NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa: Transdisciplinary Perspectives 9781800731110

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa
Introduction: The Lifeworlds and Trajectories of NGOs in Africa
Chapter 1 An Association for Emerging Technologies and the Bases of Its Longevity: The Example of Yam Pukri in Burkina Faso
Chapter 2 ‘I Will Not Tell Anyone until You Have Left’: The Ending of a Development Relationship Remembered
Chapter 3 Becoming an Expert and Negotiating Development A Development: Studies Programme in Germany
Chapter 4 Alternatives to Consultancy and NGOing: Developing Anthropological Team Research in West Africa
Part II Politics and Donors
Chapter 5 Career Trajectories of Tanzanian Aid Workers: Structural Inequalities and New Management Practices in Public Foreign Aid
Chapter 6 The Contribution of National NGOs to Development in Burkina Faso: Review and Prospects
Chapter 7 Artisanal Mining – A Necessary Evil: Narratives Legitimating Large-Scale Mining as a Pathway to Development
Chapter 8 The Price of Getting Donor Money: Gift Exchange in Aid Relations and the Depoliticization of NGOs
Part III Memories and History
Chapter 9 Negotiating Tightropes: A Historical Appraisal of NGOs and Their Adaptability in Nigeria’s Changing Political Space
Chapter 10 From Development State to Non-state Development: Counterpart Careers, West German Aid and Asymmetrical Interdependence in Late Socialist Tanzania
Chapter 11 Civil Society and the Challenge of Consolidating Democracy in Togo
Chapter 12 The Custodians of Development Memory in Morocco: When Development Projects Create New Forms of Leadership for Policymaking
Chapter 13 On the Advantages of ‘Intentional Amnesia’ Some Preliminary Notes on a Cultural History of NGOs in Burkina Faso
Afterword: Ad Hoc NGOs, Structural Failure and the Politics of Silence: Stories about Development from a Village in Togo
Index

Citation preview

NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa

NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa Transdisciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kalfelis, Melina C., editor. | Knodel, Kathrin, editor. Title: NGOs and lifeworlds in Africa : transdisciplinary perspectives /  edited by Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020051928 (print) | LCCN 2020051929 (ebook) | ISBN  9781800731103 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800731110 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Non-governmental organizations--Africa. | Non-governmental  organizations--Social aspects--Africa. | Economic  development--Africa--International cooperation. Classification: LCC JZ4839 .N46 2021 (print) | LCC JZ4839 (ebook) | DDC  361.77096--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051928 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051929 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-110-3 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-111-0 ebook

Contents

List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgements x Foreword. NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa Aram Ziai Introduction. The Lifeworlds and Trajectories of NGOs in Africa Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel

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Part I. Engagements and Encounters Chapter 1. An Association for Emerging Technologies and the Bases of Its Longevity: The Example of Yam Pukri in Burkina Faso Sylvestre Ouédraogo

41

Chapter 2. ‘I Will Not Tell Anyone until You Have Left’: The Ending of a Development Relationship Remembered Karen Lauterbach

57

Chapter 3. Becoming an Expert and Negotiating Development: A Development Studies Programme in Germany Ulrike Schultz

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vi

 On Opportunities Chapter 4. Alternatives to Consultancy and NGOing: Developing Anthropological Team Research in West Africa Sten Hagberg

Contents

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Part II. Politics and Donors Chapter 5. Career Trajectories of Tanzanian Aid Workers: Structural Inequalities and New Management Practices in Public Foreign Aid Molly Sundberg

115

Chapter 6. The Contribution of National NGOs to Development in Burkina Faso: Review and Prospects Alain J. Sissao

136

Chapter 7. Artisanal Mining – A Necessary Evil: Narratives Legitimating Large-Scale Mining as a Pathway to Development Bettina Engels

153

 On Reciprocity (beyond Africa) Chapter 8. The Price of Getting Donor Money: Gift Exchange in Aid Relations and the Depoliticization of NGOs 172 Beata Paragi Part III. Memories and History Chapter 9. Negotiating Tightropes: A Historical Appraisal of NGOs and Their Adaptability in Nigeria’s Changing Political Space 203 Abimbola O. Adesoji Chapter 10. From Development State to Non-state Development: Counterpart Careers, West German Aid and Asymmetrical Interdependence in Late Socialist Tanzania Eric Burton Chapter 11. Civil Society and the Challenge of Consolidating Democracy in Togo Kokou Folly Lolowou Hetcheli

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Contents

Chapter 12. The Custodians of Development Memory in Morocco: When Development Projects Create New Forms of Leadership for Policymaking Matthieu Brun  On Institutions Chapter 13. On the Advantages of ‘Intentional Amnesia’: Some Preliminary Notes on a Cultural History of NGOs in Burkina Faso Hans P. Hahn

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Afterword. Ad Hoc NGOs, Structural Failure and the Politics of Silence: Stories about Development from a Village in Togo Hubertus Büschel

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Index

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Illustrations

Figures 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4 7.1.

The team of Yam Pukri, 2016. Training organized by Yam Pukri, 2017. Handing over of training certificates, 2016. Working room at Yam Pukri, 2016. Advertising banner ‘Bissa Gold, a partner for development in Burkina Faso’, 2017. 13.1. The surroundings of the villages in southern Burkina Faso are mainly being utilized for agriculture. However, soil degradation and land conflict contribute to persistent difficulties with field cultivation, 2003. 13.2. The market of Guelwongo is a popular trading centre on the border of Burkina Faso and Ghana, where daily encounters of small-scale economies (stalls with thatched roofs) and the international cereal market (trucks cart away the purchased cereals) can be observed, 2003.

45 45 46 46 161

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Maps 11.1. Administrative regions of Togo. 12.1. Map of the three communes in Morocco.

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Tables 6.1. Budgets allocated by NGOs during the last ten years in Burkina Faso. 6.2. Distribution of financing by source (in billions in FCFA, in millions in EUR) in 2014. 6.3. NGOs investment by region (in billions in FCFA, in millions in EUR) in 2014.

143 144 147

Acknowledgements

The editors are grateful to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their financial support for our research project in the Collaborative Research Centre 1095, ‘Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes’, at the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. Apart from the research project, the DFG funded different conference visits and our field trips to Burkina Faso, Sweden and Switzerland. Without this support, we would not have been able to compile the necessary intellectual resources to publish this book. It was in the course of the many stimulating exchanges and discussions with colleagues and interlocutors that this new approach to studying NGOs in lifeworlds and the lifeworlds of NGOs was conceived. For assistance in preparing several project-related events in Frankfurt, we would like to thank Mi Anh Duong, Johannes Skiba and Theresa Wiehr. We are indebted to Hans Peter Hahn, who was not only the head of our research project but has also accompanied the publication of this volume from its very beginning and has always been prepared to assist us with his advice. We also acknowledge all the reviewers, whether or not anonymous, who took the time to give us their comments and encouragement, which significantly improved the quality of the volume. We are very grateful to Maura Kratz for French–English translations and Robert Parkin for careful language editing. Without their help, we would not have been able to make all contributions read clearly, or give our francophone colleagues the opportunity to share their substantial insights about NGO work in Africa. For assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication, we sincerely thank Tom Bonnington and Marion Berghahn for their patience and trust.

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Finally, we want to express our thanks to our colleagues and research partners who have contributed to our transdisciplinary discussions about the lifeworld concept as an entry point to studying NGOs in Africa. Special thanks go to Victoria Bernal, Frank Bliss, Amado Kaboré, Gudrun Lachenmann, Ezaï Nana, Dieter Neubert, Roger Norum, Joël N. Ouédraogo, Sandrine Rosenberger, Franka Schäfer, Volker Stamm and Dieudonné Zaongo. All these exchanges have brought us a long way in the process of preparing the volume and, particularly, writing the introduction.

Foreword

NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa Aram Ziai

‘We mustn’t lose sight of what is important here!’ ‘Saving Africa?’ ‘What is important here is ensuring that Aid for Aid is an effective aid organization – and beating those guys from Hungry Leaf … we have to crush them!’ —The Samaritans

The Samaritans, a Kenyan comedy series about a development aid organization, gives us a cynical, satirical and stereotypical picture of the NGO world in Africa. It is an NGO that mainly busies itself ensuring its own survival but has little ambition to achieve any other goals, and whose daily business seems to consist of producing impressive-sounding public relations bubbles consisting of the latest buzzwords to conceal the fact. Moreover, its country director was appointed by head office on the basis of his skin colour and his MBA from Harvard University and certainly not his specific knowledge of the country or his general competence. The series exaggerates grossly yet sometimes reflects a context in which NGOs are not noble knights in shining armour but instruments to secure access to resources, and it also reflects academic debates about the ‘aid industry’, ‘development brokers’ and the ‘NGO scramble’ in the competition for scarce funding. The contributions edited by Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel in this volume seem to me to be very valuable in this context, for three reasons. One is that the general approach focusing on lifeworlds emphasizes the perspective and agency of NGO actors working in and coming from Africa. This provides a healthy antidote to objectivist and structuralist approaches, which leave little room for considerations of perspective and agency. Such

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approaches have been legitimately criticized in the debates over the crisis or impasse in development theory. Conversely the views and actions of African actors occupy centre stage in these contributions, for good or ill. This also means that – and this is my second reason – that the volume does not romanticize these actors but takes into account certain ambivalences: African NGOs are not only portrayed as useful career options for actors, with their promise of upward social mobility but as being subordinated to the whims and hierarchies of the international development business, instruments implementing the bureaucratic requirements of New Public Management all over the world. They also appear as providers of valuable public services that states are unable or unwilling to deliver and as independent grassroots knowledge-producers offering counter-hegemonic perspectives, as well as being, conversely, part of a neoliberal transformation of state–society relations with declining democratic accountability, and self-interested actors selling ‘local knowledge’ to donors and even producing narratives that are detrimental to marginalized sectors of their populations. The multiple faces and roles of NGOs in different African contexts are neither simplified nor homogenized. A third reason is that the volume adopts a critical perspective, one that is informed by post-development, postcolonial and decolonial approaches. This is manifest not only in the historical perspective, which highlights continuities in structures and mentalities between colonialism and the post­ colonial era, but also in awareness of the multiple meanings of the ‘amoeba concept’ (Adesoji, this volume) of ‘development’. Nevertheless, ‘rejecting development would be like becoming a heretic in the Middle Ages’ (Hahn, this volume), as one of the contributions argues. This is the case because discursively the association of a host of social and economic problems with the signifier ‘under-­development’ and their remedies with the signifier ‘development’ makes any such rejection of ‘development’ appear indifferent to both the problems and the remedies, a stance that is often deemed morally unacceptable. On the material level, rejecting ‘development’ would deprive actors of income-earning and career opportunities. Thus, for the actors involved, there are good reasons to keep reproducing the concept besides Eurocentrism and depoliticization, although both may be fuelled as a side effect. The volume thus skilfully manages to present us with transdisciplinary research on NGOs in a number of African countries, shedding light on the discourse and apparatus of ‘development’ and the possibilities and limitations it provides to African NGO actors in different contexts and circumstances. May it inspire academic debate and help prevent scenarios like those depicted in The Samaritans from becoming real. Tehran, December 2019

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Aram Ziai has studied sociology, English literature and history at the universities of Aachen and Dublin. He got his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hamburg and his habilitation from the University of Kassel in the same subject. He has taught at the universities of Aachen, Hamburg, Bonn, Vienna, Amsterdam, Accra and Tehran and is currently professor of development and postcolonial studies at the University of Kassel. He is also executive director of the Exceed Centre Global Partnership Network. Latest books: Development Discourse and Global History: From Colonialism to the Sustainable Development Goals (Routledge, 2017), and The Development Dictionary @25: Post-Development and its Consequences (Routledge, 2018).

