When you say “working with African leaders”, I worry that in many countries that means “paying bribes which prop up dictatorships and fund war.” How can we measure the extent to which money sent to NGOs in sub Saharan Africa is redirected toward harmful causes via taxes, bribes, or corruption ?
Balancing the short-term need for economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa with the long-term need to mitigate carbon emissions is one of the trickiest balances to strike in international development. I argue that we can rectify this by working with African institutions and leaders at the local level, instead of treating Africa as a single, static data point.
This suggests either the opposite of, irrelevance to, or support by analogy of your concern. It is various African institutions and local leaders who would be making sure that the balance between increased energy output and worsening environment is stricken. The design where decisionmaking would be much more aggregated could, possibly, lead to a suboptimal decisionmaking, because authorities could be less in touch with the local nature so disproportionatelly prioritizing energy cost reduction/distribution (although, this illustrative example may show a bias in this reasoning).
The reasoning that local institutions and leaders (e. g. community elders, land owners) can make more pro-environmental (which can be interpreted as less biased or ’corrupt) decisions than national or regional governance representatives (who could be lobbied by profit-seeking industries) can seem intuitive. However, it may not be as clear. Some community elders may have little concern for the environment (e. g. many extremely poor persons gain income by charcoal making, which is polluting and unsustainable) and some land owners may be happy to destroy their crops and host a coal mine investment—or sell the land). On the contrary, governments may be aware of a variety of investment options, from mining to juice making and, if given the option, may go for portfolio diversification that also reduces their proneness to war (so, renewable resources, comparative advantage specialization and trading, or energy supply agreements).
To answer your question, the rate of unagreed-upon use of funds by NGOs (as well as other entities, including governments) can be estimated by an external observer of the total value provided by the programs, considering local knowledge of market prices. It can range, from negative percentages (employees sacrifice income compared to the profit sector, negotiate below-market bargains with local providers on the basis of social/environmental benefit) to 99.5% misappropriated (anecdotal stories of multi-million projects in a developing context outside of sub-Saharan Africa).
However, you have to consider that sometimes external funders would not have agreed to a more effective use of funds (e. g. if COVID funding is used to treat or prevent a neglected tropical disease), that workers are underpaid (so, even with a ‘premium’ can still receive less than they should), or that the locals’ preference must be taken into consideration (to build local trust or that otherwise locals would be at the threat of expressing their preferences to safeguard an institutional development considerate of people’s preferences) even if it is not the most cost-effective to do (e. g. a neighbor that needs some funding for a hospital travel for which a few vitamin doses need to be sold informally). So, ‘corruption’ may not necessarily be bad in terms of impact or improving institutions.
When you say “working with African leaders”, I worry that in many countries that means “paying bribes which prop up dictatorships and fund war.” How can we measure the extent to which money sent to NGOs in sub Saharan Africa is redirected toward harmful causes via taxes, bribes, or corruption ?
In context, this is:
This suggests either the opposite of, irrelevance to, or support by analogy of your concern. It is various African institutions and local leaders who would be making sure that the balance between increased energy output and worsening environment is stricken. The design where decisionmaking would be much more aggregated could, possibly, lead to a suboptimal decisionmaking, because authorities could be less in touch with the local nature so disproportionatelly prioritizing energy cost reduction/distribution (although, this illustrative example may show a bias in this reasoning).
The reasoning that local institutions and leaders (e. g. community elders, land owners) can make more pro-environmental (which can be interpreted as less biased or ’corrupt) decisions than national or regional governance representatives (who could be lobbied by profit-seeking industries) can seem intuitive. However, it may not be as clear. Some community elders may have little concern for the environment (e. g. many extremely poor persons gain income by charcoal making, which is polluting and unsustainable) and some land owners may be happy to destroy their crops and host a coal mine investment—or sell the land). On the contrary, governments may be aware of a variety of investment options, from mining to juice making and, if given the option, may go for portfolio diversification that also reduces their proneness to war (so, renewable resources, comparative advantage specialization and trading, or energy supply agreements).
To answer your question, the rate of unagreed-upon use of funds by NGOs (as well as other entities, including governments) can be estimated by an external observer of the total value provided by the programs, considering local knowledge of market prices. It can range, from negative percentages (employees sacrifice income compared to the profit sector, negotiate below-market bargains with local providers on the basis of social/environmental benefit) to 99.5% misappropriated (anecdotal stories of multi-million projects in a developing context outside of sub-Saharan Africa).
However, you have to consider that sometimes external funders would not have agreed to a more effective use of funds (e. g. if COVID funding is used to treat or prevent a neglected tropical disease), that workers are underpaid (so, even with a ‘premium’ can still receive less than they should), or that the locals’ preference must be taken into consideration (to build local trust or that otherwise locals would be at the threat of expressing their preferences to safeguard an institutional development considerate of people’s preferences) even if it is not the most cost-effective to do (e. g. a neighbor that needs some funding for a hospital travel for which a few vitamin doses need to be sold informally). So, ‘corruption’ may not necessarily be bad in terms of impact or improving institutions.