The committeefication of collective action in Africa

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Caroline Archambault and David Ehrhardt: “Over the last century, Africa has witnessed considerable committeefication, a process by which committees have become increasingly important to organise collective action. Throughout the continent, committees have come to preside over everything from natural resource management to cultural life, and from peacebuilding to community consultation. What has been the impact of this dramatic institutional change on the nature and quality of collective action? Drawing on decades of anthropological research and development work in East Africa – studying, working with and working in committees of various kinds – this article presents an approach to addressing this question.

We show how committees have surface features as well as deep functions, and that the impact of committeefication depends not only on their features and functions but also on the pathways through which they proliferate. On the surface, committees aim for inclusive and deliberative decision making, even if they vary in the specifics of their missions, membership, decision-making rules, and level of autonomy. But their deep functions can be quite different: a façade for accessing recognition or resources; a classroom for learning leadership skills; or a club for elites to pursue their shared interests. The impact of these features and functions depends on the pathways through which they grow: autonomous from existing forms of collective action; in synergistic cooperation; or in competition, possibly weakening or even destroying existing local institutions.

Community-based development interventions often rely heavily on committeefied collective action. This paper identifies the benefits that this strategy can have, but also shows its potential to weaken or even destroy existing forms of collective action. On that basis, we suggest that it is imperative to turn more systematic analytical attention to committees, and assess the extent to which they are delivering development or crippling collective action in the guise of democracy and deliberation…(More)”.

Trust with integrity: Harnessing the integrity dividends of digital government for reducing corruption in developing countries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Carlos Santiso: “Does digitalization reduce corruption? What are the benefits of data-driven digital government innovations to strengthen public integrity and advance the Sustainable Development Goals? While the correlation between digitalization and corruption is well established, there is less actionable evidence on the effects of specific digitalization reforms on different types of corruption and the policy channels through which they operate. This paper unbundles the integrity dividends of digital reforms that the pandemic has accelerated. It analyses the rise of integrity-tech and integrity analytics in the anticorruption space, deployed by data-savvy integrity institutions. It also assesses the broader integrity dividends of government digitalization for cutting redtape, reducing discretion and increasing transparency in government services and social transfers. It argues that digital government can be an effective anticorruption strategy, with subtler yet deeper effects. There nevertheless needs to be greater synergies between digital reforms and anticorruption strategies….(More)”.

UN chief calls for action to put out ‘5-alarm global fire’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UNAffairs: “At a time when “the only certainty is more uncertainty”, countries must unite to forge a new, more hopeful and equal path, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the General Assembly on Friday, laying out his priorities for 2022. 

“We face a five-alarm global fire that requires the full mobilization of all countries,” he said, referring to the raging COVID-19 pandemic, a morally bankrupt global financial system, the climate crisis, lawlessness in cyberspace, and diminished peace and security. 

He stressed that countries “must go into emergency mode”, and now is the time to act as the response will determine global outcomes for decades ahead…. 

Alarm four: Technology and cyberspace 

While technology offers extraordinary possibilities for humanity, Mr. Guterres warned that “growing digital chaos is benefiting the most destructive forces and denying opportunities to ordinary people.” 

He spoke of the need to both expand internet access to the nearly three billion people still offline, and to address risks such as data misuse, misinformation and cyber-crime. 

“Our personal information is being exploited to control or manipulate us, change our behaviours, violate our human rights, and undermine democratic institutions. Our choices are taken away from us without us even knowing it”, he said. 

The UN chief called for strong regulatory frameworks to change the business models of social media companies which “profit from algorithms that prioritize addiction, outrage and anxiety at the cost of public safety”. 

He has proposed the establishment of a Global Digital Compact, bringing together governments, the private sector and civil society, to agree on key principles underpinning global digital cooperation. 

Another proposal is for a Global Code of Conduct to end the infodemic and the war on science, and promote integrity in public information, including online.  

Countries are also encouraged to step up work on banning lethal autonomous weapons, or “killer robots” as headline writers may prefer, and to begin considering new governance frameworks for biotechnology and neurotechnology…(More)”.

Breakthrough: The Promise of Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Homi Kharas, John McArthur, and Izumi Ohno: “Looking into the future is always difficult and often problematic—but sometimes it’s useful to imagine what innovations might resolve today’s problems and make tomorrow better. In this book, 15 distinguished international experts examine how technology will affect the human condition and natural world within the next ten years. Their stories reflect major ambitions for what the future could bring and offer a glimpse into the possibilities for achieving the UN’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals.

