We need more good news stories on development

Here's an article from the Guardian by Jonathan Glennie.

Earlier this week I went to one of the Living Proof roadshows organised by ONE, the campaign group set up by Bono and Bob Geldof. Like the previous one I attended, at which Bill and Melinda Gates spoke, the message was simple: things are getting better, the development project is working, and aid is a key element in that picture.

The objective of the meetings is to persuade a sceptical public to support more aid. One of the centrepieces of the evening was a video in which people on the street were asked how much aid they thought the UK gave and how much difference they thought it was making. Predictably, the public tends to think the UK gives a lot more than it does, and that much is wasted.

Public awareness is an admirable and necessary goal, with the caveat that we have to be realistic about our ambitions in development education. Most people don't really have time to show much interest in the goings on of foreign countries, let alone delve deeply into the statistics. So we needn't beat ourselves up too badly about the fact that few people seem to care or know much about this sector – it is just like most other sectors in that regard, with some people very committed but most fairly ignorant.

While the focus on aid was exaggerated (there are other more important things rich countries need to do to help Africa develop), ONE's general message of optimism about what can be achieved through global co-operation and intense effort is vital. Poverty is reducing all over the world, not just in China and India, but in much of Africa as well. This is the general trend of the last century, with some blips, and progress since the turn of the millennium has been especially encouraging, spurred on by the international commitment galvanised behind the millennium development goals (MDGs).

People are more likely to be inspired by knowing that their efforts are making a difference, than by being repeatedly told that everything is a disaster. A feeling of positivity and optimism, while non-tangible, is the sine qua non for effective collective action on the world stage. It is hard to say what it was about the MDG campaign that really worked, but part of it was just the doubling of effort and an element of peer pressure on rich and poor countries alike to make change happen. One memorable intervention in the debate was by a businessman whose attempts to bring private investment to Africa were being undermined by the general feeling of negativity towards the continent's economic prospects.

So ONE is absolutely right that the good news story needs to be told. Jamie Drummond, ONE's director and a veteran of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, expressed frustration that it was hard to get good news stories into the press. But it is not the case that good news doesn't sell. Say that to China. Or India. All we hear from the press about those countries' economic development is good news.

There are three reasons it is harder to get good news stories about Africa. First, it is only relatively recently that the development sector has been emphasising good news from Africa. And for good reason. Until recently the news was generally bad, as the disastrous 1980s turned to the only slightly better 1990s. Tony Blair memorably described Africa as a "scar on the conscience of the world" as recently as 2005. That kind of language was fairly typical until only a few years ago – now it would be considered old-fashioned, although it is still common. It takes much longer than a few years for people's entrenched perceptions to change.

Second, charities concerned about Africa continue to undermine the good news narrative by basing their fundraising campaigns on desperate pictures of tragedy. While this can be justified by the fact that there is much tragedy (25 million children still die every year from preventable causes), and by the fact that market research shows that this is what motivates people to give money, it does little to contribute the positive story that ONE is rightly trying to tell. And to a certain extent you have to communicate the problem (which is a bad news story) to persuade people to care about doing something about it. It is a conundrum all charities and campaigns manage daily, and the answer is not simple.

Third, the news out of Africa is by no means always good. The picture is mixed, with some countries doing well and others poorly, and progress in most countries is uneven. As a result, income and general welfare are not improving, and are possibly degenerating, for many of the poorest Africans. So good news stories are tempered with bad news, muddying the simple narrative necessary to change long-held conceptions. In short, the good news will have to get even better, and last for a few more years, before the common wisdom that Africa is a development disaster is overturned.

But the current optimism in the development sector does imply that when we get to 2015, the renewal of the MDGs will take place in a radically altered atmosphere to that of a few years ago. At the millennium summit in 2000, world leaders surveyed the last two decades of disastrous development policy, especially in Africa, and came up with urgent calls for profound change. But if things continue along the present more positive trajectory, and the good news stories start to stick, in 2015 the world is more likely to make decisions based on hope for the future, rather than urgent concern for the tragic waste of the past.