I wish I were leaving in the aftermath of an election that had not only been relatively peaceful but which had also seen Ethiopia continue its path towards the deepened democracy that I think – as well as being important in its own terms – is important for the country’s long-term stability and sustainable progress on poverty reduction. Sadly, I am not. The next few years will be a challenge. Ethiopians will and should be at the forefront of meeting that challenge. But, with responsibilities shared in a global world, outsiders – struggling to know what to do for the best and juggling different priorities – must not turn their backs. Sadly, by flying home tonight, I am.

However, I will keep in touch and will – because accountability is central to politics and power/powerlessness – keep banging on about accountability and development. Much progress is needed, and is possible, both here in Ethiopia, in the UK and globally. And, I am sure that this won’t be my last time in Ethiopia. Thanks to everyone who has made my time here so rewarding and to Amanda who has had to put up with – and has been very supportive of – my decision to disappear for 7 months.

Owen Barder has an interesting post on this, setting out why he says little about Ethiopian politics. In brief, his view is that Ethiopians’ views rather than his should be listened to and that to give more weight to outsiders views is “unconsciously racist”, and that his time is more appropriately spent helping to fix the policies and practices of his own country’s government.

I agree with much of what Owen says in relation to this. First, the idea that citizens of developed countries have a particular responsibility to try to get their own governments to act in ways that are better in terms of development – to address issues that are, in Owen’s words, “properly mine to help fix”. Second, that the ability of outsiders (eg. me, with much worse Amharic than Owen!) to understand Ethiopian politics is limited and therefore our views should not be given very much weight. And I would add, outsiders should not be seeking to impose inappropriate context-insensitive normative models about how things should be.

However I do think that the phrase “properly mine to help fix” (or my “particular responsibility” phrase above) should be unpacked as states and sovereignty are socially and politically constructed. That is, they are not natural givens and one might argue in some instances, and to some extent, that other principles/norms – for instance in relation to human rights, or justice or accountability – trump that of sovereignty (as in the notion of the responsibility to protect, or the universal declaration of human rights).

I also wonder what Owen would make of statements on the electoral process put out by the EU Election Observation Mission or the UK Government. Are they unconsciously racist? Is reading them unconsciously racist? If a Government that provides aid to country X is concerned to ensure and to assure its own citizens that that aid is not supporting a repressive regime, is it reasonable – or unconsciously racist – of that Government to make an assessment of the political system in country X and the impact of aid on that political system (and of the the impact of that political system on the effectiveness of aid)?

And what of calls by groups within Ethiopia for outsiders to be more vocal in their criticisms? Are those calls unconsciously racist, even if those calls are made by Ethiopians who understand the politics very well?

It seems to me that that things are – and should be – more complicated than a simple “outsiders should shut up, should not be listened to, and should concentrate on problems that are properly theirs to fix”.

Globalisation after all does blur the borders between inside and outside. Should people from developing countries who are affected by UK policies on migration, or climate change, shut up too, or are they stakeholders with a legitimate interest/right in saying what they think and seeking cross-border accountability?

Globalisation goes beyond the borders. So too should and do concerns with rights, justice and accountabilities. The challenge is to find the appropriate balance between putting into practice that principle – of global social justice – and the principle of country-ownership/non-interference/not talking about stuff that is not ”properly yours” to talk about or fix.

From June 2010, I will be based in the UK. Much of my time over the next six months will be spent working on accountability-related issues for DFID’s Policy Division. However, please do drop me a line at alan@alanhudson.info if you want to discuss opportunities for freelance collaboration. My speciality is the analysis and provision of context-sensitive advice about governance and accountabilities. Click here for more information about me, my skills and experience.

Owen Barder has an interesting post about aid effectiveness which gives his take on why the Paris agenda is not working. He had been invited to participate in a retreat for the Development Assistance Group (26 donors) as they reflect on what they do and how they could do it better.

What struck me most about Owen’s presentation to the DAG was that his analysis of why Paris isn’t working is – other than two brief mentions of accountability – completely silent about the role of politics in aid effectiveness (and the role of aid in influencing supposedly domestic politics in developing countries). This might be because Owen is a self-described economist and I am not, but nevertheless it came as a bit of a surprise. Donor behaviour is certainly part of the problem and one which Owen’s ideas might go some way to address, but the reason why aid is not as effective as it might be is surely in large part because of the political contexts into which aid is pumped and the fact that donors’ behaviour is insufficiently informed by good understanding of those contexts.

