Biden’s nominees would bring diversity to the Fed—if they’re confirmed
President Biden has announced his roster to fill key vacancies on the Federal Reserve’s 7-seat Board of Governors. If confirmed by the Senate, Biden’s nominees would advance his economic agenda at the central bank. They would diversify the ranks of economic policymakers and likely tighten supervision of Wall Street.
Sarah A. Binder
Senior Fellow – Governance Studies
Twitter
BinderSAB
M
Mark Spindel
Chief Investment Officer, Potomac River Capital LLC
These nominations follow in the wake of Biden’s decisions late last year to reappoint Jerome Powell to a second term as Fed chair and to elevate Lael Brainard as second in command. Powell and Brainard already serve as confirmed governors, but the Senate will also need to approve their four-year leadership posts. If the Senate confirms all five, Biden’s Fed appointees would reverse the heavy GOP-tilt of the Board engineered by the Trump administration.
Here’s what you need to know.
Diversity counts
Biden has nominated two Black economists, Michigan State’s Lisa Cook and Davidson College’s Phillip Jefferson, to seats on the Board. He has also named former Fed governor and Treasury official, Sarah Bloom Raskin, as the Fed’s vice chair of supervision, a position Congress created in the wake of the global financial crisis as the Fed’s top banking cop.
These appointments help to diversify the Fed’s almost exclusively white ranks. Since Congress revamped the Federal Reserve Act in 1935, creating the 7-seat Board of Governors, 82 people have served on the Board. Just three of them were Black men, and ten of them were white women. And while Biden’s nominations augment the Fed’s racial diversity, confirming Cook, Brainard, and Raskin would expand the number of women governors by just one, since both Raskin and Brainard already have Board service under their belts. Notably though, this would be the first Board with a majority (four) of seven seats filled by women governors.
Rough waters ahead?
Observers expect a broad swath of Senate Republicans to vote to confirm Powell, a Republican, to a second term as chair. However, it remains to be seen how many, if any, Republicans will vote to confirm the other four nominees. Of course, Senate Democrats—if they stick together—can confirm all four without any GOP support, since Democrats banned nomination filibusters back in 2013.
Like most Congressional decisions, Fed confirmation votes are more contentious today than they were even 15 years ago, before the global financial crisis. The figure below shows shrinking Senate support on final confirmation votes for Fed nominations since the Reagan administration. Of those nominees considered on the Senate floor between 1982 and 2011, only one, Alice Rivlin, received less than 94% of the vote. The most dramatic contests came in 2020: The GOP-led Senate rejected Trump’s nominee, Judy Shelton, by a vote of 47-50, and just barely confirmed another Trump nominee, Christopher Waller. Four other Trump picks never even made it to a floor vote.
Nor can Biden count on filling the Board swiftly. Prior to the financial crisis, nominees waited about three months on average for confirmation. After the crisis, the wait time ballooned closer to eight months. The Senate took nearly ten months to confirm Waller, a record delay for the contemporary Senate’s handling of Fed nominees. Even with Democrats in control this year, Republicans have found ways to slow down the Senate.
Beware partisan crosshairs
Decades of rising partisanship are seeping into senators’ views of the Fed, often turning otherwise low profile Board nominations into politically charged votes. At the same time, public attention to the Fed has grown with its expanding imprint on the economy.
The central bank has played an outsized role in stemming the economic damage caused by the global financial crisis in 2007-08 and the global Coronavirus pandemic in 2020-21. And with interest rates near zero, central bankers need to use more creative and often contentious tools to manage the US economy. Critics from both sides of the partisan aisle blame the Fed for either doing too much—or too little—to stem an array of old and new problems.
Add in rising expectations that the Fed will hike interest rates early this year to combat inflation and a hot economy, these nominees will face questions at the core of central banking—how fast and how soon to take away the punchbowl. Raising the price of money is never easy, but this Board could find tightening especially difficult given the addition of Biden’s governors committed to the Fed’s goal of a stronger and more racially inclusive labor market.
The parties also disagree about whether the Fed can or should do more to combat climate change, especially in light of Congress’s own tentative steps. Democrats want the Fed to use its supervisory powers to force banks to address climate risk in their lending decisions; Republicans think such policies fall outside the Fed’s mandate. Partisans also contest whether the Fed should do more to redress racial economic inequities.
Presidents use appointments to advance their agendas. The Fed is no exception, despite the myth that central banks like the Fed are “independent.” But given the often partisan Senate confirmation process, Democrats will likely need to hang together to get Biden’s picks over the finish line.
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Greening Asia for the long haul: What can central banks do?
Here in Hong Kong, Category 8 typhoons used to be infrequent. Just as floods in Germany and massive wildfires in California were disasters we might see every decade or so. Sadly, this is no longer the case. In one week alone this October, Hong Kong saw two Category 8 typhoons. Earlier this year, floods devastated parts of central Germany, and California saw five of the largest wildfires in its history in 2020. Hong Kong, Germany, and California are not outliers. Extreme weather conditions have been documented in much of the world.
It is widely recognized that climate change implies more frequent and severe weather events, greatly increasing the physical risks to financial and economic stability. In the absence of urgent action, the impact will be widespread and affect most countries, people’s lives and livelihoods, and many industries. The financial sector will be no exception.
Central banks have an important role to play in responding to this challenge. They are interested in these issues for at least three reasons: (i) preserving financial stability as societies move toward reducing their carbon footprints; (ii) diversifying the investments of central bank reserves to minimize unnecessary risks; and (iii) in keeping with their mandates and expertise, providing support to global efforts to achieve the objectives of the Paris climate accord.
The Asia-Pacific region has the largest need for infrastructure investments, around $1.7 trillion per year for developing Asia alone, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Much of this needs to be green investment. It is also among the most vulnerable regions if actions to combat climate change are not taken urgently. At the same time, Asia has, relatively speaking, an extremely large pool of foreign exchange reserves, at around $5.7 trillion by the end of 2019. So, there is a clear case that we need to find a way to bring these two together and do so creatively and safely. The BIS Asian Green Bond Fund is an attempt in this direction.
The fund is designed to provide central banks with opportunities to invest in high quality bonds issued by sovereigns, supranationals, and corporations that comply with strict international green standards. It has two distinct features. First—compared to the BIS’ previous green bond funds—it has a broader group of eligible issuers. It will invest in corporations, including financial firms, because much of the financing in Asia is through commercial banks rather than directly from capital markets. Second, the BIS has engaged with multiple international financial institutions and development finance institutions—the ADB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation—to explore opportunities for collaboration to develop a pipeline of green products in the region to invest in. These institutions also have expertise on the ground to ensure that the highest standards are being followed in forming these green investment opportunities to allay concerns about greenwashing.
