Effective Management In International Development: What works and what Doesn’t
here is a shadow currently hanging over the field of international aid. Some writers who have attracted a great deal of attention claim that foreign aid has been a waste of money and has even done more harm than good. Dambisa Moyo (Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2009) claims that aid to Africa has only increased poverty, deepened dependence upon the West, and institutionalized corruption in government. A few years earlier, William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, Penguin Press, New York 2006) argued that a vast amount of money has been spent on foreign aid, especially in Africa, and that national growth rates have not increased as a result of the aid.
Other writers have furiously debated the arguments of Moyo and Easterly and have questioned the validity of their data and conclusions. Stephen Lewis (Race Against Time, Anansi Press 2005) draws our attention to real improvements in the lives of AIDS-stricken individuals, families and communities due to effective contributions, programs, attitudes and education. CBC journalist Brian Stewart says about Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, one of the world’s leading aid advocates, (Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Penguin Press, New York 2008):
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Sachs insists Moyo’s words will cost real lives. He’s launched a ferocious counterattack, claiming “the debate about foreign aid has become farcical”. The big opponents of aid today, says Sachs, are people like “Dambisa Moyo, an African-born economist who reportedly received scholarships so that she could go to Harvard and Oxford but sees nothing wrong with denying $10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net.”
Other than political ideologies, one reason for these differences of opinion is that the various commentators are talking about completely different types of international assistance, which embrace the following:
- Emergency response (no one disagrees with the value of this)
- Post-disaster reconstruction
- Development cooperation
- Mitigation of human and financial loss
- Finance, such as large loans from multilateral institutions
- Trade liberalization
- Debt relief
- Military intervention
Lewis and Sachs are concentrating on development cooperation, whereas Moyo and Easterly are focussing on finance, specifically negligible national economic growth rates in spite of infusions of assistance such as loans from the World Bank.
Paul Collier (The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Oxford University Press 2007) takes a more analytical approach to the situations that retard economic growth. He identifies the four “development traps” described below and prescribes solutions quite different from the traditional approaches to aid (including, for example, armed intervention).
Ian Smillie (Freedom from Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global Grassroots Organization That’s Winning the Fight Against Poverty, Kumarian Press 2009) presents a striking example of how indigenous non-governmental organizations can be highly effective in the struggle against poverty and hunger.
Let’s scrutinize the above list of eight types of international assistance. A great many citizens in industrialized countries would like to do their bit to make a sustainable improvement in the quality of life, especially for those in the world most in need. Sadly, they may think it is futile to try to do so when they read the arguments of Moyo and Easterly. This paper distinguishes between the problems that these authors raise concerning a developing country’s finances and debt – which cannot be solved by ordinary citizens, but only by national and multinational organizations (the fifth item in the list of eight above) – and the difficulties that daily torment individuals, families, and communities. This latter work is the focus of international development cooperation (the third item in the list above) and it can be very successful indeed, especially when initiated and managed by motivated “ordinary” citizens. This paper presents best practices – what works and doesn’t work – in the management of international development cooperation.
Development cooperation
One of the greatest pleasures obtained from working in international development is watching highly effective managers, Westerners as well as our partners in other countries, as they repeatedly make good things happen. These individuals are quite a diverse lot. They could be academics or students, they might belong to international or indigenous NGOs, they may work for associations of educational institutions, they might be businesspersons or consultants, they may be community leaders or trainers in developing countries, they can be found working for government or bilateral or multilateral agencies at home and abroad or they could be enthusiastic volunteers meeting around a kitchen table.
Although many of the individuals who do international work are very good at the business of managing development activities, there are too many—unfortunately—who are less effective, resulting in an abuse of scarce resources and in disillusionment and resentment on the part of their partners.
Readers of the Ivey Business Journal who have spent time in development will have no trouble listing approaches that don’t work. The main ones are:
- Taking a single-solution approach to development (following the fashions of the moment, like microfinance) rather than a comprehensive approach
- Not fully understanding the impediments to achieving desired development results caused by corruption, cultural attitudes, ethnic tensions, religion, or lack of human and physical infrastructure
- Talking rather than listening
- Failing to fully appreciate the needs, aspirations, experience and capabilities of our partners overseas
- Transferring irrelevant information and inappropriate technologies, and
- Expecting that Western entrepreneurs and investors will use their money to provide developing countries with what they most need.
It is useful, therefore, to identify the approaches and methodologies that do work and to identify a set of best practices for the effective management of international development cooperation.
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