Those of us from donor countries no doubt have more leverage – and, Owen might argue, more legitimacy – in seeking to influence the behaviour of their own governments/aid agencies, but if aid is to be made more effective then it needs to be provided in ways that are informed by a good understanding of the realities of governance and politics on the ground in the specific contexts where it is provided. This isn’t easy and presents its own dilemmas about where the line is between donors legitimately seeking to ensure that their actions are informed by a good understanding of the political landscape and interfering unhelpfully in that landscape, but it seems to me to be an essential complement to the sort of approach that Owen advocates. And, it is a perspective that is – post-Accra, with the notion of ownership more seriously interrogated and the importance of multiple accountabilities considered – at least beginning to influence the aid effectiveness agenda.

Sue Unsworth (drawing on her recent piece on “What’s politics got to do with it? Why donors find it so hard to come to terms with politics and why this matters”) and Mick Moore had an interesting piece on Open Democracy about this and about what they have been calling “an upside down view of governance” [I think it should be inside-out and upside-down - emphasising that one should look at different things as well as look at things differently].  David Booth too (my former colleague at ODI) draws on a similar analysis in his suggestions as to how the aid effectiveness agenda needs to be reformed.

Owen’s presentation had two other elements in it that provoked responses from me, responses that relate to my take on the failings of the aid effectiveness agenda.

First, the idea – Samuelson’s, not necessarily Owen’s – that the idea of comparative advantage is the only idea in the social sciences that is both true and non-trivial. Twaddle. I see your comparative advantage and raise it with the prisoners’ dilemma; the idea that two people might not cooperate even if it is in their best interests to do so. Put differently, the pursuit of individual interests can lead to socially sub-optimal outcomes. And, if prisoners’ dilemma doesn’t trump comparative advantage, I’ve got the tragedy of the commons up my sleeve too. True, and in a world of shared resources that don’t match up with property rights or sovereignties, certainly not trivial.

Second, the rhetorical question – posed in relation to donor division of labour exercises – about which donors want to leave the room/sector/country. I’m only a tiny bit of a donor, but I do and am. On Thursday. To be replaced by an Ethiopian who has a better understanding of the politics of Ethiopia than I will ever have. Not quite the room-leaving-manoeuvre that Owen would like, but in my view the sort of room-leaving-manoeuvre that is at least as important for making aid more effective.

I wonder whether the DAG’s reflection included consideration of the relationship between politics and aid effectiveness, and the need for donors to better understand the politics, or perhaps the political landscape for donors in Ethiopia is considered so problematic that this sort of discussion is best avoided?

So, on Wednesday, I flew to Arba Minch – in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region – via Jimma. The flight was fine and it was interesting to see the landscape and vegetation – very very green, coffee and real and false bananas I think. I got a bus – a “blue donkey” – into Sikele, one of Arba Minch’s twin towns along with Shecha. Then I got a bajaj – a tuk-tuk – on a dirt road to Paradise Lodge.

Paradise Lodge is very very nice and comes highly recommended. I had asked for a hut with a view and the view – over Lake Abaya, Lake Chamo and the Bridge of God that separates the two – was amazing. I spent the afternoon wandering around Shecha, getting my bearings and chatting to the locals, to the extent that my language skills and theirs permitted. I was also working out my options for the following day. There lots of police of various varieties around – more than is usual I was told. Someone was being shepherded off with the help of a couple of big sticks with lots of people looking on with concern.

In the end, I made arrangements via Paradise Lodge for a trip to Nechisar national park. Paradise Lodge told me that it was too muddy to go on a road trip, so I ended up taking a boat. Given that the taxi/bus that took us to the boat got stuck in the mud leaving us to walk it was probably a good idea that I’d not tempted fate and risked getting stuck in the mud in the middle of the national park. Boatyard didn’t look too promising, but the boat we were using seemed OK. No sign of a life-jacket, but we did have a gun. Other than shooting things, I’m not sure what the gun was for, but it didn’t reassure me very much.

