Category Archives: Poverty

Odinga in Washington; U.S. in Libya; “Kinetic Action” v. MCC

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Here is the link to a multimedia page for Raila Odinga’s speech and Q & A last week at CSIS in Washington.  Nothing newsmaking in itself that I saw, but a good speech of interest to those following governance and democratization issues in Africa and especially Kenya and Ivory Coast.

In the meantime, one of the most telling things I have read about how our actions in participating in the Libyan mission are viewed by others is from Bruce Reidel at Brookings:

The Indians are puzzled that some in the West who had embraced Qaddafi less than a hundred days ago are now so shocked by his cruelty. Qaddafi did not change in 2011. Some former Indian diplomats are quick to suggest that the Libyan war shows America’s “unreliability” and a tendency to over react to the last news broadcast. Who are the rebels in Benghazi, they ask, that are now your allies? Why do you rush to help them, and not the shia protesters in Manama?

As one Indian observer put it, “the U.S. is both promiscuous and flighty” with its relationships.

“A Letter from Agra:  How India Views U.S. Actions in Libya”

These observations on the Indian view were published almost a month ago.  If the NATO effort in Libya bogs down, we may find ourselves asking more rigorously, “why exactly did we decide to do this?” and “what specifically were we trying to accomplish originally and what specifically are we trying to accomplish now?”.  Those same questions that eventually became “known unknowns” in Iraq.

In the meantime, The Hill caries a piece by Paul O’Brian of OxFam America on potentially critical budget cuts for the Millennium Challenge Corporation.  No one at the MCC could afford to make the comparison politically I am sure, but let me make it for them:  look at the cost of the Libya action versus the cost of the MCC.  The MCC would seem to have bipartisan support if any area of development can.  A George W. Bush initiative originally, but very compatible with Democratic “soft power” thinking and led by Obama appointees now.   A relatively small staff and bureaucratic footprint.

In geopolitics, and in longer term development, we need to pay some real attention to states, but if this is a humanitarian effort don’t we need to look also at the numbers of people involved: is this worth the cost relative to the cost of other “kinetic” or “non-kinetic” endeavors?  Ivory Coast, for instance, is a much more populous country.

Another Ugandan Weapons Procurement Scandal?

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The East African reports:  “$740M fighter jets scam sneaks under the radar.”

In a deal reminiscent of previous purchases of military hardware in which the army bypassed civilian oversight, the Ministry of Defence and Bank of Uganda are in the news again following revelations that on the express instructions of President Yoweri Museveni, the ministry withdrew money from the central bank without due parliamentary approval, to buy six fighter jets and other military equipment from Russia worth $740 million.

It also emerged that this money is from the supplementary budget and that part of it — over $400 million — has already been spent. Hence government only wants parliament to rubberstamp the acquisition.

The deal marks a return to the late 1990s, when under the cover of classified expenditure, the country lost $6 million after shadowy middlemen sold the Uganda People’s Defence Forces attack helicopters that could not fly.

.  .  .  .

As usual, the president is once again on hand to let Defence off the hook.

On the night of March 24, Museveni met the National Resistance Movement parliamentary caucus at State House Entebbe and told the legislators to support the $740 million supplementary expenditure.

Although he did not mention the country the jets were bought from, the Daily Monitor reported last week that Russian defence websites claimed that Uganda and Algeria had gone shopping in the Russian capital.

It further revealed that the two countries paid a joint price of $1.2 billion for 22 jets — Uganda’s being only six.

Hence each of Uganda’s jets should have cost $54.5 million, translating into a total of $327 million.

.  .  .  .

The army also bought some 90 tanks from Bulgaria, only 10 of which proved operational.

The purchase earlier of another set of MiG jet fighters also followed a similar pattern: They arrived with one wing, had no spare parts nor bomb loading capacity.

Public policy analysts argue that these dubious procurements are not just bad luck hounding Uganda’s military.

Rather, they say, defence spending is the conduit through which public finances are channelled to fund politics.

