Thursday, December 1, 2011

Go Trevor

Trevor Manuel gave a speech at the launch of the JPAL lab in Cape Town awhile ago. The Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) is a partner organisation to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), where I'm working. His speech gives some insight into what JPAL will be doing in South Africa. Trevor also has some harsh words to say about things that aren't going right in SA yet. Schools, health, government bureaucracy...

Here's the shocker:

In terms of math and literacy scores, "South Africa scores in the bottom quartile of performers on the African continent even though we spend almost 6 per cent of our not insubstantial GDP on education."

A good quote to sum up what Trevor has to say about South African service delivery is: "We do not have the balance between centralisation and decentralisation right to meet efficiency and effectiveness objectives."

Click here to have a look at the speech. I'm Looking forward to seeing the evidence that JPAL provides for us to base better policies on.