The trip on the lake was lovely with views of the mountains all around. After about an hour we reached the other side and then went for a bit of a walk into the national park. It wasn’t long before we spotted some deer and then quite a few zebra, really close. Not quite the animal spotting extravaganza I had been hoping for with a road-trip, but pretty cool and the national park itself was beautiful, with or without the big five, most of which are extinct in the park, partly because some folks have opted – understandably – to live in the park and eat the animals.

We wandered back to the lakeshore where my guides purchased some fish and we watched two people fishing and bringing their nets in. The way they clobbered the fish on the snout to kill them – I averted my gaze, which my guides thought amusing – put me off eating fish, at least for a little while. We then set off back to the other side of the lake.

More stunning views and then lots of birds – pelicans, cranes of various sorts – before we got to the hippo spot. They are MASSIVE and can move much faster than you would expect. Thankfully, my guides had realised that I’m a bit of a softy, so we didn’t go too close. And then having got over that excitement we moved on a little way to the “crocodile market”. Not a market at all, but the place where the crocs sun themselves after a busy night of eating. There were maybe 10 crocs visible, within about 10 metres of the boat. Some of them were huge – about 5 metres long. Plenty big enough to swallow me. I hadn’t expected them to be quite so big or, again, so fast moving.

After that, we boated back to shore and got the bus back to the hotel. A bit of negotiation later and I set off – along with an Ethiopian couple, which made the price slightly less exorbitant than the $100 I had paid for the boat trip – into the mountains at the back of Arba Minch, to the Dorze village. This was a great trip, really interesting and well-organised, with a sense that the entrance fee was well-used to support the community.

We got a tour of a homestead – various huts for sleeping, eating and cooking – a demonstration of processing the false banana plant, a taste of the bread that is made from that plant, and the alcohol (75% proof) araki that is made too. They have huts that you can stay in. Another time, I might stay there.

While there, we met a local man who was working for the EU electoral observation mission. It was interesting to hear from him about how he was selected – he was very clear that only neutral people are selected. I kept my views about ethiopian politics to myself, but enthused about the value of good electoral observation.

We then went on – back down the hill a bit – to the market where hundreds of women were selling their produce, mainly potatoes, onions, chillies, and spices. As it was nearly market-closing time quite a lot of the women were sitting around drinking alcohol out of calabashes. The practice is that two people drink from the same calabash simultaneously, to emphasise the sharing.

We wound back down the hill for an hour, back to Paradise Lodge, where I was greeted by news that my flight back to Addis the next day had been cancelled as there were only due to be 3 people on it. Ethiopian Airlines gave me the option of waiting til the Sunday flight, with all accommodation and expenses paid for. However, I was due to have a meeting last night and I had – rather hurriedly – seen the main sights of Arba Minch, so I opted instead to get the bus back. 10 hours is what it said on the tin.

After an early dinner. Shiro, not fish, that night, with the memory of clubbed fish fresh. And a very early start. Up at 4.30 for a taxi to the bus station at 4.50. Bus station was very chaotic and pitch black which didn’t make things easy, but someone helped me to find the right bus and I was on it and ready to go by 5.15. The bus became more and more packed with people until we finally left, just as the sun was coming up at 6.00.

We didn’t get very far. We had been going about 5 minutes when the bus stopped and turned around. Apparently there was something wrong and we needed to go back to a garage. The problem was reportedly minor, but we sat and waited for 4 hours while various people – mechanics and random people with hammers – hit things and sighed. We then tried again, and gave up again after another five minutes. Tempers were getting frayed as people were keen to get home and be safe before the election and felt that the bus company should have put us on their other bus.

I got chatting to some of the students from the teacher training institute. They were extolling the virtues of the UK’s democratic tradition and saying that they would like it if Ethiopia were the same. I zipped my mouth and said that I should probably not comment, much to their amusement. While this was going on, more things were being hit with hammers and the passengers managed to persuade the driver to forget about the problem and just try to get us to Addis. Not knowing whether it was a problem with the brakes, or a less serious problem, I was not over-keen on winging it, but with everyone else apparently OK with that, I wasn’t backing out.