On the technical side, in line with reserve managers’ appetite for safety, liquidity, and return, all central features of the BIS’s financial products, the Asian Green Bond Fund would be established as a BIS Investment Pool (BISIP), a collective investment scheme structured under Swiss law that is commonly used by the BIS for its fixed income investment products.
While the fund would provide the opportunity for central banks to invest their reserves into greening the economies in the region, the fund is not restricted to investors from Asia. Broad interest to invest in the fund has been expressed by central banks well beyond Asia, reflecting the need of the global central banking community for reserve diversification. Regardless of the domicile of the central bank, central bank investments are generally made with a long-term investment horizon in mind. The fund will thus help channel global central bank reserves to green projects for long-term sustainable growth in the region, which has contributed more than two-thirds of global growth in the past decade.
In light of the fast-changing developments of the green bond market in the Asia-Pacific region, the Asian Green Bond Fund will be an evolving fund, allowing it to be agile and make changes as needed. For example, while the fund will be denominated in U.S. dollars initially, green bonds denominated in Asian local currency will be considered at its first and/or second anniversary. Similarly, while ICMA (International Capital Market Association) and CBI (Climate Bond Initiative) standards will be used at the start, the BIS is open to alternative standards, for example, for bonds funding projects that may not be green at present but are aligned with a transition toward low-carbon activities.
Technologists often say: “Think big, start small and scale fast.” That is how the BIS too plans to approach this endeavor. The Asian Green Bond Fund will represent an important addition to the existing suite of green bond funds at the BIS. As the fund evolves, it will also allow central banks to consider ways of expanding green financial markets, either through diversifying into regional currencies, or by considering the next generation of sustainable bonds adhering to even stricter standards and aligned to the objectives of the Paris accord.
Climate finance meets low-carbon agtech
Headlining the climate finance discussions next week at COP26 may be the shortfall in advanced economies’ $100 billion annual pledge to help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) adapt and further mitigate climate change. But with actual financing needs quickly approaching the trillions, the more important discussion may be reforming how public climate finance is deployed. Change is needed to mobilize private capital, fill critical gaps, and drive resilient, low-carbon development. Agriculture value chains are a good place to start the conversation.
Solar and other renewables are enabling distributed, low-cost cold storage, irrigation, and processing capabilities that could be transformative for rural communities in Africa and South Asia. Scaling these innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could provide a host of services to help farm households and communities adapt to climate change, including increased income from higher yields and higher-quality produce, reduced risk of crop failure, reduced post-harvest loss, and other resilience gains.
These are real benefits that improve food security and nutritional diversity and help rural communities survive shocks that are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change. Yet of the roughly $600 billion in tracked climate-related financing globally just 0.2 percent goes to small-scale agriculture value chains and financing institutions serving them.
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And while food systems generate one-third of the 52 gigatons in total greenhouse gas emissions globally, it’s not where climate mitigation investments are flowing. The value of carbon markets hit nearly $280 billion last year, but almost none of the SMEs sending diesel generators to the scrap heap are doing it with the help of carbon financing. As Figure 1 illustrates, agriculture-related emissions projects account for 1 percent of all carbon credits issued.
Figure 1. The agriculture sector accounts for just 1% of the global carbon market
Source: AgFunderNetwork, from Berkeley Carbon Trading Project data.
This is despite considerable potential for CO2 reductions from enterprises powering rural agriculture sector transformation. Our forthcoming research finds:
An investment of $200 million to provide solar irrigation pumps to 1.3 million farmers in Kenya would avert emissions of 6.7 million tons of CO2 annually.
Investing $10 million into solar conduction dryers in India would reduce CO2 emissions by 1.6 million tons per year.
Replacing one-quarter of the 8.8 million diesel irrigation pumps in India with solar pumps would reduce CO2 emissions by 11.5 million tons per year.
As Figure 2 puts in context, the global fleet of Tesla vehicles and solar panels displaced a total of 5.0 million metric tons of CO2e in 2020.
Figure 2. Selected low-carbon agtech mitigation potentials, by market
Source: Catalyzing climate finance for low-carbon ag-tech, James E. Rogers Energy Access Project, Duke University.
These are not garden-variety carbon reductions. Like Tesla, they represent the front end of a low-carbon sectoral transformation that could reverberate years into the future. The space is ripe for donors and ESG departments aiming for catalytic impact with their mitigation investments.
The problems—and some solutions
So why are these companies unable to attract climate finance to accelerate scale-up and what’s needed to mobilize agtech investment in LMICs?
1. Pay companies for climate benefits.
Very few companies enjoy financial benefits from the mitigation and adaptation gains they are providing. Accounting and verifying carbon reductions have high transaction costs at the small scale. Measuring adaptation improvements that are highly location specific or involve long time frames are challenging. But in the Data Age, these are opportunities, not roadblocks. Innovative funds and outcome-oriented financing facilities are emerging that build credible metrics to verify adaptation impacts and blend public, philanthropic, and private capital to align risk.
2. Connect SMEs to the climate policy ecosystem, mobilize private investment, and focus on gender.
Billions of dollars for adaptation flow to LMICs through the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, and other UNFCCC financing entities based on adaptation plans that countries are required to develop. With 80 percent of the food and 40 percent of jobs tied to small-scale agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the sector is central to these plans. However, none of the SMEs we spoke with were engaged in adaptation planning processes or aware of the content of country plans where they operate. This is because there is little to no role for SMEs in most plans, a troubling gap that UNFCCC funders are realizing.
Targeting support for SMEs under climate plans could also motivate private investment, another area where climate finance is badly underperforming. Of the $30 billion in annual adaptation investment, just 1.6 percent is from private sources. Rather than financing projects directly, public funders must pivot hard to delivering financial products that de-risk private investment—be it through blending, credit enhancement, currency coverage, demonstrating unproven models, or other measures.
Investing with a gender lens might help too. Female-owned SMEs account for roughly a third of formal SMEs in emerging markets, and our sample within agtech was well below that. Women produce an estimated 70 percent of the food in Africa, but women-owned SMEs tend to be far more capital constrained than their male counterparts. Outdated laws and cultural customs often keep female land ownership—and loan collateral—low. To fully leverage the potential of agtech, some investors are moving to non-asset-based lending and other forms of security like future cash flows, purchase order contracts, or accounts receivables.
3. Empower smallholders and address affordability.
Consumers of low-carbon agtech are extremely price sensitive. For SunCulture, a 25 percent reduction in the price of its solar irrigation pump increases the addressable market by 100 percent. Demand-side subsidies or results-based financing—essentially paying an operator for a specific outcome—can be instrumental in bringing scale to a sector and incentivizing expansion into new markets.
