Should Europe's city planners build slums?

When I was walking around Milan last weekend, I saw many homeless people.  Several parks that I walked through had a substantial number of park benches taken by sleeping men.  On some of the big avenues, others sat or slept next to a few bags of belongings. Kind of a buzzkill for the Ferrari show rooms or designer stores.

In Dhaka, we rarely talk about homeless people.  There are beggars, but there’s an assumption that they live somewhere.  We talk about “pavement/street dwellers” and even “railroad platform dwellers”, which if you think about it, is pretty much the same as calling someone a “park bench dweller.”  I’m not sure if the problem itself is different—recently brac started centers for street children to get a warm meal and a safe place to stay, which sounds a lot like a homeless shelter—but the way it’s approached is different.

Maybe part of the problem is that in wealthier cities, the available housing options are not low-end enough.  Dhaka’s creative residents have built options that start at the ground level and go up incrementally, to a plastic sheet over your head, to a plastic tent-like structure, to using cardboard and bamboo, to tin, to having a cement floor, brick base, and so on.  I doubt that the police and city officials across America or Europe would stand for this--they would clearly prohibit these types of houses and force people to go elsewhere, wherever that may be.  Park benches and sidewalks on busy avenues, perhaps.  Slums have plenty of problems, but they provide a foundation for many to start working their way up.  

Should Milan think about developing some slums to get people off the streets? 

For more thoughts on how we need to shift our thinking on urban design, especially to tackle the growing challenges posed by "mega-cities," check out the great, recent piece "Welcome to the billion man slum" by Joel Kotkin.

Innovation & scale: only as hard as you make it

Recently I participated in an online chat called “Why is innovation at scale so hard?" organized by the Guardian Development Professionals Network. Throughout the dialog, I was struck by the underlying assumptions that immediately color our understanding of these concepts. Many of these beliefs are so ubiquitous that no one even stops to think about them anymore. But like much conventional wisdom, they are dangerous when taken completely at face value.

Five "facts" on scale and innovation that I’d like to challenge are: 

Innovation is harder at scale. Why do we assume that the little guys have a monopoly on innovation, and established organizations can only provide the infrastructure and distribution networks for scaling up? One great thing about being big is that it's easier to justify (and fund) research and development.  For example in our microfinance programme, we can simultaneously run a dozen pilots testing new products and services, because we've got over 2000 branches as our playground!!  It's awesome.  Much easier than going from place to place trying to sell a potential partner on an idea, just to start a pilot.

Certainly some types of innovation are harder at scale--for example, many new financial institutions built on mobile payment platforms that are popping up in East Africa have a much easier time taking advantage of the technology that those more mature providers that now have to retrofit everything if they want to make the switch.  Often smaller institutions have a lot to gain (and less at stake), so are more aggressive about pursuing opportunities faster.  But innovating at scale is possible and happens every day.  It requires different models that are often less sexy than the start-up cults of scrums and ping pong tables. 

Living the dream: Shamim’s story

Much of Bangladesh’s economy is built on remittances and money earned abroad.  The owner of my corner store saved up during the 15 years he spent in the UAE to start this business.  On St. Martins island, I stayed in a hotel on land purchased by years of hard labor in Saudi Arabia.  Just last month, I met an electronics shop keeper cum bkash agent that had worked in Dubai for almost a decade.  Millions of Bangladeshis are still abroad, and millions more are hoping to go.

Why do people desperately want to go so badly?  Recently there have been several stories of migrants on rafts that capsized on the way to Malaysia.  People are literally dying to work abroad.  Who are these people?  Meet Shamim*, who is one of the aspiring millions.

Shamim was born in Dhaka.  His father worked as a gardener in Kuwait and was rarely in Bangladesh.  When Shamim was young, his mother took him and his brother to live with her in-laws in their village.  He enrolled in school, but like many others in his village attended irregularly.  After completing secondary school, he stopped going.

For Shamim and others in his village, “success” meant going abroad for work.  Everyone his age was trying to find a way to go.  Shamim’s father also hoped that his son could find a way to go, as he had been living in Kuwait for over 20 years, and was ready to come home.  But his family depended on his salary, so he could only return once one of his sons was earning enough to support them.

Millennium Development Goooooooooooooooool

Dhaka transformed by World Cup Fever

Football* is powerful.  I've watched the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica transform into raucous parades of celebration of a World Cup qualifier, and toasted with free champagne in Paris when France won.  There's no escaping the football love.

I was not expecting Bangladesh to be quite so football crazed.  Yet the whole country has become nocturnal to follow the action.  Brazil and Argentina flags fly across the country, and in many places people have painted huge flags on open walls.  Messi is a national hero.

During the political demonstrations that crippled Bangladesh late in 2013, my friends said, "During the World Cup, there will be no political movements.  Everyone will be busy watching the games."

I suspect that this is true in many places, excepting of course the host country, where activists (rightly) use the limelight to call attention to urgent social issues.

Reading Gloria Steinem has gotten me thinking about the big "what if's"?  What if we weren't satisfied with the incremental progress of development in the world?

What if FIFA had development components in its admission criteria?  As in, in order to participate, countries would need to recognize certain human rights (for both men and women), and actually enforce?  Countries that stone women to death for adultery would perhaps not make the cut?  Anywhere with documented government sanction (including inaction) of human rights violations, like genocide, sexual slavery, child soldiers?

