by Claire Melamed | Jun 22, 2011 | Economics and development
photo credit: Kiwanja.net
On Monday I gave a talk at ‘Africa Gathering’ – a great event full of serious mobile communications geeks (in a good way). I’m as much of a technological optimist as the next starry-eyed iphone user (an ODI paper suggests, for example, that every extra 10% of mobile phone penetration increases economic growth by just under 1%), but I thought that there’d be enough of that around so I decided to present a few of the ‘yes, but’ arguments about mobiles in Africa. Mainly these are about who gets access to the technology, and whether there’s a new ‘digital divide’ opening up in front of our eyes (screens?). In true policy wonk style, I had three points:
1. The geographical divide. This website gives live maps of mobile phone coverage of most African countries, and it’s a similar pattern in most (I tried to download some to paste in here but I couldn’t – oh the irony). The areas where most people live are covered, but large swathes of every country, so a signficant number of the most excluded, remote communities, still don’t have a signal. Expanding coverage is going to be expensive, and the most remote areas are going to be the most expensive. But it’s got to happen if we’re interested in equitable access to the huge benefits that mobile communications can bring. Governments have a role of course, in providing incentives for the private sector to make those investments.
2. The literacy divide. I’ve blogged here before about the fact that slowly growing rates of literacy and rapidly growing rates of mobile internet access might mean that inability to read, rather than lack of access to the technology,will soon become the key barrier to accessing the internet. There’s lots of great examples of how mobile communications can be used to promote literacy, but the point still stands. And again, it’s largely up to governments to make sure that literacy expands fast enough to keep up.
3. The money divide. Using a mobile phone costs money. In parts of Kenya making a money transaction using the MPESA mobile banking service costs the same as a bag of maize. Costs have to come down to bring this technology within reach. ODI has done some research (pdf) on how competition can bring costs down – again, governments have a role in promoting competition and if necessary regulating prices directly, if digital equity is a goal that they are serious about.
My conclusion: the mobile revolution might have been driven by the private sector, but governments have to get involved and start seeing mobile communications as a service like any other, with the same issues of equity, coverage and affordability, to prevent new inequalities from emerging. Or in other words: the usual public policy problem updated for the mobile age.
by Alex Evans | Jun 21, 2011 | Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia
Gideon Rachman’s FT column today is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the outlook for the Eurozone.
Right now, the conventional wisdom is that Eurozone policymakers face a choice: either the Eurozone will gradually fall apart, or they need to get their act together and pool more sovereignty. It was always illusory to suppose that you could have a currency union in which monetary policy was centralised but fiscal policy was not, so the argument goes – so if policymakers want to avert disintegration, then they need to go further and deeper on unifying Europe, through even greater institutional centralisation.
But Rachman’s having none of it:
Those who argue that “political union” is the solution to the current crisis seem to believe that Europe’s problem is institutional … This is a profound misdiagnosis of the crisis. The real problem is political and cultural. There is not a strong enough common political identity in Europe to support the single currency. That is why German, Dutch and Finnish voters are revolting against the idea of bailing out Greece again – while Greeks riot against what they see as a new colonialism imposed from Brussels and Frankfurt.
To argue that even deeper political integration is the solution to this mess, is like recommending that a man with alcohol poisoning should treat himself with a more powerful brand of vodka.
And while he observes that Joschka Fischer was unrepentant at a recent seminar about policy elites having driven the European project (“it’s called leadership”), he notes that
Such leadership is all very well, if it is vindicated by events. However, if elite decisions go wrong, they create a backlash – which is exactly what is happening in Europe now. German voters were told repeatedly that the euro would be a stable currency and that they would not have to bail out southern Europe. They now feel betrayed and angry. Greek, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese voters were told repeatedly that the euro was the route to wealth on a par with that of northern Europe. They now associate the single currency with lost jobs, falling wages and slashed pensions. They too feel betrayed and angry.
And so, he concludes, “a single currency that was meant to bring Europeans together is instead driving them apart”. Fiscal redistribution is hard enough even within long-established nation states, he observes (think of northern and southern Italy) – for a quasi-state that isn’t a nation, forget it. So what happens now? One of two things, he reckons. Eurozone leaders might manage to patch things up (and I struggle to see how, without the institutional integration that he opposes). Or weaker members of the Eurozone could start to leave. That’s what Martin Wolf reckoned at INET, too.
by Richard Gowan | Jun 16, 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks, Off topic
The versatility of modern diplomats never ceases to amaze…
Following a reported global rise in interest in black metal, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry has begun providing diplomats on foreign service missions with an introduction to the genre – specifically ‘True Norwegian Black Metal’, to give it its official term.
Louder Than War reports that Kjersti Sommerset, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Centre Of Excellence, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv: “We now have 106 foreign service missions and they get many enquiries from people who want information about Norwegian black metal as a phenomenon. In the training program, we have a large cultural programme in order to give the trainees a good understanding of Norwegian culture and the cultural industry. Black metal is clearly a part of this ‘global awakening’”.
I am not sure if the gentleman pictured above, from a series of pictures of Norwegian black metal artistes, has considered a career in diplomacy. But if the screaming and Satanism wears thin, his Mum will be glad to know he’s got a Plan B.
by Alex Evans | Jun 15, 2011 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlIrI80og8c[/youtube]
by David Steven | Jun 15, 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, North America
A Tea Party group is running a summer camp that will use ‘fun, hands-on activities’ to teach kids what the United States is really about. Here’s one of the sessions:
Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).
Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.
This is not from the Onion.