Introduction

The Lifeworlds and Trajectories of NGOs in Africa Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel

Introduction The premises of the grassroots non-governmental organization (NGO) Zaabre Vênem lie right in front of the tallest baobab tree in Zorgho, the capital of Ganzourgou province in Burkina Faso. The entrance is not visible from the main street, but there is a hand-painted sign pointing in its direction. Those who follow the sign take a bumpy path pass a small rubbish dump right beneath the baobab tree, where donkeys go looking for food. Right behind it is a turquoise-coloured gate guarding the plot of land on which the office is situated. The entrance is usually open so that pedestrians can look inside and enter the organization’s premises. At the back of the plot of land is the main house with three offices and a spacious foyer, its walls covered in a rich collection of pictures depicting past initiatives. In front of the house is a small terrace, a shaded parking area, two toilet blocks and a granary. Usually, there are several motorbikes scattered around, as if their riders had just left them behind in a hurry. In the late afternoon, the chances are high of meeting the five founders of Zaabre Vênem sitting outside the office: a Catholic teacher, a Muslim farmer, a Catholic pharmacist, the son of a Muslim chief in Zorgho and the Protestant president of the organization. The five men have known each other for decades, some of them having grown up together. There is a noticeable familiarity in the way they balance provocation, mutual Notes for this chapter begin on page 32.

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respect and care in interacting with each other. Their links with one another appear to be distinctive, challenging and harmonious at the same time, reminding the observer of his or her own lifelong friends and the pleasant lightness underlying the relationship. As soon as outsiders pass by the centre, the founders’ familiarity becomes even more evident. For example, every couple of days a woman with a basket of fruit visits the centre for a chat. However, she rarely manages to complete a sentence, as the men tend to make sarcastic remarks that the woman reacts to with pointed questions that provoke laughter. Still, before she leaves, the men buy a banana or some oranges, as they know she struggles to make a livelihood. On another day, two chiefs came to talk to the president of Zaabre Vênem, trying to negotiate extra aid for their community. Having known the president for decades, they decided to approach him directly to request ‘special treatment’ in the form of extra materials with which to plough their fields or similar benefits. However, the president had to decline, despite being visibly torn between his social obligations and the programme’s regulations. At that time, Zaabre Vênem was already working as the implementing partner of an NGO in Switzerland, which is fully in control of the projects Zaabre Vênem implements and the resources it distributes. The president’s acquaintances, who do not necessarily know about the partnership’s structural funding conditions, reacted with an uncomfortable, disappointed silence and reluctant expressions of agreement. Before they left, however, the president managed to appease them with some jokes and handshakes. Apart from the familiarity and the laid-back flair of such social interactions, the (hi)stories of the people who come to knock on Zaabre Vênem’s door are usually more distressing and urgent. Very often people approach the organization with existential problems. On any given day, a farmer might report that someone has stolen three of the goats he had planned to sell in order to pay for an operation for his eldest daughter; a mother might pass by to ask for financial support to buy medicine for her sick son. Indeed, both men and women often seek the support of the African NGOs in their communities. However, it would not be appropriate to explain this only with reference to social relations between NGO actors and their fellow humans, which would have to fall back solely on the alleged existence of patron–client and similar subsidiary relationships. The fact that African grassroots NGOs often represent the only contact point for marginalized groups in case of urgent needs and daily livelihood challenges tends to be neglected. Often confronted with the lack of health insurance, the lack of free education and the arbitrariness of political institutions, NGOs in Africa can be understood as multiform proxies. Apart from their

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‘Janus-faced’ nature (Dodworth 2014) and ‘inherent messiness’ (Lewis and Schuller 2017: 634), beyond their embeddedness in global configurations of power (Bernal 2017; Schuller 2017) and their tendency to professionalize (Baillie Smith and Laurie 2011; Bernal and Grewal 2014; Craig and Porter 2006; Lewis 2016), we argue that they retain their relevance as melting pots, both permeating and being permeated by lifeworlds.

Relocating Terminologies: On Development and Civil Society Narratives This ‘backyard story’ of Zaabre Vênem in Burkina Faso provides a glimpse into the everyday world of NGO actors in Africa. These ordinary situations are part of everyday lifeworlds and mirror the relationality of NGO work: how identities and personalities, and tensions and histories, emerge and evolve behind the dusty brick walls of NGOs in Africa. As these organizations constantly interact with people and occupy public spaces in communities, being assembled through spatial proximity and social relations, they are torn not only between institutional schemes and laudable agendas but also between their own and other people’s everyday cultural embeddedness. In this regard, NGOs should indeed be investigated as an ‘open-ended process’ (Hilhorst 2003: 4), as non-static and flexible, as shifting between and adapting to intersecting interests, rules and expectations (Opoku-Mensah, Lewis and Tvedt 2007). However, while this volume builds on this insight, it also proposes to use the concept of the lifeworld as a lens through which to study the situated, transformative and mutually constitutive nature of NGOs in Africa and beyond. The study of NGOs has become increasingly popular in the social sciences, eliciting either sharp criticism or exuberant praise. In the 1990s, it was mostly political scientists and sociologists who elaborated on the potentials and risks of the so-called ‘NGO boom’ (Alvarez 1999). Anthropologists, by contrast, took a while longer to pay attention to the inner and outer worlds of NGOs. Instead, they contributed more to debates on either development or civil society, two fields closely related to the NGO phenomenon but in very different ways. Where development is concerned, quite simply, from the 1970s, NGOs entered the field of development when the failures of structural adjustment programmes were transformed into more and more apparent and induced processes of ‘aid decentralization’ (Bierschenk, Chaveau and Olivier de Sardan 2002: 7). Yet, apart from good-governance narratives and bottom-up approaches, it still took anthropologists a while to look more deeply into the associated global ‘landscapes of power’ (Bernal

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2018: 38) that caused NGOs to continue to become the solid ‘partners’ of state ministries and to rely increasingly on donor money (see below). This new role also becomes evident in the contributions to this volume, as they touch upon issues and historical accounts of development with regard to NGO work in Africa. It is against this background that we view the anthropology of development (Herzfeld 2001) and post-development approaches (Ziai 2007b, 2012) as being of great importance to this volume, the former critically reflecting on power structures and development practice; the latter problematizing the neocolonial discursive continuities in the field of NGOs in Africa. At the same time, it is important to note that development-related studies in particular are being criticized for coproducing powerful development narratives that are quickly transformed into new paradigmatic trends and discourses (Crush 1995; Ziai 2016). While the NGO phenomena grew into the development industry, its roots lie rather in the concept of civil society, which in turn draws on a dominant strand in the intellectual history of the European bourgeoisie in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Baillie Smith and Laurie 2011; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Hann and Dunn 1996; Hemment 2014; Randeria 2002). As a consequence, the debates on civil society are often highly Eurocentric and pose a significant epistemological challenge to scholars working on civil society in Africa or other world regions. The risk of losing oneself in conceptual and ideological discussions over which formations fall under the umbrella of civil society and which do not are consequently high, particularly for anthropologists. At the same time, the question of what civil society is or is not remains an empirical one, creating both a desire for a decolonized and dynamic definition of civil society and doubts about it. While this definition already carries the risk of wallowing in cultural relativism (Lewis 2002: 580), it still points to the non-fixed and complex nature of civil engagements worldwide (Obadare 2016). A broader definition of civil society (or NGOs) is obsolete, not least because the transformative power of civil society is grounded in its power to bring about transformation. How can we give such a phenomenon a definite framework? Whether anti-state or co-opted by the state, and thus being elitist and at the same time antithetic to hegemonic orders, any form of human organization that fits the civil society framework is not only historically shaped, it is also a smaller or larger marvel of a strategic and spontaneous metamorphosis. Thereafter debates and discourses shifted. The multiplicity of forms belonging to the notion of civil society moved closer to the world of NGOs, which had very similar epistemological discomforts and inherent contradictions. However, this time anthropologists set about tackling this haunting ghost by trying to make the conceptual dilemma over NGOs

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less uncomfortable and also more fruitful by pointing to the ‘productive instability’ of the concept (Lewis and Schuller 2017). Recently, some authors have framed NGO actors as ‘do-gooders’ (ibid.: 647) who belong to Cultures of Doing Good (Lashaw, Vannier and Sampson 2017), a title reflecting the ambiguity that sticks to NGO work. This ambiguity is also mirrored in the ‘hegemonic cookbook definition’ introduced by Steven Sampson in the introduction to Cultures of Doing Good, namely that NGOs are ‘voluntary, not for profit, autonomous from government, and judicially corporate’ (2017: 11). At the same time, current research stresses NGO work as dominated by cash flow, undermined by neoliberal principles and increasingly dependent on the downward drip-drip of state-led funding streams (Aziz and Kapoor 2013; Bernal and Grewal 2014; Craig and Porter 2006; Davidov 2016). Sampson’s ‘hegemonic cookbook definition’ therefore points out the ideals and imaginations connected with NGO work, like altruism and self-determination, more than the current economic and political ambiguities the NGOs continue to face. As long as this definition is understood as ideational, it serves the critical investigation of ‘NGO-ing’ for two reasons (Hilhorst 2003). On the one hand, it triggers critical reflection on how the intellectual history of European occidental philosophy informs the norms and values that prevail in the NGO world today, as well as the antithetical processes just mentioned that have been taking place in the field for the last two decades. On the other hand, the definition tends to suggest the normative similarities that affect a wide spectrum of civil engagements, ranging from one-man endeavours and collective efforts to INGOs and grassroots organizations, thereby overcoming the formal disparities in the study of NGOs.