What if FIFA and the UN worked together on the Millennium Development Goals, and whatever follows them?  What if making education accessible to all children in your country was required to participate in the 2018 world cup?  What if access to clean water and a sewer system was a prerequisite for consideration?

What if countries had to face their citizens publicly, on a global stage, when they failed to make social progress?  What if all avid football fans suddenly started holding politicians accountable for transparency, social protections, and equity issues?  What if development achievements and failures got as much air time as coca cola?

What if companies had to pass a social impact screen in order to qualify to run ads, or sponsor the games?  What if workers' safety codes and sexual harassment policy were actually scrutinized regularly across the world?

What if everyone in the world had to, at least for one month, face the massive scale of inequity in our world today?  What if no political leader could hide?  And all the development agencies were also scrutinized by football fans at home, for not implementing policies that actually build local capacity and foster growth?

What if the world's superpowers actually wanted to see the end of poverty, as soon as possible?  Wouldn't we all get more involved?

The truth is, it's all possible, and we should make it happen.

*Soccer is an American creation.  Football is the globally accepted term.

The BS test for social entrepreneurs: 5 questions every impact investor should ask

The world loves the story of the lone crusader (who happens to be young, attractive, and usually from an elite university).  Social entrepreneurs, specifically those from the United States and occasionally Europe who are flocking to the Global South to save the poor while living large, are the latest answer to all the “failures” of the non-profit and public sectors.  And there are plenty of “impact” investors ready to fund them, and foundations ready to crown them with admiring awards.  It’s all good, except for the fact that many of these (expensive!) ventures fail to deliver any value.

Some investors have set up shop in the Global South so that they have a front-row view of the action and can get their hands dirty.  Many other investors are unwilling or unable to do this.  As a result, social entrepreneurs sometimes take advantage of the fact that potential investors are not always savvy about the targeted markets and contexts.  Over the last few years of meeting a lot of entrepreneurs, I have come up with a few basic rules of thumb that may help investors better separate the truly great ideas from the ones that are pretty unlikely to succeed.

#1 Where is the entrepreneur based?  Or spending most of their time?

If you were starting up a new company in Silicon Valley, would you spend most of your time in Tokyo?  Of course not!  You’d be living and breathing the challenges of getting everything up and running on the ground.  Trust me that there are many additional levels of complexity when you try to do this in a developing country—from electricity, to establish occupancy in an office, getting permits, to the informal powers that will inevitably expect a cut if you want to avoid their wrath.  None of this can be done remotely. 

If the CEO is spending less than 80% of their time onsite, I’d be deeply skeptical that a.) they actually know what’s going on, and b.) that they are qualified to talk about whatever problem they are solving.

Sunday morning round up

1. Finally! Academics check to see if practitioners actually read what research results, and more importantly, if the research informs their actions at all.  My favorite findings:

• Practitioners like to share articles with other practitioners—learning is a chance to engage with colleagues in a unique way
• Practitioners know that academics often talk down to them, and think that academics often underestimate what they don’t know (and can learn from practitioners).  As in:

“The problem isn’t that the practitioners don’t understand the researchers. That’s a pretty arrogant assumption on the researchers’ part. It’s more the other way around: The researchers don’t understand the dynamics that the practitioners must live with. Why not have training sessions run by practitioners for researchers?”

2. Bangladesh’s bKash is now the second largest mobile money in the world with 12 million individual accounts.  mPesa better watch out—Bangladesh has close to 150 million people (more than Tanzania, Kenya, AND Uganda combined), so there’s still a lot of room for growth.  Especially with others like BRAC in the ecosystem working on innovative ways to incorporate bkash into development work.  See the piece my colleague and I wrote for Impatient Optimist on how BRAC supported bkash in its early days, and what we’re doing now to promote adoption at the organization level.

3. Implementation is harder than public commitment, but some of the recent pieces on what’s happened in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory tragedy demonstrate just how much of the motions afterwards was about maintaining public relations versus solutions that actually create safer environments for workers.  The Dhaka Tribune reports on how the monitoring bodies set up by the US and European-based buyers can’t seem to be bothered to work together or even agree on a common set up standards—making life much more difficult for factory owners trying to understand and comply with them. 

FYI, a few weeks ago the same newspaper wrote another good piece about factories that are closing for safety reasons, and worker protests about the loss of jobs.

The sticky truths of development

It's a great feeling when I read an article and find myself nodding "yes" emphatically with the author.  This week I came across two gems that captured so many important sentiments beautifully, which saves me a lot of hard work!

William G. Moseley had a piece framed as "graduation advice for aspiring humanitarians," but has much broader relevance.  His parting comment is a wonderful mantra:

"Do it because you enjoy it, develop deep knowledge of certain places, linger at the grassroots and be humble about the limits of your knowledge."

Too many people prioritize breadth over depth.  Many CVs these days boast "development professional with experience in over 25 countries," which in my mind translates to "I stayed in a 5-star hotel for a few days, traveled around the capital city by car, and sat in air-conditioned offices drinking tea the whole time."  Measuring your knowledge and experience in passport stamps is a bad idea.  My travel acuity scale, on the other hand, is way better.