 A baby chamele's Again echoing what we heard earlier today and just tell me gentlemen if I'm blocking a baby's view from the camera perspective But you know you were just bemoaning the fact that the evidence linking aid and employment is almost nil And in fact you said you tried to look for it on Google and what happened Well The hits I try to find if you just connect official development assistance and employment is zero Zero hits. Okay, so that means there's masses out there. Nonetheless. You have been combing through a Number of reports. Could you tell us exactly what you've been doing and and under very difficult? Circumstances I might add the African Development Bank is based in Tunis and Tunis has had its own share of Civil unrest over the past couple of months. So well done for having gotten it together But tell us a little bit about the study and what its aims were. Yeah, thanks Hilary Let me take one minute of my time a lot to me first to thank the audience with the distinguished audience to for being here for to listen to our story and then of course to Finn who has been generous enough to Invite adb to this project. So we have been collaborating for quite some time now and actually this idea was initiated by Tony and Finn So what we try to do is as exactly have said the evidence linking aid and employment To my knowledge is very difficult to track even in Martin's presentation. We could see after a going through hundreds of household surveys and then you have aid and to say, okay aid works or not That conclusion will be difficult to attend. So However, what we try to do is also not conventional in that sense. It's just illustrative. It could be controversial So I tried to put this in context. So what we've done is we have gone through adb's Completion reports that what we call them of development projects that we have financed in the last 20 years That's 350 or something over 350 projects. So a lot. So a pen is taking process And then just see whether any story in those documents about employment about jobs So the story we got is interesting in some ways And probably lust rates the link between between the two One we found that at least on the average on the average for the adb financed projects For 1.5 million us a dollar we spent. It was possible to link with about 400 jobs but this is Has a lot of variation within the sectors where we have gone through Okay, so what was the sector where you saw the most direct influence the most jobs coming up? Yes, I mean more or less to the story of Gary's Financing micro credit micro insurance projects We got the highest Employment generating in those sectors So that was the most immediate return the fact of it. Exactly. Okay, and Just to for the benefit of the audience the sectors adb financed were agriculture and allied activities infrastructure education and the holds and of course financing micro credit micro insurance Activities, but also I would like to mention we have also looked at our financing to the private sector Which which started quite recently but has been growing in importance Where also the job creation in those sectors were significant Okay, and I just want to come back to some some of the kinds of numbers we're talking about but before we we get into We've heard about the most successful, which was the finance. Where were the areas the least successful? Well at least I mean because I don't want to draw a Very healthy conclusion on this so the audience also not to be misled But in areas like education and the health it seems we have quite a weak link with employment That's where the least we're able to find now I'm assuming you're not saying do not invest in Education and health is that because it's a longer term to see the return? Yes. I mean the Everybody here knows to be in the labor market to have to be healthy But also to get a good job you have to have skills which you acquire through education basic skills This is these are quite straightforward argument. However in the sense of investing in Catalyzing jobs the education and employment sector is The fruits you get it after after long years The immediate job implication would be like for instance if you build a school or if you build a health station then So it's the same with infrastructure. Basically, you're looking at the same thing with infrastructure But infrastructure is much better. I'm just gonna ask you to I know this is a deadly word for an economist but to speculate, but Do you think it will be possible at some point to do research? Because obviously there are places where you need to build infrastructure where you need to invest in health where there are Issues that have to be addressed Because it's a short-term major problem. But is there any way eventually of being able to measure? what the returns are because I've heard a lot from a Lot of you, you know the the skills issue is is basic I know with illness in just my own work as a journalist and then doing a lot of these conferences You know when you've got a population that's devastated by AIDS It's very difficult for people to go to work So is there any way or is it just pie in the sky to think that eventually you might actually be able to look for The data that will link the benefits of different things be they Development aid or the countries that ultimately getting to the point where they can invest in these things But where you can see a return or is that just an impossibility? Sorry, this is coming out of the yeah No, I think you're right Probably I take even a step back and look at the perception of the audience here Which believes it should be seen more as an investment than anything else But also 97% say They support it So in my view if you see it as an investment there is a return. There is a risk to it As investment I see for instance what's the return is exit from aid Country should just be on their feet and do their own things without relying on others What's the risk is probably it could be more harmful than Being useful. Yeah, so within this bounds what we are trying to do in this exercise is to illustrate if you scale up for instance some of the adb type of projects at those countries we covered and then Replicate it all over Africa and look at the amount of total aid Odds that has flown into the economy of Africa then what is the order of magnitude of employment you might expect and About 10 million jobs every year would be expected. So the reason we don't find the evidence is because of the data like lack of data lack of monitoring and proper tracking But what we are saying is that the evidence is out there Okay, well, I want to come back to