The first 4 hours were grim. A new road is being built. But the old road is in a very bad way. Huge pot holes. Fords where there once were bridges. That sort of thing. At about 2.30 we arrived at Sodo, in the Wolaita region. I was befriended by a couple of blokes and whisked off for more shiro and injera, before we set off again at 3.00, up until the hills. The problem with the bus, or at least one of the problems, soon became apparent. The bus had no ooomph and uphill could go just faster than walking pace. We spent about 3 hours going up hill, covering maybe 15 miles in that time. The women walking home from market, almost faster than the bus, were most amused. I, being a bit of a worrier, was thinking about whether the driver had a plan, or sufficient brakes, if the bus decided to start rolling backwards down the hill.

We passed through Hosaina (in the Hadiya area) – a strong-hold of opposition political support – with daylight fading. I was trying to find out what the plan was. Were we going to carry on to Addis or stay somewhere overnight? (I had understood that travelling at night was not a good idea, given the state of some of the roads and vehicles). I got mixed messages, so just sat tight. We carried on and on, stopping briefly near Butijira to buy kolo nuts and water, as it got darker and darker. By 10.00 pm it was looking good. We were only 2 hours from Addis. And then the bus gave up.

This time it gave up good and proper. Cue more standing around, this time not even hitting things with a hammer, which is clearly a sign that things are really too far gone. Everyone took it well. There was lots of laughter and joking around. I guess that such inconveniences are what life is like in Ethiopia. I resisted the temptation to ring someone at the Embassy, thinking that I could hardly disappear off in a landcruiser leaving my fellow passengers to their fate, and that try as we might we wouldn’t fit more than 10 people in.

By about 11.30 it was really cold and there was no plan other than wait til it’s light, so people starting going to sleep in the bus. Not comfortable. Very crowded. Very smelly from being crammed with 60 people on a hot day and a long journey. At 12.30, another bus turned up from Addis, but – rather than take us back to Addis it was going to sit there until daylight and then take us on. I wasn’t very happy about this and tried briefly to suggest that the new bus take to addis those that wanted to go now, and return to get the others later. But, most people seemed happy to wait, so – casting aside a brief plan to pay the bus driver to do an extra trip – I moved to the new bus where I could at least lie in the gang-way and get a couple of hours sleep.

We set off at 3.30 and made it to Addis a couple of hours later. All the men had to get off the bus at the check-point. I – as a ferengi – was grouped with the women and children, although a soldier did actually get on to search me and ask for ID etc. He picked up a small notebook from my bag and saw there was nothing written in it, and somehow missed the satellite phone which I might have had a harder job explaining.

By 6.00 we were at Addis bus station, which was very busy with buses getting ready to set off to various parts of the country. I managed to find – with a bit of help – a minibus that was heading towards the hilton, so got on that for what was a thankfully uneventful journey. Last night, sleeping on the gang-way of the bus, I was wondering whether I should have taken Ethiopian Airlines up on their offer of paying my way for 2 extra days. But, the bus journey was interesting. I got to see bits of Ethiopia that I wouldn’t otherwise have done, and got to use my amharic much more than I would have on a one hour plane journey.

More photos here or click on me and the zebra on my photos page here

I’m due back in the UK at the end of May. Before then, there are elections to be held in Ethiopia, on the 23rd May. The elections in 2005 did not go well – disputes about results, violence, people being shot, people being locked up. The Ethiopian Government’s take on things is here. The EU Electoral Observation Mission’s take on things is here.

The expectation is that things will be more peaceful this time around. There are a variety of reasons for that, very few of which are about a strengthening of democracy and human rights in Ethiopia and most of which I would probably be unwise to comment on. I will leave that to others, including the EU’s Electoral Observation Mission, whose interim reports look good – it will be interesting to see whether their final report, which I imagine will have more oversight from higher political levels (of the EU and its member states), builds on or is substantially different from the interim reports.

I’m not supposed to be here – here is in Addis – this weekend. I had been planning to go to Arba Minch for a couple of days, staying in Paradise Lodge. However, there was some uncertainty this week about whether foreigners would be able to travel outside Addis this close to the election. The authorities here don’t want foreigners to risk getting caught up in any election-related trouble. Or something like that … So, my trip has been cancelled or at least postponed until things are clearer.

