The evaluation argues that the MVP was responsible for a substantial drop in child mortality. However, we see a number of problems.

Summary

• Even if the evaluation’s conclusions are taken at face value, insecticide-treated net distribution alone appears to account for 42% of the total effect on child mortality (though there is high uncertainty).
• The MVP is much more expensive than insecticide-treated net distribution — around 45x on a per-person basis. Therefore, we believe that in order to make an argument that the MVP is the best available use of dollars, one must demonstrate effects far greater than those attained through distributing bednets. We believe the evaluation falls short on this front, and that the mortality averted by the MVP could have been averted at about 1/35th of the cost by simply distributing bednets. Note that the evaluation does not claim statistically significant impacts beyond health; all five of the reported statistically significant impacts are fairly closely connected to childhood mortality reduction.
• There are a number of other issues with the evaluation, such that we believe the child mortality effect should not be taken at face value. We have substantial concerns about both selection bias and publication bias. In addition, a mathematical error, discovered by the World Bank’s Gabriel Demombynes and Espen Beer Prydz, overstates the reduction in child mortality, and the corrected effect appears similar to the reduction in child mortality for the countries as a whole that the MVP works in (though still greater than the reduction in mortality for the villages the MVP chose as comparisons for the evaluation). The MVP published a partial retraction with respect to this error (PDF) today.

We would guess that the MVP has some positive effects in the villages it works in — but for a project that costs as much per person as the MVP, that isn’t enough. We don’t believe the MVP has demonstrated cost-effective or sustainable benefits. We also don’t believe it has lived up (so far) to its hopes of being a “proof of concept” that can shed new light on debates over poverty.

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

That is the annual change in child mortality in those selected countries. No country, no group of countries, has ever seen anything like this, it simply has not happened so quickly anywhere else at all. Something, blessedly, is going very right indeed in this world. My suggestion is that we keep doing exactly what it is that we are currently doing: we might call it globalisation, foreign direct investment, openness to trade or as Madsen puts it, buying things made by poor people in poor countries. But it’s working, isn’t it?

You don’t have to go far into NGO land to find people arguing that poor countries need to protect their baby industries from the big bad wolves of international capitalism. That trade barriers are a good idea, that infant industries need to be nurtured and, as is the way of these things, the Washington Consensus is the imposition of the poverty that the poor suffer from.

That this is entire nonsense does not stop those idiots wearing ideological blinkers from repeating it. Which is something of a pity as it really is trade, openness to it, which drives economic growth:

In recent years, sub-Saharan African countries have grown remarkably. According to data from the Penn World Table 7.0 (Heston et al. 2011), average annual real GDP per capita growth from 2005-9 has been over 2.5% (3.5% when excluding 2008 and 2009). This recent growth performance is remarkable given that, for over four decades since 1960, real GDP per capita growth in sub-Saharan Africa was dismal, averaging less than 0.5% per annum.

We are, as we know, talking about the poorest of the poor and any uptick in their fortunes has been both extremely difficult to find and extremely welcome when it is.

One thing that might be remembered is that, post-colonialism, most sub-Saharan countries did in fact follow the policies of infant industry protection behind tariff and licencing barriers. It was the falling apart of this in the 80s and then the gradual adoption of good old neoliberalism in the mid to late 90s which has turned the numbers around.

(Larger version at the original URL)

James Cheshire, of Spatial Analysis, has taken historical records of shipping routes between 1750 and 1800 and plotted them using modern mapping tools.

The first map, above, shows journeys made by British ships. Cross-Atlantic shipping lanes were among the busiest, but the number of vessels traveling to what was than called the East Indies — now India and South-East Asia — also stands out when compared to Dutch and Spanish records.

I was surprised to see how many trading voyages there were to and from the Hudson Strait — fur trade traffic, I assume.

(Larger version at the original URL)

This second map shows the same data for Dutch boats. The routes are closely matched to the British ones, although the number of journeys is noticeably smaller.