We also discovered that SMEs across agriculture value chains face roadblocks, but also offer solutions. Their products routinely offer customers paybacks of 6-24 months, but that makes little difference to customers facing borrowing costs of 30-45 percent annually. Of SMEs interviewed, nearly 60 percent either became consumer finance organizations directly or invested in third-party relationships to solve for a lack of consumer credit access. Improving access to credit—through banks, microfinance institutions, coops, and other nonbank financial institutions—directly benefits farmers and allows SMEs to focus on core competencies
Small agriculture enterprises are addressing the energy access and reliability problems en route to improving the productivity and resilience of rural communities. It’s a snapshot of what low-carbon development could look like. The task before climate investors is to identify these transformative models, demonstrate their benefits and de-risk them, and bring along the private sector to deliver scale.
Climate finance meets low-carbon agtech
Headlining the climate finance discussions next week at COP26 may be the shortfall in advanced economies’ $100 billion annual pledge to help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) adapt and further mitigate climate change. But with actual financing needs quickly approaching the trillions, the more important discussion may be reforming how public climate finance is deployed. Change is needed to mobilize private capital, fill critical gaps, and drive resilient, low-carbon development. Agriculture value chains are a good place to start the conversation.
Jonathan Phillips
Director, Energy Access Project – Duke University
Victoria Plutshack
Policy Associate, Energy Access Project – Duke University
Rob Fetter
Senior Policy Associate – Energy Access Project, Duke University
Solar and other renewables are enabling distributed, low-cost cold storage, irrigation, and processing capabilities that could be transformative for rural communities in Africa and South Asia. Scaling these innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could provide a host of services to help farm households and communities adapt to climate change, including increased income from higher yields and higher-quality produce, reduced risk of crop failure, reduced post-harvest loss, and other resilience gains.
These are real benefits that improve food security and nutritional diversity and help rural communities survive shocks that are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change. Yet of the roughly $600 billion in tracked climate-related financing globally just 0.2 percent goes to small-scale agriculture value chains and financing institutions serving them.
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And while food systems generate one-third of the 52 gigatons in total greenhouse gas emissions globally, it’s not where climate mitigation investments are flowing. The value of carbon markets hit nearly $280 billion last year, but almost none of the SMEs sending diesel generators to the scrap heap are doing it with the help of carbon financing. As Figure 1 illustrates, agriculture-related emissions projects account for 1 percent of all carbon credits issued.
Figure 1. The agriculture sector accounts for just 1% of the global carbon market
Source: AgFunderNetwork, from Berkeley Carbon Trading Project data.
This is despite considerable potential for CO2 reductions from enterprises powering rural agriculture sector transformation. Our forthcoming research finds:
An investment of $200 million to provide solar irrigation pumps to 1.3 million farmers in Kenya would avert emissions of 6.7 million tons of CO2 annually.
Investing $10 million into solar conduction dryers in India would reduce CO2 emissions by 1.6 million tons per year.
Replacing one-quarter of the 8.8 million diesel irrigation pumps in India with solar pumps would reduce CO2 emissions by 11.5 million tons per year.
As Figure 2 puts in context, the global fleet of Tesla vehicles and solar panels displaced a total of 5.0 million metric tons of CO2e in 2020.
Figure 2. Selected low-carbon agtech mitigation potentials, by market
Source: Catalyzing climate finance for low-carbon ag-tech, James E. Rogers Energy Access Project, Duke University.
These are not garden-variety carbon reductions. Like Tesla, they represent the front end of a low-carbon sectoral transformation that could reverberate years into the future. The space is ripe for donors and ESG departments aiming for catalytic impact with their mitigation investments.
The problems—and some solutions
So why are these companies unable to attract climate finance to accelerate scale-up and what’s needed to mobilize agtech investment in LMICs?
1. Pay companies for climate benefits.
Very few companies enjoy financial benefits from the mitigation and adaptation gains they are providing. Accounting and verifying carbon reductions have high transaction costs at the small scale. Measuring adaptation improvements that are highly location specific or involve long time frames are challenging. But in the Data Age, these are opportunities, not roadblocks. Innovative funds and outcome-oriented financing facilities are emerging that build credible metrics to verify adaptation impacts and blend public, philanthropic, and private capital to align risk.
2. Connect SMEs to the climate policy ecosystem, mobilize private investment, and focus on gender.
Billions of dollars for adaptation flow to LMICs through the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, and other UNFCCC financing entities based on adaptation plans that countries are required to develop. With 80 percent of the food and 40 percent of jobs tied to small-scale agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the sector is central to these plans. However, none of the SMEs we spoke with were engaged in adaptation planning processes or aware of the content of country plans where they operate. This is because there is little to no role for SMEs in most plans, a troubling gap that UNFCCC funders are realizing.
Targeting support for SMEs under climate plans could also motivate private investment, another area where climate finance is badly underperforming. Of the $30 billion in annual adaptation investment, just 1.6 percent is from private sources. Rather than financing projects directly, public funders must pivot hard to delivering financial products that de-risk private investment—be it through blending, credit enhancement, currency coverage, demonstrating unproven models, or other measures.
Investing with a gender lens might help too. Female-owned SMEs account for roughly a third of formal SMEs in emerging markets, and our sample within agtech was well below that. Women produce an estimated 70 percent of the food in Africa, but women-owned SMEs tend to be far more capital constrained than their male counterparts. Outdated laws and cultural customs often keep female land ownership—and loan collateral—low. To fully leverage the potential of agtech, some investors are moving to non-asset-based lending and other forms of security like future cash flows, purchase order contracts, or accounts receivables.
3. Empower smallholders and address affordability.
Consumers of low-carbon agtech are extremely price sensitive. For SunCulture, a 25 percent reduction in the price of its solar irrigation pump increases the addressable market by 100 percent. Demand-side subsidies or results-based financing—essentially paying an operator for a specific outcome—can be instrumental in bringing scale to a sector and incentivizing expansion into new markets.
We also discovered that SMEs across agriculture value chains face roadblocks, but also offer solutions. Their products routinely offer customers paybacks of 6-24 months, but that makes little difference to customers facing borrowing costs of 30-45 percent annually. Of SMEs interviewed, nearly 60 percent either became consumer finance organizations directly or invested in third-party relationships to solve for a lack of consumer credit access. Improving access to credit—through banks, microfinance institutions, coops, and other nonbank financial institutions—directly benefits farmers and allows SMEs to focus on core competencies
Small agriculture enterprises are addressing the energy access and reliability problems en route to improving the productivity and resilience of rural communities. It’s a snapshot of what low-carbon development could look like. The task before climate investors is to identify these transformative models, demonstrate their benefits and de-risk them, and bring along the private sector to deliver scale.