Has been a wee bit frustrating travel-wise the last few weeks. A couple of weeks ago I was due to go down to the Somali region – on the border with Kenya and Somalia – on a work field-trip. Turned out that because of my contract – I am in effect a consultant – I am not insured in the same way as regular British DFID staff. My personal insurance would not have been valid so close to the border and DFID (rightly) felt that if I got injured on the trip and needed medical evacuation they would be obliged to pay, and as the cost could be as much as £150k they could not take that risk.

All a bit disappointing, but also thought-provoking. Not easy explaining to Ethiopian colleagues – dependent on the Ethiopian health system – who were going on the visit that I wouldn’t be going because I didn’t have coverage for medical evacuation. I was surprised how easily I put aside any principles – or imagined some new ones – in order to look after my personal interests. My Ethiopian colleagues must think I’m a right wuss, although I guess that foreigners having options that they do not, and making choices that they cannot, is nothing new for them. On a related note, there’s been some discussion in the blogosphere of an interesting piece by Ravi Kanbur about the cushy life of people who work in international development.

As well as elections in Ethiopia, elections in the UK have of course been a hot topic amongst DFID staff. DFID was set up in 1997 so has never served a non-Labour government. It will be interesting to see what changes the Conservatives/Liberal Democrats make. Owen Barder has done a useful primer on the new UK Government’s Development Policy. In his introductory speech to DFID staff, the new Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell MP, bigged-up Clare Short, which I thought was a nice touch!

Some of the things that the new Government have said they will prioritise – more focus on results, independent evaluation, greater transparency, more attention to accountability, possible introduction of Cash-on-Delivery Aid – have the potential to be good (although I trust that there will be serious discussion about the limitations as well as the potential of the results agenda, impact evaluation and techniques such as Randomized Controlled Trials – for instance, on results, it might not be the case that everyone in the aid chain will prioritise the same results). It will also be interesting to see how the new Government manages the relationship between poverty reduction objectives and other more security-related objectives, and – notwithstanding the Conservatives commitment to meet the 0.7% target by 2013 – what that means for spending on poverty reduction.

Once my time in Addis comes to an end, I will be returning to Brighton – in recent years, and not discounting the fact that I am NOT A SOUTHERNER, my spiritual home, along perhaps with Arsenal-Land). I didn’t vote for Caroline Lucas – I didn’t feel that it was the best option tactically – but I am very pleased, even proud, that Brighton now has a Green MP.

Work-wise, from June I will be working 60% with both the “politics and state” and “fragility and development” teams in DFID’s policy division, focussing on accountability-related issues. So, I’m very excited about that. And then the plan is to use the other 40% to make sure that what I do in policy division is well-informed by the realities of governance in developing countries. I don’t want to be designing frameworks and models and writing How To Notes that aren’t useful for DFID’s country offices. So, I hope to remain engaged in governance work in Ethiopia, and through being involved in other governance/accountability programmes in places such as Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania …

Non work-wise, I’m very much looking forward to being back with Amanda and to enjoying the Summer in Brighton. There’s plenty of wind-surfing, mountain-biking and swimming in the sea to be done and we’ve booked to go to Benicassim music festival in Spain. The weather here in Addis has been rubbish – not sure whether it’s been good for the farmers, whose interests should take precedence over my desire to sunbathe! – so I’m looking forward to a bit of sun too.

Fingers and everything else crossed for the Ethiopian elections.

There are a number of factors to consider, some of which don’t feature below despite being particularly important (Hello Amanda!), and time-scales to play with. I’ve come up with criteria, scoring systems and weighting systems that are too embarrassing for public consumption. However, I thought it would be good to get some advice from the friends and colleagues and fellow development wonks who occasionally have a look at my blog.

I’ve whittled it down to three simple questions:

• What would be the most interesting thing to do?
• What would be the best thing to do in terms of learning new stuff? (I like learning new stuff, and it looks good on my CV … a CV which is a bit short on long-term developing country experience)
• What would be the most useful thing to do? (my goal is to contribute to global poverty reduction – yeah, I know it might sound crazy …)

I’m happy to take suggestions as to better questions to ask, but those three will do for now.

