NADEL Newsletter April 2020

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Dear NADEL friends and alumni

We have talked and taught for some time about the need for adaptive management in the fast changing environment of development cooperation. The new coronavirus made adaptive management everybody’s “new normal.” Two months into the novel modus operandi, it is impressive to see the energy that research, policy and practice have mobilized to confront COVID-19 and continue to work on other long-standing and still important global challenges. Also, NADEL is learning and working together from home. After having quickly moved most NADEL courses online, we now try to push the boundary to make virtual teaching more interactive and develop future courses with blended learning. We are currently conducting a survey to understand the effects of national lockdowns on poor urban households. In four blogposts, we ask how development research, cooperation and finance can adapt to help contain the coronavirus pandemic and to support the global poor who are likely to be hit hardest. And ETH4D has launched a special call for collaborative research projects that address communicable diseases in Africa – now and in the future.

Stay healthy, stay engaged

For the NADEL team,
Fritz Brugger and Isabel Günther

Contents

•	Teaching
•	Research
•	Blogs
•	ETH4D Special Call


The shift to remote learning
Exchange of experiences and very interactive face-to-face classroom learning is an essential part of NADEL’s courses. It was therefore with some anxiety that we organized our first 5-day remote block course two weeks after ETH closed its doors in March. “Teaching online has been a positive and important experience, allowing us to explore new opportunities for interaction and learning”, says Linn Borgen Nilsen, responsible for the course Climate Change and Development. “Most of our pedagogic principles still apply, and an engaged group of students helped to create a good learning atmosphere – despite sitting in different cantons (and even countries!).“ Online teaching program Spring Semester 2020


New research project: Mobile phone surveys in four African countries
While the coronavirus has disrupted all our lives, the drastic measures needed to slow the spread of the virus have been particularly burdensome to those living in poverty. For many, social distancing has led to loss of income, food insecurity and anxieties about an already uncertain future. The ETH Development Economics Group is conducting phone interviews in South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin to determine what poor individuals need most during the pandemic. Project webpage Impact of Social Distancing in Africa


Social distancing – an immediate threat to many
Staying at home, distance learning, home office – many African countries cannot easily copy rich countries’ responses to COVID-19. Social distancing immediately jeopardizes many poor people’s livelihoods, leaving them disproportionately affected by the global lockdown and further increasing global inequalities. In the ETH Zukunftsblog, Isabel Günther discusses the challenges and calls for international solidarity: "The coronavirus does not stop at national borders, nor should our action to confront it.” Read the Zukunftsblog in English or German

Conducting surveys in a pandemic

As the coronavirus spreads, data collection may prove essential for emergency response in low-income countries. But how can we collect data when countries lock down? With curfews and bans on group gatherings taking effect, the face-to-face surveys that have long been the main source of empirical information on individuals and households in many developing regions will likely be decommissioned until at least late summer. But data collection doesn't necessarily have to grind to a halt: Mobile phone surveys have been gaining traction as a reliable and low-cost alternative to personal interviews.

Read Bart Kudrzycki’s blog post

Lessons learned from COVID-19 for international cooperation

The considerations of Switzerland’s Strategy for International Cooperation 2021-2024 in the Foreign Policy Commission and in Parliament coincide precisely with the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an opportunity, says Fritz Brugger in an op-ed for the Swiss Society for Foreign Policy SGA-ASPE. In the current situation, the question comes up with new urgency: What is actually important when we think about development? Fritz Brugger identifies four key points: investing in health and education, promoting the rule of law, intensifying policy coherence, and reinforcing multilateralism.

Read Fritz Brugger’s op-ed (in German)

How to scale up multilateral development financing to face the COVID-19 crisis

Wealthy countries can spend trillions on stimulus packages to overcome the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis, but developing countries don’t have these means. The international aid packages already announced by the G20, World Bank and IMF are a good start, but not nearly enough. Research by the ETH Development Economics Group in collaboration with the Overseas Development Institute shows that the World Bank and regional multilateral banks could lend up to $750 billion more without threatening their stability.

Read the Briefing Paper


ETH4D Research Challenges: Special Call
ETH4D launches a Special Call for the ETH4D Research Challenges to help address current and future challenges related to infectious diseases in Africa. To quality, the projects must help to strengthen African countries’ preparedness to respond to an outbreak, address the prevention of an infectious disease, or help to mitigate the negative impacts of a pandemic on people’s health or livelihoods. A focus on the current coronavirus - COVID-19 crisis is encouraged but not required. 2 page proposals can be submitted until 17th of May. Learn more about the Special Call for the ETH4D Research Challenges

NADEL in the Social Media

Contact

NADEL - Center for Development and Cooperation
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8092 Zurich
Switzerland

+41 44 632 42 40

info@nadel.ethz.ch