CAIRO: “The developing world is full of interesting people with interesting ideas but they haven’t always had the means to develop their ideas or to make them matter, David Malone, president of the International Development Research Center (IDRC), told Daily News Egypt.
This, he continued, is the sole purpose of establishing the IDRC, a Crown corporation created by the Parliament of Canada in 1970 to help developing countries use science and technology to find practical, long-term solutions to the social, economic, and environmental problems they face.
“Our support is directed toward creating a local research community whose work will build healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous societies, a statement on the IDRC website reads.
“IDRC was created 40 years ago simply to support researchers in the developing world in providing the basis to create better policy, as every country is always in need for a better policy, whether it is a developing or industrialized nation, Malone said.
The IDRC is one of the three major development research funders, namely for research pertaining to social sciences, along with the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development.
IDRC does not market itself as an NGO, but rather a center that merely provides funds for the developing world. “We’re simply a rather modest funder and our only aim is to provide support for evidence-based research that can serve to support better policy, Malone explained.
The center has six regional offices around the world in developing countries. Cairo hosts the Middle East and North Africa regional office, headed by Iglaa Rashid.
The center operates in five-year cycles, with the next cycles scheduled to start in 2010. Malone is currently in Egypt for a meeting in which researchers from the region were consulted on what they think the program’s next cycle should focus on.
In the meeting, the regional researchers are asked, “What do you think is the priority for development in your region? Responses they have received so far included issues of agriculture productivity, climate change and its long-term effect on the region. In addition, there has been an interest in how the MENA region relates to its neighbors.
“There are a lot of ideas of what the priorities for the MENA region should be in the development agenda and this is made more acute by the global financial and economic crisis. Development can’t be taken for granted anymore, we have to think about it a bit more and decide what the priority issues for the region are going to be, explains Malone.
The IDRC funds local researches on problems they find crucial to their communities, some of the problems identified in Egypt were the scarcity of water, and ways to conserve it, issues of unemployment, according to Rashid.
“We have done a lot of work in the agriculture sector with regards to productivity and having sustainable production practices, such as the better use of water, she said.
In Egypt they have been working on a variety of issues which Malone stresses is “always through Egyptian researchers and other researchers in the region . All we really do is support local researchers and of course Egypt has a long history of research and so do a number of other countries in the region.
“Egypt has been quite successful in economic growth and it will continue to grow but it will probably grow more slowly in the next couple of years than it has in the last three or four years and that sharpens the minds in terms of; if growth is going to be more slowly, what are the actual priority areas on which we should focus, she said.
The Food Crisis
During his stay in Egypt, Malone will be visiting a number of Egyptian institutions. This week he spoke at the American University in Cairo, mainly highlighting the causes and repercussions of the food crisis.
While the causes of the crisis are not definite, most experts agree on several theories, Malone said.
He explained that global consumption has been increasing rapidly. The middle class is growing internationally and it is a class that eats more, eats differently and wastes more than the poor . Food supply became tighter, food stocks are lower [about half of what they were 10 years ago] and that created pressure that eventually led to the crisis.
Secondly, Malone said that commodities like oil and grain tend to move at the same time, so it’s no coincidence that oil prices spiked at the same time as food prices, partly because oil is an input to agriculture.
For Egyptians, the rise in the prices of food, which rose four-fold in 2007-2008, created anxiety because food is the most basic need. So, when its prices rise, it is a dramatic development for the poor, whereas the rich and middle classes can manage because they can afford to pay more.
Food takes up about 50 percent of the income of the poor, so when prices go up, they are obliged to adapt and so the share goes up to 70 percent, he explained.
But why has it hit Egypt so hard inciting general strikes and riots, including the acclaimed April 6 Strike?
“Twenty percent of the population is poor by international standards and another 20 percent are very close to that level and another 20 percent that is by no sense middle class so to that 60 percent food prices are quite critical and that’s why its hike so suddenly and unpredictably to consumers was so worrying, he explained.
On the other hand, Malone points out that absolute poverty in Egypt has been declining, which is “admirable, adding that Egypt has done much better economically than most Egyptians think.
On a final note, Malone explained that everywhere around the world societies always notice “what isn’t working and have a lot of trouble accepting that there is progress in the country.
“In Egypt there has been a great deal of progress, since I’ve lived here 30 years ago, perhaps less in society. But it has been very significant in the economy. Maintaining the track towards continued progress, never forgetting the poor and rising in social equality has been one of the less attractive features globally, he said.
“Could this region have done better? Probably. Should it do better in the next 30 years? Yes, but it will have a more hopeful foundation to build on now than was the case 30 years ago, Malone said.
