Have you read the Development Policy Blog today by Richard Curtain?  If you haven’t please do.  It is music to my ears.  He reviews two papers, one on fragile states and one on implementation failure. These papers expose the folly of forcing western “best practise” models on  systems that are barely operating, and could never hope to attain even “good enough”  practise.  How often have we borne witness to development consultants and agencies exhorting countries to adopt best practice organisational forms and applying pressure  to encourage the hasty introduction of changes, overloading the fragile systems, and  causing local structures to fail to cope?  

In my experience – slow and steady wins the race.   There are no silver bullets.

In our paper “Working together for a better future”, soon to be published in the PNG Medical Journal, Maxine Whittaker and I suggest that we need to “Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw  from your experiences and invest them in the future” (Jim Rohn).  Home grown solutions need to be given time to emerge and a stronger focus on getting the basics in place is a better bet than creating  organisational  forms that look good but don’t deliver .

Click here to view Richard Curtin’s Development Policy blog  http://devpolicy.org/confronting-capability-traps/

To view Jane Thomason’s and Maxine Whittaker’s paper click here   Working together for a better future

As Australian businesses move into newly emerging markets, we are challenged to think about how concepts of ethical governance can be translated into different cultural, economic and political arenas.  

Integrity in the human context means adherence to consistent moral and ethical principles – no matter the setting.By extension, to act with global integrity is to conduct your business according to consistent moral and ethical principles – no matter what the setting. There are two aspects to global integrity: global business practice and corporate social responsibility.  Ethical business practice is guided by a number of global frameworks including The UN Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative. Corporate social responsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation  that encompasses the impact of businesses on the environment and communities, and has a positive dimension of encouraging community growth and development. The great Chinese philosopher Confucius said: ‘If a man remembers what is right at the sign of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger and does not forget sentiments he has repeated all his life when he has been in straitened circumstances for a long time, he may be said to be a complete man.’Global integrity is about all of us being that complete person – wherever we are in the world. Global integrity is about how you and I behave: every day, everywhere.

Today’s Development Policy Blog, posted comments on the 2011 Australian Aid Review from Bob McMullan,  former  Parliamentary Secretary for International Development,  from an  article published in the East Asia Forum. In commenting on relevant areas of Australian expertise to Africa, he reports that representatives of African countries,  were keen to add mining. I was pleased to see mining identified, and hope that this includes planning for long term social benefits, in partnership with mining companies. This is an area currently being explored by DFID on “Potential of mining PPPs to strengthen health systems and extend health services to underserved populations” and the ADB in PNG have been exploring this area in the HIV in Rural Enclaves Program. Our own work with the mining sector in PNG, Philippines and Mongolia strengthens my belief that the mining sector can be an important and valuable partner in development.  In our attached discussion paper on how to harness the mining sector to generate social benefits to resource poor communities, Matthew Hancock and I, explore how this might be done in PNG.  So we encourage Australia to look at how to convert economic benefits of mining into long term social benefit, in Africa, and elsewhere where the extractive industries are working among impoverished communities.

Please follow the link to view the discussion paper http://devpolicy.anu.edu.au/publications/

On February 11^th – 12^th, I was an invited speaker at the Second Roundtable on China Africa Health Collaboration, and the official launch of “China’s Alliance for South-South Health Cooperation Research” in Beijing.  The meeting was organised by the Institute for Global Health of Peking University and the China Institute of International Studies.  

It was quite an extraordinary event, and had extremely high level Chinese and international participation, including an opening message from Dr Margaret Chan the Director-General of The World Health Organisation.  The Chinese government was represented with  Vice Ministerial participation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commerce, National Population and Family Planning Commission, as well as the Minister for Health. 

The meeting was attended by Chinese health, academic and research organisations, as well as large private sector enterprises.  International attendees included UN agencies, WHO, DFID, USAID, Cordaid,  World Bank, Gates Foundation and GAVI. African countries represented included Liberia, Ethiopia and Tanzania. 

The two day program covered the history of China-Africa health cooperation over the past 50 years. Many may be surprised about the volume and range of assistance China has provided to various African countries, both through government and private sector channels. 