South Africa’s municipal elections: A referendum on political parties and local democracy
On November 1, South Africans will go to the polls in the sixth round of local government elections since the country’s democratic transition in 1994. Voters will be able to choose among 60,000 candidates and more than 300 political parties to elect councilors for 257 municipalities.
Typically, local elections in sub-Saharan Africa rarely receive much attention. South Africa, however is an exception: Not only is it the region’s most decentralized country, so that local governments have substantive autonomy over services citizens care about, but it’s also a place where local elections are seen as a bellwether for party performance in the general elections. Notably, this electoral contest will be the first since the deadly riots that rocked the country back in July when supporters of the former president, Jacob Zuma, rebelled against his conviction for contempt of court when he failed to attend a corruption inquiry. In addition, with more than 60 percent of South Africa’s population classified as urban, control of the country’s eight large metropolitan areas (known as metros) provides both political leverage and economic clout.
How do the elections work?
South Africa operates a mixed member electoral system for municipal elections, meaning that half the seats on the councils are chosen through proportional representation—whereby the parties receive seats in proportion to the share of votes they receive—and half are chosen through a single-member constituency-based system so that individual candidates who receive the most votes in their ward gain their ward’s seat. In the metros, voters receive two ballots: one for a party and one for a ward councilor. In smaller cities and rural areas, voters also receive a third ballot to choose a party for a district municipality, which encompasses about four to six local municipalities and coordinates cross-boundary development issues. According to the Municipal Structures Act, the newly elected council then chooses an executive committee among their members, which in turn selects the mayor and deputy for the municipality. Compared to a system of direct elections for mayor by voters, this approach encourages more upward accountability to the party, causing the local elections to strongly reflect parties’ organizational capabilities and coherence.
Importance of the 2021 elections to South Africa’s political parties
In the 2016 elections, the African National Congress (ANC)—the leading political party since the end of apartheid in 1994—experienced massive local election losses for the first time ever. Some of the countries’ largest economic centers, including Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay, went to the opposition because the ANC could not obtain outright majorities and had to enter coalitions with other parties. Much of this shift could be attributed to the low popularity of then-President Jacob Zuma in the aftermath of the “State Capture” controversy and the “Fees Must Fall” protests across universities, as well as to the growing attraction of both the Democratic Alliance (DA) under the leadership at that time of Mmusi Maimane and the surprising endurance of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) under the populist Julius Malema. For the 2021 elections, a poll by the public opinion company Ipsos showed that 49 percent of respondents intend to support the ANC on November 1, falling from the 53.9 percent the party obtained in the 2016 contest. This number is still massively higher than the DA and EFF—which respondents claim to support at 17.9 and 14.5 percent, respectively—but depending on the distribution of those votes and seat allocations, could leave the ANC again scrambling to gain majorities in the coveted metros.
Will this contest largely amount to a referendum on the ruling ANC and more importantly, for Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency? The ruling party has intense competing factions, including a divide between pro-Zuma loyalists who could be implicated for corruption, and pro-Ramaphosa supporters who believe internal party reform is critical for regaining citizen support. Already, such rivalries have affected the ability of the ANC to agree on candidates to represent the party across more than 90 wards. More worryingly, they’ve contributed to large-scale political violence and several killings, mostly concentrated in Zuma’s stronghold of Kwa-Zulu Natal province.
The anti-Ramaphosa faction may be hoping that a poor showing will hurt the sitting president and allow others in the party to justify competing against him in the party’s national conference next December. His deputy vice president, David Mabuza, already has announced his intentions to compete against Ramaphosa at that conference. However, control of municipal councils provides the ANC with a huge source of patronage—particularly via access to municipal jobs for local-level party branch members. Therefore, if rivalries among party elites cost the ANC control of major councils, especially the metros, it could affect the party’s ability to retain support among the rank and file in the 2024 general elections.
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The electoral outcome will be equally consequential for the other two main opposition parties, the DA and EFF. The DA recently has faced a series of defections, including in 2019 by Maimane who created the Movement for One South Africa, and Herman Mashaba, the former mayor of Johannesburg, who established the Action South Africa party. Now under the leadership of John Steenhuisen, the party may not be able to break perceptions that it is mostly representative of white privilege and may not gain much ground beyond its traditional stronghold of Cape Town and the Western Province.
The EFF, which took away black votes from the ANC in 2016, could pose a bigger threat for the ruling party in Limpopo—Malema’s home province—and in Gauteng and Northwest. Reports indicate the EFF has gained much more financing for advertisements and handouts than were available in the previous local contest. However, the party’s growing popularity creates a challenge: Unlikely to win outright majorities in most councils, the EFF’s path to governing will rely on entering coalitions with one of the other two big parties. On the one hand, the party’s left-wing, nationalist platform contrasts sharply with the pro-market position of the DA. In fact, DA-EFF coalitions established after the 2016 elections ultimately crumbled in several councils because the two parties operate at opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. By the same token, Malema, who relishes attacking the ANC with his combative rhetoric and populist style, would be wary that a compromise with the ANC would alienate EFF supporters. On the other hand, without more substantive experience governing at the local level through such coalitions, it will be difficult for the EFF to gain widespread voter confidence in national elections.
Reinvigorating faith in local government
Perhaps more substantively than foreshadowing political parties’ electoral fortunes in 2024, the elections on November 1 are critical to strengthening local democracy and serve as a mechanism to encourage municipal governments to improve their performance. Based on recently released data from Afrobarometer that was collected in May-June of this year, close to 45 percent of South Africans claim they do “not at all” trust their local government council, and more than 60 percent disapprove or strongly disapprove of the performance of their elected local government councilor. Trust has declined over the last six years while disapproval rates remain stubbornly high (Figure 1). Moreover, South Africa continues to have the highest rates of distrust in local government across the continent, rivaling only more politically restricted regimes like Gabon, Morocco, and Sudan (Figure 2). This trend may paradoxically be due to the range of powers devolved to local governments combined with high expectations that voters have about their ability to deliver.
Figure 1. South Africans’ views on local government
Source: Afrobarometer, Rounds 8 (2021) and Round 6 (2015). Shares do not always total to 100 due to a small percentage of “don’t knows” or “refused to answer.”
Figure 2. Distribution of distrust of local government across Africa
Source: Author. Calculated from Round 7 of Afrobarometer (2018).Note: Countries in grey are those where Afrobarometer did not collect the data for the corresponding round.
