How to immigrate to America

Be David Beckham.

HT: Simon at EconomicEye.com

LSE joins the blogosphere

A couple of potentially interesting new blogs from the LSE, Do No Harm written by students on the MSc Development Management and a course blog DV409: Economic Development Policy written by Instructor Diana Weinhold.
There is an even a post by an ex-Juba-ite on working in development:

A self-serving bureaucracy that never gets to the field, lives in meetings, writes endless reports and pays itself handsomely.  This isn’t why a lot of people join the cause.  They want to be working directly with people, seeing the impacts of their work in front of them, confronting poverty and injustice head on.  But how do you achieve large-scale impact from a local level, how do you fully engage with national politics, and how do you bring the large resources to bear?  Personally I’m in development to work on the big issues, which means in 3 years in Sudan I got out of the capital three times.  I could live with that.  Other people felt sorry for me, often quite angry.  You know that aid official who lives behind barbed wire in western comfort when there are poor people just the other side of the fence?  That was me.

In my 18 months I’ve left the capital twice.

---

Links fixed - thanks Laura

UNINVOLVED IN AFRICA

This is surely staged…

Weekly(ish) Twitter Links 29.03.10

• Gettin by in Vietnam
• RT: @alunmcdonald Trekking through dense congolese forest, halfway up a volcano, and still get internet and twitter. Amazing
• Chinese wages too high for coastal factories?
• @maggie4enough The brilliance of Jay-Z
• Tim Harford: Macroeconomics is witchcraft
• Information Is The New Coal
• RT: @gigglingbob New Post: Sudan Votes Music Hopes http://robrooker.com/blog/archives/527
• 1 in 5 Southern Sudanese are severely food insecure
• RT: @PeaceDividend Our website - www.peacediv.com - is LAUNCHED!!
• "Southern Sudan is on the rise - there’s a rumour that should be circulated in the press"
• RT: @robertcottrell @rovingbandit here's a browser Africa feed. http://thebrowser.com/taxonomy/term/59/feed
• er, Mr. Ibrahim? There aren't any Southerners running for president...
• RT: @JuliaThornton @susanmorgan: #Bashir on @CarterCenter: We will cut their fingers off, put them under our shoes, & throw them out. http://bit.ly/bBxs4h
• @maggie4Enough chapatti-beans are much better next to de-mining commission behind MoFEP - come for lunch
• [Juba] is home to a circus cast of outsiders who have flocked here since 2005: roughshod profiteers, UN drones in pressed shirts... ... bleeding heart aid workers, insta-fix briefcase consultants. http://tinyurl.com/ygdk3h5
• Nice long feature about Juba in the FT

Social Networks for Development - India Edition

Here it is folks - Kiirti - a one-stop reporting and petitioning platform for Indian governance.

It is a platform to enable effective governance by promoting awareness and citizen engagement. It allows government, non-government and civic organizations to engage with citizens easily through phone, sms, email, and the web.

These guys running this (eMoksha.org) will also be running the Ushahidi platform for the Sudanese elections: Sudan Vote Monitor.

Quick Wins in Development Policy

Development is hard. There is plenty that the governments of rich countries can do to help, but sadly much of it is politically too difficult to contemplate (such as allowing more immigration from the poorest countries).

So how about a policy that can help but costs rich countries nothing?

This new working paper from CGD finds that providing Duty-Free Quota-Free access to OECD markets for poor countries provides significant benefits with very small to zero impact upon the rich countries.

A development policy no-brainer?

There are still significant benefits for LDCs from removing the remaining barriers they face in OECD countries, but only if all products are covered.  Since both rich-country tariff peaks and LDC exports are relatively concentrated, excluding as few as three percent of tariff lines, as proposed by the United States at the WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in 2005, reduces the benefits to basically zero.

…

The LDCs account for a trivial share of global exports, the reason for the initiative, and preference-giving countries thus have little to fear from extending full market access to them. The quantitative results show that the expected impact on welfare, exports, and domestic production are very small to zero, including for the quota-controlled agricultural products excluded by Canada, Japan, and the United States, as well as textiles and apparel in the latter case.

…

providing market access is a step that this analysis suggests would be both beneficial for LDCs, and low-cost for preference-giving countries. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon just designated 2010 as the “year of development” and called for accelerated efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The goal of providing duty-free, quota-free market access for LDCs should be easily achievable by rich countries, as well as by Brazil, China, India, and other developing countries “in a position to do so.”

This is going to be huge

The UK Conservative Party has promised to

Publish every item of local and government and quango expenditure over £25,000, plus every project that receives EU funds

a Tory spokesman confirmed to me earlier today: "We will publish Coins [the Treasury’s Combined Online Information System] straight away if we get into government."

I’m almost tempted to vote Conservative. Only kidding. I’m probably not going to vote in any case. But this is absolutely revolutionary. This is going to change everything. It will make the MP expenses scandal seem like nothing.

