezzlement in high places only warrant inconclusive investigations. That is why African corruption is not practiced discretely. There is no need to disguise sleaze. Conversely, scruples are equated to stupidity. That is why African auditors have no difficulty reaching adverse findings.

via Abhijeet Singh 

So what exactly just happened to the economy of South Sudan?

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. News about common citizens and business people being shot dead injured, and/or robbed were making headlines on almost daily basis. In a sense, these consequences are attributable to the economic hardships facing the nation.

The fastest growing city in Africa

Is the claim of a fascinating new paper on Juba by Richard Grant and Daniel Thompson (HT: Sean Fox).

Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is the fastest growing city in Africa, exhibiting the most rapid urban expansion and growth ever to take place in the region. Despite its explosive demographic and infrastructural expansion, the urban explosion has received virtually no attention from urban scholars.

since 2005 [Juba] recorded spectacular urban expansion: at upwards of 12.5% per annum, the city’s growth is among the fastest rates of urbanization in human history. [Population] has more than doubled in the past seven years to at least 500,000-600,000 by 2012.

On the urban economy:

The sudden and massive influx of development aid and investment drives local property and consumer markets 

Juba functions within a highly unequal cash economy: while Juba can be among the most expensive cities in Africa (for example US$200 for a basic hotel room and seasonal food price hikes); simultaneously, subsistence wild food harvesting is necessary for many food-insecure urbanites.

On urban livelihoods:

the urban poor concentrate on firewood collection, informal construction (digging pit latrines, stone breaking, and mudding traditional dwellings), charcoal making (exacerbating deforestation), petty trade (tea and food selling), motorcycle taxi (boda-boda) driving, and brewing alcohol.

And on rural "land grabs":

analyses showing approximately 5% of total land is under cultivation 

Between 2007 and 2010, 8% of South Sudan’s total land area was acquired by international private interests (firms from the US, Egypt, UAE, and UK are the largest investors)

‘How to Build a Country From Scratch: A 12 Step Program'

This is a cool video on South Sudan's first year of independence (the NYT doesn't do embeds).

A couple of minor criticisms

1 - was it really necessary to provide subtitles for the Vice President speaking in English?

2 - The final shot is a slide with the text "In late 2012, South Sudan expelled a U.N. human rights officer and downed a U.N. helicopter." Which makes it sounds bit like South Sudan is trying to wage a war against the UN. I don't know the details of the human rights officer case, but reportedly the shooting of the helicopter was clearly an accident. Following years and years of bombing by North Sudan (the South has no airforce), recent sighting of Northern planes bringing supplies to rebels in the South, reports that North Sudan has purposely disguised its aircraft as UN aircraft in the past, and reportedly a phone call made by the SPLA before the strike was made to check, in which the UN were not aware of any UN aircraft in that area. (More details from Eric Reeves here). So maybe cut the South a bit of slack on that one.

Against cash transfers in South Sudan

A few quick thoughts on this recent article republished in the Sudan Tribune by the Auditor General of South Sudan, Steven Wöndu.

He makes 4 arguments against cash transfers

1. There is no clear definition of poverty in South Sudan
2. Targeting would be impossible
3. Delivery would be impossible
4. Cash transfers won't increase productivity

I'd suggest that the first two issues could be resolved by instituting a universal child benefit. No poverty targeting to worry about. Delivery systems could reasonably quickly be created by mobile phone companies if the government committed to start pushing serious money through this system. And finally that cash transfers surely will increase productivity down the road if they have an impact on child malnutrition, but that the productivity effects should not be our highest concern when there are people who are literally starving.

Update: I should credit Joe Hanlon with the child benefit idea (here and here), and also note the Blattman vs Banerjee debate on the subject from 2011.

The fiscal cliff in East Africa

So, when South Sudan makes a strategic choice to temporarily (but drastically) cut government spending in order to achieve political objectives, it is being "reckless". And when Western donors decide to temporarily cut government spending in Rwanda and Uganda in order to achieve political objectives, they are being... what exactly? Is there any evidence that sanctions are even effective? And it's lucky that our whiter than white British government has a totally clean record on corruption, human rights, and interfering in other countries... ahem, MPs expenses, Leveson, our Prime Ministers acting as arms salesman to Middle Eastern despots, our financial services industry laundering exactly the cash stolen from foreign governments that we pretend to care about, the invasion of Iraq... good job our citizens don't rely on foreign aid for basic service delivery then.

Humanitarian Aid in South Sudan 2013

The UN has just published its annual mammoth humanitarian aid coordination effort for South Sudan, and it has GRAPHS. LOTS of GRAPHS.

Up to 4.5 million people are expected to need food and livelihoods support in 2013, so it's kind of a big deal.

The document pulls together needs analysis across 12 sectors ("clusters") and details costed plans for response by 114 non-governmental organizations and UN agencies, adding up to over $1.1 billion.

Finally kudos to UNDP and OCHA for signing up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The next job is to actually publish some data ...

The cost of currency controls in South Sudan

One of the ways that South Sudan has managed to avoid currency depreciation after its collapse in oil revenues, has been to impose hard controls on access to foreign currency. Instead of rationing limited foreign currency through price (to the highest bidder) - rationing has been at the discretion of the authorities. As a result, Kenyan airline Jetlink hasn't been able to convert its South Sudanese Pounds into hard currency with which to buy fuel, and has just announced the suspension of all of its flights.

HT: @bankelele