Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
SIR SUMA
CHAKRABARTI, MR
MARK LOWCOCK,
MS NEMAT
(MINOUCHE) SHAFIK
AND MS
SUE OWEN
17 JULY 2007
Q1 Chairman: Sir Suma, once again we
welcome you to the Committee for its annual exchange based on
your departmental report. For the record, perhaps you would first
introduce your team.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Thank you,
Chairman. On my right is Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, Director General
for Country Programmes; on my far left is Sue Owen, Director General
for Corporate Performance; and on my immediate left is Mark Lowcock,
Director General for Policy and International.
Q2 Chairman: Obviously, we want to
cover a number of issues, not all of which may flow neatly, but
we will deal with them by topic. In the two years that I have
been doing this particular job, from the number of inquiries and
visits we have made, it has become more and more apparent in the
context of development how crucial are gender issues. In many
cases we find that the role of women is under-played, under-valued
and under-consulted and their potential to contribute to development
is, therefore, under-realised and everybody loses. There are all
kinds of issues, cultural and otherwise. Within your department
there is an acknowledgement of the importance of gender issues.
When we raised it with Gareth Thomas on 4 July he told us that
a "revolution in attitudes" was necessary if progress
was to be made. Your Gender Action Plan says that a political
response, not a technical one, is needed. Can you give us an indication
of what that means? Probably the worst example we came across
was in Ethiopia where we were taken by officials from DFID to
a project which was supposedly being managed by a body called
the Women and Children's Development Organisation. The entire
presentation was given by men. We were served tea and coffee by
a lady who turned out to have a PhD in economics and was the finance
director. That was perhaps the worst example, but there have been
many others. For example, in northern Vietnam women were kept
in a back room and not allowed to take part in the proceedings.
This is a really serious issue and I would be interested to hear
how you believe you can deal with it.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: There are
no silver bullets in development but gender is a crucial issue
and we recognise that in the recent publication of our Action
Plan. I will come to the politics of it because that is at the
heart of it. I shall ask my colleagues to give some examples of
what we are doing. The first thing we have to do as an organisation
is to up our game on gender compared with what we have been doing
in the past few years. How we take forward the Action Plan internally
and in our work with other countries is quite crucial. It may
help the Committee to know that under our Action Plan we have
set up a group of champions at quite senior levels within the
various divisions of the organisation. They are led by Mark Lowcock
who is chairman of the board for that purpose. Each of the regions
of the country programmes also has an action plan. That takes
forward the overall Action Plan but in much greater detail. All
of our Country Assistance Plans—in the recent past they
were weaker on gender analysis than we would have liked—will
include much greater analysis of issues to do with women and children,
particularly girls, than has been the case. Therefore, the evidence
base will be better for what we want to do; and we need to share
good practice between regions. We shall be leading the way on
that between the regional divisions. Beyond that, there are a
couple of points worth making. One is that the evidence base on
how gender impacts on development needs to be improved. That is
not just DFID's evidence base; it is the position globally. We
are now doing quite a bit of work with the World Bank and the
IFC[1]
on some of these issues. We are particularly interested in the
link between gender issues and growth. Quite a lot is posited
around that. We would like to investigate it more and build up
a stronger evidence base and see where we can go with it in our
programming. The other point is to do with multilateral influencing.
Again, this is a collective effort which we have talked about
before. Frankly, DFID upping its game alone will not have much
of an impact unless it can get the World Bank, European Commission
and crucially the UN involved. One is aware of the Panel on System-Wide
Coherence which also talks about sorting out the UN structures
on gender. We are also trying to improve how multilaterals address
this issue. To return to the heart of your question, the treatment,
profile and status of women is fundamentally a political issue
and in many countries it is a political economy issue. Therefore,
we cannot expect results very fast, but at the same time we need
to work with civil society organisations and others in those countries
that are trying to change the position of women. That will take
time. All of us can give personal examples of it. A few years
ago I visited Pakistan and talked to the director of family planning
who was a man. Leaving that aside, he did not seem to believe
in family planning whatsoever and that is a symptom of some of
these issues. That has changed in Pakistan, interestingly, but
it has taken a long time.
Ms Shafik: If you look at the
MDG[2]
programmes the ones where we make the least progress are those
concerned with women, In particular, in relation to maternal mortality
in Africa and Asia we have seen the least progress. Probably the
most optimistic areas are education and equality in education.
