“Oil Bills: Will they erase our doubts?“ was published in the Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor while SIPA Professor Jenik Radon and his students were in Uganda in March doing field research for a Capstone Workshop. Professor Radon and Marie-Paule Jeansonne (MIA ‘12) are both quoted in this article, commenting on the latest draft of two petroleum bills currently being considered by the Ugandan Parliament.

Eight SIPA students have been working on a Capstone Workshop that focuses on Uganda’s “Oil Bills,” conducting research to make recommendations on ways to effectively legislate and manage newly found oil reserves. 

The team’s initial comment on the legislation, which was put together by Jeansonne and Sri Swaminathan (MPA ‘12) under the guidance of Professor Radon, has been quoted in various media outlets in Uganda, including The Daily Monitor (above) and The Independent (“Parliament to pass weak laws on oil”). 

The students and Professor Radon also presented their comments and recommendations in-person to 15 members of the Ugandan Parliament’s Natural Resource Committee. 

The team presents its recommendations to Members of Parliament in Uganda. At right, Professor Radon and Jeansonne.

According to Professor Radon, the team’s two biggest recommendations are:

1. to have a stronger system of checks and balances, with an emphasis on transparency;
2. not to concentrate decision-making in one individual

During their time in Uganda in mid-March, the team also organized meetings with individuals from government ministries, members of Parliament (governing and opposition), civil society, Ugandan citizens, international donors, foreign embassies, and international and local media.

“We tried to identify what they see as the biggest issues and problems,” said Jeansonne. “By then, we already had ideas about what our recommendations would be, so our field trip was a good chance to test them. We had to make sure our report was something that could be actionable and something Ugandans could relate to.” 

While Nithin Coca (MIA ‘12), Kazumi Kawamoto (MIA ‘12), Ida Dokk Smith (MIA ‘12) and Frithiof August Wilhelmsen (MIA ‘13) conducted interviews in the capital city Kampala, Chitra Choudhury (MIA/Journalism ‘12) and Frazer Lanier (MIA ‘12) travelled to the resource-rich “oil belt” region of Hoima, which shares a border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Choudhury and Lanier in Hoima.

“We conducted interviews with both local authorities and residents,” said Choudhury, “people who might be displaced, fishing communities that might be affected… We were trying to understand how far-removed people on the ground are from what’s going on in Parliament. It added an extra layer of understanding on the issues.”

Professor Radon added that one of the major images that has stuck in his mind from the students’ field research is that “the elephants are leaving” due to the drilling and vibrations.

“That’s something we found,” said Choudhury, “the environmental impact wasn’t being studied. The government is doing that now, with the help of NORAD [the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation].” 

“You have to consider the full impacts,” Professor Radon added. “The importance of such a trip is you discover information from the locals. For example, there is a greater influx of fishing because of roads being built and increased access to [Lake Albert]. There’s overfishing, too much to be sustainable…. So these are the unintended consequences that you can only see on the ground.”

Jeansonne emphasized that because most of the oil drilling is on land, there are “grave implications for human rights, because people will be displaced.” This raises questions about compensation, how people should be displaced, and whether they should be displaced in the first place. 

“Developing extractive industries is difficult to do in the best of circumstances,” Radon said. “So these questions need to be answered in the right way.”

- Michelle Chahine

A team of four SIPA students have made it to the Final 10 in the competitive International Impact Investing Challenge, organized by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, partnered with the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business. Evgenia Sokolova (MDP ‘12), Vladimir Olarte Cadavid (MPA ‘12), Sandra Halilovic (MPA ‘12), and Helene Roy (MIA ‘13) will pitch their proposal—for a financial vehicle that would attract new sources of funding to areas that have high social benefits—to a panel of judges in the San Francisco Federal Reserve building on April 13^th, 2012.

According to SIPA Adjunct Professor Adam Quinton, the students proposed a unique independent study project, with the aim of entering this competition and creating the prospectus for the first round.

Quinton was the team’s advisor for the first half of the semester as they did independent research into potential financial vehicles. They submitted their prospectus in mid-March and were selected for the final round, competing against teams of graduate students from the University of Chicago, Stanford University, University of California, Berkley, Duke University and Northwestern University, among others.

“The submission had to be something that could be appealing to large investors and attract funding to for-profit enterprises that have a social benefit,” Quinton said. “If you’ve got to the finals in a competition like this, you’ve clearly done a pretty good job.”

Based on the presentations on April 13^th in the morning, the field will be narrowed to the final four teams, who will then compete for first place later in the day. $15,000 in prizes will be awarded to the winning teams.

Good luck to everyone! 

- Michelle Chahine

(Click here to read more about this competition on The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch.com.)

As international attention focused on Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January 2010, at least two teams of SIPA students focused their 2011 Capstone workshops on Haiti.

One team of six students did their Workshop in Development Practice on the Haitian Diaspora and education reform in Haiti. The project was commissioned by the Bureau of Haiti’s Special Envoy to the United Nations and the Social Science Research Council. Read the full report here.

- Photo Wendy L. Carlson (MIA ‘11)

According to Juontel White (MIA ‘12), a students on the team, this project was  inspired by the mass response efforts to the earthquake. She explained that many observers were interested in the role and involvement of the Haitian Diaspora - Haitians displaced from their homeland. Therefore, after consultations with their clients, the students decided to focus their research on the Haitian Diaspora in the United States, specifically with regards to education reform in Haiti.

The team conducted dozens of interviews via Skype with members of the Haitian Diaspora in the U.S. A few students also traveled to Boston and Miami, where there are large communities, to conduct interviews in person.

In Boston, White interviewed a Haitian Diaspora teacher in the Boston Public School system who taught bilingual students that had moved to the U.S.

“[This project] opened my mind to the world of diaspora,” said White. “I think in the media, in development work, they get over-shadowed a lot. It’s international organizations who get the attention. In our interviews, we saw a lot of Haitians do a lot for their country. And that’s amazing to me.”

“It was also very inspiring,” added White (right), describing teachers that she and her teammates met. Many ready to take part in exchange programs, as well as vocational education and training programs, which the team recommended in their final report. 

“While some of our recommendations are vague, about strengthening the Haitian Diaspora in general,” explained White, “Some are very practical, and it’s just a matter of getting funding for them to be implemented. Those would make a big impact.”

-Michelle Chahine