In terms of options, let’s keep that simple too for now. Some of this is slightly wishful thinking, but let’s say that I have 4 options:

• Option A, doing policy-relevant research at a place like ODI, in the developed world.
• Option B, doing a policy job at a development agency in the UK.
• Option C, being a governance adviser in a development agency’s country office.
• Option D, being a UK-based freelance development consultant (perhaps while I decide amongst A, B and C)

What do you reckon? With those criteria and those options, what should I go for? Putting voting buttons on my blog is beyond me, but if you have any thoughts please do drop me a line or add a comment!

If you’ve got other options that I should be considering, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. I’m available for weddings, christenings, barmitzvahs, and short or long-term consultancies on governance and accountability

Early start on friday, for a 5.00 am check in. Having checked in to fly to Lalibela a few weeks ago with no delays at all, I thought 2 hours was excessive but when I saw the queues (throngs would be a more accurate word) I realised the importance of getting there early. Everyone was travelling for Easter weekend. The throng was getting a bit agitated by the prospect of missing flights, but fortunately I had latched on to someone who is a peacekeeper for the United Nations – I figured that he would help to defuse any rows!

Anyway, we made our flight and 50 minutes later arrived in Dire Dawa. I had been here maybe 7 years ago, en route to Somaliland with a bunch of MPs – I still have the wooden camel that was left for me once the MPs had shared out the souvenir spoils when they got back in Addis! I hadn’t expected to return. There were 4 foreigners – farengos in this neck of the woods – on the flight. We all piled into a taxi to take us to Harar, skipping the hassle of going into Dire Dawa and getting a taxi. It was an interesting trip, up into the hills – or perhaps onto the plateau – from Dire Dawa, the hillsides much greener than expected, with lots of chat cultivation to be seen and lots of small dusty chat-filled market towns.

On arrival in Harar we first went to look at a couple of hotels that the taxi driver recommended, before making it to the Heritage Plaza, which is where I had a reservation. Plaza is a bit out of town, and not in the walled city, which is the main draw of Harar. However, room was OK. A bit shabby, but clean and with a balcony. And the hotel had a nice terrace with a cafe that served great coffee-with-milk.

Friday was spent having a look round the walled city – a maze of cobbled and uncobbled alleyways, houses arranged round courtyards, lots of churches, lots of mosques, and, as the afternoon progressed, more and more people (mainly but not only men) lying on the ground armed with their shopping bags full of chat and a big bottle of water to help the chewing process. By this time I had acquired a guide, with a couple of other young men competing for my business, a competition that was given extra edge by the fact that at least one of the guides had had his fair share and a bit of chat.

In the evening, we went in a tuk-tuk to see one of the hyena-men. Not half-man-half-hyena, which would have been even better, but some nutter who feeds a pack of hyenas meat with his hands and from sticks held in his mouth. Hyenas are big! Very big. Like a very very big dog. And they can crush a skull in their jaws. Frankly, it was all a bit scary. I stayed firmly in the tuk-tuk, wishing that I were in a vehicle with solid sides and trying to explain to the driver that no, I did not want to go any closer, no I did not want to get out, and no I did not want to feed the hyenas myself. We escaped, with me very glad to be in a vehicle rather than walking away from the hyenas in the pitch black.

Me plus my guide plus my would be guide had dinner at Hirut (oh, I had had lunch – a great pizza – at Fresh Touch, where we met an older Spanish woman and I dusted off my spanish skills, well hidden as they were by more recent french and amharic efforts). Hirut was good. I managed to get meatless shiro (pea stew) with bread rather than injera, so that was very nice. Also bumped into a bunch of Irish folks, one of whom I had met previously on the first night of the TESFA trek. I think that illustrates that there’s a fairly limited circuit of things that ferenge/ferengo tourists do! We swapped stories about continuing open wounds caused by the bed bugs of some weeks previous.