Loose Ends and Three Ambitions Sampson’s definition, then, even though taking this Eurocentric, hegemonic angle as its starting point, serves our epistemological duty to use a definition that does not exclude the multiple forms and agendas of NGOs in Africa and beyond. Sampson’s definition means acknowledging that certain norms dominate a vast field of ambitions and practices with a charitable idea, while at the same time leaving room for the different experiences, organizational formats, practices and social realities that take place within the NGO shell. This is why most authors in this volume use the term NGOs, even though the organizations they refer to have different legal statuses, formats and structures. This leads us to the first of three ambitions we have in this volume. We intend to question certain rhetorical habits in academic discourses on

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Africa, especially to dissolve dichotomies like ‘local’ and ‘global’, which anthropologists have much criticized but nevertheless inscribe into the language and epistemological thinking behind our academic writing. This volume aims to reach beyond entrenched binary categories like ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’ (e.g. Burawoy 2001; Crush 1995; Herzfeld 2001; Kees 2004; Moore 2004; Tsing 2005) or ‘the West and the Rest’ (Gieben and Hall 1992: 187; Ziai 2007a). Although some such notions might be heuristically useful in describing larger correlations, we think that there is still an obligation to look for ways in which knowledge production ‘can be twisted, removed or turned upside down’ (see Schultz, this volume). This also means adopting a more ‘horizontal topography’ (Ferguson 2006) with respect to the spatial aspects of our analysis, which we do by arguing that the transnational scope of African grassroots organizations is no less evident than that of INGOs, and that a British NGO worker is no less bound to his or her ‘local’ space than an NGO worker in Burundi. Another major challenge, we suggest, is the revision and application of the European corpus of literature on NGOs, as well as its critical elaboration and transformation. There is a growing call to ‘break from the process of recycling knowledge in the upper stratum of global power’ (comment by Manzurul Mannan in Lewis and Schuller 2017: 646). After years of repeatedly (and rightly!) pillorying the silencing of ‘non-Western’ thought and epistemologies in academic knowledge production, it is time to breach the auto-poetic and self-referential but vicious cycle of criticism (Shivji 2018). Instead of pointing to their absence, therefore, we draw attention to dialogues with European and African colleagues, as well as between scholars and practitioners working in the NGO field. The second aim of this volume is therefore to enter a transdisciplinary, boundarycrossing exchange and thus connect practical to academic knowledge. In this volume, accordingly, there are contributions from NGO founders, like Sylvestre Ouédraogo from Burkina Faso; researchers in history, anthropology, political science and sociology; and academics who prepare students for NGO work in their home countries or who used to work in the NGO field themselves. We bring together perspectives on NGOs from Nigeria, Denmark, Togo, Germany, Sweden, Burkina Faso, Hungary, Austria and France, together with all the challenges, language barriers and epistemological opportunities, inspirations and doubts we came across as the editors of this book. The reader might also notice that a large proportion of the chapters focus on Burkina Faso, because the editors of this volume have been conducting research in the country for more than a decade. However, beyond the different styles of telling stories and the plurality of topics and viewpoints, our contributors share an important com-

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monality: they all aim to point out how NGOs and their actors impinge on politics, education, knowledge and people’s everyday life, as well as how the latter find their own path out of this impinging. It is against this background, thirdly, that this volume aims to enter the field of NGOs from an actor-centred angle. While much attention is currently being paid to sector-specific NGO fields like religion, gender or the environment, the trajectories of NGO actors in Africa are largely unknown, as qualitative studies rarely put the actors at the centre of their inquiries. Even though recent studies of NGOs do cite the actors behind the formal shell of their organizations and take into account their challenges, it is still the organization itself that ‘acts’, ‘engages with’ and ‘promotes’ agendas. This might be one reason for Erica Bornstein noting that NGOs can be the ‘object, a locus, a research field or a verb’ (comment by Erica Bornstein in Lewis and Schuller 2017: 639). However, even in studies in which it is NGOs that serve as the empirical field itself, thorough examinations of the everyday work of NGO actors behind the scenes – of their social realities, biographies and working conditions – remain rare.1 We know little about situations, interactions and negotiations behind the walls of NGO offices, or about the actors, who come from very different social backgrounds and certainly do not fit into a homogenous category (Mouftah 2017: 124). As a consequence, we know little about how the lives of NGO employees, recipients and communities in Africa are shaped through their NGO work or vice versa. How do people enter this field? What are the challenges involved in doing development in one’s own community? Under what social and economic conditions do NGO actors work? What are the future imaginations and ideas of NGO actors in Africa? How do those who grew up in an environment in which NGO activities were part of the everyday evaluate NGOs? And how does NGO work influence how people perceive the state?

The Usefulness of the Lifeworld Concept in Studying NGOs The most important commonality underlying these questions is the suggestion that NGO work is part of the everyday lifeworlds of men and women in Africa, regardless of how concrete their relationship is to the field. Our questions are therefore profoundly empirical and require examining in the most unbiased manner possible. This is why we propose the concept of lifeworlds in which ‘microcosms and macrocosms’ (Jackson 2012: xiv) deserve equal attention. Both the experience of individuals with regard to the NGO field and the ramifications of the decade-long salience of development projects in society, as well as their

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interrelations, find a place in this perspective (Jackson 1989). Originating in phenomenological theory, the lifeworld approach assumes that the frictions and correspondences between a person’s world (Eigenwelt) and the worlds of others (Mitwelt) is bidirectional (Husserl 1973 [1910/1911]). In this view, the biography and experiences of an NGO founder in Morocco (see Brun, this volume) are as insightful as the culture, humanity and history of political institutions. In Hannah Arendt’s words, we are interested in the ‘subjective in-between’ (Arendt 1982), the ‘in-between’ of the subjective and universal, the local, the national and the global, without any traceable limits or tangible boundaries. Therein everything is in motion and unpredictable; cultural, political and social phenomena are neither static nor separable from each other. This is why Jackson describes lifeworlds as a a ‘force field (Kraftfeld)’ that is ‘charged with vitality and animated by struggle’ (2012: 7; referring to Husserl 1970 [1936]). This struggle can take place between the nation state and the transnational donor policies with which it may collide, while depending on and thus craving the donors’ resources (see Sissao, this volume). Other struggles take place within NGOs. Routines of communication and work, of social norms and ideas in African countries, intersect with normative orders and global paradigms, leading to conflict and undermining but also synergies and transformation. African NGO actors must manoeuvre their way through the ‘close meshed’ structural conditions and rules of the state and donors (De Certeau 1988: 24). They improvise and work out hidden tricks but also face confrontation, if necessary, while believing, ridiculing or criticizing the often contradictory requirements donors expect them to fulfil. NGO policies and project-based planning not only impinges on the day-to-day work of NGO actors in Africa and the everyday of their fellow humans, it also belongs to their social worlds in an inseparable manner. Against this background, the contributions in this volume look more closely at mutually constituting situations to focus on the relationships of NGOs and NGO actors in a transdisciplinary manner (Jackson 2012: 22). Practices and concepts within NGO partnerships in Africa unfold complex meanings everywhere they seek validation and influence. It is important to acknowledge that these interactions and intersections unfold a social life of their own that co-shapes individual relationships and personal encounters (see Lauterbach, this volume). In the day-to-day of NGO workers, personal viewpoints and project planning may depart massively from one another without causing the project to fail, as actors may want to maintain good relations or secure resources. At another moment, NGO actors may resist certain requirements openly and accept the losses that may ensue. Hence, in the study of NGOs in Africa, in which power asym-

Introduction

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metries unquestionably exist, it makes no sense to overemphasize either structural conditions or people’s agency (Ortner 2006). We therefore argue that in projects and programmes too, in meeting rooms and campaigning, there are still constant dialogical, physical and introspective exchanges at work. Even though dominant norms and forms of knowledge circulate to, from and within NGOs, they still circulate in a particular place and at a particular time. On the basis of our research, we have come to the conclusion that, from a situated perspective, the cards of power and hegemony are reshuffled every day, while powerful formations unfold heterogeneous connections on-site, whose patterns and meanings require a more radical empirical stance (Jackson 1989). The lifeworld concept therefore helps us to render empirically disputable the more dominant narrative of the paramount donor, whose power is indeed enshrined in international ethical codes, in the norms of development programmes and in ideas of economic progress. For example, as Beate Paragi (this volume) emphasizes, the asymmetric basis of giving and receiving between NGO partners is not as evident as it may seem. Exerting power needs continuous work and effort to maintain its force in people’s lives, particularly in spatially distant places. We understand powerful orders as the ‘work of mankind’, as Heinrich Popitz (1992 [1986]) claims empathically. Consequently, practice and narrative strengthen and weaken, transform and shape power structures (see Engels, this volume). Everyone who therefore deftly plays the game of adaption and flexible navigation through NGO worlds can reach his or her goals, like re-creating one’s own social status or accumulating the wealth and opportunities that open up a path of upward social mobility for the future (see Sundberg, this volume). Yet the lifeworld approach not only lends our understanding of NGOs, donor relations and everyday work in development more depth, it also points to the fact that the social life of NGO work in Africa is deeply embedded in the everyday lives of African citizens. Whether people are active in this field of work or not, many of them hoard experiences and memories with(in) these organizations, while NGO projects shape and disrupt the everyday lives of people in different ways. Communities are familiar with the formal visits of donors; for example, to celebrate the opening of new buildings. They have seen more than once how foreigners arrive in shiny jeeps to sit under temporary tents and shake hands and give speeches. Many members in cities and communities have experience of development-related activities and can easily remember the problems related to the construction of a school building five years earlier and why it still lies idle today. They know stories of why an NGO – whose name still decorates a crumbling, abandoned house on the main street – had to

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stop its activities or can at least point out somebody who remembers the organization’s history (see Brun, this volume). However, after decades of intervention, people not only have memories, they have also developed elaborate opinions and conclusions on NGOs and related projects. This applies to citizens but even more to (former) NGO actors in Africa. They have memories of foreign donors’ names and their procedural and normative peculiarities. Sometimes NGO workers can even recall the different habits and cultures of donors from different countries, as well as explain the respective advantages and disadvantages of working with them. Many narratives are about the continuities and discontinuities they have experienced within NGOs. These stories not only derive from the course of their engagement in the field; sometimes they connect with memories when they were younger (see Büschel and Hahn, this volume). Here it is crucial to take into account the fact that aid activities and NGO work can be an ordinary, though often volatile part of everyday life. A lot of today’s NGO actors were born and grew up in the target destinations of NGOs projects, sat in classrooms built with development funding, profited from donated school materials and used newly constructed sanitation facilities. They themselves may have experienced how their parents engaged in protests against largescale mining (LSM) (see Engels, this volume) and how their mothers and sisters marched for more political rights on Women’s Day every 8th of March. An unknown number encountered what development jargon calls ‘poverty’. Biographies collected during the research in Zorgho (Burkina Faso) show that they often also experienced hunger, had to drop out of school because of financial problems and suffered physical restrictions. Indeed, some of today’s NGO actors in Africa might even have used the donor-funded infirmary or participated in work in community-based agricultural fields themselves when they were young. Understanding these correlations and paying attention to the biographies of African NGO actors leads to a simple, though rarely acknowledged insight: the latter’s experiences with development in Africa not only evolve during their career paths or derive from billboard images: NGOs and their development projects belong to the lifeworlds many of these workers grew up in. How do they relate to the fact that they had to implement project procedures, norms and rules, and how do they feel about shifting from benefiting from aid to distributing it? We also know little about how citizens in Africa perceive their neighbours, friends and relatives who become active in this field. Working in NGOs leads them to fulfil certain meanings and functions in terms of social cohabitation, but how does this affect their own everyday lives, and what conflictual situations arise from this ambiguous position?