 

In the meantime, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation reports that the drought and increasing food prices leave 5 million people at risk of hunger in the greater Horn of Africa region:

The World Food Program – WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran has expressed fears that drought coupled by rising food prices could drive some 5 million people into hunger in the Horn of Africa sub-region.

Sheeran said the number of hungry people in the Horn of Africa was growing and WFP aims to assist 5.2 million people as drought, rising food and fuel prices and conflict take their toll.

“More and more people need help in the Horn and we’re now on high alert over the impact of the March to May long rains. The drought began with the failure of the October to December short rains last year in eastern parts of the Horn of Africa, pushing an additional 1.4 million people into hunger,” said Sheeran.

The World Food Program is also warning that the number of people in need of assistance may increase if the current long rains – from March to May – are poor.

Sheeran who is in Nairobi on a fact finding mission noted that farmers in producing areas that have abundant supplies are selling their produce to WFP so that it can be used to help the poorest in drought-stricken areas.

In 2010 WFP bought food worth a total of US$139 million in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Food prices have started rising in areas that relied on the failed short rains for food production, with increases for maize of 25 percent to 120 percent in some remote parts of the Horn.

Cereal prices in the region over the next six months are expected to increase by 40 to 50 percent.

Nestle Chairman Says U.S. Biofuel Policy Causes Starvation at Time of Food Crisis

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Interestingly, the head of Nestlé lashed out at U.S. ethanol policy yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations as reported in The Independent:

Today, 35 per cent of US corn goes into biofuel,” the Nestlé chairman told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York yesterday. “From an environmental point of view this is a nonsense, but more so when we are running out of food in the rest of the world.
“It is absolutely immoral to push hundreds of millions of people into hunger and into extreme poverty because of such a policy, so I think – I insist – no food for fuel.”

Corn prices almost doubled in the year to February, though they have fallen from their peak in the past few weeks. Anger at rising food prices contributed to protests across the Middle East, and rising commodities costs were among the factors pushing UK inflation to 4.4 per cent in February, according to figures out yesterday.

US exports account for about 60 per cent of the world’s corn supply. Demand has surged as more people join the middle classes in emerging economies such as China and India, not just because these new consumers demand more food made from corn, but also because demand for meat has increased and livestock farmers need to buy more feed.

Nestlé, the company behind Shredded Wheat, Nescafé and Aero chocolate bars, has been lobbying European regulators and governments around the world against setting high targets for biofuel use, even though many countries see the production of ethanol as a means of meeting obligations to cut carbon fuel emissions.

The lobbying has fallen on deaf ears in the US, however. Ethanol production from corn is heavily subsidised, with output running at more than 13.5 billion gallons annually. Policies to promote its production are “absurd”, Mr Brabeck-Letmathe claimed yesterday, and meeting a mooted global target of having 20 per cent of fuel demand with biofuels would involve increasing production by one third.

“What is the result? Prices are going up. It’s not very complicated,” he said. “This question is now the number one priority for the G20 meeting in Nice, and the main thing we are going to do is fight against speculation. We are concentrating on the irrelevant.”

Speaking to farmers earlier this month, the Obama administration’s agriculture secretary said he found arguments from the like of Nestlé “irritating”. Mr Vilsack said: “The folks advancing this argument either do not understand or do not accept the notion that our farmers are as productive and smart and innovative and creative enough to meet the needs of food and fuel and feed and export.” . . . .

There are a number of recent biofuel projects at various stages in Kenya. Obviously this is controversial, but without the subsidies so far as I know these projects involve non-food crops,  UPDATE:  Here is a story this week in AFP about opposition to plans to grow jatropha on 50,000 hectares near Malindi on the Kenyan coast for the European ethanol market.