After Hirut, I was taken on a tour of various bars and clubs. Samson Hotel. National Hotel. Tourist Hotel. Family Hotel. However, what would have been a good evening was spoilt; lesson learned – one guide good, two guides bad. Can’t say I blame them for competing for my business – I should have realised earlier that the concerns of guide 1 that potential guide 2 might cause problems were based on years of experience. Anyway, I managed to extricate myself from the situation without annoying anyone too much (paying guide 1 what we had agreed and paying guide 2 something too, despite his – and guide 1 as I remember – previous claims that “I am not a guide” (I was reminded of a Peep Show sketch that went something like “the first thing to note is that this is not a pyramid scheme …)  and got a tuk-tuk – of which there were many – back to the Plaza, which by this time was all locked up with gates that I didn’t much fancy scaling. Fortunately after 10 minutes a security guard arrived and, after some pleading, let me in.

Saturday morning, I decided to leave the over-expensive Plaza and stay for one night in the Rewda guesthouse in the heart of the walled city and near the Shoa Gate and “Christian market” – not a market where you can buy Christians, but to distinguish it from the Moslem market and the Oromo market. (Harar is a mix of Harari people, Oromo people, Somali people). I had had a lie in. By the time I got to the Rewda – 250  birr rather than the plaza’s 600 birr (£25, which is a lot in Ethiopia) – the room had gone so I was directed to the owner’s sister’s nearby guesthouse – Zubeyda Waber. I left my stuff there. The other occupants were a south african couple who were spending the afternoon chewing chat with their guide, a man who was dreaming of moving to greece (because of its philosophers) rather than the US (whose get-rich-appeal had no appeal). I agreed that greece would be better than the US, and apologised that I couldn’t get him a passport to the UK. We chatted about the forthcoming elections. I did my best to defend the idea of elections, to no avail.

Saturday afternoon was a different sort of harar cultural experience. Watching Man Utd lose – always good, even to Chelsea – in an underground unventilated boiling hot fire-trap cinema along with maybe 500 others.  After that, I bumped into a colleague from DFID who also happened to be in Harar. The rest of the day was spent relaxing – but not chewing chat (yes, I had tried some on the Friday and concluded that the investment of time and leaf-chewing required was too great to make it worth it) – at the guesthouse and then wandering around a couple of bars. By this point I had told my guide that I didn’t need him and paid him – I wanted to have a wander around on my own.

Slept very well in the single bed in an alcove at the guest house, disturbed only by the all night chanting from the orthodox churches. Not sure whether they were chanting more than usual for easter or not, but their persistence was impressive. Sunday morning was a lovely breakfast of honey and pancakes and tea. A bit of chatting to the South Africans about their travels and mine and then off to the bus station to catch a minibus to Dire Dawa. The driver took good care of me, and my main bag that was on the roof. Was a stop-start journey, picking people up, making sure that there were not too many people in the bus at points where it was going to be stopped and inspected. Stashing bags of something or other in hidden places. Made it in an hour and then got a tuk-tuk to the airport from Dire Dawa, finding out somewhat to my surprise that Arsenal had managed to sneak a late goal.

Airport check in was easy and all was going well, until about 2 seconds before take-off. We were away, nearly, early, and I had texted Teddy to pick me up at Addis. However, the plane – or the plane’s left engine – decided that it didn’t want to take off. Was a wee bit scary as in maybe 100 flights I’ve never had an aborted take-off. More scary was wondering whether we were going to have another go in the same plane once the mechanics had had a look at the engine. In the end we didn’t, and after much delay and lots of confusion we were bused to the Ras Hotel in Dire Dawa, to be fed – or to be fed if you were OK eating meat – and then back to the airport where a bigger plane was expected to take us and the afternoon flight’s people back to Addis. There was a lot of nervousness and jostling as it wasn’t clear that everyone was going to get on, but Ethiopian Airlines had sorted things properly and we were all back in Addis by 7, only 5 hours late for me.

So, was a very good trip. A bit difficult in places, with big queues, delays and guides fighting – very nearly literally – over my business. But very interesting. I’m not sure that having 50% of the people spend 6 hours per day chewing chat is the recipe for a very productive economy, but the people of various ethnic groups and religions seem to live together peacefully – maybe the chat helps for that? Maybe a productive economy would too? Other thought was that for a place to develop, what you need fundamentally is for the people to have at least some sense that they can – by doing things differently – help to shape their own prospects. Perhaps that’s what “empowerment” means? Perhaps I should know?!

In Harar, the people I talked to felt that they were totally powerless to shape their own lives, whether that was because of bad politics or because they felt that god would decide what would happen to them. And perhaps chewing chat for 6 hours per day is not particularly empowering?