You can also see the scattering of journeys made by Dutch ships to Svalbard, off the North coast of the Norwegian mainland

After two years of immense prosperity, the last year has been a disaster for the Somali pirates. For example, in the last eight months, only six ships have been captured, compared to 36 ships in the same eight month period a year ago. Pirate income is down 80 percent and expenses are up. Pirates have to spend more time at sea looking for a potential target, and when they find one, they either fail in their boarding efforts (because of armed guards, or better defense and more alert crews) or find anti-piracy patrol warships and armed helicopters showing up. Unlike in the past, the patrol now takes away the pirates weapons and equipment, sinks their mother ships and dumps the pirates back on a beach. The pirates claim that some members of the anti-piracy patrol simply kill pirates they encounter on the high seas (some nations have admitted doing this, at least once, in the past). But no one does this as official policy, and the rules are still basically “catch and release.” The big change is that the patrol has become much better at detecting pirates, on captured fishing ships, and shutting these pirates down. Often the pirates bring along the crew of the fishing ships, to help with the deception. But the patrol knows which fishing ships have “disappeared” and quickly identify those missing ships they encounter, and usually find pirates in charge. The anti-piracy patrol also has maritime reconnaissance aircraft that seek to spot mother ships as they leave pirate bases on the north Somali coast, and direct a warship to intercept and shut down those pirates. The pirates have been losing a lot of equipment, and time, and money needed to pay for it.

[. . .]

Pirates have responded by finding new targets (ships anchored off ports waiting for a berth) and using new tactics (using half a dozen or more speedboats for an attack.) The pirates still have a powerful incentive to take ships. In 2010, for example, pirates got paid over $200 million in ransom. The year before that it was $150 million. Most of that was taken by the pirate gang leaders, local warlords and the Persian Gulf negotiators who deal with the shipping companies. But for the pirates who took the ship, then helped guard it for months until the money was paid, the take was still huge. Pirates who actually boarded the ship tend to receive at least $150,000 each, which is ten times what the average Somali man makes over his entire lifetime. Even the lowest ranking member of the pirate gang gets a few thousand dollars per ransom. The general rule is that half the ransom goes to the financiers, the gang leaders and ransom negotiators. About a quarter of the money goes to the crew that took the ship, with a bonus for whoever got on board first. The pirates who guard the ship and look after the crew gets ten percent, and about ten percent goes to local clans and warlords, as protection money (or bribes).

[. . .]

For the last four years, Somali pirates have been operating as far east as the Seychelles, which are a group of 115 islands 1,500 kilometers from the African coast. The islands have a total population of 85,000 and no military power to speak of. They are defenseless against pirates. So are many of the ships moving north and south off the East Coast of Africa. While ships making the Gulf of Aden run know they must take measures to deal with pirate attacks (posting lookouts 24/7, training the crew to use fire hoses and other measures to repel boarders, hanging barbed wire on the railings and over the side to deter boarders), this is not so common for ships operating a thousand kilometers or more off the east coast of Africa. Ships in this area were warned last year that they were at risk. Now, the pirates are out in force, demonstrating that the risk is real.

The EU (European Union) agreed, on March 23rd, to allow its anti-piracy force off Somalia (EUNAVFOR) to attack coastal targets and coordinate military operations with the Somali TNG (Transitional National Government). This means that EUNAVFOR ships and aircraft can attack pirate targets on land. Most of the pirate bases (coastal towns and villages) are in Puntland, a self-declared state in northern Somalia. While less violent and chaotic than southern Somalia, Puntland officials are bribed and intimidated (by the superior firepower of the pirate gangs) into inaction. Technically, Puntland is opposed to the pirates, so the EU is hoping that Puntland won’t make a stink when EU forces begin shooting at pirates on the coast.

The EU plan apparently involves going after pirate logistics and fuel supplies in their coastal havens. This could be tricky, as the pirates are well aware of how the Western media works and could easily put many of these targets in residential neighborhoods. The EU could respond by blockading the pirate bases, and attacking pirate attempts to truck in fuel and other supplies. Pirates could put civilians on trucks, or even captured sailors from ships held for ransom. There is no easy solution to the Somali pirates.