 

 

 

 

 

Constitutional Debate on Constituency Development Funds in Tanzania

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Bora Kujenga Daraja (better to build a bridge) discusses the filing by a group of civil society organizations of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of new legislation in Tanzania creating Constituency Development Catalyst Funds, or Mfuka wa Majimbo. [h/t to Global Integrity  on Twitter]

Here is an introduction to the Daraja organization that sponsors this blog from their website:

Daraja is a new organisation that aims to make positive changes to life in rural Tanzania by bringing people and government closer together. Our name reflects our approach – Daraja comes from the Swahili word for bridge.

In rural Tanzania, local government has a responsibility to listen to the community and to deliver public services that meet local needs. We want to make sure local government fills that role. We want to make the system work.

The argument in the lawsuit is that the legislation violates the Tanzanian constitution by inappropriately crossing the separation of powers by giving legislators executive authority, rather than legislative oversight, over these funds:

A few days ago, a group of seven civil society organisations, including Policy Forum and the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) filed a case with the High Court of Tanzania, arguing that the act establishing the Constituency Development Catalyst Fund, or Mfuka wa Majimbo, is unconstitutional. In doing so, they are following the lead of other organisations raising challenges to similar constituency-based development funds in other countries.

But this move is far from being universally popular. MPs from all major parties supported the CDCF bill. One MP – Dr Faustine from Kinondoni – used his personal blog to criticise the CSOs’ case, arguing that the CDCF has been a very effective way of quickly solving problems in his constituency. . . .

And this view can perhaps claim some academic support from a surprising source: the DFID-funded African Power and Politics Programme (APPP), who have been looking into the idea that governance reforms should build on what exists and should be rooted in their socio-cultural context. Perhaps it’s better to give MPs a means of fulfilling constituents’ expectations and to find ways of ensuring it’s well managed, accountable and more than just a slush fund, rather than to insist on western governance niceties in a very different context. “Going with the grain” is the slogan of this approach.

I have a lot of sympathy for going with the grain. But surely it applies more to governance reforms at the administrative level – focussing on things like budgeting and financial management systems – than to such a fundamental distinction as that between the executive and the legislature. After all, the constitution is supposed to prevent misuse of power by the government and MPs, which is exactly what these CSOs are trying to use it for.

And let’s not forget, MPs are hardly powerless to “bring development” to their constituencies. They have the most influential seat on the council, which sets the budget for local development projects. And if that system is too slow and bureaucratic for them to use in response to local demands, MPs are better placed than almost anyone else to make the system work better, since they also have a roll in setting the national budget and national laws and policies.

For civil society there’s also a rigourous debate about tactics going on here – also a question of following formal processes or going with the grain. Launch a legal challenge to bring the law down, or focus on monitoring how the CDCF works in practice. In Kenya, for example, such monitoring has uncovered widespread abuses and I hear this has led to some MPs concluding that this type of fund is more trouble than it’s worth. It doesn’t have to either/or, of course; it could be both legal challenge and monitoring, but that takes twice as much effort.

ICC Judges Summon “Ocampo Six” while Government of Kenya Lobbies for “Delay” in New York and Food Crisis Worsens [updated]

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2.4 Million Kenyans threatened by acute food shortage.

The food crisis worsens in Kenya.  [In an post last fall entitled “The Kenya Lobby, Corruption and Hunger” I noted a report predicting an increase in hunger.  We are now seeing that play out, while the Government of Kenya remains focused elsewhere.]

Ocampo Six ordered to appear in the Hague.

ICC:  Kalonzo shuttle diplomacy hits New York.

The Vice President said that Kenya has no intentions of pulling out of the ICC nor is it seeking to assist those named by the ICC prosecutor to escape justice: “All we want is [for] the UN Security Council to consider positively the Africa Union resolution endorsing Kenya’s request for a 12 month deferral to allow us to complete reforms and embark on local trials.”

For some reason the Vice President does not seem to be calling attention to the fact that the Kenyan Parliament recently voted almost unanimously to support withdrawal from the ICC, well after the promulgation of the new constitution.

[Update:  no indication in any change in position by the United States which remains unwilling to support UN Security Council intervention to stop the ICC prosecutions.]