More photos are available here.

Putting budget documents on-line and enhancing transparency about aid are great things to have done/be doing, and the work of AidInfo is very useful, but these sorts of initiatives do leave me pondering some questions or issues. As does Tim Berners-Lee’s motto of “Raw data now!” or AidInfo’s “Liberate the data”.

Anyway, three sets of issues:

1) To make sense of “raw data”, one needs a theory. I think that this sometimes gets forgotten as if one can just make sense of massive influxes of data, without some framework of/for understanding. A variant of this problem is when the theories that are shaping how “raw data” is selected, connected and interpreted are left unexamined as if they were value-neutral. At risk of straying into one of my gripes about mainstream economics, I’ll leave that one there …

2) To make the “raw data” or transparency deliver something useful – policy and practice that is better because it is based on better evidence, for instance – requires that there are structures and processes in place, let’s call them “accountability systems”. So – as well as not neglecting those - when people are trying to “liberate the data”, it’s important that they also think about how the data might best be used and whether that might make a difference to what data is liberated and how. I expect that the AidInfo initiative is doing this, and would be interested to know more.

3) I guess this is related to 1 and to 2 and at the moment I won’t say much about it, but it’s important to understand the political economy of data (including how the workings of accountability link to the generation/circulation/use of data). That is, to get your head round the system of data flows and to contribute to making it work better, you need to understand the political economy and the power dynamics of the production, distribution and consumption of data. It ain’t – despite the pretense of those who talk about evidence-based (rather than informed) policy - a politics free or value free system; to understand it – and change it – requires a clear recognition of that. If information/evidence/data is “the currency of accountability“, then a political economy perspective ought to have considerable value.

Ooops, sounding like a marxist again

PS: I am coining a new term. Bloggybacking. Currently with only one google hit in the whole googlyverse. Promoting one’s own blog on the back of someone else’s better known efforts. Thanks Owen. And others!

My thinking on this has been stimulated by David Roodman of the Center for Global Development. David is in the process of writing a book about micro-finance and posed a question about definitions of development.

That reminded me of a piece of work I led for the Gates Foundation on “Exploring ‘development success’: Indicators, stories and contributing factors” and the train of thought that that rather frustrating piece of work – we were too quick to go along with the client’s slightly confused request (such are the delights of consultancy) – stimulated. David’s thought-provoking post and my comment is here, but the thrust my comment was:

***

I agree that making explicit one’s conception of development, and assessing interventions with the help of a theory which sets out how one might expect to move towards that conception of development is useful and doesn’t happen as much as it should in international development.

That setting out one’s theory – surely one of the foundations for anything pretending to be social science or anything with aspirations to being part of evidence-informed policy – doesn’t happen as a matter of course is, I would suggest, a large part of the reason why we (folks who work in international development) don’t really know what we’re doing, and are making little progress towards having a better idea. And that, along with a lack of accountability, is a large part of why what we do often doesn’t deliver the results that are hoped for.

I guess what I’m saying is that while your insight shouldn’t be that novel, I’m afraid that it is, and am keen to join forces to push its implications! I might start asking “what’s the theory?” (and “where’s the evidence?” and “who’s accountable?) 100 times per week, including of myself.

That you need to ask “are there other useful definitions of development” should give us all pause for thought, particularly those of us who work/have worked at places such as the Center for Global DEVELOPMENT and the Overseas DEVELOPMENT Institute.***

Since posting that response I’ve been thinking some more about the probability that without a theory of what it is you’re trying to do, it will be very difficult – and perhaps impossible – to make an evidence-based assessment of whether you’re succeeding, or to have effective accountability.

I’ve also remembered that I wrote about this nearly 10 years ago, in a report for the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee where I talked – drawing on analysis by David Booth, Howard White and the National Audit Office – about the  ”the missing middle” in DFID’s Country Strategy Papers which “state clearly DFID’s poverty reduction objectives and DFID’s planned spending, but lack analysis of the causes of poverty and strategies to break into these causal relationships.” Saying that there is a “missing middle” was a polite way of saying “you don’t know what you’re doing”.

Will I still be writing about this in another ten years’ time. Please no.