The session on “Opportunities and challenges of China-Africa health collaboration”, reviewed the history, provided a candid analysis of the challenges and discussed some of the issues for China to consider in future support to health in Africa.  The session on “China’s contributions in helping Africa achieve the Millennium Development Goals” outlined significant programs of cooperation particularly in maternal health and malaria control.  A number of African countries presented on their collaborations with China in MDG related programs. 

With very significant private sector operations in Africa, the session on  “ Contributions on South-South health collaboration through Public-Private Partnership and Corporate social responsibility” provided a clear  vision of how to improve the participation of   Chinese enterprises and societies in health aid in Africa    by the China Institute of International Studies, discussions on the contribution and issues for the Chinese pharmaceutical sector and some case studies on how Chinese mining companies could consider their corporate social responsibility for broader health improvement through Public Private Partnerships. 

With several significant development partners in attendance, the session on ”Approaches and strategies of multilateral collaboration in health” provided a forum for dialogue between the “old donors” and China, on ways to improve their cooperation and collaboration in health in Africa.       

Some take home messages for me were (i) the willingness and interest in China to strengthen its contribution to health in Africa, (ii) a strong focus on South-South collaboration, but also an interest in including “Northern” partners, to benefit from their perspectives and experience; (iii) keen interest in encouraging the Chinese private sector to strengthen their corporate social responsibility programs; and (iv) mutual interest from China and “old donors” in finding ways to cooperate more closely in their China – Africa health programs.                                                

Congratulations to Dr Lucy Chen and her team from the Global Health Institute and the  China Institute of International Studies for convening such a high quality event, and for the launch of  China’s Alliance for South-South Health Cooperation Research.           

On Monday 7 February, I was an invited panellist at the conference on Doubling Australia’s Aid Program, convened by the Development Policy Centre of the Crawford School of the Australian National University.  The conference  registrations were so popular, that conveners had to turn people away.  

The scene for the conference  was set by Peter Baxter, Director General, AusAID  who opened with  a very focussed presentation on the challenges to AusAID in  managing the doubling of the aid budget.  He outlined initiatives already underway to prepare the agency for the challenges  ahead.  Among other issues, he observed that with more money will come more scrutiny, and emphasised the role of the aid review in assisting him to meet these challenges.  The aid review team, led by Sandy Holloway, were present for the whole day.  With the higher aid volumes, Mr Baxter noted the expected change to fewer, larger more strategic activities.  He emphasised the importance of NGOs and multilaterals to the future delivery of the aid program.  He also highlighted the new modalities and the reduction in the proportion of the aid program being handled by managing contractors having reduced from 41% in 2006  to  22% in 2010.  Underlying his comments was  an increasing emphasis on improving performance measurement and value for money in the aid program. 

Steven Howes provided the latest thinking on aid effectiveness and distilled it into three considerations (i) the quality of the recipient; (ii) the quality of the donor and (iii) the interaction between the two. Given the weakness of the evidence base – Howes called for greater use of independent evaluation.  His comment  “Find out what works and stick to it”  had resonance with me. 

A range of stimulating presentations and parallel sessions followed.  Highlights included a presentation by Sean Burges  on “new donors” such as China, India and Brazil and the ways in which they are changing the development landscape and consideration of “trilateral programming”, where “old donors”, “new donors” and recipient countries establish greater cooperation in their development programming. 

Simon Feeny presented an interesting paper challenging some of the “received wisdom” about too much aid going to the Pacific.    He provided an analysis  which suggested that, other than small Micronesian countries and the Solomon Islands,  other Pacific countries like PNG, Samoa, Fiji and Vanuatu were nowhere near the point of diminishing returns.  He countered the common arguments around absorptive  capacity constraints by saying – where capacity is poor (i) build it and (ii) until it is built, work around it by direct provision of service.  Satish Chand also presented a fascinating analysis of where Australia’s aid goes, and found correlations with (among other things) distance from Canberra and where US aid is given. 

It was a great day and a benchmark for high quality debate and dialogue around Australia’s development program. Congratulations to Steven Howes and Matt Morris and the rest of the team. Long overdue. 

My contribution to the wrap up Panel discussion is attached to this blog, in case you are interested.    

The papers were of high quality and great relevance to current aid debates.  All papers, presentations and videos are  up on the ANU  website and I encourage you to look at them.  http://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/media/policy_forum/.

Jane Thomason Presentation