John Wilson*
The so-called development sector is now a huge industry and it needs a huge overhaul. Much of what it does is redundant in my opinion, an opinion that has come out of twenty years of experience working in one way or another in this sector. I definitely don’t take pride in calling myself a development practitioner. Why do I say that it needs a complete overhaul?
Firstly it’s in a muddle. Many development sector organisations, often called NGOs, are not at all clear about what they are doing. They hide behind this all-embracing word “development” and do anything and everything.
As I move around to different countries I see all kinds of organisations doing all kinds of things in the name of development. One organisation will provide training, will have a credit scheme, will jump into relief if the situation calls for it, will be a donor to the communities they are working with and, in more recent times, will become involved in advocacy work because many organisations have recognised the need to change/influence policies.
How does one organisation become effective in all these areas? The answer is that they don’t and what we end up with is failed credit schemes, poor and shoddy training programmes and muddled communities not knowing what the organisation is really about, lending them money one day and giving training the next. If we are to move towards sustainable development then this situation needs sorting out. Organisations need to be clear about what they are doing and provide an excellent service to communities and keep learning so as to continually improve their service.
If an organisation’s area of expertise is adult education then it should focus on this. This is a huge task in itself and absolutely critical to sustainable development in
If an organisation’s expertise lies in the provision of credit then they must stick to this focus. This is another critical area and one that needs lots of attention. The Grameen Bank which has done just this is a lesson to us all. It has learnt over the years how to lend money effectively to poor people.
If an organisation specialises in organisational development then let them stick to that and do the work to understand the way organisations at all levels function and how they can help organisations grow. This in itself is another huge area.
Let donors be donors and let relief organisations stick to relief. Imagine yourselves as a community and one minute an organisation is a donor to your community, the next they are involved in relief and the next they are training. What would you make of them? How would you perceive them? Quite apart from the problems of the organisation itself not knowing who or what it is.
In essence there needs to be a division of labour in the development sector so as to improve the quality of service that organisations are providing. Where NGOs and other service providers for communities are clear about what they are doing they will do this better and then let communities do their own development rather than trying to do it for communities, which is all too often the case. I wish NGOs would stop being development organisations and start being something.
For too long now, in the name of development, we have been jack of all trades and as a result have been giving communities a shoddy service. It probably all goes back to the way in which the notion of development came about, the idea that the North would bring development to the under-developed South. International NGOs, under a charitable umbrella, came and did everything to try and develop communities. Big international NGOs are still doing this and much of local civil society has followed in their footsteps. The introduction of “participatory approaches”, which at first seemed something positive, has turned out to be negative because it has gone a further step in strengthening the notion that outsiders can come in and "do development" in communities. The only difference now is that this is “participatory.”
Another major problem in the development sector is the way in which funding happens. In most cases it is not developmental. There is no doubt that there is a need for a lot of financing. Widespread adult education to stimulate learning is in itself a huge undertaking and a very necessary one, for example. But we need a different kind of financing than what is currently happening. Most funding today is for short-term projects and is tied to a planning approach that tries to predict the unpredictable.
Most donors these days require a planning process that turns organisations into delivery agents rather than innovative and flexible partners. Sustainability is about being flexible and being able to creatively respond to a changing situation. Funding today does not enable this. It stifles innovation rather than encouraging it. It focuses on projects rather than processes. It is about impact rather than sustainability. It is time that donors paid more attention to learning from their experience in order to improve the practice of being a donor.
Another area where the development sector needs overhauling is to do with international NGOs. Apart from their practice which is often suspect (such as paying farmers to attend training workshops – something I all too often come across), and their lack of clarity as alluded to above, their continued presence in a country does not enable the development of a strong local civil society at all levels. It is time that they ceased to implement on the ground and instead focused on fundraising and being a donor for local civil society. Care International has started to set an example to the other big international NGOs by doing this. If only the others like World Vision, Concern and Plan International would follow suit. Where they are continuing to implement on the ground they are hindering the development of local civil society.
*John Wilson is based in Zimbabwe and works with communities across Africa in permaculture. This article was part of his wider-ranging presentation to the International Permaculture Conference in Brazil in May 2007.
