Thread by @ravnotraj

The debate about the World Bank's planned $500m loan to Tanzania illustrates a lot of very interesting assumptions people make about (a) democracy, rights and development and (b) the Bank and its clout.

cnn.com/2020/01/27/afr…

The backstory: the Bank planned a $300m investment in new secondary schools, teachers and reforms in Tanzania, which desperately needs them, on the condition that the Government repeal or sideline a law that prevents pregnant girls and young mothers from attending school.

The law wasn't repealed and enforcement continued, and in 2018 the Bank announced it was cancelling the deal, citing that as well as harassment of LGBT people as the reason. This was an attempt to pressure the government, though it was soft-pedalled in the ensuing weeks.

The Bank then developed a new, larger program, with a lot of money ($100 million+) focused on girls', but a lot of it going to 'alternative' schooling for pregnant girls and young mothers. Civil society objected loudly, and now the Board has postponed agreeing that revised loan.

There are two related critiques of the Bank here. The first is that the Bank could have exercised more influence on the Government to push them to repeal or sideline the law.

And that might be true! They've successfully pushed back on other horrors, the LGBT harassment and an awful law that banned unofficial statistics on government services.

It's also true that the Bank has a lot of internal incentives to keep money flowing, and there have probably been cases where blind eyes were turned as a result in the past. But I think this critique ignores two things:

1. There are legitimate questions on whether the Bank should push hard on this. Tanzania's elections are not totally free and fair, but most observers believe the victory of the current president in 2015 to be essentially a genuine one.

The idea that an international organization should simply insist that an elected government change its policies is not unproblematic, and frankly a lot of the people currently calling for it have been pretty opposed to it in the past in other contexts.

2. The idea that the Bank simply *didn't apply any pressure* here seems unlikely. I don't know the details of the behind the scenes discussions but this is not going to be a situation where no concerns were expressed.

The Board rejecting the first version was a big deal. It is a least possible that the Bank pushed, and basically said we won't do this if you don't repeal the law, and the Government said, fine. Don't do it. We'll cope.

(Important to note here is that to repeal the law is not in the gift of the government alone. You'd have to win over Parliament, where the Bank has much less influence. But you could theoretically get a reduction in enforcement.)

People generally overestimate the amount of influence the Bank has with Governments. This isn't the 80s, where countries were desperate and would sign up to god knows what to unlock finance. These are growing countries with comparatively stable politics.

There remains awful poverty, poor health and education outcomes, poor services, and tremendous need. But not the kind which threatens governments or peace, compelling them to take their medicine. And there are more and more other sources of loans- regional banks, private sector.

All this means that the Government of Tanzania could lose a confrontation with the Bank and maybe survive. So of course the Bank's chances of persuading them to change a signature policy are reduced.

This brings us to the second critique: that, confronted with the refusal of the Govt to stop enforcing the law, the Bank should have simply not gone ahead...

that it's better not to build the new schools, hire the new teachers etc at all than to do it in a way which segregates pregnant girls and young mothers. This seems much more clearly problematic to me.

Note the context. Tanzania has a secondary net enrollment rate of 27%. That means that of all the secondary school-age children in Tanzania, only a quarter are in school.

This is not from a lack of demand. The government - the same one being demonized for its (admittedly horrible) policy on girls - recently abolished fees for secondary school, creating a huge increase in demand.

World Bank estimates suggest TZ needs to build 30,000 classrooms and hire 75,000 teachers in the next five years in order to meet demand. This in a country with an average income of $1000. This represents a huge 'fiscal challenge', which is Bank speak for 'they can't afford it'.

If this money doesn't flow to Tanzania, hundreds of thousands of children - half of whom are girls - will probably not get to go to secondary school. They'll finish primary school, and go work on their parent's farm, or in a mine. Or they'll get married and have kids at 14.

Now, going ahead has its downsides. It does create the appearance of accepting the policy that the Bank claims to decry. It might even be "seen as an endorsement of a misogynistic regime," as one 'anonymous analyst' puts it. theguardian.com/global-develop…

This is a real issue! Angus Deaton, who is a serious person who has thought about these things, argues that in the long run aid retards development by protecting bad governments from being punished by the people for their failures to deliver growth. There's something to this.

But are these downsides *so egregious* as to outweigh the benefits of $500m - a lot of money! - targeted directly to help hundreds of thousands of young people get more than a 6th-grade education?

I find that hard to believe.

This is the problem that international organizations are faced, again and again. It's easy to say, in the abstract, that they shouldn't 'support' or 'prop up' governments with bad policies, which oppress their people, or discriminate, or waste money on jet fighters or limousines.

But when you really look at who loses out from support being taken away, it's never those governments. It's ordinary people.

The best possible ending to this is that the Government caves. The *most likely* ending is that the loan is quietly approved, 2-3 months from now, maybe with some tweaks to appease critics.

But the worst possible ending, it seems to me, would be for the Bank to simply walk away. That would leave hundreds of thousands of brilliant, inquisitive young people, who should have bright futures, stuck without the skills they need for life. That doesn't help anyone.

End of long-ass thread.

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