Watching Alliances Experience “Blow Out” from a Build Up of Democratic Pressure

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Its a beautiful spring day here in coastal Mississippi.  A nice day for a Mardi Gras parade and to rake leaves, which we do here in the spring instead of the fall, and to watch events unfold in Africa.  As election results are coming in from Uganda, the Libyan army is attempting to repress a budding revolution against Museveni’s recent friend from the north, Col. Gaddafi.  Of course, Museveni is not the only one who has been cozy with the theatrical Libyan dictator, oil baron and would-be “Pan African” leader.

From today’s Guardian, “Britain’s alliance with Libya turns sour as Gaddafi cracks down”:

Now Britain’s risky and controversial relationship with Libya is beginning rapidly to unravel.

BP, which is also heavily involved in the country, is weeks away from beginning a major drilling operation in a vast area around the desert town of Ghadames. Indeed, a group of US senators last year suggested that the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi could have been influenced by lobbying over BP’s commercial interests in Libya — an allegation fiercely denied by the Scottish government.

And it is not only Britain’s foreign policy on Libya that has sent diplomats scurrying into disarray as they have tried to keep up with the wave of popular uprisings against regimes that Britain supported, but the policy for the entire region.

According to Claire Spencer, head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, the rapprochement with Libya in 2004 was founded on assumptions that dominated for a decade post-9/11, obsessed as the west was with the fight against al-Qaida, the wider “global war on terror” and fear of mass migration and the rising influence of Iran.

“Against that we backed the other half, the so-called moderates standing up for our values – regimes in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel.” The domination of that foreign policy agenda, she believes, meant that not only in the Foreign Office but in the Quai d’Orsay and the US State Department, those warning of the growing potential for unrest across the region were ignored.

Though Libya had faced accusations of refusing to recognise the rights of refugees, indefinite detentions, torture and arbitrary expulsions, Spencer believes that British diplomats felt they had only the most limited leverage on their new partner.

By yesterday the queasiness had turned to outright horror, as Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague, a day after his department revoked all British arms licences to Libya and Bahrain, condemned the “unacceptable and horrifying” use of violence by Gaddafi’s security forces against his own people, “including reports of the use of heavy weapons fire and a unit of snipers against demonstrators”.

Which leaves the crucial question of whether Gaddafi can survive. In the past, as Spencer points out, the self-styled Supreme Guide has been adept at ditching prime ministers and others to protect his position and place himself on the side of the people, a tactic he tried to use even in the current protests. Now he has abandoned that in favour of the use of outright violent suppression.

If he believes that he can confine the problems to the country’s east, he may be mistaken. Many from that region have families in Tripoli. He may find it impossible to stop rebellion spreading.

And Britain’s manoeuvring to distance itself from the man it has supported for the last seven years may have come too late.

Needless to say, here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast BP has not been especially popular since last April. I don’t think many people here have paid especially great attention to Gaddafi, but neither I suspect, have they been particularly confused about him.

I pulled out a copy the other day of a J. Peter Pham column from World Defense Review from March 2010 entitled “Libya as an African Power” which I would encourage you to read and reflect on:

The breakout came in 1997 when the annual summit of Organization of African Unity foreign ministers was held in Qadhafi’s hometown of Sirte (some of the diplomats attending were only able to do so because Libya paid their country’s arrears to the pan-African organization, thus restoring their voting rights). The foreign ministers also set up a five-member committee to mediate between Libya and the West over the Lockerbie dispute. On the heels of the summit, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela both visited Tripoli. African backing proved critical to the breakdown of the sanctions regime and the subsequent agreement to hand over two Libyan suspects for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law for the Pan Am bombing.

Meanwhile, Libya’s strategic engagements across Africa multiplied—a state of affairs symbolically demonstrated by the change in name of the country’s state broadcaster from the “Voice of the Greater Arab Homeland” to the “Voice of Africa.” .  .  .  .