Unfortunately, in the last several years, many of the municipal councils have become financially insolvent due to poor budgeting practices and substandard revenue collection. In fact, a report by the country’s auditor general revealed that the situation of one-quarter of municipalities was so dire that it was not clear how they could continue operating. Overall, the report gave only 27 of the country’s 257 councils a clean bill of health. Moreover, the electricity utility, Eskom, recently claimed that the municipalities owed it approximately $2.5 billion and accounted for 10 percent of its total debt. These dynamics, in turn, help explain why service delivery remains one of South Africans’ major grievances: In fact, there have been close to 100 protests and demonstrations over local service delivery in South Africa just since the start of 2021.
Conclusions
Globally, local elections do not lead to high turnout, especially nonconcurrent ones—an often-surprising trend given that most citizens’ engagement with their government is most directly at the local level. Encouragingly, again, South Africa contradicts common trends as it historically has had turnout rates of close to 60 percent in the last two local elections, and the assessment by Ipsos also confirms high levels of voter intentions despite the pandemic.
If the reality matches projections, November 1 will surely be a turning point for all the political parties: solidifying allies and enemies for Ramaphosa’s faction of the ANC, testing the DA’s ability to become a national party without a black leader, and signaling the EFF’s willingness to govern rather than simply oppose. Perhaps more importantly, however, it will serve as a warning sign from South Africans that on the local issues that most affect their everyday lives, they will continue to demand and expect better from their politicians.
South Africa’s municipal elections: A referendum on political parties and local democracy
On November 1, South Africans will go to the polls in the sixth round of local government elections since the country’s democratic transition in 1994. Voters will be able to choose among 60,000 candidates and more than 300 political parties to elect councilors for 257 municipalities.
Typically, local elections in sub-Saharan Africa rarely receive much attention. South Africa, however is an exception: Not only is it the region’s most decentralized country, so that local governments have substantive autonomy over services citizens care about, but it’s also a place where local elections are seen as a bellwether for party performance in the general elections. Notably, this electoral contest will be the first since the deadly riots that rocked the country back in July when supporters of the former president, Jacob Zuma, rebelled against his conviction for contempt of court when he failed to attend a corruption inquiry. In addition, with more than 60 percent of South Africa’s population classified as urban, control of the country’s eight large metropolitan areas (known as metros) provides both political leverage and economic clout.
How do the elections work?
South Africa operates a mixed member electoral system for municipal elections, meaning that half the seats on the councils are chosen through proportional representation—whereby the parties receive seats in proportion to the share of votes they receive—and half are chosen through a single-member constituency-based system so that individual candidates who receive the most votes in their ward gain their ward’s seat. In the metros, voters receive two ballots: one for a party and one for a ward councilor. In smaller cities and rural areas, voters also receive a third ballot to choose a party for a district municipality, which encompasses about four to six local municipalities and coordinates cross-boundary development issues. According to the Municipal Structures Act, the newly elected council then chooses an executive committee among their members, which in turn selects the mayor and deputy for the municipality. Compared to a system of direct elections for mayor by voters, this approach encourages more upward accountability to the party, causing the local elections to strongly reflect parties’ organizational capabilities and coherence.
Importance of the 2021 elections to South Africa’s political parties
In the 2016 elections, the African National Congress (ANC)—the leading political party since the end of apartheid in 1994—experienced massive local election losses for the first time ever. Some of the countries’ largest economic centers, including Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay, went to the opposition because the ANC could not obtain outright majorities and had to enter coalitions with other parties. Much of this shift could be attributed to the low popularity of then-President Jacob Zuma in the aftermath of the “State Capture” controversy and the “Fees Must Fall” protests across universities, as well as to the growing attraction of both the Democratic Alliance (DA) under the leadership at that time of Mmusi Maimane and the surprising endurance of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) under the populist Julius Malema. For the 2021 elections, a poll by the public opinion company Ipsos showed that 49 percent of respondents intend to support the ANC on November 1, falling from the 53.9 percent the party obtained in the 2016 contest. This number is still massively higher than the DA and EFF—which respondents claim to support at 17.9 and 14.5 percent, respectively—but depending on the distribution of those votes and seat allocations, could leave the ANC again scrambling to gain majorities in the coveted metros.
Will this contest largely amount to a referendum on the ruling ANC and more importantly, for Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency? The ruling party has intense competing factions, including a divide between pro-Zuma loyalists who could be implicated for corruption, and pro-Ramaphosa supporters who believe internal party reform is critical for regaining citizen support. Already, such rivalries have affected the ability of the ANC to agree on candidates to represent the party across more than 90 wards. More worryingly, they’ve contributed to large-scale political violence and several killings, mostly concentrated in Zuma’s stronghold of Kwa-Zulu Natal province.
The anti-Ramaphosa faction may be hoping that a poor showing will hurt the sitting president and allow others in the party to justify competing against him in the party’s national conference next December. His deputy vice president, David Mabuza, already has announced his intentions to compete against Ramaphosa at that conference. However, control of municipal councils provides the ANC with a huge source of patronage—particularly via access to municipal jobs for local-level party branch members. Therefore, if rivalries among party elites cost the ANC control of major councils, especially the metros, it could affect the party’s ability to retain support among the rank and file in the 2024 general elections.
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The electoral outcome will be equally consequential for the other two main opposition parties, the DA and EFF. The DA recently has faced a series of defections, including in 2019 by Maimane who created the Movement for One South Africa, and Herman Mashaba, the former mayor of Johannesburg, who established the Action South Africa party. Now under the leadership of John Steenhuisen, the party may not be able to break perceptions that it is mostly representative of white privilege and may not gain much ground beyond its traditional stronghold of Cape Town and the Western Province.
The EFF, which took away black votes from the ANC in 2016, could pose a bigger threat for the ruling party in Limpopo—Malema’s home province—and in Gauteng and Northwest. Reports indicate the EFF has gained much more financing for advertisements and handouts than were available in the previous local contest. However, the party’s growing popularity creates a challenge: Unlikely to win outright majorities in most councils, the EFF’s path to governing will rely on entering coalitions with one of the other two big parties. On the one hand, the party’s left-wing, nationalist platform contrasts sharply with the pro-market position of the DA. In fact, DA-EFF coalitions established after the 2016 elections ultimately crumbled in several councils because the two parties operate at opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. By the same token, Malema, who relishes attacking the ANC with his combative rhetoric and populist style, would be wary that a compromise with the ANC would alienate EFF supporters. On the other hand, without more substantive experience governing at the local level through such coalitions, it will be difficult for the EFF to gain widespread voter confidence in national elections.