To get around laws, in many ports, forbidding weapons aboard merchant ships, security companies operating off the Somali coast have equipped small ships to serve as floating arsenals. The security guards boards, in port, the merchant ships they are guarding, then meet up with the gun ship in international waters so the guards can get their weapons and ammo. The process is reversed when the merchant ships approach their destinations or leave pirate infested waters (and put the armed guards off onto the gun ship.) Maritime lawyers fret that there are no proper laws to regulate these floating armories, or that if there are applicable laws, everyone is not following them. It’s also feared that some enterprising lawyers will seek to represent the families of pirates shot by these armed guards. Off the Somali coast, everyone is looking for a big payday.

In the last three years, more and more merchant ships, despite the high expense, have hired armed guards when travelling near the “Pirate Coast” of Somalia. It began when France put detachments of troops on tuna boats operating in the Indian Ocean, and Belgium then supplied detachments of soldiers for Belgium ships that must move near the Somali coast. These armed guards are not cheap, with detachments costing up to $200,000 a week. There are now over a dozen private security companies offering such services. What makes the armed guards so attractive is the fact that no ship carrying them has ever been captured by pirates. That may eventually change, but for the moment, the pirates avoid ships carrying armed guards and seek less well-defended prey.

Monarchies in the Middle East and North Africa have been stable relative to their republican neighbours; the replacement of a monarchy with a republic rarely if ever makes the people better off; and the monarchies in the region tend to be more liberal economically, even if they don’t have particularly liberal political structures.

In the ci-devant monarchies of the Arab and Persian world, nostalgia for overthrown Western-friendly regimes of the past seems fairly common. When the Libyans got rid of Gadhafi last year, for instance, they promptly restored the old flag of the Kingdom of Libya (1951-69), and some of the anti-Gadhafi protesters carried portraits of the deposed late king, Idris. From the vantage point of Canada, constitutional monarchy looks like a pretty good solution to the inherent problems of governing ethnically divided or clan-dominated places. And in most of the chaotic MENA countries, including Libya, there exist legitimist claimants who could be used to bring about constitutional restorations.

The most natural locale for such an experiment would have been Afghanistan, where republican governments have made repeated use of the old monarchical institution of the loya jirga or grand council.

Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.

Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.

When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.

I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.

H/T to Megan McArdle for the link.

Update: BoingBoing got a response to their post on this issue from Google’s Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets:

We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.

A worthless desert in South Africa, largely inhabited by drought-stricken sheep and a handful of marginal farmers, turns out to contain rich natural gas reserves that could bring a new wave of economic growth to South Africa and provide huge numbers of well paying jobs for poorly educated workers.

The New York Times, of course, is wringing its elegantly manicured hands. And why not? The soil of the Karoo desert is “fragile,” and the extraction of the natural gas will involve fracking. What will happen to the sheep?

The Times finds a local farmer who is worried about exactly that.

“If our government lets these companies touch even a drop of our water,” [the farmer] said, “we’re ruined.”

Ruined! By wicked natural gas companies feeding the world’s hydrocarbon addiction. The farmer in question has a herd of 1400 sheep. (It was 2000 last year before a drought forced the slaughter of 600.) One somehow suspects that the farmer will find some other way to make money when the district becomes a major gas producing center. And, worst case, roughnecks eat a lot of meat.

That the Times chooses the lonesome shepherd to lead off one of the best good news stories around these days speaks volumes about the gloomy Gus mindset at the Paper of Record. Why can’t this be a good news story? Will a gas boom save South African democracy, for example? Will new economic opportunities transform the lives of tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of poor black South Africans? Will the huge increase in South Africa’s natural gas supply reduce the country’s carbon footprint? Is there anything in the geology to suggest that other poverty stricken parts of Africa might also be similarly blessed? How are local leaders planning the spend the windfall: better schools? better hospitals?