Even the creation of the African Union in place of the tired Organization of African Unity has a Libyan connection that is usually glossed over. In response to an initiative promoted by Tripoli, the OAU Assembly of African Heads of State and Government met in extraordinary session for only the fourth time in its nearly forty-year history at Sirte in September 1999. In the resulting “Sirte Declaration,” the African leaders professed to have been “inspired by the important proposals submitted by Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, Leader of the Great Al-Fatah Libyan Revolution, and particularly, by his vision for a strong and united Africa, capable of meeting global challenges and shouldering its responsibility to harness the human and natural resources of the continent in order to improve the living conditions of its peoples” and resolved to “establish an African Union” better able to “cope with the challenges and to effectively address the new social, political, and economic realities in Africa and in the world.”

.  .  .  .

Considerably more important than its role as a donor of development assistance has been Libya’s role as an investor in Africa. A government entity, the Libya African Portfolio for Investments (LAP), overseen by the country’s main sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), numbers among its companies the Libyan Arab African Investment Company (LAAICO), which has a mandate to promote business growth in Africa by investing in sectors as diverse as agriculture, mining, manufacturing, real estate development, telecommunications, and tourism. Currently, LAAIC has holdings in some more than two dozen African countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Another LAP company, the Oil Libya Holding Company (formerly Tamoil Africa), is engaged in refining, marketing and distribution of petroleum products in a similar number of African countries. In Morocco, for example, the Libyans have invested more than $5 billion to acquire about 200 gas stations, approximately 10 percent of the local market. Yet another LAP asset, LAP Green, has had telecommunications operations in Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Rwanda, and Uganda. Last month LAP Green acquired 80 percent of Gemtel in South Sudan and the company has been shortlisted among the suitors seeking to acquire a 75-percent stake in the Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel) being offered by the Zambia Development Agency.

.  .  .  .

Uganda is a good example of a case where Libya’s investments have served its strategic objectives while simultaneously helping the target country’s economic and social development. There are few African countries where Tripoli’s past interventions were so much on the wrong side of history.  .  .  .

.  .  .  . Currently at least $500 million in Libyan capital is participating in Uganda’s growing economy. Libya owns a 49-percent stake in the National Housing and Construction Company (NHCC), a public enterprise with a mandate to increase the housing stock in the country, rehabilitate the housing industry, and encourage Ugandans to own homes in an organized environment. Libya also owns 69 percent of Uganda Telecom Limited (the Ugandan government owns the other 31 percent), where its capital has been used to aggressively expand the company’s market share. In a joint venture with the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), Libya has invested in a soluble coffee plant that adds value to Ugandan production by making it compliant with European standards. Libya also has the contract to build an extension of the Mombasa-Eldoret oil pipeline in Kenya to the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The extension will be designed to permit reverse flow once Uganda begins its own petroleum production. Earlier this year, a team from Oil Libya visited Uganda to explore the possibility of building an oil refinery.

The Qadhafi regime’s decision in 2003 to abandon its WMD program, settle the Lockerbie claims, and give up its hitherto support of international terrorism (the United States removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2007) led to the lifting of numerous economic and trade restrictions as well as the ban on American citizens doing business there. The potential economic and political rewards of deciding to work with instead of against Washington may actually strengthen Tripoli’s capacity in dealings with the rest of the African continent, especially the poorer states of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Given some of the anti-Western, post-colonial rhetoric that has emanated from Tripoli over the years, it may be surprising for some to learn that since the thaw in bilateral relations with Washington, Libya has even demonstrated greater openness to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) than some other states on the continent. AFRICOM Commander General William E. “Kip” Ward actually traveled to Libya twice in 2009 and met with Colonel Qadhafi .  .  .

Thus last May, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Boutwell arrived in Tubruq for a three-day port visit that was the first of any U.S. military vessel to Libya in more than four decades.  .  .  .  The visits were returned in September when a delegation of three senior Libyan officers visited AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as U.S. Air Force Africa headquarters at Ramstein Air Base.During the officers’ visit, General Ward gave an unprecedented interview to Al-Musallh, the official journal of the Libyan armed forces, in which he described his discussions of African security matters with Qadhafi and “we look forward to working together in ways that help us achieve those common objectives for peace and stability.”

