MattAndrews

Football inequality

I have been interested to see that UEFA (the European Football Association) is taking a position against FIFA continuing with its leadership election, given the corruption crisis. In contrast, CAF (the African association) wants the election to go ahead.

Tension between Europe and Africa is nothing new. And it is a product of stress and tension and inequality in the sport. If I stick on this topic in the next few months I will discuss how the inequalities in football overlap with inequalities in economic development more generally, and need to be discussed more explicitly. Here is the most simple representation of the issue: revenues from the major leagues in the world.

Notice that there are four English leagues with higher revenues than the first two African leagues--South Africa and Algeria. Looks a lot like cross country GDP data and is the opening salvo in a story of the haves and have nots.

Beyond the corruption scandals everyone is now paying attention to, these data also deserve attention.

Governance, Football, and the Challenges of Development

"Football has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting."     George Orwell            

                                                                                                                           

I have been working on a project about sports governance for the past year. It has been a tremendously interesting piece of work, forcing me to apply experience with governance in developing countries to questions of governance in sports sectors and organizations.

As I have moved along, I find many overlaps between my work in both areas...and the most recent FIFA scandal reflects this as well. As in many developing countries, the biggest challenge for sporting sectors (and football in particular) centers on the pressure of improving governance in the midst of modernization, professionalization, globalization, and a flood of money. 

The governance structures in world football are simply outdated, and creaking. They are feudal in many respects and country-clubbish in others. These simply don't match a sector that has grown financially by multiple times over the last twenty years, and that is global and complex. As in many countries, the perpetuation of old-style personalistic governance regimes under conditions of change will inevitably lead to corruption and abuse. Especially when rents are easy to come by, as they have been in global football in the past twenty five years.

On the topic of say rents, I think football's governance issues are very much like those we see in resource rich countries, where the easy-to-come-by revenues need special type of management and protection. We often do not see governance that provides such structure in resource rich countries, and we are absolutely not seeing it in world football right now, where Orwell's words are ringing true (and world football looks more like war without shooting).

Hopefully things will change.

 

 

 

Jobs and Black Economic Empowerment: Missing The Point in South Africa

I don't often blog about policy in South Africa, but recent frustrating back-and-forth on core policy centered on Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has been frustrating to watch--especially given recent unemployment statistics that show a bad situation getting worse (see http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/editorials/2015/05/28/editorial-jobs-should-be-an-obsession).

So, here is my view on Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa (sorry for those who have no interest).

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has been a priority of the South African government for a number of years now. This is an appropriate and important priority, centered on empowering those who had been left behind by the past economic system. The BEE approach has centered largely on improving participation of these people in ownership and management structures in formal firms that were previously dominated by white men. This is an important aspect of adjustment and change in South Africa.

But most of the disempowered people in South Africa have not been empowered by such policies—and are unlikely to be empowered by such policies in the future. This is because the real empowerment problem is all about jobs, and BEE as currently shaped pays too little attention to incentivizing and supporting broad-based job creation.

My view on this is not original, but is reflected in government statistics for all to see. Labour force surveys count only 55% of Black African citizens as economically active, and only 70% of those who are active are employed. This means that about 17 million working age Black Africans are not working in the formal economy. The Coloured community and women suffer in this area as well, making up a population of over about 20 million South Africans who remain excluded from the formal economy. They are the truly disempowered South Africans. And there are more of them—in absolute and relative terms—since BEE began.

In 2008 I was part of a team from Harvard that advised government to expand the BEE regime to include a focus on job creation if it really prioritized economic empowerment. We suggested a simple approach for this, adding BEE dimensions to reward firms that hire new workers, and individuals who create new businesses, and firms that take the risk to produce new export products (especially manufactured goods that absorb less qualified labour). The theory behind this was simply that South Africa requires more small business, manufacturing, and export activity if it is to grow and create the kind of jobs its many unemployed people need. Read the report here, and summary ideas here.

These dimensions are still nowhere to be seen in the BEE scorecard (used to assess whether firms are BEE compliant), which has in many ways focused even more narrowly on ownership and participation at the top of the economy. The policy is imbalanced, and needs revision to focus on jobs at the bottom and middle of the economy as well. If this does not happen, BEE will continue to be a policy regime that simply misses the point on empowerment.

Getting Best Fit in Development Projects is like buying a new suit

I often hear talk of moving from best practice to best fit in development. When I ask what people mean by this I seldom get the same answer. But the basic idea is that multiple solutions are considered  instead of a one-best-way solution. I like the idea in concept and have written on it as a way of ensuring that we get past the tyranny of one-best-way. But I don't think having multiple solutions to choose from is enough.

Getting Best fit is not simply about looking at a variety of options and deciding which one works best in the place one is working. This is because it is really hard to know what led to and informed the ideas being considered, and it is hard to know what the contextual realities are in the place where one is doing the fitting. So: One may think that an idea from South Africa will work in Botswana, because there are contextual similarities, but one does not know if the South African idea depends on very localized political or capacity issues that are not present in Botswana.

The only way one truly does best fit is by trying stuff out and learning what works, hopefully why, and then adapting. Try the South African example in Botswana, ask where it is working and why, and then chisel the idea into a shape that fits Botswana better -- simultaneously building some new capacities in Botswana to make the fit work. 

It is not, therefore, about getting best fit in some conceptual manner, but about 'fitting' in practice. Kind of like being a tailor to someone looking for a new suit. How might it work? Let's think of buying a new suit....

• Identify the general type of suite that interests you...
• Choose a variety of potential suites off-the-shelf
• Try them on...with the tailor advising on their fit...
• Learn what kinds of cuts and styles work best for your look (you may be surprised and find your assumptions were incorrect)
• Decide on the style and cut and color you want (and other characteristics)
• See what you can take off-the-shelf (you may have the entire suite, or a jacket, or a jacket with sleeves that need shortening, etc.)
• Get the tailor to make alterations you need... as many as required
• try it on again
• make more alterations
• pay that tailor and leave, to impress the world with your best fitted suit!