Introduction

11

Proximity and Distance as a Lens for NGOs in Africa To answer these questions, we shall elaborate on the pivotal engagements that determine the everyday lives of those who work in NGO-related contexts. Therefore, we need to recognize that in spatial, temporal and social respects the endeavours, challenges and work routines of NGO activities in Africa demonstrate significant differences from the day-today work of European or US-American NGO employees. Although this may seem obvious, it is not. In academic discourse there is almost no reflection on the contact zones between NGO actors, target groups and other parties that might be involved in the process. Take German NGOs, which are active in Africa and well known for their activities, as an example. Only a few Germans will be able to tell you where to find the offices of the headquarters of Brot für die Welt or Kindernothilfe, not in which city, let alone which street, tower, building or floor. NGOs in Germany mainly occupy public spaces through commercials, posters and flyers, reminding citizens of their moral obligation to help those who have less and who suffer from constraints like malnutrition, a lack of education or unequal opportunities. Admittedly, if one travels to the capitals of African countries, these German NGOs have a little more visibility and presence, some occupying tiny destination boards in the city’s streets and hanging up a more prominent sign outside their own premises. However, even in their socalled country offices the gates are usually high enough to obscure the view inside and are protected by a guard, who checks visitors before letting them pass. German NGO offices nevertheless tend to be spatially distant from project sites, often situated outside the capitals or nowadays being managed by African ‘counterparts’, to borrow an expression of Eric Burton (this volume). This is how scales of spatial proximity and distance shift significantly: NGOs in Africa are increasingly becoming the implementation partners of foreign NGOs, prolonging the intervals between field visits from the fund-giving side. There are practical reasons for this that we will leave aside here, such as security and cost: what is important here is that it changes the roles of African NGO actors. Comparing the everyday work of a German NGO worker with, for example, a Malian NGO employee stresses how spatially restricted the offices of the latter are in comparison to the offices of the former. NGOs in Africa, even those implementing the administratively extensive programmes of transnational donors, are usually based in a city district or a small village and are active in the very same area. Consequently, the spatial proximity of African NGO actors to target groups and ­communities

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is very noticeable. No matter how technically equipped and professional grassroots organizations may become, they still form social spaces anyone can enter. Cultural traits, normative expectations, individual ideas, moral claims, conflicts and social linkages all merge in these spaces all the time. Project campaigns and reunions take place on the properties of NGO offices, and development projects can be reached in a five-minute motorbike ride. The offices have no material or immaterial barriers, like glass doors and elevators, doorbells and email blacklists. Instead, streets in Africa are loaded with metal notices and signs promoting the locations of NGO offices from various countries and cultures. The same social connectivity exists the other way around. To many NGO actors in Africa, projects are not abstract imaginaries of planning and impact models but significantly concrete and tangible events and occurrences. NGO activities therefore have a personal and social dimension because they proceed in the surroundings where NGO actors live and work. Their targeted recipients are flesh and blood people living next door. This means that beneficiaries and employees, gatekeepers and project managers, may be relatives, old friends, neighbours or former employees. Being physically and socially close, at any moment in time a member of a target group can pass by the office and ask for a favour or offer his or her thoughts and ideas. Information, criticism and dispute, as well as the consequences of decision-making and rigid planning, strike African NGO actors in a direct and unfiltered manner. They know a lot more about the controversies and antagonisms that may arise out of NGO activities than their foreign counterparts but are usually reluctant to share their knowledge because they fear for their jobs, thus contributing to the ‘intentional amnesia’ (see Hahn, this volume) of development. In other words, African NGO actors hold back information before the institutional memory of development can even start to sort out the critical knowledge that threatens its existence (Douglas 1986; Kalfelis 2020). Spatial proximity also means that those affected by projects, campaigns and measures can hold African NGO actors to account. The existence of distinct hierarchies of communication leaves no virtual gaps through which uncomfortable or qualitative information on what is happening ‘on the ground’ can be filtered. If a foreign NGO declines financial support to a mother to buy medicine for her child and the daughter dies, the on-site counterpart who takes that decision or passes it on will have to face the discredit alone. This may sound like a harsh example, but some cases do force international NGO workers to take decisions deciding matters of life and death. While foreign NGOs may lack the knowledge about details on-site or about the consequences of their decisions, it is almost impossible for African NGO actors to turn away from the ‘intended or unin-

Introduction

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tended’ consequences (Grewal 2017: 114) of harmful decisions. In most cases, African counterparts serve as passive messengers with almost no decision-making authority, which is related to the manner in which international actors tend to outsource the management of their programmes (see Sundberg, this volume). Usually, when foreign donors subcontract an African partner, they only hand over executive branches of their programmes, not any decision-making leadership. Another complication of such asymmetric relationships is that internationally active NGOs may themselves lose control of their projects, as they are increasingly being forced to apply for programme mandates with planning procedures, contents and accountability rhythms already set by states, ministries, foundations and/or supranational organizations (see below). An example from the field illustrates the repercussions resulting from the fact that NGO actors in Africa represent and administer the decisions of foreigners, not their own. Back in Zorgho, Burkina Faso, a communitybased NGO representative of the national branch of a French NGO had put a lot of effort in gaining the trust of two marabouts in his community to help him promote improvements to talibé children’s2 living conditions. In exchange for the marabouts’ cooperation, the NGO had promised to dig new wells close to their mosques. However, when the project cycle ended, the French NGO employees did not return to the community, nor did they keep their promise. Instead, they left the NGO representative behind, someone who had lived in Zorgho all his life. He urged his employers to keep their promise and contacted the person responsible for this promise repeatedly without success, while the marabouts held him accountable for the deception. Later on, he explained that he would not be able to return to their property. Thus, while foreign decision-makers in NGOs can just pull out of projects, the African actors on-site run the risk of losing face in their own communities. This means that NGO actors in Africa working on projects on-site are even more at risk of being harmed, thus widening the scope of the ‘do-no-harm’ principle more than previously assumed. These actors not only take on the position of a broker, using their skills of negotiation and translation to mediate between communities and international donors (Bierschenk, Chaveau and Olivier de Sardan 2002; Lewis and Mosse 2006), they themselves come to bear the responsibility locally for foreign interventions. This example also stresses that it is not only spatial but also social proximities that need to be taken into account when cooperating with or studying NGOs in Africa. The incident just described is a perfect example of the destructive effect of development on social structures, and it illustrates how easily personal closeness can be transformed into social

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distancing through foreign interference. Researchers and development practitioners speak of ‘local experts’ and their familiarity with ‘local’ cultures, norms and conditions. However, they rarely reflect on what this idealized social embeddedness means for the African NGO actors’ own standing in society. Carrying out and managing NGO interventions with people you personally know is a sensitive endeavour in its own right, one that needs a great deal more reflection before one starts a ‘partnership’. Of course, many NGO actors have profited from upward social mobility and become part of a new middle class living in air-conditioned apartments in urban areas, far away from the project site. However, a substantial number do live side by side with those they are aiming to help, seeing, smelling, feeling, hearing and hence interactively experiencing the same social realities and sharing the same language, heritage, symbols and environments. In short, they share lifeworlds.

African NGOs, African Experiences, African History The proximity–distance contrast helps us move beyond certain analytical boundaries when discussing NGO fields. Even though the two notions may form a binary opposition, they also help describe the relationality of cultural interaction, the negotiation of norms, social practice and social reality. In this way, it becomes evident that African NGO actors are indeed ‘experts’ who have what we call ‘situated knowledge’, though in a much broader sense than these terms imply, and in a less biased fashion than one might think. Their knowledge is intersubjective and thus inseparable from their own, experience-based trajectories. In this perspective, researchers should consider and examine NGOs and civil society in Africa as a phenomenon in its own right. As long as twenty years ago, Comaroff and Comaroff stated that ‘… there has been little parallel effort to disinter the cultural seedbeds and historical sources of anything that might be regarded as an analogue of civil society in Africa’ (1999: 22–23). Nonetheless, with some exceptions (Ekeh 1975, 1994; Kabore 2002; Little 1957, 1965), knowledge of precolonial practices and forms of organization that show relationships with today’s NGO field is still lacking (Lewis 2002). It might therefore still be worthwhile researching the traces of social protection and altruism in Africa through biographies, memories, tales and myths (Devereux and Getu 2013), quite apart from popular African concepts like Ubuntu3 (Praeg 2014). We suggest that there are several reasons for this gap in knowledge. First of all, written sources are lacking that might reveal evidence of forms of resistance and political engagement in African empires like the

Introduction

15

Yatenga or Ashanti kingdom (Fuller 2012 [1921]; Izard 1985). Secondly, new methodologies, epistemologies and approaches might contribute to research on precolonial phenomena and ‘African’ schemes without people having to immerse themselves in traditionalizing, essentializing or romanticizing knowledge production. A third barrier is the dominance of a contradictory yet Eurocentric understanding (see Adesoji in this volume) of what civil society is, what it should be and from where it derives (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: 23). The idea that European theory has a unique selling point when it comes to social welfare is quite entrenched. Even though twentieth-century philosophers did not agree on the role of civil society,4 its dogmatic affinity with democratic and non-violent principles is nevertheless valid, despite continuing to be challenged (Bruhns and Gosewinkel 2005; Gosewinkel and Reichhardt 2004). David Lewis (2002) thoroughly examines this juncture and carves out four different academic narratives of the connections between the concept of European civil society and politics in Africa. While one of these narratives draws on idealized, policy-related claims calling civil society the ‘missing key’ (Haberson 1994: 1–2) for political change on the continent, another postulate is that the concept is inapplicable to regions outside Europe (Maina 1998), while a third, arguing for a more nuanced, historical understanding of what the term entails, stresses the existence of African associations and cooperatives representing ‘local’ variations of civil society (Hann and Dunn 1996; Mamdani 1996). The latter line of argument is the starting point for the contributions of Alain Sissao, Kokou Hetcheli and Abimbola Adesoji in this volume, which provide glimpses into the roles played by NGOs in Burkina Faso (Sissao) and Togo (Hetcheli), while Adesoji offers an alternative historical reading of NGOs in Nigeria. By introducing the term ‘proto-NGO’, he highlights early forms of resistance to colonial rule and self-organized activities by churches and other movements initiated in Africa. Their aim was not only to improve people’s lives but also to offer alternatives to the normative and political. The anti-colonial yet perhaps less democratic culture of the colonial history of civil society in Africa is revealed in Adesoji’s chapter. In the last decade, historians have provided more nuanced views of the colonial histories of NGOs in Africa as well as, more broadly speaking, the history of development (Burton 2016; Büschel and Speich 2009; Easterly 2014; Hodge 2015, 2016). As Hubertus Büschel (2014) explains with reference to his research on Cameroon, Togo and Tanzania between 1960 and 1975, many African leaders expelled so-called experts from their territory after gaining independence. To maintain power relations and political influence after decolonization, a strategic move of great