In the long run arguably that is the investment which will have
the greatest impact in terms of gender equity. We have made gender
equality assessments in less than a dozen countries. A couple
of weeks ago I held a video conference with about 8 countries:
Cambodia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, China and
Bangladesh. We talked about their experience in implementing gender
equality assessments where we go through the entire DFID programme
and look at how gender-sensitive the programme is. There are some
pretty clear conclusions to be drawn from that work, and needless
to say leadership from the top and the head of office in country
is quite important if these things are to work. The analytics
are usually pretty clear but whether or not they are implemented
depends on whether heads of office place a high priority on this
matter. That is a matter that I am following up in terms of our
country heads. These issues are deep-seated.
Q3 Chairman: I have to tell you that
it is a problem for the Committee. At the moment we have only
one woman on the Committee. We have two women Members but one
has been promoted. We have vacancies and hopes that our poor gender
balance will not deteriorate even further. As a practical issue,
there was a particular example in Kashmir. We wanted to know what
the views of women were. The answer was quite simple: as men we
could not talk to the women, so we had one woman on the Committee
and a woman clerk who did speak to those women. This occurred
months after the earthquake. They were told that that was the
first time anybody had asked them anything about the aftermath
of that event. Whilst I believe that the mere men on the Committee
are becoming genuinely much more aware of the issues, it strikes
a woman much more immediately when she sees things that are not
right. In a moment I shall ask Ann McKechin to come in. If one
looks at those examples, it is fine to say there is an action
plan but is the department able to provide incentives to bring
gender much more centrally into the country programmes? Can you
give any examples of where you have managed to achieve a degree
of change?
Mr Lowcock: We hope that the main
incentive is the leadership provided by managers and ministers.
In his speech in Washington last week Douglas Alexander went out
of his way to say that empowering women was a priority for all
of us and he linked that directly to the achievement of the MDGs.
That has cascaded down to my job objectives and those of senior
staff. We observe that across the organisation there are hundreds
of people who as part of what they are doing are trying to pursue
this agenda. To pick up a couple of examples of how it cascades
down in the country programmes, not long ago we were in Vietnam
where we had a dialogue with the government about its own overall
development plans and priorities within the framework of a budget
support operation. As part of that dialogue we have been able
to raise with them issues like legislation to deal with domestic
violence, changes to the legislative arrangements for access to
assets, especially land titles, and equality of retirement age
as between men and women. Another example is Malawi where as part
of the policy dialogue we have been able to get into a discussion
on domestic violence. The truth is that the start of the political
dialogue in most of the countries in which we work is not what
it is in this country in regard to the position of women. There
is a long way to go, but through the process of dialogue, generating
evidence and keeping it on the agenda we hope that we shall, with
others, be able to make a significant difference.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: As to what
leadership can do, Rwanda is a rather interesting case in point.
Nearly 50% of the parliament are women. We do not have that in
this country. That has not been brought about by some sort of
reservation; it has resulted very much from active participation
at grass roots level up.
Ms Shafik: To give two examples
of country programmes, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are two countries
where gender issues are quite central to their assistance strategy.
Every person who works on those programmes has gender-related
objectives in their individual performance objectives in those
countries.
Q4 Ann McKechin: One of the criticisms
in the evidence that has been sent to us is that your draft Public
Service Agreement targets include no indicators for measuring
gender equality. Can you comment specifically on that point? When
we were in northern Vietnam one of your programmes was about making
markets work for the poor. That is certainly an innovative programme,
but it contains absolutely no gender analysis strategy. There
is a concern about just how comprehensive is DFID's own approach
to gender equality in its work and policies and programmes in
addition to the importance of the dialogue which I do not in any
way underestimate. It is important that we have very robust mechanisms
throughout DFID's own policy work.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: To pick
up the example of Vietnam first, obviously we shall be looking
at how we can up our game there. Mark has given a couple of examples
of what we have already achieved in Vietnam. We do not claim that
that has been done across all the programmes in Vietnam. You have
picked up an example where it has not, but I would have thought
that the next country assistance strategy will put this centre
stage in terms of what we do in Vietnam.
Ms Shafik: Probably the most powerful
thing we can do just as a starting point is to have gender disaggregated
data in terms of the impact of our programmes and micro-financing
to make markets work for the poor is one element of that.