In the interest of renewing links to professionals in the Libyan military and security services after a nearly four-decade hiatus, the Bush administration requested $350,000 in State Department-administered International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding for Libya in fiscal year 2009. The Obama administration requested the same amount for the current fiscal year, specifying that the funding would be used for English language education as well as courses on civil-military relations, border security, and counterterrorism (Libya has been invited to join the U.S.-led Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership). In addition, the Obama administration budget also allocated, for the first time ever, a token $250,000 in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to provide assistance to the Libyan air force in developing its air transport capabilities and to the Libyan coast guard in improving its coastal patrol and search-and-rescue operations. As significant as these steps may be, there is no reason why bilateral cooperation should not extend to other spheres. As Saif Aleslam al-Qadhafi, noted at the start of the U.S. rapprochement with his father: “Libya does not envisage limiting relations to fighting terrorism. It proposes joint efforts, for example, to meet the needs of Africa by eradicating disease and promoting investment.” .  .  .  .


New Report on Uganda’s Defense Spending Plans

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A release on businesswire.com highlights a report from consultants BMI on Uganda’s expected defense budget in coming years:

In 2010, BMI estimates that Uganda’s defence spending totalled US$450mn, up 37.21% from US$328mn in 2009. Per capita spending is still very low by global standards, at US$13.30. Defence expenditure was equal to 2.3% of GDP, a normal level for developed countries but quite low compared to some other African countries. Defence accounted for 12.9% of government spending, high by developed country standards, if not those of emerging markets in unstable regions. Therefore the expenditure reflects the small size and moderate level of development of the Ugandan economy, as well as the country’s military commitments.

In 2011, BMI expects defence spending to grow more slowly in nominal dollar terms, growing 4.72% to US$471mn, or US$13.50 per capita. In constant price terms, this represents a drop of 3%, though as a proportion of government expenditure, defence will rise to 13.4%.

Over the forecast period, as Uganda’s economy grows, and with regional risks and Uganda’s position as a military power in the region increasing, BMI expects defence spending to rise rapidly, peaking at 36.52% growth in 2014 in nominal dollar terms.

Uganda is therefore likely to follow the trend seen across Africa of heavy investment in military capacity over the coming years, with defence a major government priority. The wave of investment will taper down in the second half of this decade as the army takes delivery of new equipment, but growth will still remain relatively high. By 2019, we expect defence expenditure to total US$2.150bn, or US$47.89 per head still low by rich country standards, and remaining at 2.3% of GDP, but accounting for a huge 23.6% of government spending.
. . . .
Gen Aronda Nyakairima, Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces said that Ugandan troops are now able to participate in international peacekeeping missions, a signal of intent that the country, while still relatively poor, is ready to make its presence felt internationally, including theatres outside East Africa. Kampala has shown itself to be increasingly willing to step in to protect its interests and fight militants. Its armed forces, having had a considerable amount of success against the LRA, can be considered among East Africa’s strongest.

Internally, tensions have been rising in the run-up to 2011 elections. Some fear the army could intervene in the polls, and even that the military sees itself as an extension of the ruling party due to the latters militaristic policies. Therefore concerns have been raised that the army could intervene on the governments side in a disputed election, which could potentially lead to an escalation in violence and damage Uganda’s international reputation. After Kenya’s troubled 2007 election, there are serious concerns about the potential for political violence in Uganda, as an entrenched government faces a fractious and frustrated opposition.