The authors were asked to envision future success in their respective fields, given the current state of technology and potential progress over the next decade. The central question driving their research: What are likely technological advances that could contribute  to the Sustainable Development Goals at major scale, affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people or substantial geographies around the globe.

One overall takeaway is that gradualist approaches will not achieve those goals by 2030. Breakthroughs will be necessary in science, in the development of new products and services, and in institutional systems. Each of the experts responded with stories that reflect big ambitions for what the future may bring. Their stories are not projections or forecasts as to what will happen; they are reasoned and reasonable conjectures about what could happen. The editors’ intent is to provide a glimpse into the possibilities for the future of sustainable development.

At a time when many people worry about stalled progress on the economic, social, and environmental challenges of sustainable development, Breakthrough is a reminder that the promise of a better future is within our grasp, across a range of domains. It will interest anyone who wonders about the world’s economic, social, and environmental future…(More)”

Data Re-Use and Collaboration for Development

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Stefaan G. Verhulst at Data & Policy: “It is often pointed out that we live in an era of unprecedented data, and that data holds great promise for development. Yet equally often overlooked is the fact that, as in so many domains, there exist tremendous inequalities and asymmetries in where this data is generated, and how it is accessed. The gap that separates high-income from low-income countries is among the most important (or at least most persistent) of these asymmetries…

Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership that, when designed responsibly, can offer a potentially innovative solution to this problem. Data collaboratives offer at least three key benefits for developing countries:

1. Cost Efficiencies: Data and data analytic capacity are often hugely expensive and beyond the limited capacities of many low-income countries. Data reuse, facilitated by data collaboratives, can bring down the cost of data initiatives for development projects.

2. Fresh insights for better policy: Combining data from various sources by breaking down silos has the potential to lead to new and innovative insights that can help policy makers make better decisions. Digital data can also be triangulated with existing, more traditional sources of information (e.g., census data) to generate new insights and help verify the accuracy of information.

3. Overcoming inequalities and asymmetries: Social and economic inequalities, both within and among countries, are often mapped onto data inequalities. Data collaboratives can help ease some of these inequalities and asymmetries, for example by allowing costs and analytical tools and techniques to be pooled. Cloud computing, which allows information and technical tools to be easily shared and accessed, are an important example. They can play a vital role in enabling the transfer of skills and technologies between low-income and high-income countries…(More)”. See also: Reusing data responsibly to achieve development goals (OECD Report).

Shaping a Just Digital Transformation: Development Co-operation Report 2021

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Digital transformation is revolutionising economies and societies with rapid technological advances in AI, robotics and the Internet of Things. Low- and middle-income countries are struggling to gain a foothold in the global digital economy in the face of limited digital capacity, skills, and fragmented global and regional rules. Political stability, democracy, human rights and equality also risk being undermined by weak governance and the abuse of digital technology.

The 2021 edition of the Development Co-operation Report makes the case for choosing to hardwire inclusion into digital technology processes, and emerging norms and standards. Providing the latest evidence and policy analysis from experts in national governments, international organisations, academia, business and civil society, the report equips international development organisations with the latest guidance and good practices that put people and the sustainable development goals at the centre of digital transformation…(More)”.

GDP’s Days Are Numbered

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Diane Coyle: “How should we measure economic success? Criticisms of conventional indicators, particularly gross domestic product, have abounded for years, if not decades. Environmentalists have long pointed out that GDP omits the depletion of natural assets, as well as negative externalities such as global warming. And its failure to capture unpaid but undoubtedly valuable work in the home is another glaring omission. But better alternatives may soon be at hand.

In 2009, a commission led by Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi spurred efforts to find alternative ways to gauge economic progress by recommending a “dashboard” of indicators. Since then, economists and statisticians, working alongside natural scientists, have put considerable effort into developing rigorous wealth-based prosperity metrics, particularly concerning natural assets. The core idea is to create a comprehensive national balance sheet to demonstrate that economic progress today is illusory when it comes at the expense of future living standards.

In an important milestone in March of this year, the United Nations approved a statistical standard relating to the services that nature provides to the economy. That followed the UK Treasury’s publication of a review by the University of Cambridge’s Partha Dasgupta setting out how to integrate nature in general, and biodiversity in particular, into economic analysis. With the consequences of climate change starting to become all too apparent, any meaningful concept of economic success in the future will surely include sustainability.

The next steps in this statistical endeavor will be to incorporate measures of social capital, reflecting the ability of communities or countries to act collectively, and to extend measurement of the household sector. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how crucial this unpaid work is to a country’s economic health. For example, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics intends to develop a more comprehensive concept of living standards that includes the value of such activity….(More)”.