Reinvigorating faith in local government
Perhaps more substantively than foreshadowing political parties’ electoral fortunes in 2024, the elections on November 1 are critical to strengthening local democracy and serve as a mechanism to encourage municipal governments to improve their performance. Based on recently released data from Afrobarometer that was collected in May-June of this year, close to 45 percent of South Africans claim they do “not at all” trust their local government council, and more than 60 percent disapprove or strongly disapprove of the performance of their elected local government councilor. Trust has declined over the last six years while disapproval rates remain stubbornly high (Figure 1). Moreover, South Africa continues to have the highest rates of distrust in local government across the continent, rivaling only more politically restricted regimes like Gabon, Morocco, and Sudan (Figure 2). This trend may paradoxically be due to the range of powers devolved to local governments combined with high expectations that voters have about their ability to deliver.
Figure 1. South Africans’ views on local government
Source: Afrobarometer, Rounds 8 (2021) and Round 6 (2015). Shares do not always total to 100 due to a small percentage of “don’t knows” or “refused to answer.”
Figure 2. Distribution of distrust of local government across Africa
Source: Author. Calculated from Round 7 of Afrobarometer (2018).Note: Countries in grey are those where Afrobarometer did not collect the data for the corresponding round.
Unfortunately, in the last several years, many of the municipal councils have become financially insolvent due to poor budgeting practices and substandard revenue collection. In fact, a report by the country’s auditor general revealed that the situation of one-quarter of municipalities was so dire that it was not clear how they could continue operating. Overall, the report gave only 27 of the country’s 257 councils a clean bill of health. Moreover, the electricity utility, Eskom, recently claimed that the municipalities owed it approximately $2.5 billion and accounted for 10 percent of its total debt. These dynamics, in turn, help explain why service delivery remains one of South Africans’ major grievances: In fact, there have been close to 100 protests and demonstrations over local service delivery in South Africa just since the start of 2021.
Conclusions
Globally, local elections do not lead to high turnout, especially nonconcurrent ones—an often-surprising trend given that most citizens’ engagement with their government is most directly at the local level. Encouragingly, again, South Africa contradicts common trends as it historically has had turnout rates of close to 60 percent in the last two local elections, and the assessment by Ipsos also confirms high levels of voter intentions despite the pandemic.
If the reality matches projections, November 1 will surely be a turning point for all the political parties: solidifying allies and enemies for Ramaphosa’s faction of the ANC, testing the DA’s ability to become a national party without a black leader, and signaling the EFF’s willingness to govern rather than simply oppose. Perhaps more importantly, however, it will serve as a warning sign from South Africans that on the local issues that most affect their everyday lives, they will continue to demand and expect better from their politicians.
What to expect around education at COP26
For the first two weeks of November, all eyes will be on Glasgow as the much-anticipated COP26—the 26th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change—unfolds. While climate experts vary on their outlook for an optimistic outcome, one thing is clear: COP26 will be a deciding moment in our collective efforts to draw down greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
World leaders still trying to recover from COVID-19-related setbacks will be looking for bold, transformative climate solutions that put countries on a more equitable path to sustainability.
One such solution that deserves more political attention is education, especially quality education that grounds discussions about climate change in science, transforms harmful social norms and power dynamics that increase the climate vulnerabilities of marginalized groups like women and girls, and connects learning outcomes with climate action and the achievement of climate justice.
As COP26 unfolds, what can we expect from Glasgow when it comes to advancing such education? Here are three things to keep your eyes on and to help amplify.
1. Expect a lot of (good) “noise” from the education sector.
Without a dedicated “day” for education on the COP26 agenda, civil society actors will attempt to draw attention to the important role of education for climate action through an impressive, decentralized roster of side events in the green and blue zones and other sidelines.
These events will add to an unprecedented surge this year in publications and advocacy by global education leaders highlighting the impact of climate change on children (especially girls), the role that education plays in increasing society’s adaptive capacity and climate resilience, and the lackluster progress being made by countries on education for climate action. These include reports published by EarthDay.org, Education International, Malala Fund (and a complementary report by Brookings), Plan International, Save the Children, UNESCO, and UNICEF, among others.
A positive outcome of this increased attention to climate change by the education sector will be the reverse mobilization, that is, increased attention to education by the climate sector.
2. Watch out for a “Glasgow Work Program” for action for climate empowerment.
2020 marked the end of the Doha Work Program, which aimed to guide countries’ implementation of education and training activities as laid out in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). However, a lack of financing commitment by countries to support and implement the development of national ACE strategies means the Doha Work Program—the second ACE work program, running from 2012-2020—was less than effective. This has left ACE a little understood entry point for climate action and a low priority item for negotiations among world leaders.
On top of this, the COVID-19 pandemic sidetracked important momentum-building multilateral and bilateral dialogues that could have helped to create a critical mass of world leaders committed to a more ambitious and fully financed ACE work program. Such missed opportunities mean many ACE negotiators are heading to COP26 without clear incentives, mandates, and goals. Although ACE stakeholders have proposed options for a future work program (delegates are not coming to Glasgow to build the next ACE work program from scratch), the lack of political will around education for climate action threatens to set the new work program on a course to fail.
At this critical juncture in the climate crisis, cooperation rather than competition is needed to ensure our mutual survival—not just as a nascent education and climate sector, but also as present and future generations on this planet.
What we can hope for with the ACE negotiations is that delegates will reach a decision on a 10-year Glasgow Work Program that leans into the recommendations and calls to action by civil society; provides for sufficient funding and technical support, especially to developing countries; centers intergenerational equity, climate justice, and the rights of children and youth, girls and women, and indigenous peoples; aims for societywide empowerment and systemwide transformations; and holds governments accountable through data disaggregated by gender, age, and other relevant social and economic identifiers.
3. Lift up and connect with champions of education for climate action.
We may be witnessing the birth of a global climate and education sector—if not a tipping point in a global movement to strengthen the education sector’s role in climate action. The increasing number of “new” global education organizations arriving at the climate and education agenda, together with the unwavering energy of “older” environmental education and climate change education organizations, feels notably different than just under two years ago. But with few high-level champions at the helm, the possibilities for action seem both endless—unencumbered by political agendas and timelines—but also uncertain and temporary—without political weight. Will the fire fizzle out if financing to education for climate action does not materialize, or if world leaders continue to deprioritize education in favor of “climate-relevant” sectors like energy and transportation?
Short of high-level champions and without an Earth Fund centered solely on education, the sector must work together to lift itself up, identify ways to “do the work” regardless, and resist the internalized institutional urge for its members to compete against each other for resources. At this critical juncture in the climate crisis, cooperation rather than competition is needed to ensure our mutual survival—not just as a nascent education and climate sector, but also as present and future generations on this planet.
