Key issues guide on service delivery... (4)
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Dear Colleagues
I am glad that Wendy Holmes (WH) took the time to point out a
lot of the weaknesses in my earlier message regarding DFID/IDS/
Eldis and the business model that is being used to facilitate
socio-economic development.
WH wrote >>> Burgess complains that "most of the projects that
the donors want to fund are not even priority needs as seen by
local leadership and local experts." This is hardly a new obser-
vation.
and then goes on to describe what has been done to encourage
"community participation"
WH wrote <<< In recent decades there has been much development
of ideas and tools for participatory action - used not only by
communities in an ongoing process of development, with identifi-
cation of their own problems and solutions, but also for gather-
ing information for planning and evaluation.
WH misses however the key piece... there is identification of
problems and solutions... and there is gathering information for
planning... and for evaluation. BUT PLEASE where is the discus-
sion about RESOURCES and about implementation and about JOBS
that make development work.
People that work for DFID have jobs. People that work for the
World Bank, IMF and the UN have jobs. People that work in acade-
mia have jobs. People that do consulting have jobs. But the
process that calls itself development rarely does very much to
create paying jobs in the communities that ought to be benefit-
ing from development resource mobilization and relief and devel-
opment fund flows.
WH wrote <<< Burgess is quite wrong (and rather patronising) to
suggest that this is an arena simply for "academics from the
north". There are a myriad development workers, some of whom are
also academics, from low income countries that have led the
field in using participatory processes and building related the-
ory.
It is difficult to follow the money in the official relief and
development assistance (ORDA) arena. But it seems that a very
large amount of the resources labelled as funding development do
little of the sort. I observed this issue in the 1980s, and when
I was acting aid coordinator in an African country some 15 years
ago was disgusted at the proportion of the donors project dis-
bursements that circulated within the donor's economy without
every touching the beneficiary country. Over the years I have
asked a lot of "south" officials why they did not ask questions
and address this problem... and of course was told that if they
did that, there would be nothing rather than the crumbs that
they were actually getting. I was glad to hear NGOs in the UK
raising the issue of Phantom Aid, but as WH said in another con-
text, this is hardly new news.
I have the luxury of being old enough to talk about difficult
issues with relatively little fear of retaliation. There are
many around the world who would like to speak out but dare not.
Someone has to challenge the decision making in development, and
the processes being used, because from a "performance" perspec-
tive there is a very poor relationship between disbursements and
socio-economic progress at the grassroots. Looked at from an
academic perspective in Sussex or in Massachusetts there is a
big progress in the ways of thinking... but looked at from the
perspective of a women seeking water and firewood in the middle
of Africa there is no progress. Many people in remote and poor
villages have no idea that progress is possible, and I would say
that most of the academic work being done today (in the "north")
misses this by a mile... on the other hand there is a huge popu-
lation of reasonably well educated youth around the world that
has potential to make a difference, but the resources to mobi-
lize these people to work productively is hardly being discussed
at all.
I am sorry to sweep broadly and generalise... but this message
should be kept reasonably short. All of us who have anything to
do with relief and development in the past and indeed today
should be asking hard questions. Compared to what we should have
accomplished, we have done very little. Why has this happened is
one question. How has it happened is another question. My answer
in part is that resources have rarely been used to create value
adding in the beneficiary economy... and worse, much has been
done that has resulted in absolute value destruction. Not a
pretty picture.
IDS is an influential institution. I wrote my original message
because I could not easily find good material about transparency
and accountability, and performance measurement on the web-
site... some key issues in my view to help improve development
outcomes. I will willingly retract my criticism if someone can
point me in direction where this sort of good material is avail-
able.
Sincerely,
Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
Tel. +1-212-772-6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
With Kris Dev in Chennai India
and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com