Obama Budget Proposal includes Diplomacy and Assistance Cuts for FY2012, While Congress Continues Work on Cuts for This Year [Updated]

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It seems that the Obama administration by leading with a budget proposal that recommends modest cuts, is laying the groundwork for negotiations with Republicans in Congress over somewhat bigger cuts at the end of the day, if in fact a budget is to be passed and signed into law for the new fiscal year. In the big picture, the overall goal of rebuilding USAID and generally elevating Diplomacy and Development as part of an overall “national security strategy” is at least deferred until some years down the road when the fiscal tradeoffs might seem easier or less politically expensive. On the other hand, we see here “American incrementalism” at its finest on both sides. We don’t spend a lot on foreign assistance, relatively speaking now, and we will keep doing most of things we are doing now in the same basic way we are doing them, with a very few programs eliminated and overall budgets squeezed some.

Regarding the current fiscal year, now almost half over, Josh Rogin writes at The Cable blog at Foreign Policy:

Of course, nobody knows what the fiscal 2011 funding levels will be, because congressional Democrats failed to pass an appropriations bill before the fiscal year began on Oct. 1. The House Republican leadership released its overall allocations for the next CR on Feb. 11, which would provide a total of $44.9 billion for the State Department and foreign operations for fiscal 2011.

A news release by House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) praised the $44.9 billion number and said it was a reduction of $3.8 billion, or 8 percent from total 2010 appropriations and a reduction of $11.7 billion, or 21 percent, from the president’s 2011 budget request. Granger and GOP congressional leaders are promising to cut Obama’s 2012 request even further.

“The reductions made to my section of the bill are a good start. As long as I am Chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I will ensure that our foreign aid is not used as a stimulus bill for foreign countries. This bill is about our national security and the funding levels reflect that,” Granger’s statement read.

The new continuing resolution still has a long way to go before it becomes law. But if enacted as the House GOP leadership wants, it would slash U.S. funding for international financial institutions, eliminate U.S. contributions to several international funds, and cut allocations for global health and childhood survival programs by $784 million compared with fiscal 2010. USAID would also face a $121 million cut to its operating budget as compared with fiscal 2010 under the current House GOP plan.

Funding for international financial institutions was hit especially hard in the GOP bill, with a cut of $892 million from fiscal year 2010 levels. Funding for global health and childhood survival programs also took a hit, losing $784 million compared with 2010.

“Targeted cuts to the bill were partially made by rescinding funds from appropriations that remain unspent, freezing federal employee pay raises at the State Department, not funding programs that require authorizations, scaling back contributions to the United Nations and other international organizations, and eliminating wasteful, duplicative and ineffective programs,” Granger said.

The lawmakers proposed keeping aid to Egypt and Israel intact. However, the continuing resolution would cut off foreign aid to the Lebanese armed forces unless Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certifies such funding is in the United States’ national security interest.

Update: Here is the link from today’s special briefing on the State Department’s 2012 Budget Request with Deputy Secretary Thomas Nides.. One of the more interesting things here is the innovation of splitting the State Department budget into a $47B “core budget” and “[f]or the first time, OMB is presenting our war funding as they do with the Department of Defense, in a separate account called OCO, Overseas Contingency Operations. This will allow for a full transparency and a unified approach for the costs we believe are not part of our core budget. The State and USAID OCO request for 2012 is $8.7 billion . . . “

Dancing with the Data We Have

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Daniel Kaufmann draws lessons from the events in the Middle East:

‘Tunisia, Egypt and Beyond:  Fewer Predictions, More Data and Aid Reform Needed,’ The Kauffmann Governance Post

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), which has been compiled since the mid-1990s, measure six components of governance. One very important component is Voice and Democratic Accountability (V&A). The V&A indicator measures not only whether countries hold elections, but also whether these are truly contested, legitimate, free and fair, whether the government is accountable to its citizens, and whether there are basic freedoms of expression and association, including protection of media freedoms, of civil society, and against human rights abuses.The sobering reality is that in terms of Voice and Democratic Accountability, the Middle East has rated very poorly relative to the rest of the world for many years. With very few exceptions, there is little variation on this indicator across the region. Worse, even though the region began the past decade underperforming on V&A, most every country in the region has deteriorated since and ended the decade at even lower levels of V&A.