Q5 Ann McKechin: Have you changed
the Public Service Agreements? Are we going to have targets on
gender issues?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Yes. Yesterday
I hope we sent you the ongoing work on the PSAs which we have
not yet finalised. Gender equality will be a theme that cuts across
all the PSAs, and we shall try to disaggregate as much as possible
the data so we can present that information in future. For some
of the indicators the data will be there and for some it will
not, so where we can do it we shall do it.
Q6 Ann McKechin: You have prioritised
climate change in your Comprehensive Spending Review bid. Can
you give us some indication of the level of funding that you hope
will be available over the next few years as part of the CSR?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Obviously,
we do not know what the CSR outcome will be, but part of the outcome,
which is the Environmental Transformation Fund, was announced
in the Budget by the then Chancellor. Therefore, we know that
£800 million is already there and will be factored in. I
am sure that Mark can provide some of the details about how we
shall use that money. We would expect most of our effort post-CSR
to be multilateral, but we expect that for some country programmes
we shall do a bit more in the area of climate change both on adaptation
and mitigation. As to mitigation, it is a matter of helping countries
think through the adoption of low energy technologies, regulatory
reform and that sort of stuff; and we shall also be helping them
to adapt to some of the impacts of climate change.
Q7 Ann McKechin: Later on the Chair
will raise the question of more for less. I am sure that you have
anticipated that coming up on the agenda.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Yes.
Q8 Ann McKechin: We heard that in
Ethiopia a new climate change programme was due to start but that
no additional staff resources had been allocated to it. In terms
of integrating climate change policy into your department, have
you had any thoughts about any additional staff that might be
required and how you will integrate that into your current projects?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We are just
in the middle of getting a piece of work done that will map out
exactly the human resources, numbers and also skills, that will
be required and on which countries and multilateral agencies they
will be targeted. We have already increased resources on climate
change but the new plan will give us a much more forensic look,
if you like, at exactly what we need. We shall come back to you
as soon as we have that and have agreed it with ministers.
Mr Lowcock: The details of the
Environmental Transformation Fund which will be managed jointly
by us and Defra are being worked through following the announcement
by the Chancellor. There will be a substantial component that
is about leveraging funds which potentially are available from
other multilateral sources but are not currently accessed by developing
countries because the terms are not sufficiently attractive. For
example, at the moment together with the World Bank we are discussing
with the Government of China, who are potentially interested in
borrowing very large sums from the Bank to get onto a cleaner
development path and to pilot some things, how we can use the
Environmental Transformation Fund to facilitate and incentivise
that. We hope that later in the year we shall be able to finalise
those discussions and have it as one of the flagship pilots of
the Environmental Transformation Fund. But the word "transformation"
is quite important in this context because it is about trying
to leverage billions of dollars which are potentially available
on the balance sheets of the IFIs[3]
but which currently are not being accessed.
Q9 Ann McKechin: Are there any additional
projects that you may be planning over the next year or two in
terms of environmental and climate change work which currently
are not in the programme?
Mr Lowcock: We would not have
done those two but for this. We are substantially increasing the
research programme on adaptation to climate change. DFID is apparently
the world's largest financier of research on adaptation to climate
change in developing countries, but we are increasing that work
in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The other major matter on which
we are spending time is climate-proofing existing development
activities and trying to help countries to climate-proof their
Poverty Reduction Strategies. Again, that is a major part of what
the Secretary of State was driving at in the things he said last
week in Washington about climate change.
Q10 Hugh Bayley: China has enormous
holdings of US bonds and dollar reserves. Why does it need to
borrow from the World Bank? Could not the Bank provide its clean
technology expertise on a consultancy basis rather than by making
loans to China?
Mr Lowcock: Why China thinks it
is in its interests to do this is a very interesting question.
I guess that all we can observe is that, for whatever reason,
they find the package of expertise, access to knowledge and financing
one that at a senior level within their government and their team
in Washington adds up to something in which they are interested.
Our view is that it is a good thing for the world and the climate
change issue that there is a positive dialogue. Maybe the motives
are not for us the most important question.
Ms Shafik: Interestingly enough,
the entire World Bank lending programme to China is now only about
the environment. It is the one area where they feel there is value
in external assistance, but for everything else, as you imply,
they would use commercial markets and borrow elsewhere.
Q11 Hugh Bayley: Is there an opportunity
cost in that there is less lending to other countries that do
not have reserves? Could not the World Bank develop a new package
that provided the expertise but said that the capital needed to
be provided from Chinese reserves or that, for example, China
should invest a certain amount of funds in the World Bank equivalent
to the loans that it receives?