COP26 offers us an opportunity to identify and invite new education champions for climate action into “the tent.” We have two weeks to configure new connections among local and global actors, and a rapidly closing window thereafter to make a difference through our collective work. What are you waiting for? Let’s get started.
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What to expect around education at COP26
For the first two weeks of November, all eyes will be on Glasgow as the much-anticipated COP26—the 26th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change—unfolds. While climate experts vary on their outlook for an optimistic outcome, one thing is clear: COP26 will be a deciding moment in our collective efforts to draw down greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
World leaders still trying to recover from COVID-19-related setbacks will be looking for bold, transformative climate solutions that put countries on a more equitable path to sustainability.
One such solution that deserves more political attention is education, especially quality education that grounds discussions about climate change in science, transforms harmful social norms and power dynamics that increase the climate vulnerabilities of marginalized groups like women and girls, and connects learning outcomes with climate action and the achievement of climate justice.
As COP26 unfolds, what can we expect from Glasgow when it comes to advancing such education? Here are three things to keep your eyes on and to help amplify.
1. Expect a lot of (good) “noise” from the education sector.
Without a dedicated “day” for education on the COP26 agenda, civil society actors will attempt to draw attention to the important role of education for climate action through an impressive, decentralized roster of side events in the green and blue zones and other sidelines.
These events will add to an unprecedented surge this year in publications and advocacy by global education leaders highlighting the impact of climate change on children (especially girls), the role that education plays in increasing society’s adaptive capacity and climate resilience, and the lackluster progress being made by countries on education for climate action. These include reports published by EarthDay.org, Education International, Malala Fund (and a complementary report by Brookings), Plan International, Save the Children, UNESCO, and UNICEF, among others.
A positive outcome of this increased attention to climate change by the education sector will be the reverse mobilization, that is, increased attention to education by the climate sector.
2. Watch out for a “Glasgow Work Program” for action for climate empowerment.
2020 marked the end of the Doha Work Program, which aimed to guide countries’ implementation of education and training activities as laid out in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). However, a lack of financing commitment by countries to support and implement the development of national ACE strategies means the Doha Work Program—the second ACE work program, running from 2012-2020—was less than effective. This has left ACE a little understood entry point for climate action and a low priority item for negotiations among world leaders.
On top of this, the COVID-19 pandemic sidetracked important momentum-building multilateral and bilateral dialogues that could have helped to create a critical mass of world leaders committed to a more ambitious and fully financed ACE work program. Such missed opportunities mean many ACE negotiators are heading to COP26 without clear incentives, mandates, and goals. Although ACE stakeholders have proposed options for a future work program (delegates are not coming to Glasgow to build the next ACE work program from scratch), the lack of political will around education for climate action threatens to set the new work program on a course to fail.
At this critical juncture in the climate crisis, cooperation rather than competition is needed to ensure our mutual survival—not just as a nascent education and climate sector, but also as present and future generations on this planet.
What we can hope for with the ACE negotiations is that delegates will reach a decision on a 10-year Glasgow Work Program that leans into the recommendations and calls to action by civil society; provides for sufficient funding and technical support, especially to developing countries; centers intergenerational equity, climate justice, and the rights of children and youth, girls and women, and indigenous peoples; aims for societywide empowerment and systemwide transformations; and holds governments accountable through data disaggregated by gender, age, and other relevant social and economic identifiers.
3. Lift up and connect with champions of education for climate action.
We may be witnessing the birth of a global climate and education sector—if not a tipping point in a global movement to strengthen the education sector’s role in climate action. The increasing number of “new” global education organizations arriving at the climate and education agenda, together with the unwavering energy of “older” environmental education and climate change education organizations, feels notably different than just under two years ago. But with few high-level champions at the helm, the possibilities for action seem both endless—unencumbered by political agendas and timelines—but also uncertain and temporary—without political weight. Will the fire fizzle out if financing to education for climate action does not materialize, or if world leaders continue to deprioritize education in favor of “climate-relevant” sectors like energy and transportation?
Short of high-level champions and without an Earth Fund centered solely on education, the sector must work together to lift itself up, identify ways to “do the work” regardless, and resist the internalized institutional urge for its members to compete against each other for resources. At this critical juncture in the climate crisis, cooperation rather than competition is needed to ensure our mutual survival—not just as a nascent education and climate sector, but also as present and future generations on this planet.
COP26 offers us an opportunity to identify and invite new education champions for climate action into “the tent.” We have two weeks to configure new connections among local and global actors, and a rapidly closing window thereafter to make a difference through our collective work. What are you waiting for? Let’s get started.
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Introducing the Brookings and Ashoka Collaborative Innovation Challenge: Valuing Homes in Black Communities
The time has always been right to address discrimination in housing. But since the release of the 2018 Brookings report, The devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods—which showed homes in Black-majority neighborhoods are priced on average $48,000 less than comparable homes in white-majority neighborhoods—research, social activism, and legislative action have spurred a reckoning. The real estate industry has had to reckon with common practices that extract wealth from families simply for living in Black neighborhoods.
Lower home prices in Black neighborhoods reflect how much we value their residents. The problem of housing devaluation requires input from a wide range of actors across multiple sectors, including the people closest to the problem; but they have less resources and power to engage with powerful people who influence policy. Consequently, we must financially incentivize and empower local leaders, firms, and nonprofits to work alongside well-resourced institutions to find a new generation of solutions.
To empower local stakeholders and combat housing devaluation, the Brookings Institution is joining forces with the social entrepreneurship organization Ashoka to provide opportunities and financial incentives of up to $100,000 for people who are proximate to the problem so that additional seats can be pulled up to the decisionmaking table. This collaborative challenge, Valuing Homes in Black Communities, begins this week.
What do we mean by devaluation?
After carefully attending to social conditions like education, crime and walkability, our research found that homes in Black-majority neighborhoods across the country are priced, on average, approximately 23% or $48,000 less than similar homes in similar social conditions in mostly white areas, where the share of the Black population are less than a percent. In some specific metropolitan areas, the price difference is even more pronounced. For instance, in the Lynchburg, Va. metropolitan area, we see an -81% difference between average home prices in Black-majority and white neighborhoods. In the Rochester, N.Y. metro area, there is a -65% difference. In the metro area with the largest Black population, Detroit, Mich., there is a -37% disparity.
For the millions of residents who live in Black-majority neighborhoods, this devaluation means less money for critical municipal services like public schools and policing. Less equity in a home translates into less cash for ever-increasing college tuition, thus leading to more student loan debt. And lower value on our homes also means less capital to start a business. Our research finds that the $156 billion in lost revenue could have started 4.4 million businesses, based on the average amount of capital Black people use to start their firms.
