File

Problems with international
development
Firoze Manji
Director, Fahamu (www.fahamu.org)
Editor, Pambazuka News
(www.pambazuka.org)
History makes poverty
How can we make poverty history if we
donʼt interrogate the history of poverty?
How would developmentalists have
responded in time of slavery?
Made slavery more tolerable?
Developed slavery reduction strategies?
Supported slave rebellions?
Problems of development
Development as means for increasing
self determination vs
International development or
ʻdevelopmentalismʼ
Citizen action or
Market fundamentalism
Development for and by the people
vs
Market and private capital as the engine of
development
Track record of development
1960: Income of top 20% was 30 times that of
bottom 20%; by 1997 it was 74 times more
By late 1990s, 20% of world population had 86%
of world GDP; bottom 20% had 1%
1 million massacred in genocide on eve of 50th
Anniversary UNDHR
Millions killed in DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia
Collapse of Somalia, etc etc
Track record of development
“The assets of the top 3 billionaires are
more than the combined GNP of all
least developed countries and their 600
million people” (UNDP 1999)
200 richest people worth >US$ 1 trillion
Interest on debt of 41 HIPCs = $ 1.1 billion
1 billion people below UNDP poverty index
Track record of development
Total resource flows to developing
countries between 1982-1990 was
$927 billion.
In the same period, developing
countries remitted $1,345 billion in
debt servicing alone. i.e. the
difference in favour of the West was
$418 billion.
Who gets the big stuff?
According to UN Millenium Development
Campaign:
Since 1950s $2 trillion in aid to developing
countries
In the last 12 months, $18 trillion public
funds to banks and international finance
institutions
Reverse aid flows
According to Charles Abugre et al (Christian Aid):
developing countries became net capital providers
to rich countries, and not the other way round as
theory predicts. Cumulatively, this amounted to
$2,577bn in the period 2002 - 2007. Add to this, the
volume of capital flight, especially illicit capital
flight from developing countries (estimated annually
between $150bn - $250bn), and the scale of reverse
aid is staggering.
Compare with Marshall Plan
To understand the scale of what the
Marshall Plan transferred to Europe
the equivalent of $70 billion in
today’s prices.
Thus between 2002 and 2007,
developing countries gave the rich
countries nearly 37 Marshal Plan
equivalents.
Post 2WW anti-colonial upsurge
Rise of multitude of popular movements
Organising around basic rights:
 shelter, land, education, health
 freedom of association, speech,
movement
 freedom from abuse
 self determination
Impact on Europe
Rise of Nationalist movement
Only by joining the struggle for political
independence will you gain those
freedoms and rights
Emergence of mass movements
Enter the USA
Marshall plan - bailing out of Europe in
exchange for access to its colonies
But colonies facing crisis with mass
upsurge and threat of radicalisation
If not curbed, could fall under spheres of
influence of the ʻred menaceʼ
If not curbed, return of investments would
be poor
Dual strategy: carrot and stick
Coups dʼetat, support for military regimes,
assassinations, economic isolation,
destablization, military interventions (albeit by
proxy), and support for repressive regimes
including apartheid, etc
Inducement of ʻmodernisationʼ, financial
inducements for ʻdevelopmentʼ as the ʻuniversal
universal goalʼ
Financing emergence of compliant comprador
class with vested material interests that
coincided with corporate interests
Establishment of
‘independence’
Nationalist governments established
Protected corporate and interests of
international capital
Established social contract with mass
movement to provide universal access
to eduction, health etc
ʻAidʼ provided to finance these ventures
Single party supported
…independence
State as “sole developer” and “unifier of nation”
Civil & political rights declared luxury
Emancipation agenda replaced by “development”
agenda
Popular organisations disbanded
Political associations banned or repressed
Development by experts
Poverty v Rights, Charity v emancipation
Basic needs v basic rights
Post-independence
achievements
Universal access to health and education
in response to popular demand
Life expectancy:
 1960: 38 years
 1978: 47 years
Yet GNP increased only from $222 to
$280
The (oil) glut crisis
1970s oil crisis
Glut of capital
Downturn in world economy
Development = buy on the “never-never”
The debt crisis
Emergence of bio/micro-technological
revolution - new avenues for capital
Rising interest rates
Yesterdayʼs cheap mortgages become
todayʼs liabilities
Enter Structural Adjustment
Initial justification: allegedly to ensure
ability of countries to repay debt
Ideological framework: only freedom of
capitalists to amass wealth in the market
place will guarantee development; the
State, by definition deemed “inefficient”
and “ineffective”
Contents of SAPs