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i­mportance during the Cold War, NGOs served as a new, seemingly untainted framework (ibid.: 195–97). Eric Burton’s research on counterpart relations between German and Tanzanian development actors in this volume adds to this argument. By taking an actor-centred perspective focused on the African side of this relationship, he argues that on the surface apparently new NGO formats often grew out of, complemented or even replaced existing state-led programmes. In line with Büschel’s observations about colonial experts, the career trajectories of Tanzanian development professionals show that NGOs too strove to keep control of material resource flows and therefore of power. Hence, the NGO framework became a Trojan horse not only for experts from the former colonial regime but also for an African elite that feared for their advantageous position in the new postcolonial era. Büschel’s and Burton’s findings are evidence of the multilayered histories of NGOs in Africa, with their trajectories and expressions of social work in different regions of the world that deserve greater analytical attention. For example, in West Africa, a popular example of civilitas would be Mande hunter associations, whose history goes back to the thirteenth century, when they had central roles in the provision of medicine, hunting and security (Hagberg 2019: 177). Yet, many scholars would probably hesitate to acknowledge hunters as a form of civil society because they had key functions in the private and public, economic and political spheres and used physical violence against fellow human beings. Another example of African expressions of social work has left linguistic traces of former associational dynamics in Burkina Faso. Recent research has revealed two different ideas related to civil engagement in the Mooré language, lagem-n-tar-sulli (‘federation’ (lagem), ‘have’ (tare), ‘group’ (sulli)), translated as ‘group joining forces’; and song-taab-sulli (‘mutual help’ (song taaba) ‘group’ (sulli)) – that is, a ‘mutual help group’. In contrast to lagem-n-tar sulli, whose purpose was human cooperation for the sake of greater safety and a better harvest, song-taab-sulli describes people coming together to support the weakest members of the community. These expressions, one describing ‘endogenous’ support for group members, the other ‘exogenous’ support for the needy in the community, seem more accurate to describe today’s civil engagement in West Africa (Kalfelis 2020). Concerning social movements, Elísio Macamo (2011) makes a similar argument by pointing out a lack of the proper conceptual tools to describe forms of protest and political engagement in Africa. In general, just lately, authors show growing efforts to find conceptually more nuanced approaches to describe social movements in Africa (Daniel and Neubert 2019). To study African forms of self-organization, altruism and

Introduction

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political action is therefore not a romanticist request to recover the cultural memory that dissolves through the generations but a critique of the ability of our epistemological and conceptual toolbox to describe events, actions, engagements and correlations on the African continent. In the words of Haythem Guesmi on the online blog ‘Africa is a Country’,5 we need to reflect more conceptually and theoretically on the ‘gentrification’ of African studies and search for ways to produce knowledge beyond the binary thinking of our own education (Jackson 2012: 22–23). How can we give African phenomena, thought and history a serious place in the departments of social anthropology in Europe and the USA (Rettová 2016)? Again, the example above shows us that in some regions of Africa civil society engaged in the provision of security and justice. However, it was a kind of civil society that used forms of regulated violence to secure established orders and punish fellow human beings who had broken moral codes. Maybe there were different variations in civil engagement, with particular social agendas that did not exclude economic profit-­seeking. Maybe the altruistic segment of civil society was hijacked in the formation of what Peter P. Ekeh (1975) calls the ‘two publics’ (also Osaghae 2006), which differentiate between the native ‘primordial public’, rooted in moral obligations, and the ‘civic public’, the realm of the state derived from colonial political infrastructures. Albeit romanticized, the idea that there are ‘two publics’ emphasizes the neocolonial pattern of the postcolonial state in Africa.

Transnational Encounters of NGOs: Disseminating, Mediating, Working We have more questions than answers in this regard. What is certain is that the organizations we call NGOs have various pasts, presents and futures, and in addition they not only have project-based impacts but belong to and shape structures. NGOs create memories and future imaginations (Appadurai 2013), unfolding their own ‘after-lives’ (Schler and Gez 2018). They launch activities and discourses that are inscribed in the histories of states, of urban and rural areas, and in people’s biographies and lifeworlds. In this context, the question of whether NGOs collaborate with the state or contest it, and how, becomes fairly opaque. It is more urgent to ask who and what processes are active in shifting NGOs’ relations with the state and how these actors do or do not find success while trying (Thelen, Vetters and von Benda-Beckmann 2018). Whose interests do they represent, and whose do they actually support? The same questions are relevant with regard to both communities and NGOs.

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Hence, the contributors to this volume examine the multiplicity of meanings, the ‘sturdiness of neoliberal hegemony’ (Lashaw and Vannier 2017: 234) and assumptions about power in NGO fields, as well as in the lifeworlds of NGO actors in Africa. For example, Bettina Engels (this volume) tackles the ambiguous role of NGOs in Burkina Faso. They belong to an ‘ensemble’ that, against all expectations, shapes narratives to the detriment of communities. NGOs may therefore act like wolves in sheep’s clothing by breaking with the normative expectations that are directed at them. Beata Paragi (this volume), on the other hand, shows how NGOs and their donors need beneficiaries and proof of suffering in order to legitimize their activities and raise funds. She frames this as the ‘aid for pain, pain for aid’ syndrome in today’s global NGO world and emphasizes that dependencies are mutual and not as one-sided as they might seem. Even though donors seem omnipotent in the everyday of NGO actors in Africa at the first or even the third glance, it is important to study empirically the situations and interactions at hand. Buzzwords, concepts and knowledge of the World Bank do circulate behind the walls of grassroots NGOs in Senegal or Kenya, but this does not necessarily mean that they give meaning to the NGO actors’ activities on-site. These notions function much more as a parallel language, as artificial tools that NGO actors worldwide use in the right manner and at the right moment (Chambers 2012). Apart from this ‘NGO-speak’ (Synková 2017: 79), the material and practical power of donors can also be overwhelming. We highlighted the social embeddedness and spatial proximity of Zaabre Vênem at the beginning of this introduction. What we left out is what one finds upon entering the organization’s offices, namely various brochures issued by their Swiss partner containing colourful pictures and some carefully formulated, explicit programme targets that are easily ‘up-scaled’. There is also information on awareness-raising campaigns to accompany Zaabre Vênem’s agricultural activities, as well as literacy courses and surveys. The pressure of time is constant, as project cycles and accountability loops always seem to be coming to an end very soon. There is a simultaneity of engagement and endeavour at work in the everyday of NGOs in Africa, the actors and practices of which are socially and transnationally embedded, not in a top-down manner but in a multiedged, entangled way. NGOs in Africa mark crossroads, empirical fields in which transnational policies, social realities, administrations and cultures intersect. To follow their activities reveals these organizations as involuntary circulators of bureaucratic principles and legal-rational orders (Weber 2005 [1922]). However, paradoxically, the discourses that have pushed NGOs worldwide into this role can be traced back to an

Introduction

19

antagonistic argument. From the 1990s onwards, NGOs were celebrated as the new hope in voicing the needs of the marginalized (Chambers et al. 2000), needs that can ‘challenge mainstream orthodoxies with alternative ideas and practices’ (Lewis and Schuller 2017: 636). It is against this background that the international call to integrate NGOs into global summits and to let them take part in decision-making procedures became louder and boosted the transnationalization of development, as well as the neoliberalization of the NGO sector (Craig and Porter 2006). Not much later, after the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), the international community introduced the Accra Agenda for Action (2008)6 and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (2012),7 which turned NGOs into legitimate partners for state-led development cooperation. Today, they serve as legitimate and legitimizing partners, thereby showing parallels to the role and function they had in the early period of decolonization, as highlighted by historians like Hubertus Büschel (2014; see above). It would lead us too far to trace the various structural changes that resulted from the strategic papers mentioned above. However, it is crucial to understand that these political shifts have gradually dispossessed African NGOs of their autonomy by favouring them as implementation partners for foreign donors, who themselves increasingly have to channel and delegate what ‘primary donors’ determine (Dia et al. 2011: 77–78). ‘Primary donors’ are not active in development themselves but are the major contributors to Official Development Assistance (ODA), consisting, for example, of states and ministries, foundations and private companies. In parallel to this, there are also growing investments in ‘host-country expertise’ (see Sundberg, this volume), this being a main factor in the acceleration of bureaucratization processes within NGOs in Africa. Even in the most remote areas, one can find administrative systems and meticulous planning being inflated in the tiniest organizational structures in Africa today, transferring strict guidelines and conditions of participation to every single member of a community. Project recipients are thus increasingly being obliged to adapt to the rhythms and planning transferred to them in project designs so as to account for the project’s support and provide evidence of their own motivation by contributing small amounts of money to it (Kalfelis 2020). Against this background, to follow the day-to-day work of NGOs reveals how African NGO actors accept, adapt, contest and reinterpret the rules and timetables, knowledge and models, of the projects they implement. They develop a certain, more multifaceted ‘expertise’ that is interpersonal, strategic, technical and situated in nature and has a different genealogy than development expertise (see Büschel, this volume, also

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Easterly 2014 for a historical genealogy of development expertise). They have so-called ‘local knowledge’, which they ‘sell’ to donors. In most cases, they also have the cultural sensitivity and language skills to mediate between the project recipients and the donors’ expectations, or at least they quickly learn with whom to speak in order to pour oil on troubled waters. However, their expertise also entails knowing about donor expectations and attitudes to work (e.g. punctuality). Many men and women in Africa have learned how to present themselves as ‘successful’ partners and how to deal with the gaps between project planning and the social realities of actual communities. Balancing out the multiple temporalities, concerns and practices that overlap in NGO projects is only one of the most challenging tasks in the day-to-day work of NGOs in Africa. Other obstacles affect the working conditions and neglected social realities of African NGO actors, which Benedetta Rossi (2017) highlights as constituting a particular relationship between employees and employers. She argues that African NGO actors might be beneficiaries at one time and place and the reverse at others and uses this insight to reflect on the social consequences of development. Rossi points out that both actors and recipients work in development projects, and she wonders what this implies for the power (im)balance between them (ibid.: 17–19; see above). Our own research in Burkina Faso leads us to agree with this insightful analysis. Most NGO actors in Burkina Faso themselves grew up in marginalized conditions, started to engage with and work for NGOs, then just fell back down the ladder again (Krishna 2007, 2017) to face the margins of so-called ‘poverty’. To work in an NGO in Africa therefore means to achieve a rare privilege in society, even though such actors are severely underpaid. Yet since compared to the recipients’ side only a small group of individuals can enter the NGO field, the competition for these positions is high enough to make people accept low salaries and bad working conditions. Development, in this regard, (re)creates social structures and hierarchies by drawing lines in society between collaborators in management and ‘poor’ recipients, or between those who are ‘poor’ and those who are ‘doing good’ (Lashaw, Vannier and Sampson 2017). This also recalls our previous argument about the antagonistic, dual role of African citizens engaging in NGOs, leaving little doubt about how ambiguous the effects of development are when it comes to social cohesion (Smith 2008). This is also the main argument of Alain Sissao in this volume: NGOs create employment while introducing social divisions in line with the reasoning of global development.