you one thing on that because you mentioned exit strategy and Exit strategy for aid is I think something that is very much on Many donors minds because they don't want it to become just continuous and eb. I know this is something you've mentioned So yeah, I Think it's important That we get out of this notion that aid is here for the next 50 years And and therefore we have another face when this face is over not to say that every time that we start We didn't expect to be out again five years from from from now or seven years from now but I think we should put into the Work in preparing that what results would be achievable within five years if We were to exit if you understand I think we need to because we're not going to be there forever So we need to put that into the equation Okay coming back because I didn't mean to rain on your parade there a baby But you're basically saying and I realized that this is our hypothesis now The big picture was that if you looked at everything and rolled it out you would have seen how many jobs being created Yeah, close to ten million jobs every year. That's quite a quite a big number now I'm just going to take a couple of questions, but first of all Stefan Isaacson. I'm just going to ask you Stefan is with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sweden. Okay Stefan Anderson This whole concept of exit strategies Investments, I know that we've discussed it. So I just wanted to bring you into the conversation early No, I think that's a very good point And I think that I mean in the long term We are not in a position to see that development is sustainable over time and hence the question to Martin before that Where do we actually put our money to be catalytic and actually make the difference today to exit perhaps not tomorrow But in the short term, we need to see where we can be adding the extra bucks to make the difference I mean, we've been talking a lot now about about Microfinancing Taking the risk out of some investments and of course these are things we could do easily in Denmark and Sweden Both could provide guarantees for instance It's that the way we should go and withdraw ODA. Is that what you're saying or and then sort of stay only with financing research Okay, and maybe this is necessarily a question you need to answer I'm throwing it into a general conversation. However, I'm Anders Nash and I'm going to take three. So I've got Anders pool Book Hansen and Peter Dam. So in that order first of all Anders Nash Can you hear me now? Good Where are you way about me? I can't see you Forget your seat when you sit down. Absolutely. And don't forget the clock on me either Because I will go on A lot of interesting points today. Thanks very much and a lot of discussions about Employment that's been created. Sorry if I deviate slightly but my questions relate to direct and indirect employment and Also to the formal and informal sectors now We have the ambassador from Bolivia here and it mentioned the project in Bolivia I was fortunate enough to work on the impact. I know from that I'm going to give you the mic as soon as we start hearing from them But if you have a question for a baby right now, and it's directly related to that. Okay, how highly on the agenda Do you do you place formal vis-a-vis informal sectors? There's a lot of informal jobs created in some of these economies we mentioned and also direct employment you mentioned through some of the Projects you're working on vis-a-vis indirect employment A baby Thanks Give him a clock, please. Yeah, very quickly the employment We have document today's directing indirect, but I want to really Remind us that These projects were never intended to create jobs anyway The primary objectives depending on the sectors of intervention were for something else like for instance If it is building a dam the whole engineering concept goes into that, but then We picked how much employment has been created as a result of that. So there was no really intentional Discrimination between formal informal jobs, etc. This is just an illustrative exercise If there is any evidence out there to link between jobs and aid then tracks the projects and then get some illustration and some ideas about What's the money spent has has managed to create opportunities? Okay, cool big Hansen and please pronounce your name if I've massacred it Okay, thank you very much. I just want to ask you a question related to value chains With something a concept we are talking about part a lot these days in relation to The job creation and they are different value types of value chains domestic value chains international value chains Different sectors different products. So my question is does your material give you data to go into the question of which? Value chains are most productive in creating Employments depending on which context Thank you. Oh, this is a difficult one. Maybe the audience also can join me anyway notice a very interesting question because this is as you said one of the Topics of interest these days even in the bank in the agriculture sector. There is now money going Into enhancing what we call the value chain agro industry processing, etc So, I mean within within that perspective What I can share with you now is we have a few private sector financed projects that have Exactly this kind of concept and create quite a lot of jobs, especially agro processing industries Okay, and the next one and last one for now is Peter dam right Hello, my question is regarding education if I understood correctly then education didn't show a Very good return of investment, and I'm wondering if this I mean it depends on the setting and the country region Of course family traditions community a little bit further away from you. I thought okay, sorry I didn't take this where the education Is not they can't utilize it in the setting that they come from and so do they ever do the experience brain-drain do they leave believe that They're homes behind to to use your education or this is sometimes not can they even utilize it in their settings I Would like to you to reference the question what Okay, I think what it was was maybe that and you're talking about people that have completed tertiary education I'm assuming yeah, so those that have completed tertiary education is one of the reasons Perhaps there is not a return in the country because they couldn't find a job that paid well enough or they found a job Elsewhere that paid better so brain drain Did well I don't call it by the by the expression on his face I would say that was probably not the focus of when they were doing the education. So let us assume no for