Social expenditure redirected from public
to private sector
Economic policies to cause decline in real
incomes and increase profits
“Liberalisation” of trade, no tariff barriers;
no subsidies for national production
“We can’t tighten our belts we ate them yesterday”
Growth in gap between rich and poor
Distinction between social organisation for
criminal, economic or political purposes
blurred
Collapse of indigenous industry in face of
international competition
Growth in repressive nature of state to
deal with social opposition
SAPs and Social Policy
State discouraged from social provisions
Education, health, social welfare no longer right
but “commodity”
Neither citizen nor subject, but “consumer” - the
poor consequently disenfranchised
SAPs “with a human face”: money for NGOs, the
new subcontractor, to provide services to the
poor as charity not right
New character of
“development”
Competition for who gets most access to
wealth
Development = improving infrastructure for
exploitation and private accumulation
State = primary source of accumulation the “honey pot”
Mechanism oiled by patronage, favour,
corruption
Consequences of SAPs
Dissatisfaction and disenchantment with
ruling party
Loss of credibility of state and government
Development aid and projects used as
means of buying favour with “ethnic”
groups
Playing the “ethnic card
Consequences of SAPs
Post colonial period led to major
demobilisation of popular movement
SAPs exacerbated demobilisation
Fragmentation of society
From SAPs to conflict
If development has become about who
gets access to what, then civil war is but
a continuation of that process, albeit by
more destructive means
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Somalia,
Sudan, Burundi, Congo, Kenya and …
Conflict is big business
Increasing number of conflicts lead to
greater opportunities for NGOs to reap
income from humanitarian aid
Once again, seemingly neutral in conflict
with no understanding of politics of
situation
The new development
discourse
From citizen to consumer
But those who have no capacity to
consume become effectively
disenfranchised
Victim is the problem, not those who
cause impoverishment
The new discourse
Bringing ʻdemocracyʼ to the rest of the world, even
if it means through the amassed fire power and
weapons of mass destruction wielded by the
USA and Britain and invasion as in Iraq
Democracy / good governance= rest of the world
needs to be rebuilt in the Westʼs own image.
Once again the old resonance of imperial
arguments that the role of the West to bring
civilisation (democracy) to the South
Globalisation
Open markets, non-discrimination (against
international capital), and global
competition in international trade are
conducive to national welfare
Social policies best served through
enhancement of economic liberalisation
Social policy can be made so long as it
does not interfere with private
accumulation
Consequences of globalisation
Increased inequality between and within
countries
Greater impoverishment
Increased vulnerability
Globalisation of criminal activities
Exclusion of vast sections of humanity
Impact on national policy
Influenced by speculative flows of capital
Taxation capabilities undermined
Curtailment of local industrialisation
Lack of accountability of multinational
investments
Competition to lower the social cost of
reproduction of labour power
Selling off of national assets
Market sacrifices respect for
justice
When the market goes too far in dominating social
and political outcomes, the opportunities and
rewards of globalisation spread unequally and
inequitably – concentrating power and wealth in
a select group of people, nations and
corporations, marginalizing the others. … When
the profit motives of market players get out of
hand, they challenge people’s ethics – and
sacrifice respect for justice and human rights.”
UNDP 1999
Problems of NGOs
NGOs have become an increasingly
bigger player in development
Market and voluntarism
Long association
First period of ʻfree tradeʼ of 1840 to 1930
also high point of charitable activity in
Britain and the colonies
Not surprising that it has grown again in
neoliberalist period since 1980s
Social policy in colonial period
Designed to preserve integrity of colonial
state and settlers
Prevent spread of epidemics into colonial
society
Missionaries: “human face” of colonisation
in form of charity
Welfare vs control
Charity combined with evangelising,
discouraging what missionaries
conceived of as “ignorance, idleness
and moral degeneracy”
Promoting the white vision of the world,
the whites bringing religion to ungodly
natives
Controlling the mental universe
“Colonialism imposed its control of the social
production of wealth through military conquest
and subsequent political dictatorship. But its
most important area of domination was the
mental universe of the colonised, the control,
through culture, of how people perceived
themselves and their relationship to the world.
Economic and political control can never be
complete or effective without mental control.