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Belonging to Lifeworlds: NGOs as Multiple Institutional Proxies Indeed, NGOs are one of the few employment alternatives to public service in many African countries, especially those that have a poorly developed private sector and high unemployment rates. However, working in an NGO in Africa has various implications. Many African NGOs struggle to establish their financial independence, which is why they try to move from one donor contract to another. This often leads to periods in which the resources to run the organization, including salaries, are lacking. Other NGO actors in Africa avoid partnerships with transnational donors and try to generate money through collective activities instead. In any case, many men and women engage in NGOs without earning a salary for shorter or longer periods. Some of them hope that the NGO will find a donor later on; for others, the work gives their lives meaning and kills time while waiting for other opportunities to come along (Honwana 2014). Against this background, African NGO actors often have multiple income-generating activities and come from a variety of social backgrounds. Some of them work as civil servants, while others constantly struggle with unemployment or try to make progress as students. Not a few NGO actors in Africa start their career path into development accidently, at least if they cannot afford to pay for their education in the development industry. Over the years, they accumulate knowledge of the field in domestic, small grassroots NGOs and educate themselves before applying for higher positions in national or international NGOs. As Molly Sundberg (this volume) demonstrates for Tanzania, NGOs nevertheless provide many of these actors with a temporary post before they attempt to join public aid agencies, where jobs are usually better paid and more secure.8 However, Sundberg also argues that, due to structural inequalities between national and posted staff and very limited room for manoeuvre on the part of African counterparts, career goals have started shifting again, this time towards private development consultancies (Stirrat 2000). The growing significance of NGOs in bi- and multilateral partnerships influences the number and quality of job offers in the field of development in Africa. However, using NGOs as channels for state-led development programmes, budgets and agendas also increases the range of functions they can fulfil, particularly in the more remote parts of Africa. In many African countries, NGOs are responsible for the construction of streets, maternity wards, hospitals and schools. For a while, they were the only providers of kindergartens and night schools where adults could earn their primary school certificates. They also often provide peasants

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with an education through literacy and maths courses. NGOs offer health insurance and medication to those who cannot afford to pay a regular doctor. Some of these NGOs even specialize in particular medical areas, like malaria, eye diseases and prosthesis, as well as supplying the core funding for related medical centres. NGOs distribute school materials, agricultural tools and seeds, as well as clothing. They are involved in water sanitation systems and electricity supply; they maintain gardens, forests and fields and offer new technologies and sector-specific expertise. As employers and the suppliers of various services, NGOs also impinge massively on educational structures in Africa. The presence of development activities and the competition for the few jobs available feeds the future aspirations of young men and women and their hopes of succeeding in entering the world of development (Appadurai 2013). People know that development experts earn salaries and see some of them move up into the middle class. In addition, study programmes, private schools and training offers in African countries are often financed by development and orient the curricula towards it. Often, they are not only highly biased but perpetuate the assumptions of modernization theory, which Ulrike Schultz (this volume) reflects on sensitively. In her chapter she discusses how training in development practice creates ambiguities in the identities and self-understandings of students from countries that are labelled ‘developing’. For the students, she argues, development is not simply the object of study but is linked to experiences and phenomena in their own lifeworlds. From another perspective, Matthieu Brun (this volume) stresses how such development structures also disseminate a particular kind of sectoral thinking that does not match the experiences and views of NGO actors in Africa when it comes to the challenges in their own areas. What would NGOs mean to our own lifeworlds if they had such a massive number of social, economic, educational and infrastructural tasks in society? What value would we attribute to them in our everyday? With these questions in mind, it becomes quite difficult to ignore NGOs when trying to understand the social and economic realities of many African citizens. Based on such examples, the distinctions between public, private and the third sector again prove not to be the appropriate way to describe the structural conditions of states in Africa (and elsewhere). Nearly ­everywhere where development programmes and projects are a part of everyday life, development is like a glue holding the public, the private and the third sector together. African and international NGOs both fulfil or support the tasks of the state, functioning as non-profit distributors of goods and products and providing social protection. They are involved in education, sanitation, health and the private economy. Against this back-

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ground, authors rightly see (African) NGOs as parastate organizations that weaken the state’s monopoly, or even render the state a ‘chimera’ (Zimmermann 2013), thereby relieving governments from having to fulfil their public duties (Klute and von Trotha 2001; Mann 2015; Marcussen 1996; Vetta 2012). Possibly, it is exactly such narratives that contribute to the transnationalization of development aid mentioned earlier and the already completed integration of (African) NGOs into multilateral orders of cooperation. Today, as arms of domestic and foreign governments, and supranational organizations and private donors, the parastate role of African NGOs becomes more complicated and no less evident than the foreign parastate regime. Certainly, NGOs today continue to pull aid resources away from the state, but if they do, they do it as ‘partners’. In other words, they are increasingly being funded through the channels of the state,9 as foreign donors have to align themselves with the recipient government’s development strategy, as this fulfils the paradigmatic dogma of ‘alignment’ in the Paris Declaration (2005). Against the background of these global shifts, ‘NGO forms’ (Bernal and Grewal 2014) in Africa continue to evolve as heterogeneous processes (Hilhorst 2003) and prove to be very resilient as long as they show transformative competences. NGO actors in Togo can be expert partners in the water sector while also presenting themselves as grassroots organizations so they can receive subsidies from the state. Maybe it is not enough to describe these organizations as ‘changing’ or ‘shifting’ because this would imply that they had had a certain shape earlier. Instead, NGOs have multiple forms and agendas simultaneously. If we understand NGOs to be processual in nature, as traits rather than as states, we may have to accept that the term ‘NGO’ is most useful as a heuristic device with which to describe this multiplicity and transformability. We argue that it is more fruitful to look closely at the actors behind the terminology, at those who (re)act and make decisions in response to donor expectations, paradigmatic bases, national politics, responsibilities in communities, social relations and unpredictable events, as with the recent deterioration of the national security situation in the Sahel (see Hagberg, this volume). In this view, NGOs both mirror and produce political, economic and legal changes, as well as moral shifts and social connections. This is how they end up being multiform proxies for institutions, services and tasks while also remaining social spaces in which people laugh, chat and worry, fight and support each other, contest and create.

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About This Book This volume is arranged in three thematic parts, each containing one additional contribution with a special focus to broaden the perspective of the respective part. The first part, entitled ‘Engagements and Encounters’, brings together self-reflective and autoethnographic perspectives. Partly written as first-­person narratives, the contributions mirror the many ways in which NGO work is embedded in lifeworlds. Projects, paradigms and discourses, as well as decisions and interventions, permeate, shape and change the way NGO employees and beneficiaries live and perceive social reality, something that becomes particularly evident in this part of the book. With this part, the authors pay tribute to the fact that people share personal stories with the ‘NGO world’ (Stirrat and Henkel 1997) that are deeply inscribed in their own biographies. This personal account fills a gap that is often left out by academic research. Friendships, biographies and encounters resulting from NGO involvement leave traces beyond partnerships, funding periods and programmes, thereby allowing the temporalities and spaces of development activities to endure. These traces appear on both sides of the relationship and decisively influence career pathways, creating a degree of personal involvement that goes beyond merely analytical approaches. While this obviously applies to NGO actors, it is also true for scholars, who, for example, take on the roles of trainers of future development workers or are employed by an NGO at some point in their academic careers. This is why methods used in this part of the book are more personal than solely academic, including autobiography, biographical narratives, auto-ethnography and selfreflection. Practitioners as well as scholars remember, critically reflect and immerse themselves in their own histories and experiences with NGOs, giving this disciplinarily diverse volume the perfect entry point into the endless array and vast expanse of a whole global industry. In his chapter, Sylvestre Ouédraogo, founder of an NGO himself, provides insights into his personal trajectory. He is not just occupied with NGO activities but is someone who creates and defines NGO work. Narrating his biography, he explains how he came to be the founder and director of his own NGO, an organization teaching ICT skills in Burkina Faso. It being quite exceptional in this context for an NGO to exist for more than twenty years, Ouédraogo analyses the reasons for this longevity and the conditions that favoured it. In his view, donors and the state are relevant but also partly ambivalent points of reference for his work. But what is most crucial from his point of view is the inner motivation and attitude of the founder and the NGO’s employees. To focus on resil-

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ience and to know one’s own priorities, instead of chasing to keep up with paradigmatic trends and project funding, is what Ouédraogo indicates are the main reasons for his success. Behind the walls of NGO offices worldwide, it is people who decide, act and negotiate. Against this background, Karen Lauterbach argues that development has to be understood as a relationship that deserves more analytical attention. She tells how, as a young Master’s graduate, she found her first job in a Danish NGO. Her employer sent her to Burkina Faso to inform the partner NGO that their cooperation had to come to an end and would not be prolonged. This crucial moment reveals some of the main characteristics of such cooperation and highlights the role and significance of personal and social relations in NGO partnerships, whose main characteristics relate to reciprocity, agency and dependency. Lauterbach shows vividly how these relationships may flip over when it comes to personal encounters between individuals of different ages and coming from different societies. In fact, the daily negotiations and interactions of workers in NGO partnerships are mainly overlooked in the literature on NGOs. The place of NGOs as potential employers of future development experts is also the topic of Ulrike Schultz’s chapter, in which she focuses on the question of what such education should ideally entail and how existing knowledge structures can be challenged. She describes a ‘paradoxical situation’ in a studies programme at the University of Friedensau in Germany, where she teaches students from all over the world to become development experts. In doing so, she not only reflects on her own positionality as a German professor teaching development to students who come from countries where development is implemented and is often part of everyday experience; she also discusses how differently her students relate to development in comparison to herself on both epistemological and habitual grounds. It is against this background that Schultz asks how we can decolonize the production of development knowledge. Thus, the question is what future development actors in Africa and beyond actually need to learn and internalize in order to be the competent partners and counterparts of international donors. How can they be empowered, even though their empowerment would not necessarily be congruent with the structural and paradigmatic constitution of their potential future employers? In an additional contribution, ‘On Opportunities’, Sten Hagberg turns this perspective around by carving out alternatives to professional pathways into NGOs. Given his many years of experience of West Africa, he is well acquainted with how difficult it is for African academics to find suitable employment. NGOs, Hagberg argues first, are often the only

