Alex Singleton

On Telegraph.co.uk, I put the case for private sector management of poor country water systems, arguing that opponents:
…do not have the empirical evidence on their side. The main cause of water poverty in poor countries is state mismanagement, both of water systems and of resources. 97% of the water distribution in poor countries is run […]

The World Bank puts out many interesting publications but out on the ground, its legacy is one of failure. Remarkably, 65% to 70% of World Bank projects in Africa fail. Its efforts to fight corruption were fundamentally undermined this year by the Bank’s own board in its decision to remove Paul Wolfowitz (based on spurious […]

Political interference in the World Bank by the likes of Britain’s Hilary Benn is bad news for developing countries. While organisations like Transparency International rightly point out the damage corruption does to the fight against global poverty, political pressure means the Bank’s anti-corruption agenda is being seriously undermined. Thankfully, private capital markets are making the […]

I was recently a speaker at a debate at Southwark Cathedral that looked at the issues of free trade and trade justice. The other speakers were Chirstopher Stephens, Chairman of Traidcraft plc and a Civil Service Commissioner, and Hilary Parsons, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Nestle.
I got the distinct impression that many of the […]

Blow the Whistle Sunday is a campaign day (20 May) in which hundreds if not thousands of churches across the UK will participate. Churches are being encouraged to politicise their message and use prayers and sermons to denounce free markets and free trade. One example of what the campaign is suggesting churches read out in […]

Here’s a very good video clip (just under four minutes long) on how liberalisation saved India from economic collapse, from the TV series Commanding Heights. The end of the Soviet Union reverberated, it says, and took away India’s role model. Manmohan Singh, India’s finance minister who introduced the market reforms, says in the video that […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid - the EU’s answer to Britain’s Hilary Benn - isn’t doing his job:
The European commissioner for development cooperation, Louis Michel, is currently on unpaid leave because he is taking part in the Belgian federal elections on June 10. Instead of visiting […]

The very worst idea in international development circles is the One Laptop Per Child scheme being fronted by academic Nicholas Negroponte. The idea is that developing country budgets and development aid will be spent buying computers for up to two billion children in the developing world. The organisers want these computers to cost $100 […]

This week has been a bad week for World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. According to Reuters: “World Bank staff and global development organisations called for Wolfowitz to step down as anger increased even after a public apology on Thursday in which he said he erred in the handling of the 2005 promotion of [his girlfriend] […]

Zimbabwe’s socialist dictator Robert Mugabe has called for critics of his government’s physical beating of the main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to “go hang”. In a deluded statement, Mr Mugabe said:
We do not accept their criticism at all, here are groups of persons who went out of the way to effect a campaign of violence, […]