Data Powered Positive Deviance Handbook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Handbook by GIZ and UNDP: “Positive Deviance (PD) is based on the observation that in every community or organization, there are a few individuals who achieve significantly better outcomes than their peers, despite having similar challenges and resources. These individuals are referred to as positive deviants, and adopting their solutions is what is referred to as the PD approach.
The method described in this Handbook follows the same logic as the PD approach but uses pre-existing, non-traditional data sources instead of — or in conjunction with — traditional data sources. Non-traditional data in this context broadly refers to data that is digitally captured (e.g. mobile phone records and financial data), mediated (e.g. social media and online data), or observed (e.g. satellite imagery). The integration of such data to complement traditional data sources generally used in PD is what we refer to as Data Powered Positive Deviance (DPPD)…(More)”.

Decolonizing Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Tony Roberts and Andrea Jimenez Cisneros: “In order to decolonize global innovation thinking and practice, we look instead to indigenous worldviews such as Ubuntu in Southern Africa, Swaraj in South Asia, and Buen Vivir in South America. Together they demonstrate that a radically different kind of innovation is possible.

The fate of Kenya’s Silicon Savannah should serve as a cautionary tale about exporting Western models to the Global South.

The fate of Kenya’s Silicon Savannah should serve as a cautionary tale about exporting Western models to the Global South. The idea of an African Silicon Valley emerged around 2011 amidst the digital technology ecosystem developing in Nairobi. The success of Nairobi’s first innovation hub inspired many imitators and drove ambitious plans by the government to build a new innovation district in the city. The term “Silicon Savannah” captured these aspirations and featured in a series of blog posts, white papers, and consultancy reports. Advocates argued that Nairobi could leapfrog other innovation centers due to lower entry barriers and cost advantages.

These promises caught the attention of many tech entrepreneurs and policymakers—including President Barack Obama, who cohosted the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kenya. As part of its Silicon Savannah vision, the Kenyan government proposed to build a “smart city” called Konza Technopolis in the south of Nairobi. This government-led initiative—designed with McKinsey consultants—was supposed to help turn Kenya into a “middle-income country providing a high quality life to all its citizens by the year 2030.” The city was proposed to attract investors, create jobs at a mass scale, and use technology to manage the city effectively and efficiently. Its website identified Konza as the place where “Africa’s silicon savannah begins.” Years later, the dream remains unfulfilled. As Kenyan writer Carey Baraka’s has recently detailed, the plan has only reinforced existing inequalities as it caters mainly to international multinationals and the country’s wealthy elite.

One of the most important lessons to be derived from studying such efforts to import foreign technologies and innovation models is that they inevitably come with ideological baggage. Silicon Valley is not just a theoretical model for economic growth: it represents a whole way of life, carrying with it all kinds of implications for how people think about themselves, each other, and their place in the world. Venture capital pitching sessions prize what is most monetizable, what stands to deliver the greatest return on investment, and what offers the earliest exit opportunities. Breznitz is right to criticize this way of thinking, but similar worries arise about his own examples, which say little about environmental sustainability or maintaining the integrity of local communities. Neoliberal modes of private capital accumulation are not value neutral, and we must be sensitive to the way innovation models are situated in uneven structures of power, discourse, and resource distribution…(More)”.

Conceptual and normative approaches to AI governance for a global digital ecosystem supportive of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Amandeep S. Gill & Stefan Germann: “AI governance is like one of those mythical creatures that everyone speaks of but which no one has seen. Sometimes, it is reduced to a list of shared principles such as transparency, non-discrimination, and sustainability; at other times, it is conflated with specific mechanisms for certification of algorithmic solutions or ways to protect the privacy of personal data. We suggest a conceptual and normative approach to AI governance in the context of a global digital public goods ecosystem to enable progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Conceptually, we propose rooting this approach in the human capability concept—what people are able to do and to be, and in a layered governance framework connecting the local to the global. Normatively, we suggest the following six irreducibles: a. human rights first; b. multi-stakeholder smart regulation; c. privacy and protection of personal data; d. a holistic approach to data use captured by the 3Ms—misuse of data, missed use of data and missing data; e. global collaboration (‘digital cooperation’); f. basing governance more in practice, in particular, thinking separately and together about data and algorithms. Throughout the article, we use examples from the health domain particularly in the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We conclude by arguing that taking a distributed but coordinated global digital commons approach to the governance of AI is the best guarantee of citizen-centered and societally beneficial use of digital technologies for the SDGs…(More)”.