To control a people's culture is to control
their tools of self-definition in relationship
to others” Ngugi wa Thiongʼo
Colusion in repression
Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Kenya
Womenʼs Association) and Christian
Council of Kenya both involved in
interrogation of internees in
concentration camps, and helped set up
ʻrehabilitation campsʼ against Mau Mau
Welfare as social control
Welfare successful because seen as ʻapoliticalʼ
Dealt not with causes of impoverishment but with
ʻfailing of nativesʼ
Problem not injustice but one of the ʻnative
conditionʼ
Making colonial condition more palatable
(cf ʻhuman face of structural adjustment)
Staving off discontent
In short, charity was not only designed to
help the poor, it also served to protect
the rich
Two distinct groups
Former missionary
societies like MYO
and CCK (from which
Christian Aid
emerged)
The ʻwar charitiesʼ
Oxfam, SCF, Plan
International - no
previous experience in
colonies, working in
Europe
Two distinct groups
Former missionary
societies
Indigenised, replaced
white staff and clergy
with local nationals the new indigenous
NGOs
The ʻwar charitiesʼ
Marshall Plan brought end
to their role in Europe.
What to do?
Close?
Or join the new
ʻdevelopmentʼ industry
New discourse
Not ʻnativeʼ but ʻnationalʼ
Not ʻuncivilisedʼ but ʻunderdevelopedʼ
Dominant discourse framed not in language of
emancipation, but with vocabulary of charity,
technical expertise, neutrality, and a deep
paternalism (albeit with rhetoric of participatory)
that was its syntax.
Discourse on development served to
undermine social mobilisation and
subverting popular aspirations for
radical change, and to limit the spread
of communist ideology.
Development no longer about selfdetermination but about modernisation to become more like the North
Western definitions of
developing world
�ʻDeveloping worldʼ and its inhabitants were (and
still are) described only in terms of what they
are not.
• They are chaotic not ordered
• Traditional not modern
• Corrupt not honest
• Underdeveloped not developed
• Irrational not rational
• Lacking in all of those things the West
presumes itself to be
Development machine
Now prominent part of development
machine:
“A vast institutional and disciplinary
nexus of official agencies, practitioners,
consultants, scholars and other
miscellaneous experts producing and
consuming knowledge about
ʻdevelopmentʼ.”
Boom time for NGOs
Retrenching state left space for NGOs as
service provider
In wake of protests against impact of
SAPs, massive funding available for
NGOs for ʻsocial dimensions of
adjustimentʼ
Boom time
Exponential growth of NGOs - number of NGOs in
Kenya increased 300% between 1978 and
1988
In 1992, about 15% of all aid transfers to
developing countries distributed through NGOs
1970s: <2% of NGO funding came from official
donors
1990s: >30%
There are more expatriates in Kenya today than at
any time under colonialism
Conflict is big business
Increasing number of conflicts lead to
greater opportunities for NGOs to reap
income from humanitarian aid
Once again, seemingly neutral in conflict
with no understanding of politics of
situation
Role of NGOs
Collusion in colonial rule
Pivotal role in modernisation post independence
Pivotal role in depoliticisation of poverty
Disinclination to challenge social relations that
reproduce poverty, inequality and repression
Chumming up to state to protect own projects
Substituting for the state, making SAPs more
palatable
Vested interest in conflict
Have NGOs developed long term vested
interest in reproduction of neo-colonial
social relations because they will
“… do better the less stable the world
becomes … [because] finance will
become increasingly available to
agencies who can deliver ʻstabilisingʼ
social services” (Fowler, 1997)?
Role of NGOs
The role NGOs have played in expanding and
consolidating neo-liberal hegemony in the
global context may have been unwitting.
It may not have been as direct or as underhand as
some of the activities willingly taken up by
colonial missionary societies and voluntary
organisations.
But that is not to say it is any less significant.
Indeed, one could argue that it has actually
been far more effective.
NGOs the ‘Non-…’
Non governmental
Non political
Non partisan
Non ideological
Non academic
Non theoretical
Non profit
Non class based interests
NGOs not homogeneous
Political activists who view their work as
political
Well intentioned leaders who are morally
motivated to ʻdo goodʼ
Former government bureaucrats who see
opportunities
Donor fuelled organisations
Advocacy organisations - genunine and
fashion driven
Emancipation or Poverty
Tendency to focus only on poverty. But
this is a moral appeal such as “make
poverty historyʼ without concurrently
addressing the need for making looting
history. i.e. It doesnʼt challenge
economic or political power. A fight
against poverty that is also not a fight
against those who create it and benefit
from it, is doomed to failure
What would developmentwallahs have done under
slavery?
Alleviation or abolition?
Siding with political struggles or
depoliticising oppression?
Choice
Thank you