I really enjoyed this post. Thank you! As a policy researcher in Kenya the past 14 years, it's something that's been nagging at me, too. Two things have been on my mind related to this. One is that I think there are political finance/dealmaking reasons that the Kenyan government is currently opting for a range of giant overhauls instead of improving 'good enough' systems. It's not just education (as you point out), but now Maisha Namba and SHIF. For Maisha Namba, I suspect it's because donors are willing to fund this and the tenders it produces, even after we spent $72 million on Huduma Namba with nothing to show for it. I would love to see some research that explores state decisions to opt for overhauls rather than incremental improvements to help donors / development agencies understand the politics of this better. The second is also a donor-driven political economy problem where local think tanks and academic policy centres are also forced to chase the latest donor fads for project based funding, lacking core funding and endowments that make truly independent research possible elsewhere. It makes it really hard to pay for rigorous and ongoing policy research and engagement on these big picture macro issues that really matter. Thanks for sparking this conversation.
This is the foundational problem with donor funded development. It is doomed to fail for the reason charities fail to end poverty. A donor has not much incentive to figure out what Africa needs. Hence all foreign needs to be suspended. The IMF and World Bank should be defunded. All development economics departments in high income countries should be suspended. Africans need to learn to stop relying on foreigners and stand on their own two feet.
Really interesting post Ken! I work in health research in Malawi, and I wonder if you have a take on whether the research/policy making interaction is any better in healthcare? My guess would be that, for things like vaccines where there is substantial funding, the interaction is better because there's enough funding to back-up external policy recommendations. But I'm sure that's a simplistic take! Would be great to hear your take!
What an excellent post. I’m currently studying Politics and Economics at Oxford, and it feels insane how little the stuff people are taught and the research that gets churned out seems to resemble actual reality. Granted I haven’t seen that much of the developmental economics ecosystem of the university, but it genuinely feels like another parallel universe these people live in given the questions they concern themselves with and the way they approach problems.
The late Thandika Mkandawire once pointed out that the growth of international development aid had resulted in diverting African intellectuals from doing academic research that would benefit African governments. Instead, the only access African governments had to their own intellectuals was through international development aid, as consultants. Lots of excellent points raised in this article. One hears the observation regarding there being too many policies but too little implementation on a daily basis, especially in Malawi. The point about how it's the policies that are bad to begin with (in the case of Kenya) is insightful.
I have noted that the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP), a policy research institute, is beginning to engage African higher education institutions (starting here in Malawi) in order to bridge the gaps between research, policy and practice. Another noteworthy development is the number of Malawian academics being seconded into government as Directors, Principal Secretaries, and in one recent case, as a Cabinet Minister. One hopes there can be new learnings going both ways.
Very interesting post! While I agree with almost everything you say, I tend to think that a lot of what you describe works better for the case of Kenya (where loads of RCTs have been conducted by prominent dev economists) and for the case of academics from the Global North working on the Global South. For instance, other countries in East Africa still struggle with the 'what to do question' simply because there is very few research done in them. Moreover, in some of these countries, there is a strong presence of local academics in the government as policymakers; and policymakers teaching and researching at unis.
Really great post. On this point: "The need to sound smart by claiming to be champions of “evidence-based policymaking” (who’d be against that?) has resulted in these important actors abdicating their duties". I'd add that the impregnable methods used by a lot of empirical papers also make it difficult or impossible for policymakers/program managers to identify the validity issues of this research! There's a reward in academia for using technically complex, 'clever', methods. To me it seems like this can disguise the peculiarities of the research design/setting, making it harder for policymakers to know how much confidence to place in the results of a paper/literature, or understand whether findings will translate to the context they're working in.
I really enjoyed this post. Thank you! As a policy researcher in Kenya the past 14 years, it's something that's been nagging at me, too. Two things have been on my mind related to this. One is that I think there are political finance/dealmaking reasons that the Kenyan government is currently opting for a range of giant overhauls instead of improving 'good enough' systems. It's not just education (as you point out), but now Maisha Namba and SHIF. For Maisha Namba, I suspect it's because donors are willing to fund this and the tenders it produces, even after we spent $72 million on Huduma Namba with nothing to show for it. I would love to see some research that explores state decisions to opt for overhauls rather than incremental improvements to help donors / development agencies understand the politics of this better. The second is also a donor-driven political economy problem where local think tanks and academic policy centres are also forced to chase the latest donor fads for project based funding, lacking core funding and endowments that make truly independent research possible elsewhere. It makes it really hard to pay for rigorous and ongoing policy research and engagement on these big picture macro issues that really matter. Thanks for sparking this conversation.
This is the foundational problem with donor funded development. It is doomed to fail for the reason charities fail to end poverty. A donor has not much incentive to figure out what Africa needs. Hence all foreign needs to be suspended. The IMF and World Bank should be defunded. All development economics departments in high income countries should be suspended. Africans need to learn to stop relying on foreigners and stand on their own two feet.
Really interesting post Ken! I work in health research in Malawi, and I wonder if you have a take on whether the research/policy making interaction is any better in healthcare? My guess would be that, for things like vaccines where there is substantial funding, the interaction is better because there's enough funding to back-up external policy recommendations. But I'm sure that's a simplistic take! Would be great to hear your take!
What an excellent post. I’m currently studying Politics and Economics at Oxford, and it feels insane how little the stuff people are taught and the research that gets churned out seems to resemble actual reality. Granted I haven’t seen that much of the developmental economics ecosystem of the university, but it genuinely feels like another parallel universe these people live in given the questions they concern themselves with and the way they approach problems.
The late Thandika Mkandawire once pointed out that the growth of international development aid had resulted in diverting African intellectuals from doing academic research that would benefit African governments. Instead, the only access African governments had to their own intellectuals was through international development aid, as consultants. Lots of excellent points raised in this article. One hears the observation regarding there being too many policies but too little implementation on a daily basis, especially in Malawi. The point about how it's the policies that are bad to begin with (in the case of Kenya) is insightful.
I have noted that the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP), a policy research institute, is beginning to engage African higher education institutions (starting here in Malawi) in order to bridge the gaps between research, policy and practice. Another noteworthy development is the number of Malawian academics being seconded into government as Directors, Principal Secretaries, and in one recent case, as a Cabinet Minister. One hopes there can be new learnings going both ways.
Very interesting post! While I agree with almost everything you say, I tend to think that a lot of what you describe works better for the case of Kenya (where loads of RCTs have been conducted by prominent dev economists) and for the case of academics from the Global North working on the Global South. For instance, other countries in East Africa still struggle with the 'what to do question' simply because there is very few research done in them. Moreover, in some of these countries, there is a strong presence of local academics in the government as policymakers; and policymakers teaching and researching at unis.
Really great post. On this point: "The need to sound smart by claiming to be champions of “evidence-based policymaking” (who’d be against that?) has resulted in these important actors abdicating their duties". I'd add that the impregnable methods used by a lot of empirical papers also make it difficult or impossible for policymakers/program managers to identify the validity issues of this research! There's a reward in academia for using technically complex, 'clever', methods. To me it seems like this can disguise the peculiarities of the research design/setting, making it harder for policymakers to know how much confidence to place in the results of a paper/literature, or understand whether findings will translate to the context they're working in.