PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

Shoes (not) optional

I hadn't worn shoes in nearly a month. I'm not used to shoes anymore. This is probably the only IFC office I know of where you work barefoot. Staff and visitors alike leave their shoes at the front door before coming inside, sometimes hopping while trying to undo their laces.

But on this day, shoes were necessary. Ambassador Bill Farmer of Australia came to visit Banda Aceh. Australia is our sole donor, and he wanted to have a first-hand look at how their taxpayers' money is being spent. To our delight, his very first stop after arriving was the Investor Outreach Office (IOO), which is being set up by the provincial government to provide support services to investors. The IOO provides investors with information about investment opportunities, helps them get licenses and permits, links them to prospective partners, and connects them to anyone they need to meet. After some thought, I decided to put on a tie as well.

The Ambassador arrived with a number of AusAID staff and was shown around by Pak Chan, who manages the IOO. Pak Faisal from the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency was also there to meet him. There were a few brief speeches, including a very well-worded statement by the Ambassador about the importance of...

Private education for public demand

30 percent of students in India attend local private universities with Amity being one of the biggest. With the numbers rising, the Indian private sector and U.S. universities are eagerly stepping in.

Emerging donors: China and India

FT writes:

China already provides aid amounting to $2bn (€1.5bn, £1bn) a year, a higher figure than Belgium, Switzerland or Australia. India's estimated total of up to $1bn a year already exceeds that of Finland and Ireland.

Computers for development

The idea for an ultra-low-cost computer isn't new. This time the going price is $200.

It's a short life for SMEs in Uganda

Almost 80 percent of all business in Uganda are SMEs. The bad news: most of them "do not live past their first anniversary."

Try it at home - microfinance

Using Kiva and his laptop, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof discovers the power of microfinance - in Afghanistan. From the op-ed:

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and "Emily's family" in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. "If you came back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries," he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn't know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

Here's more on Kiva and the key principles of microfinance.

Death and resurrection

One of our staff died today. The rest of the team has gathered from the South of Chad to N'Djamena for training, and we get a call around 8am. He has passed away with first light. He has been sick for a while, and so the news is not unexpected, although still shocking. We sit in silence, stunned.

After a few minutes I leave our offices to head to the World Bank. By the time I arrive in my boss’s office I am sobbing. This is the second person out of twenty that we have lost in the past six months. Our first colleague was killed in a car accident coming back from Cameroon, and now our second colleague has gone after a long illness. We have started to grow close, this is too much loss.

We talk about what to do: call the training off, send a delegation, contact people we know in the South to provide money for the funeral. Now we need permission to travel: in the middle of death we make phone calls to track down managers in Johannesburg and Douala to expedite trip approval in SAP — the Bank is an odd place...

Tough terms in Algeria

[In Algeria] public-sector managers who leave their posts for jobs in the private sector will be liable to severe penalties, including prison terms of six months to a year and fines of up to AD500,000 (US $6,900), according to a presidential decree published in the official gazette on March 13th. The decree states that managers in state-owned enterprises wanting to work in the private sector must first spend two years unemployed. Moreover, if they find a new job within three years of leaving a public-sector post, they must make a full declaration to the state anti-corruption agency.

Reports the subscription-based Economist Intelligence Unit. The flexibility of labor regulations is one of the key indicators in the Doing Business database which in 2006 ranked Algeria 116 out of 175 on how conducive its regulatory environment is for business.

Water: what's next?

So now that World Water Day has come and gone, what is on everyone's mind?  Water supply and climate change?

It is expected that globally there will be more precipitation, and that higher temperatures will tend to reduce run-off. As the patterns of precipitation and runoff change, rain in fewer, heavier bursts will lead to more floods and dry spells. This, combined with less ground water recharge, means that water storage is being touted as a means to smooth water consumption over periods of variability.

Water storage, whether surface water dams or aquifer recharge, is never without controversy.  To complement adding storage infrastructure to counter-act water variability, managing water quality will also become more and more important: i.e. increasing water re-use will 'create' additional water supply in drier areas.

Whereas water quality has been viewed as an "environmental issue" moreso in the past, it is hitting the radar screen as a "water supply" issue more and more. So, look to water storage and water quality to be companion solutions to water in the context of climate change, even if we are all still sorting out the specifics ....

Easterly, Africa and free markets

William Easterly writes in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Economists involved in Africa then and now undervalued free markets, instead coming up with one of the worst ideas ever: state direction by the states least able to direct.

The free market is no overnight panacea; it is just the gradual engine that ends poverty. African entrepreneurs have shown what they are capable of. They have, for example, launched the world’s fastest growing cell phone industry to replace the moribund state landlines. What a tragedy, therefore, that aid agencies have foisted the poorest economics on the world on the poorest people in the world for 50 years. The hopeful sign is that many independent Africans themselves are increasingly learning the economics of how to get rich, rather than on how to stay poor.