How much of DFID spending will be on this thing?

Did I ever tell you about the Obama t-shirts in Juba?

 

Originary

Born in

Africa to

Manage

Americans

 

Awesome. Also, Yasir Arman, the SPLM candidate for President of the Republic of Sudan (not Southern Sudan) is standing on a platform of Hope and Change. Check out the website.

Constraints to growth in Southern Sudan

“One sack of sugar cost 155 [Sudanese pounds, $69.50]. When that train arrived it went to 80 [$35.90],” said John Arop, an NGO manager based in Wau. Soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and Fanta halved in price from 2 SDG (90 cents) to 1 SDG (45 cents), he said. The first cargo train also carried sugar, cement and sorghum.

Rail transport can dramatically cut prices because delivery trucks face multiple roadblocks and taxation

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88517

Ten rules for writing fiction

The Guardian has asked a bunch of authors how to write. Many of the responses are a bit worthy and repetitive. My pick of the 3 best are:

Margaret Atwood

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a ­memory stick.

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

10 Prayer might work. Or reading ­something else. Or a constant visual­isation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

Philip Pullman

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

Ian Rankin

1 Read lots.

2 Write lots.

3 Learn to be self-critical.

4 Learn what criticism to accept.

5 Be persistent.

6 Have a story worth telling.

7 Don't give up.

8 Know the market.

9 Get lucky.

10 Stay lucky.

For non-fiction - here are some good tips from Amanda Taub

The economics of pirating

A basic piracy operation requires a minimum eight to twelve militia prepared to stay at sea for extended periods of time, in the hopes of hijacking a passing vessel. Each team requires a minimum of two attack skiffs, weapons, equipment, provisions, fuel and preferably a supply boat. The costs of the operation are usually borne by investors, some of whom may also be pirates.

To be eligible for employment as a pirate, a volunteer should already possess a firearm for use in the operation. For this ‘contribution’, he receives a ‘class A’ share of any profit. Pirates who provide a skiff or a heavier firearm, like an RPG or a general purpose machine gun, may be entitled to an additional A-share. The first pirate to board a vessel may also be entitled to an extra A-share.

At least 12 other volunteers are recruited as militiamen to provide protection on land of a ship is hijacked, In addition, each member of the pirate team may bring a partner or relative to be part of this land-based force. Militiamen must possess their own weapon, and receive a ‘class B’ share — usually a fixed amount equivalent to approximately US$15,000.

If a ship is successfully hijacked and brought to anchor, the pirates and the militiamen require food, drink, qaad, fresh clothes, cell phones, air time, etc. The captured crew must also be cared for. In most cases, these services are provided by one or more suppliers, who advance the costs in anticipation of reimbursement, with a significant margin of profit, when ransom is eventually paid.

When ransom is received, fixed costs are the first to be paid out. These are typically:

• Reimbursement of supplier(s)

• Financier(s) and/or investor(s): 30% of the ransom

• Local elders: 5 to 10 %of the ransom (anchoring rights)

• Class B shares (approx. $15,000 each): militiamen, interpreters etc.

The remaining sum — the profit — is divided between class-A shareholders.

From the UN Security Council via UN Dispatch via the Browser

The Spaghetti Bowl of African Regional Integration Agreements

You said you liked pictures… (from the same WB report as this one).

Barely getting by

Walking through the markets of Juba, women selling vegetables, tea and managing local food outlets catch your eyes most.  We do not do these odd jobs because they are our favourite, said Elizabeth Wani, a tea seller. “This is the only way we can find an income since we are illiterate,”.  Ms. Wani like most of her colleagues makes a living of less than 15 Sudanese pounds (5$) per day.

 

Betty Nyadeng, a 15 year old serving in a local hotel makes 10 Sudanese pounds (3$) in a day which caters for her two daughters and four siblings. “If I had an education, I would be earning more for my siblings,” she said upon tears. She added that her eldest sister passed away while giving birth early this year due to the hard times she went though while pregnant.

From SudanVotes.com

The SSCCSE are killing me, I can’t wait to see some published household survey data.

DFID in Nigeria

DFID is another donor that could not account for all its activities. When asked to provide information on the sectors and states DFID is operating in, it simply wrote saying ‘we do not require our programme managers to collect expenditure on a state-by-state basis.’…

Huh? Isn’t Nigeria quite a big country? With quite a large population? Some casual googling tells me that the average (mean) Nigerian state has 3.7 million people, more populous than Liberia, Mauritania, Namibia, Botswana, or Lesotho.

Lagos State has 9 million people, more than Rwanda or Sierra Leone.

Why do countries get so much more weight in our decisions than people?
--------------
Quote from Global Dashboard’s summary of a Nigeria National Planning Commission report which analyses the aid to Nigeria between 1999 and 2007.