Ms Shafik: I think that all of
China's borrowing from the World Bank is IBRD[4]
lending which in effect is unconstrained, so it is not crowding
out other borrowers. Having said that, one of the issues we raised
with China on a recent visit was whether it should start to think
of itself as a donor to IDA[5],
the concessional lending arm.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: In IDA 15
we hope that both China and India will make contributions.
Q12 Chairman: The Committee is planning
to visit China next year. One of the things it wants to explore
is exactly that point. Sir Emyr Jones Parry[6]
spoke to a number of Select Committees yesterday about what he
was doing on behalf of the Government to try to promote climate
change issues through the UN. One of the concerns that arises
out of that, on which you have already touched, is the danger
that for developing countries climate change can become a constraint
on development rather than an opportunity either because resources
which would have gone straight into development are diverted into
what you call climate-proofing, which has a cost, or because of
the populist view that, for example, we should not be buying flowers
or beans from Kenya because flying them in causes environmental
damage, on which I know the previous Secretary of State has commented.
I guess that a Kenyan farmer who has invested heavily in that
activity will take the view that, just as he has found a niche
market to add value and develop the economy, those so-and-sos
in the West bring in environmental constraints and destroy the
market before it has even given payback. How do you ensure that
tackling climate change is seen by developing countries as something
from which they benefit or that at the very least they are not
disadvantaged by it?
Mr Lowcock: The economic issues
about where things are produced and are exported to are matters
to which both the former and current Secretaries of State have
been alive. For us, the one matter that comes out of the analysis
is that some of the starting assumptions about whether or not
it is a good idea to export products a long way by air because
of climate concerns turn out not to be very well justified by
the evidence. For example, a lot of power is used by greenhouses
in Europe where such products would otherwise be produced. For
us, essentially the general issue on adaptation to climate change
in developing countries is about the fact that changes in climate
will dramatically affect the paths to development that are available
to them. The sooner that is evidenced and exemplified in particular
countries and they are able to plan for the consequences the better
in terms of continued economic growth and the achievement of the
MDGs. For us that is a central issue. Lots of people have talked
in recent months about the impact on Uganda's ability to grow
and export coffee if there is a change in rainfall patterns. Obviously
coffee is fundamental to the Ugandan economy. If it turns out
to be true that changing rainfall patterns have a big impact on
that it will be a massive economic issue for the whole country.
The sooner we can understand that and analyse it and Uganda is
able to plan for the consequences of it the better for the development
of that country. That is independent of who is responsible for
climate change or what we do about mitigating further climate
change.
Q13 Richard Burden: I should like
to ask one or two questions about governance. Your White Paper[7]
says that good governance is the single biggest factor in determining
whether or not development will be successful, and that is something
that we should like to probe a little. On the Governance and Transparency
Fund, we are aware that in a Written Answer last week Shahid Malik
said that you were hoping to announce funding decisions by early
December[8].
I will not press you on what those decisions are yet, but in terms
of the consultation on the use of that Fund, what responses have
you received about how it could be used, and how will those responses
inform and be reflected in the funding decisions you make?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We have
been amazingly inundated with concept notes. We put out a call
for concept notes after the strategy was set out. Well over 400
concept notes have come in from all round the world. Eighty-five
per cent of the Fund will go to organisations in developing countries.
The demand has been extraordinary. Just sifting through that demand
and then calling for final proposals, which we shall do by September,
is a big task for us. We are quite excited by where we have got
to on this and we are encouraged by it.
Ms Owen: We have received well
over 400 applications as concept notes. What will happen now is
that the managing agent that has been appointed will assess them
against the criteria agreed with us and provide recommendations
as to which merit funding. In some cases they will go back to
the organisations for fuller proposals and more details, including
some technical assessments, so that they can recommend to the
Secretary of State which ones should go ahead. We hope we can
start funding by the beginning of next year and make decisions
in December. The funding will be for projects under £5 million
in each case and for periods of up to five years.
Q14 Richard Burden: I should like
to return to the question I asked a moment ago. Before I do that,
you talked about managing agents. Who are they? How much are they
costing? Is the funding for them coming out of the £100 million?
