At the World Economic Forum last week, U2 lead singer Bono announced that he has persuaded companies like Gap, Armani and American Express to produce products under a a new brand, called Red. A share of the proceeds from Red products will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Amex, for example, will produce a Red credit card giving 1% of what’s spent on the card to the endeavour.
Red is a way of helping people contribute private money to what is an important development initiative. Yet some ideological opponents to business have attacked the initiative. War on Want says: “Cynical marketing ploys aren’t the answer. The problem with schemes like this is that they miss the point.”
Eliminating malaria, TB and AIDS are some of the most pressing of humanity’s problems, and the Global Fund seems a good vehicle for addressing them. The Red brand may well be good marketing, but at the end of the day, if it helps the important work of fighting communicable diseases, that’s a good thing.
When the word “consultant” is mentioned, what do you think of? Is it the highly-paid doctor who mainly takes private work and disappears off to the golf club three times a week? Or is it the well-dressed hot-shot who spends a couple of weeks in your office, types a not-very-useful report full of buzz-words, and leaves with a huge cheque?
There’s a stereotype that goes with the word, and so perhaps it’s unhelpful that DFID uses “consultants” to talk about bringing in expertise to help development. International Development Secretary Hilary Benn says that “Dfid’s spending on consultants, as a proportion of our total aid programme, has halved since 1997 to just 5%”. It’s not something he should be proud of. If we are going to make serious strides in improving governance and institutions in developing countries, there is a good case for needing to spend a lot more on consultants: lawyers out in the field helping to formalise property rights, for example.
Employing consultants enables DFID to be more flexible than if it employed everyone in-house, letting it quickly bring in new expertise when priorities change. Free from the responsibilities of employing people directly, the use of consultants probably actually saves the taxpayer a considerable amount of cash.