Figure 1 below shows the extent to which the Middle East has been afflicted by a severe deficit in accountability. In fact, all Middle East countries, with the exception of Israel, rank in the bottom half of the world on V&A. Within the Arab world, Lebanon and Kuwait are above the rest, but still remain in the bottom third globally. The remaining Middle East countries perform even worse, in the bottom quartile (25th percentile or below) in the V&A component, including Tunisia and Egypt (both underperformed rather similarly). Countries like Iran, (North) Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya rank among the very bottom (10th percentile or below).

From a broader global perspective, Egypt’s percentile rank, at a lowly 15.6 (out of a maximum of 100) in 2009 (meaning that over 170 countries around the world rated above Egypt) compares extremely poorly with countries like South Africa (67th percentile), Brazil (62), Ghana (61) and Indonesia (49). By the end of the decade, Egypt rated similarly in V&A to countries like Cote d’Ivoire, Angola and Congo.

So here we have a comparison of the Voice and Accountability measure from the World Governance Indicators for the five countries of the East African Community, plus Sudan and Ethiopia, along with Tunisia and Egypt (for 2009, the most recent):

Tanzania–43.6

Kenya–37.4

Uganda–33.2

Burundi–28

Egypt–15.2

Ethiopia–12.3

Rwanda–10.9

Sudan–6.2

Libya–2.8

To prepare for the Uganda election February 18, here is the full Uganda Country Report for the World Governance Indicators with links to the sources of the original data.

Dr. Kaufmann goes to look at aid spending:

. .  .  .  Let us look specifically at how donors have responded to the democratic deficit in the Middle East over the past decade.

On aggregate, as Figure 2 indicates, donors have been oblivious to poor democratic governance in the region. In fact, while Voice and Accountability have deteriorated over the past decade, aid increased significantly, even when excluding the ‘special case’ of Iraq from this sample (from US $6.2 billion to $10.5 billion). In fact, almost all of donor development aid is channeled to Middle East countries that have low democratic accountability by the standards of other developing countries.

Are we doing any better in East Africa or are we ‘oblivious’ as well?  Simply looking at the “Voice and Democratic Accountability” scores raises obvious questions . . . .

Meanwhile, in the Kenyan hinterlands, the usual emergency starts again . . .

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Another drought, more famine.  One of the early and formative conversations I had shortly after arriving to work in Kenya was with a judge who encouraged me to take note of the living conditions of the people that he saw in the pastoralist regions when he traveled to remote courts: “it is hard to believe that they are Kenyans” and yet lived in such difficult circumstances.

During the last drought in 2008-09 we had the infamous Maize Scandal, the first big new scandal for the Grand Coalition, and as yet unresolved.  How will the Government of Kenya respond this time, or is this just an issue between the outside humanitarians and the locals and not worth notice in Nairobi?

Act now to mitigate drought effects, say aid agencies, IRIN

Kenya can best mitigate the devastating effects of recurrent drought by strengthening the livestock sector so that it becomes a viable money-based economy, and improving pastoral food and water security, say aid officials.

“Responding to drought has largely remained a reactive mechanism over the years,” Enrico Eminae, Action Aid Kenya’s Northeast Regional Coordinator, told IRIN. “There is also a lack of a coordinated approach by CSOs [civil society organizations] and government in addressing drought-related issues at all levels.”

According to the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) Secretary-General, Abbas Gullet, drought mitigation should focus on addressing vulnerability factors through activities such as dam construction and investments in irrigated farming in marginal areas.

.  .  .  .

“The story of drought and famine is almost becoming a cliché in Kenya,” noted Damaris Mateche, environmental security analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi. “Despite the existing drought early warning systems in the country, drought disaster response mechanisms and coping strategies remain miserably wanting. More often, drought and famine situations degenerate into dire humanitarian crises before the government takes substantial action.” (emphasis added)

“Coping with hardship in pastoralist regions,” IRIN