Ms Owen: The managing agent that
has been selected is KPMG. We had a blind process of assessing
those by competitive tender and there was NGO representation on
the group that selected the managing agent. The administration
costs are not included in the £100 million, and the approximate
value of the contract with KPMG is about £1.6 million, so
it is 1.6% of the total which is quite low. A lot of people ask
why we are not doing this in-house. You will know that we face
head count constraints but, in addition, we do not have the capacity
in-house to process this volume of applications. Further, it is
a one-off process in that it is a single application round. Given
all that, it made sense to buy in the short-term resources to
manage the selection process.
Q15 John Battle: I can see the constraints
to which you are subject to push things out and get consultants
in. I have no problem in principle with consultants, but I have
questions about capacity. One of the things that DFID has developed
is that it is not just an agency for the disbursement of money
to projects and governments but it has a world-class capacity
to understand processes of development and methodology. Is that
capacity in KPMG? Do they have experts in development, or are
they starting to poach your staff so they can build their capacity?
Ms Owen: I am not aware that they
have been poaching our staff, and they certainly did appear to
have the capacity to do this.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: When we
put these matters out to tender the key matter is to ensure that
we are defining the strategy clearly enough, because obviously
that is where our skill comes in. I am confident that in this
case we were very clear about what we wanted out of the scheme
and what key issues we wanted to cover. To go back to Mr Burden's
question as to the themes that are emerging, I think we will have
to give you a note in September when the managing agent has gone
through the 400-odd concept notes and see what key themes emerge.
I suspect that parliamentary strengthening will be one of them.
We have pushed for more of that as one of our objectives; we have
been pushing that through a number of our country offices in recent
years, but I do not want to predict what the other themes will
be until we have been through the 400-odd concept notes.[9]
Q16 Richard Burden: I want to ask about
the issue of scrutiny. I also want to pursue the question of managing
agents and consultants generally. Obviously, you appear before
us on a regular basis, which we appreciate. Do DFID officials
think it would be a good idea for them to appear before equivalent
bodies to this in countries where DFID has programmes, in a sense
making themselves open to scrutiny? To return to the use of consultants,
if they are to play an increasingly important role perhaps both
in country and here, do you think it would be useful and proper
for those firms to give this Committee the benefit of their views,
advice and expertise?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Obviously,
it is open to the Committee to decide whom it wants to see. You
take advice from ODI[10]
and various other bodies. To go back to Mr Battle's question,
if you want to check out the development credentials of some of
these organisations then it would be a good thing for you to see
them. We would have no objection to that. Whether you would want
to do that in a formal or informal session is obviously up to
the Committee. You asked about DFID officials appearing in developing
countries. Perhaps Mark and Minouche can comment on whether we
have ever done that. I just stress that our ultimate accountability
is to you and must be to UK citizens and the UK Parliament. It
is very important not to muddy the waters in that respect. At
the same time we want to increase the amount of mutual accountability
out there because we feel, as I think the Committee does, that
there has not been enough of that. Therefore, to hold DFID and
other donors to account for our commitments, just as we would
hold other governments to account for their commitments, is very
much part of this process. We have done a number of things in
that respect. The Africa Partnership Forum has been a major global
exercise for that purpose, and at national level we try to do
that. I am sure that Minouche can give examples of that.
Mr Lowcock: On the question of
whether DFID officials give evidence to legislatures in other
countries, the answer is that we have done that. In the past month
I gave evidence to the Foreign Relations Committee of the Canadian
Senate on the legislation going through the Canadian parliament
for its own development assistance. That was in response to a
request from them to understand more about the legislation that
Parliament had put in place for the UK's expenditure. I cannot
recall any cases where we have done that in a formal way in developing
country legislatures, but we have had informal interaction. We
can check to see whether there have been cases where we have done
it more formally.[11]
Ms Shafik: I am also not aware
of formal cases, but I am aware of cases where, for example, parliaments
have done investigations into the role of donors in their countries,
donor co-ordination and that sort of thing, and we have provided
information as part of that process.
Chairman: We have actively encouraged
parliamentarians to ask DFID to give evidence on the grounds that
that will help them check on their own governments so they know
better about what the donors are doing.
Q17 Richard Burden: Perhaps we can
have a note on whether or not that has happened and also whether
or not requests have come in which have not been responded to.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Perhaps
in that note we can also set out our understanding of the amount
of interaction there is on the parliamentary front more broadly.