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significant employers of university graduates, if not the only ones the private sector has to offer. Whether full time or part time, or open-ended or temporary contracts, the NGO and development industry offers one of the few career opportunities for which African university degrees are of value. Against this background, he decries the profound lack of alternatives. Hagberg’s second argument points right at the heart of global knowledge production: instead of only managing and operating NGO projects as ‘local’ experts, university graduates should become part of the process of knowledge production themselves. One possibility for achieving this is the promotion of more academic team research. Mixed teams of senior and junior and national and international researchers working together, Hagberg concludes, provide different benefits, like the facilitation of comparative qualitative research and the guided training of young African academics in policy advice and qualitative research. The data such teams produce and interpret ideally flow back into NGO strategies and contribute to the slow process of decolonizing global forms of knowledge. In the face of huge security issues in the Sahel region, Hagberg also promotes team research as an opportunity to continue conducting research in these countries at all. Another emphasis of this volume is the manifold ways in which ‘Politics and Donors’ (Part II) influence individual pathways, politics and partnerships. Through methods like participant observation, semistructured individual and (focus) group interviews, in-depth interviews, questionnaire surveys, discourse analysis and grounded theory, the contributions in this part trace the tensions between adaptation and contention within NGOs. The contributions are thought-provoking in so far as they stimulate critical reflection about the position of African NGO actors in relation to their donors. The various contributions pay attention to the different predicaments and challenges that have partly been caused by the general set-up of national politics and the character of the nation state, as well as how NGO actors encounter them in Africa. One crucial aspect this part highlights is that donors’ directives (re-)create and strengthen inequalities of power to the disadvantage of NGOs in Africa by controlling the conditions under which NGO actors have to work. Nevertheless, while the structural inequalities in the NGO business are evident, the chapters in this part do not deny NGO actors in Africa agency and power. In fact, the studies presented here vividly show how NGO actors on-site are aware of their own capacities and how they follow their own priorities, career paths and goals through a jungle of structural constraints and narrow corridors of agenda-setting, contracts and rules. Molly Sundberg’s chapter provides a comparison of working conditions of both ‘posted’ and national aid workers in Tanzania. She sheds

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light on existing inequalities in salary levels and social and geographical mobility that are inherent in these two different terms of employment. By revealing examples of career trajectories and professional aspirations, her chapter provides insights into the advantages and disadvantages of different aid agencies and the job conditions they offer to Tanzanians in national NGOs, public organizations and the private sector. She also highlights the role of national aid workers as a bridge between incoming and outgoing professionals, as bearers of institutional memory, and as a resource because of their context-specific knowledge of development. They themselves lament the fact that they have very limited autonomy and authority, which explains a trend Sundberg emphasizes: NGO actors increasingly pursue aspirations to work in the private sector as consultants. This means that, in the end, international NGOs risk losing the expertise of their national workers by maintaining structures that perpetuate inequalities. Burkina Faso represents a typical case of a very diverse NGO landscape. Alain J. Sissao provides a detailed and mainly quantitative analysis of its status quo. He reveals in actual figures how much money the NGO sector receives and how it is spent in the different areas of intervention. Sissao raises the question of how Burkinabe NGOs contribute to the country’s development and what challenges they encounter in the process, such as a lack of finance. In addition, Sissao claims that donors often distrust NGOs and tend to implement their own projects instead of those of the African partners. He recognizes that NGOs complement the state’s development activities, while simultaneously pointing out its deficits and incapacities. The state’s competition with civil society in the context of its sovereignty is a persistent topic that intersects with several chapters in this volume. However, one undeniable effect of the existence of NGOs is the creation of employment in very different ways. This is especially important for young people in Africa, who are generally affected by enormous levels of unemployment, one of the factors that is said to give rise to conflict and jihadism in, for example, the Sahel region. By taking a close look at the legitimization strategies of governments and international development organizations with regard to large-scale mining (LSM) and artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Burkina Faso, Bettina Engels highlights the ambivalent role of Burkinabe NGOs. Driven by the need to mobilize funding, NGOs explain the emergence of protests by communities and artisanal miners with reference to inadequate communication by state agencies and a lack of knowledge on the part of the population. This opens up room for manoeuvre for NGOs to promote themselves as necessary mediators who can educate those concerned properly. By obscuring the root causes of such conflicts, NGOs

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unwittingly sustain a dominant discourse that presents LSM as a ‘winwin’ solution for development. In so doing, they discursively demonize ASM, though the latter is important for the livelihoods of many people in the affected communities. This is a very impressive example of a situation that is becoming a reality for numerous NGOs worldwide. It demonstrates the extent to which NGOs’ room for manoeuvre waxes and wanes in accordance with the political dynamics of state agencies and the economic interests of huge international enterprises. In an additional contribution ‘On Reciprocity’, Beata Paragi gives us a glimpse of NGOs beyond the African continent. Her case study in Palestine is a strong example of an attempt to reduce NGOs’ political engagement. At the same time, Paragi’s contribution clearly shows that the relationship between donors and recipients is not a one-way street and that donors urgently need recipients to achieve their goals. She analyses the relationship between aid donors and recipients within the scope of gift-giving and reciprocity, following the well-known theories of Marcel Mauss (2002 [1925]). This is a thought-provoking perspective from which the asymmetries and dependencies in the interplay of international aid become visible, a perspective that can fruitfully be transferred to other regional settings. Paragi shows that even at the basis of transnational cooperation the lines between giver and recipient are blurred, their roles being interchangeable to some extent. While this insight ascribes Palestinian NGO workers the capacity to wield power, they are at the same time restricted in what they can do by the highly problematic political situation in the region. The high price these workers pay for the aid they receive is the abandonment and exclusion of certain political claims like self-determination, independence and related political agendas. The final part of the volume, ‘Memories and History’, contains chapters that focus on how actors remember their pasts, construct their biographical narratives in relation to NGOs and acquire individual experiences and trajectories. This part highlights the strong influence of development programmes on specific regions and social and political power structures but also on today’s perceptions and the sense-making of actors. For many parts of the world, and for Africa in particular, development programmes and NGO-related activities play a crucial role, as they continue to shape national, regional and individual histories in decisive ways. Although the idea of development is embedded in Africa’s heterogeneous histories, the perception to date easily underestimates the extent to which development has not only influenced national histories but also collective and individual (life) stories. Using the perspective on history, the authors in this part relate to aspects of the historiography of nations, institutions, regions and groups. They refer to the ways in which these

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larger entities narrate collective (his)stories and explain their coming into existence and their current status. Of course, the personal and collective dimensions of NGO work in Africa are interdependent, but this actor-centred perspective is helpful in bringing lifeworlds to the fore on many different levels, where both dimensions overlap to a large extent. Participant observation, different interview methods, the reputational method, archival research and source analysis are prior methodological approaches in this part. Abimbola O. Adesoji’s chapter is an appropriate starting point in this regard, as he challenges the European claim that they are the origin of NGOs. Adesoji contributes to the historical deconstruction of NGOs in Africa by investigating the secession of African churches from an ‘overEuropeanized’ Christianity at the end of the nineteenth century, and thus shows how they occupied a vacuum that a dysfunctional state had created in the process of delimitation. Challenging governmental structures, demanding accountability and mobilizing actions considered detrimental to the state are, Adesoji argues, a historical, African legacy rooted in the colonial period and not in development. By introducing the term ‘protoNGO’, Adesoji unmasks the presumptuous attitude behind the assertion that the charitable and mediating agenda of NGOs was born in the age of enlightenment in Europe, thus pushing the debate on NGOs in Africa towards a question that is rarely asked: which, possibly different roots do NGOs have, and which cultural forms of organization and understanding relate to them? Interpersonal relations are at the heart of Eric Burton’s chapter. He sheds light on what he calls ‘counterpart relations’ in Tanzania between the 1970s and the 1990s, a period of socialism that was also the heyday of the concept of ujamaa. While counterparts in Africa are often spatially labelled ‘local’ or national workers in the development literature, Burton locates them in a complex arena pervaded by asymmetries, inequalities and interdependencies. At the same time, he manages to reveal the room for manoeuvre and agency that counterparts may have (Ortner 2006) by highlighting their roles and functions as brokers and thus as central figures who negotiate and translate between communities and international donors. Two aspects Burton stresses are particularly relevant, as they resonate in other chapters. First, he emphasizes the world of NGOs as one in which career opportunities can lead to upward mobility and professional advancement. Sundberg and Brun also address this topic in their chapters. Secondly, Burton questions the myths and realities of the ‘local’ expert, which deny development actors in Africa their expertise beyond a situated form of knowledge, an aspect also evident in Paragi’s and Schultz’s chapters.

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Like Adesoji, Kokou F.L. Hetcheli offers a very broad and far-reaching insight in another national context. His research concentrates on Togo from the 1990s until today and tackles the essential question of the role civil society actors play in strengthening democracy. Through a document analysis and interviews with civil society actors and other members of society, he takes stock of the current situation by identifying central achievements such as the decline of violence during elections, a strengthening of basic rights and a general loosening of state control. He completes the picture by referring to the deficits that culminate in a lack of efficiency on the part of the respective civil society organizations, which he attributes to internal weaknesses, as well as to the national political environment. Hetcheli thereby emphasizes a structural and personal commingling of civil society and politics that cultivates the continuing politicization of Togolese civil society. Individual trajectories of NGO workers are the focus of Matthieu Brun’s chapter. One important asset he emphasizes is the meaning of personal memory with regard to NGO-related activities in rural Morocco. By tracing the emergence of new types of political leadership and elitism, he shows how actors use their memories of development projects to position and legitimize themselves in regional policymaking. Like Hahn in the following contribution, Brun reflects on the usefulness and profitability of memory as a mainly personal resource. Terms such as ‘local’ knowledge and ‘expert’ are ultimately attributed to those who understand the donors and know how to read them. Hence, the requisite skills require a profound knowledge not only of the region, its people and needs but also of the way in which donors function and reason. Working with NGOs is yet again presented as one way, among others, for individuals with a special set of skills and competences to become part of an elite group striving to achieve social mobility. Hans P. Hahn’s contribution ‘On Institutions’ provides something of  a  contrast to the emphasis on memory. Hahn highlights the ‘intentional amnesia’ of developmental state agencies that prevents conscious reflection on past interventions. Mainly focusing on his personal experiences during his long-term fieldwork between 1993 and 2003 in Burkina Faso, he poses the far-reaching question of how far development activities impinge on cultures on-site. In other words, he asks, ‘what does development do to societies?’ As a result, he places collective memory and the influence of development on social identities and their history at the centre. He also puts forward a social history of development that is ironically foiled by the ‘intentional amnesia’ of big state agencies such as the German Corporation for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ). However, he man-

