Editorial (20.3)

If only for their own organisational reasons, aid agencies tend to divide the world into large regions, a practice which encourages unhelpful generalisations and limits their ability to perceive gradual and sometimes significant changes. Policy and practice can be slow to catch up with slow-moving trends - for instance, the fact that although sub-Saharan Africa may be predominantly rural, it is nevertheless home to 10 per cent of the world's urban population. Or that Latin America was 'returning' to democratic rule, when many countries in the region had never really experienced it. Shorthand representations can tend to reduce a region to single issues, such as international debt, or conflict, or HIV and AIDS, or corruption, almost to the exclusion of a wider picture. This matters, given that the way in which a region is depicted will shape aid priorities. Clearly these depictions are themselves influenced by history - one will search in vain for articles in the British press about francophone Africa - but they also depend heavily on the most influential brokers. Adebayo Olukoshi illustrates the ways in which African intellectual production is rendered invisible in all the major reports of all the United Nations specialised agencies, and not merely those of the World Bank - which has re-cast itself as a Knowledge Bank. He points out that African perspectives are absent not only from the agencies' global reports, but even from those that are focused on sub-Saharan Africa. The fact that this 'knowledge' is at best imperfect and at worst based on a Northern ideological narrative does little to tarnish its veneer of authority.1

It is with these caveats in mind, then, that this issue of Development in Practice presents articles from and about sub-Saharan Africa. Two of the contributions stand out, however, in revealing the limitations of geographical boundaries as defining shared interests. Nana Akua Anyidoho highlights the fact that if 'participation' is to have any real meaning, participants must be able to determine their own communities and connections in exercising agency; this is fundamentally different from being mobilised to join in X or Y pre-determined development project. Coming from a different perspective, Niamh Gaynor compares the PRSP process in Malawi with the Social Policy process in Ireland to argue not only that the similarities are important, but that drawing such trans-boundary connections may make 'another globalisation' possible, as the World Social Forum would express it. Mary Ssonko Nabacwa examines the various ways in which governments can silence inconvenient sources of knowledge, without needing to resort to heavy-handed tactics. With reference to NGO advocacy on gender-equity issues in Uganda, she illustrates the many ways in which NGOs can be tamed and may indeed comply with this process. Sally Reith, also focusing on Uganda, shows how the work of a small NGO can be distorted by Northern donors, who seldom hesitate to use their greater financial power as a Trojan Horse to impose their own agendas on their local 'partners'. In her article on efforts to combine current thinking about 'the learning organisation' with participatory practices in the field of rural development, Sarah Parkinson recounts the experience of the Ugandan National Agricultural Advisory Service. She concludes that when the two approaches complement each other effectively, some progress can be made towards placing the intended beneficiaries in the driving seat of development.

In the context of Malawi, Pierson R. T. Ntata considers cash transfers via cash-for-work public-works programmes as a means of addressing hunger, arguing that it is the inability to purchase food, rather than food shortages as such, that is the underlying cause of the problem. Stephen Devereux and Katharine Vincent also focus on the issue of social protection via cash transfers in Malawi, reporting on pilot projects using technology such as smart cards, mobile (cell) phones, mobile ATMs, GPS devices, and biometrics as a relatively low-cost and secure means to reach dispersed or mobile populations.

Another cluster of articles examines issues relating to ecology. Frik de Beer describes a medicinal-plant conservation project in South Africa which aimed to combine conservation with support for traditional healers as well as protection for national parkland. In practice the efforts to link sustainable livelihoods, community development, and conservation proved more complicated than expected. Thomas K. Erdmann presents a comparable attempt in Madagascar to protect biodiversity conservation, but in this case with too little attention paid initially to the needs of the local population to earn a living from agriculture and forest products. Mbne Diye Faye, John C. Weber, Bayo Mounkoro, and Joseph-Marie Dakouo report on a study of the use of parkland trees planted to ensure household security in Mali, and to earn some revenue from selling agroforestry produce, particularly during the 'hunger period' when grain stores are depleted and farmers await the next harvest. Paul Van Mele, Jonas Wanvoeke, and Esprance Zossou describe the impact of a series of videos produced by the African Rice Centre (WARDA), translated into 30 African languages and given open-air showings throughout the continent. These videos have not only been informative, but have unleashed farmers' creative potential and willingness to experiment, as well as encouraging greater participation by women and younger people.

Noam Schimmel argues that international aid agencies have largely failed the survivors of genocide in Rwanda, many of whom remain traumatised and impoverished. He calls for assistance focused specifically on these populations, combined with more deliberate attention to their particular needs in mainstream projects. Paul W. K. Yankson reports on the extensive damage done by gold mining to local Ghanaian communities, who are barely compensated by the limited employment opportunities that the industry generates. Though welcome, the attempts at community development now being initiated as an expression of corporate social responsibility predictably leave something to be desired.

References

1. Bretton Woods Project (2007) Knowledge Bank-rupted: Evaluation says key World Bank research “not remotely reliable”. — available at http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-549070 (retrieved 22 December 2009)
2. UNRISD (2004) Social Knowledge and International Policy Making: Exploring the Linkages. Report of the UNRISD Conference Geneva
Notes

'… although Africa has always been central to the work of the UN, the organization has tended to serve as a conveyor belt for ideas and perspectives from outside. There has also been serious underrepresentation and sometimes even complete absence of African researchers set up by the UN system. Only very limited use is made of African research, as illustrated in the UN flagship publications, in which an average of only 2 per cent of citations are to such literature. Most are to the UN's own literature, an incestuous dependence that gives only the illusion of debate. African scholars who are involved in the formulation of policy proposals are generally relegated to gathering data and producing case studies; within the division of intellectual labour, their work features in the textboxes while the theoretical frameworks and analysis come from institutions in the North. Furthermore, most input by African scholars is limited to matters concerning Africa, thus consigning their work to a ghetto while also failing to capitalize on the potential for comparative insights'. (UNRISD 2004: 11)