I know that, for example, the CPA[12]
has done a lot in terms of parliamentary strengthening, which
we very much applaud. We ought to set out also what the 20 country
offices with which I am familiar are doing. They are doing much
more on the parliamentary front than they were two or three years
ago. If we can provide a fuller note that may be helpful.[13]
Q18 Richard Burden: In relation to capacity-building,
obviously for the vision outlined in the White Paper to work civil
society must be as strong and as empowered as possible in terms
of holding governments to account and overseeing the programmes
about which we have been talking. When we were in Ethiopia one
of the consequences of the change from conventional budget support
was the creation of the Protection of Basic Services Grant approach,
part of which was about not only ensuring that assistance was
provided, perhaps at a lower level, but ensuring that there were
mechanisms of accountability that would not necessarily be there
in conventional budget support. Can you give us any sense, whether
from that experience or others, of what good practice you have
been able to identify in capacity-building and empowering civil
society and how that could be spread in other programmes in other
countries in which DFID operates?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: A few months
ago there was an NAO report on civil society work undertaken by
DFID.[14]
It touched on a number of matters, and for an NAO report it was
quite nice about what we did. It is quite important to distinguish
between countries because, given its history, Ethiopia has never
been as open to civil society as some other countries. Therefore,
civil society in Ethiopia is quite limited compared with, say,
Tanzania or somewhere like that—hence the need to work through
government, quite often at local level as well. The Basic Services
programme works very much with local government. At the same time,
what we are trying to do with all our programmes—we have
more success in some places than in others—is to raise civil
society both as a service deliverer but also as holding government
to account much more.
Ms Shafik: As far as concerns
Ethiopia, we wanted to check two elements of accountability at
local government level. We wanted to make sure, first, that the
government did not allocate these additional funds in a way that
was politically biased and penalised those communities that had
supported the opposition and, second, to strengthen local civil
society's capacity to hold governments to account for the quality
of service delivery. As to the former, I think we have made a
lot of progress and we have been able to confirm that funds have
not been distributed in a politically biased way and the agreed
formula for allocation has been adhered to. As to the development
of civil society groups, we have put funding in place. The World
Bank is responsible for overseeing that. As Suma implied, we are
starting from a very low base in terms of indigenous civil society
in Ethiopia and it has gone much slower than we had hoped, but
we are continuing what will be a long-term investment. The first
step has been the provision of information to local communities
about what transfers have been made and trying to enable them
to digest that and use that information well. There are examples
in other countries where there is a stronger indigenous civil
society and it has proceeded well. One good example is Tanzania.
In that country almost 90% of our programme goes through budget
support, but we see civil society development and capacity-building
as an important complement to that budget support. It is key for
holding government to account on a whole range of service delivery
indicators to which they are committed. That is a very strong
parallel programme. For example, in Kenya where we have been working
in the education sector we have used parents as an important accountability
mechanism, so the amounts of money we put into schools has to
be posted on every school in Kenya with a clear budget, saying
where the money has gone, how much is spent on teachers and how
much on books. We have been using that as a mechanism of accountability
to supplement more traditional methods.
Q19 Hugh Bayley: On page 287 of the
Annual Report—I am not sure you need to turn to it—you
summarise your performance against the PSA targets. You say that
Africa has shown much improved growth performance over the past
five years and this should have a positive impact on poverty.
What are the statistics that back up the statement about improved
growth across Africa as a whole? What is the evidence that leads
you to believe rather than hope that that growth will lead to
poverty reduction? One looks at India, for instance, where very
high levels of growth do not necessarily translate into poverty
reduction.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I believe
that high rates of growth have had an impact on poverty reduction
in India, but we can come back to that at some other time. As
to Africa, for the past five or six years it has grown faster
than the world economy. For those who are pessimistic about Africa,
that is quite an astonishing change. I do not think that such
a thing has happened since the 1960s.
1 International Finance Corporation Back
2
Millennium Development Goal Back
3
International financial institutions Back
4
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Back
5
International Development Association Back
6
UK Permanent Representative to the UN Back
7
Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the
poor, DFID, 2006 Back
8
HC Deb, 16 July 2007, cols 136-7w Back
9
Ev 57-62 Back
10
Overseas Development Institute Back
11
Ev 58 Back
12
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Back
13
Ev 58 Back
14
DFID: working with NGOs and other civil society organisations
to promote development, National Audit Office, HC 1311, Session
2005-06 Back
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