Since the release of this report, there have been congressional hearings, additional studies and news reports corroborating our conclusion that racial bias significantly influences home values. The Biden Administration has acknowledged Brookings’s devaluation research in various memoranda, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced an interagency task force on appraisals. This came right before the government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac released a study showing systemic racial bias among appraisers. The acknowledgement of this issue by the highest levels of government is appreciated and encouraging. But we believe that solutions must come from people who experience and combat discrimination on the daily basis.
Correcting home values must go beyond appraisal regulation
After our devaluation report was released, people’s attention immediately shifted to the appraisal industry. Appraisers are the professionals who explicitly assess value. So, it is understandable why the industry garnered scrutiny. In 2019, one of this blog’s authors testified in Congress along with representatives from the Appraisal Institute and the Appraisal Foundation, two organizations that help certify and regulate appraisal professionals. When Rep. Al Green of Texas asked the panel to raise our hand if we believe “discrimination plays a role in the devaluation of property in neighborhoods that are predominated with minorities,” I was the only one who raised a hand.
If you have a structural innovation that fully values homes in Black communities, please join the Ashoka-Brookings collaborative challenge to win up to $100,000 to help solve for housing devaluation.
Since then, numerous news stories have surfaced that show the intrinsic value of whiteness expressed in biased appraisals. In 2020, the New York Times reported on the Jacksonville, Fla. couple, Abena (who is Black) and Alex (who is white) Horton, who had their home appraised. They believed that the appraisal was too low. So, they got a second appraisal. However, during this second round, the couple staged the appraisal appointment so that Alex was present instead of Abena, while the couple had purposefully removed all signs of Abena and their biracial son. The second appraisal yielded a 40% higher value than the first appraisal.
In 2020 in Indianapolis, amid the pandemic, Carlette Duffy sensed that appraisals on her home in the Black-majority Flanner House Homes neighborhood, west of downtown Indianapolis, had come in too low. After removing pictures, books and clothing—or scrubbing the Blackness from her home—and getting a white stand-in, her appraisal came in $134,000 higher. Numerous other stories have been published in places throughout the nation showing racial bias in appraisals.
While appraisals are certainly involved in lower home values, they are not the only actors influencing price. Lenders, real estate agent behavior, elected officials and public policies, biased labor markets as well other predatory housing practices also contribute to the problem of devaluation. Consequently, we need a suite of innovations based on people who are intimate with the issue.
The Ashoka-Brookings Challenge
We believe that no one understands the issue of housing devaluation better than the advocacy groups, firms and institutions who have been working to remove the everyday policies and practices that extract wealth and opportunity from residents, throttling their growth. We also believe that devaluation reflects discrimination throughout housing markets. Consequently, we are interested in innovations that address low appraisals, mortgage rates and insurance costs.
In addition, the country needs structural innovations that enable development without displacement; make it possible for people of all incomes to live and work in the same place; and push back against the increasing prevalence of financial landlords and the widespread use of eviction proceedings that accompany it.
If you have a structural innovation that fully values homes in Black communities and/or are connected to a community of innovators, please join the Ashoka-Brookings collaborative challenge to solve for housing devaluation. Participate in the opportunity to win funding of up to $100,000 to help drive change forward.
Participants can submit applications from now until January 13th on the Valuing Homes in Black Communities competition website. We are looking for applications from innovators who are advancing policy-based and market-based change on the local, regional and/or national scale. Participants will have a chance to win funding of up to $100,000. Participants who submit their application by December 2nd may also qualify for additional funding of up to $15,000 along with guaranteed advancement to the semifinalist round.
Past and present exclusionary policies and practices like redlining, racial housing covenants, single family zoning ordinances, and neighborhood level price-comparison approaches to valuation impact today’s home values. Correcting housing markets will require initiatives that encourage inclusion rather than exclusion and seek restoration of the value extracted by racism. The Ashoka-Brookings Collaborative Innovation Challenge on devaluation does just that.
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Figure of the week: Education participation rates in Africa increase, with some caveats
On September 18, the African Union, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released the report, “Transforming Education in Africa,” an evidence-based overview of education in the region. The report highlights progress the continent has made on education indicators, such as participation rates, while also illustrating challenges that remain. As Africa has the youngest population in the world—nearly 800 million Africans are under the age of 25, with 677 million between ages 3 and 24—accelerating investment in education is vital for countries to take full benefit of their human capital.
Overall, the report reveals both progress and regression when it comes to education in the region. For example, although Africa has made progress in increasing children’s participation in school (Figure 1), the authors speculate that the absolute number of out-of-school children has actually increased since 2010, given rapid population growth.
Figure 1. Share of out-of-school children in Africa, by age group
Source: “Transforming Education in Africa,” African Union, 2021.
More specifically, according to the report, approximately 42 million children of primary and secondary school age are not enrolled in school. Regionally, western Africa accounts for the highest number of out-of-school children: 2 out of 5 out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa live in western Africa (Figure 2). Eastern Africa follows with 34 percent of Africa’s out-of-school children.
Figure 2. Distribution of out-of-school children of primary and secondary school age in Africa by region
Source: “Transforming Education in Africa,” African Union, 2021.
More specifically, in western Africa, 27 percent of primary school-age children, 37 percent of lower-secondary school-age children, and 56 percent of upper-secondary school-age children were not enrolled in school in 2019.
The report states that bottlenecks and barriers to improving education include broader educational policies and legal frameworks and conflict and security. Specifically, within policies and legal frameworks, the authors state that, although basic education is usually compulsory, legal measures for implementation are lacking, which creates a disconnect between expected learning outcomes and effective implementation of cost-effective interventions. Demand barriers, such as the imbalance between education and labor needs can prevent children attending school on a regular basis, hindering education improvement. On the supply side, teacher shortages can lead to large class sizes where child-centered learning is difficult. Finally, conflict and insecurity situations, especially when learning institutions are targeted, inhibit children from having access to learning.
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To combat these barriers the authors recommend, among other actions, investigating the underlying reasons individuals fail to participate in education to design policy, investing in development of more resilient education systems, and improving education data and management information systems. The authors state that a substantial number of students drop out of school. Investigating the reasoning behind this could aid in policy creation that motivates students to stay in school. To address lack of resiliency in education systems, the authors say that taking a well-rounded approach that includes assessment, management, and monitoring and evaluation tools will aid in making sure that education systems function continuously. Finally, the authors state that evidenced-based information is key to education systems making progress, and so encourage further research.
For the full report, see here. Also check out “Improving learning and life skills for marginalized children: Scaling the Learner Guide Program in Tanzania” by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education for more on innovations in education in the region.