Rosling, TED, and the White Man's Burden

Saw two presentations on development and the artificiality of the labels "Developed" and "Developing", by Hans Rosling - one at TED 2006 and one at TED 2007. Great presence, great sense of humour, absolutely amazing graphics using Trendalyzer, developed by the Gapminder Foundation (inspired by "mind the gap"). I've never been a fan of a heavy focus on quality of presentation when arguing something in public, but the way Rosling brought development issues to life is forcing me to re-evaluate that bias.

Anyway, both presentations focused on the multi-faceted nature of development, and the fact that most countries have unique features which make a broad categorization into developed and developing very deceptive.

Interesting corollary - Rosling argues that, if you take into account how long traditional "developed" countries took to get to their level of development, several countries in the past couple of decades have rocketed up the HDI. (He didn't say the HDI, but the factors he sketched seemed similar).

Was good to listen to Rosling, especially since I had recently listened to William Easterly, famous for writing "The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good". Not a cheerful guy, Easterly.

His arguments, when examined in detail, are sound. Basically, he says the Aid project (globally) won't work if it is a) the only approach b) a top down approach c) if you don't discriminate between initiatives that work and that don't work. He says development projects need CIAO (Customer feedback, Incentives, Accountability, Outcomes) - all of which are lacking in the current planned-at-macro-level environment. All ideas I agree with. Easterly is not an aid-skeptic. Only the title of his book is. Maybe his publicist chose the title.

He doesn't like the Millenium Development Goals, tends to be a little rude about Jeff Sachs, even ruder about Bono, and is allergic to the UN.

What bugs me about Easterly is
(a) I like U2. One should not speak ill of members of U2. Only Bill Bailey should be allowed to speak ill of U2 (I like Bill Bailey more than U2)
(b) Despite his fine-print being sound, Easterly tends to speak in sweeping generalizations which are not helpful (e.g. his dismissal of the UN). Even his choice of title for the book feels unhealthy - describing aid-for-development as the burden of the west is not a great way to motivate an interdependant and constructive approach to development. Regardless of the pros and cons of Kipling's poetry, describing the West as "White" = aarg. (aarg arrg).
c) He doesn't realize the value of ideas as a catalyst for mobilization: He's right about the fact that some of the Millenium Development Goals are dangerously faffy and that there is no one accountable for achieving them, but he doesn't seem to see their value as rallying points.

All this being said, I wish Sachs would also work-in a bigger CIAO element (as well as a bottom-up element) into his writing, and ease up on the grandiose statements before random Google.org audiences.

Anyway, point of the post:

watch Rosling's TED performances. They rock.