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ages to bridge both aspects, namely the collective memories of societies and the individual memories of NGO actors. In agreement with Burton and Brun, he highlights the individual experiences, perceptions and emotions that shape the identities of NGO actors in Africa. The often disregarded fact that development can be a burden, obligation and responsibility is one of Hahn’s arguments on which Paragi also expands in her chapter. The afterword by Hubertus Büschel uses the case of a failed German development project in Togo to introduce yet another type of NGO, the ‘ad hoc NGO’. Besides earlier ‘proto-NGOs’ (Adesoji) and recently emerging professionalized NGOs (Schultz, Sundberg), the ‘ad hoc NGO’ has a less formal organization that is created temporarily in order to implement a specific project and disappears as soon as the project funding dries up. Büschel discusses in combination two aspects that are also crucial to many of the previous chapter: the influence of individual memories of development interventions on biographical narratives, and the implications of NGO work for social hierarchies in the societies concerned. He in turn balances the idea of memory with the concept of agnotology, which he uses as a heuristic tool to frame the silence of those affected by development projects. This silence, Büschel argues, serves as a practice or a coping mechanism with which to handle the often negative experiences and failures that accompany such interventions. Finally, consistent with the chapters by Schultz, Sundberg, Burton and Brun, he points to the social divisions that may emerge from development programmes and stresses that in a majority of cases only a few profit from NGO activities, leaving the already marginalized even more disadvantaged than before. He thus questions popular narratives that emphasize the positive effects of development by stressing the puzzling, frustrating and even traumatizing effects of internationally led and NGO-based development projects. Melina C. Kalfelis has lately been a fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa in Accra and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bayreuth. She is currently conducting research on trust, violence and justice in the context of recent conflicts in the Sahel region. More generally, her research interests include politics, violence, transnationalism, civil society, law and ethics, as well as philosophical anthropology and ethnographic methodology. Her dissertation deals with lifeworlds of NGO actors in Burkina Faso, transnational cooperation and poverty concepts in African language (Campus, 2020). Melina also works as a photographer and filmmaker.

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Kathrin Knodel holds a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology. She has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the CRC 1095 ‘Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes’ at Goethe University Frankfurt within which she conducted research on NGO actors in Burkina Faso. Currently, she is a teaching assistant at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research and teaching focuses on development, West Africa and Rwanda, brokerage as well as the history of civil society and farmers’ organizations in Africa.

Notes 1. Of course, there are exceptions: see, for example, Bierschenk 2008; Bierschenk, Chaveau and Olivier de Sardan 2002; Kalfelis 2015, 2020; Michael 2004; Neubert 1995; Yarrow 2008, and, with a less actor-centred approach but still focused on working conditions in development, Rossi 2017. Other authors have paid some attention to expatriates in development (Fechter 2007, 2012; Mosse 2011). 2. Talibé children are pupils of Koranic schools who often live in harsh economic and social conditions and are quite visible as beggars in public spaces in Africa. 3. The concept Ubuntu is a widely discussed concept of African philosophy that, in the words of Praeg (2014: 91), describes ‘interdependence’ in the sense of a ‘shared humanity’. 4. It would take us too far to discuss definitions of European civil society by Hegel (1991 [1820]), De Tocqueville (1994 [1835]) or Habermas (1996 [1992]), but it is their theoretical ideas that underlie a major part of intellectual thinking on civil society today. Particularly interesting is Antonio Gramsci’s (1981 [1926–1937]) ambiguous, Marxist understanding of the term, which stood out at the time. He developed his ideas while in prison in Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime. For Gramsci, civil society is torn between revolution and suppression and is thus always a part of the hegemonic order (Brighenti 2016). 5. See https://africasacountry.com/2018/12/the-gentrification-of-african-studies (accessed 8 August 2019). 6. See https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction. htm (accessed 8 August 2019). 7. See https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/busanpartnership.htm (accessed 8 December 2019). 8. For a complementary discussion of the significance of volunteerism in Africa, see Prince and Brown 2016. 9. See http://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-financetopics/Aid-for-CSOs-2019.pdf (accessed 22 September 2019).

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Hann, C., and E. Dunn. 1996. Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge. Hegel, G.W.F. 1991 [1820]. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hemment, J. 2014. ‘Global Civil Society and the Local Cost of Belonging: Defining Violence against Women in Russia’, in V. Bernal and I. Grewal (eds), Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 119–42. Herzfeld, M. 2001. Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Blackwell: Malden. Hilhorst, D. 2003. The Real World of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity and Development. London: Zed. Hodge, J.M. 2015. ‘Writing the History of Development (Part 1: The First Wave)’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6(3): 429–63. ______. 2016. ‘Writing the History of Development (Part 2: Longer, Deeper, Wider)’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 7(1): 125–74. Honwana, A. 2014. ‘“Waithood”: Youth Transitions and Social Change’, in D. Foeken et al. (eds), Development and Equity: An Interdisciplinary Exploration by Ten Scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Leiden: Brill, pp. 28–40. Husserl, E. 1970 [1936]. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ______. 1973 [1910/1911]. ‘Die natürliche Einstellung und der “natürliche Weltbegriff”’, in I. Kern (ed.), Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905–1920. Rotterdam: Springer Netherlands, pp. 111–37. Izard, M. 1985. Le Yatenga Précolonial: Un Ancien Royaume du Burkina. Karthala: Paris. Jackson, M. 1989. Paths Towards a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ______. 2012. Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kabore, R.B. 2002. Histoire politique du Burkina Faso 1919–2000. Paris: L’Harmattan. Kalfelis, M.C. 2015. ‘Flexibel aus Armut: Die Lebenswelt von lokalen Entwicklungsakteuren in Burkina Faso vor dem Hintergrund entwicklungspolitischer Erwartungshaltungen’, Paideuma 61: 143–64. ______. 2020. NGO als Lebenswelt: Transnationale Verflechtungen von Entwicklungsakteuren. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Kees, J. 2004. ‘Unpacking and Re-Packing Knowledge in Development’, in D. Kalb, W.G. Pansters and H. Siebers (eds), Globalization and Development: Themes and Concepts in Current Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp. 163–90. Klute, G., and T. von Trotha. 2001. ‘Von der Postkolonie zur Parastaatlichkeit: Das Beispiel Schwarzafrika’, in E. Reiter (ed.), Jahrbuch für Internationale Sicherheitspolitik. Hamburg-Berlin-Bonn: E.S. Mittler & Sohn, pp. 683–707.

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Krishna, A. 2017. ‘For Reducing Poverty Faster: Target Reasons Before People’, World Development 35(11): 1947–960. ______. 2007. The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and Potential of India’s One-Billion. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Lashaw, A., and C. Vannier. 2017. ‘A Second Generation of NGO Anthropology’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 230–36. Lashaw, A., C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds). 2017. Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Lewis, D. 2002. ‘Civil Society in African Contexts: Reflections on the Usefulness of a Concept’, Development and Change 33(4): 569–86. ______. 2016. ‘Abandoned Pasts, Disappearing Futures: Further Reflections on Multiple Temporalities in Studying Non-Governmental Organisation Worlds’, Critique of Anthropology 36(1): 84–92. Lewis, D., and M. Schuller. 2017. ‘Engagement with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologist and Nongovernmental Organizations’, Current Anthropology 58(5): 634–51. Lewis, D., and D. Mosse (eds). 2006. Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Boulder, CO: Kumarian. Little, K. 1957. ‘The Role of Voluntary Associations in West African Urbanization’, American Anthropologist 59: 579–96. ______. 1965. West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Cultural Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macamo, E. 2011. ‘Social Criticism and Contestation: Reflections on the Politics of Anger and Outrage’, Stichproben: Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 20(11): 45–68. Maina, W. 1998. ‘Kenya: The State, Donors and the Politics of Democratization’, in A. van Rooy (ed.), Civil Society and the Aid Industry. London: Earthscan, pp. 134–67. Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mann, G. 2015. From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marcussen, H.S. 1996. ‘NGOs, the State and Civil Society’, Review of African Political Economy 23(69): 405–23. Mauss, M. 2002 [1925]. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. With an introduction by Mary Douglas. London: Routledge. Michael, S. 2004. Undermining Development: The Absence of Power among Local NGOs in Africa. Oxford: Currey. Moore, H.L. 2004. ‘Global Anxieties: Concept-Metaphors and Pretheoretical Commitments in Anthropology’, Anthropological Theory 4(1): 71–88. Mosse, D. 2011. Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York: Berghahn. Mouftah, N. 2017. ‘Faith Development beyond Religion: The NGO as Site of Islamic Reform’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of

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Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 122–41. Neubert, D. 1995. ‘Afrikanischer Nicht-Regierungsorganisationen zwischen gesellschaftlicher Selbstorganisation und professionalisierter Dienstleistungserbringung’, in A. von Oppen, and R. Rottenburg (eds), Organisationswandel in Afrika: Kollektive Praxis und kulturelle Aneignung. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, pp. 145–70. Obadare, E. 2016. Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Opoku-Mensah, P., D. Lewis and T. Tvedt (eds). 2007. Reconceptualising NGOs and their Roles in Development: NGOs, Civil Society and the International Aid System. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. Ortner, S.B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Osaghae, E.E. 2006. ‘Colonialism and Civil Society in Africa: The Perspective of Ekeh’s Two Publics’, International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 17(3): 233–45. Popitz, H. 1992 [1986]. Phänomene der Macht: Acht Abhandlungen. Tübingen: Mohr. Praeg, L. 2014. A Report on Ubuntu (Thinking Africa). Scottsville: KwaZulu-Natal Press. Prince, R., and H. Brown (eds). 2016. Volunteer Economies: The Politics and Ethics of Voluntary Labour in Africa. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer. Randeria, S. 2002. ‘Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil society, Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-colonial India’, in Y. Elkana, et al. (eds), Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, pp. 284–312. Rettová, A. 2016. ‘African Philosophy as a Radical Critique’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 28(2): 127–31. Rossi, B. 2017. ‘What “Development” Does to Work’, International Labor and Working-Class History 92: 7–23. Sampson, S. 2017. ‘Introduction: Engagements and Entanglements in the Anthropology of NGOs’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 1–18. Schler, L., and Y. Nissim Gez. 2018. ‘Development Shadows: The Afterlife of Collapsed Development Projects in the Zambian Copperbelt’, Africa Spectrum 53(3): 3–31. Schuller, M. 2017. ‘Introduction Part I: Dilemmas of Dual Roles, Studying NGOs, and Donor-Driven “Democracy”’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 21–25. Shivji, I.G. 2018. ‘The Metamorphosis of the Revolutionary Intellectual’, Journal of Political Economy: A Triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES 7(3): 394–400. Smith, J.H. 2008. Bewitching Development: Witchcraft and the Reinvention of Development in Neoliberal Kenya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stirrat, R.L. 2000. ‘Cultures of Consultancy’, Critique of Anthropology 20(1): 31–46.

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Stirrat, R.L., and H. Henkel. 1997. ‘The Development Gift: The Problem of Reciprocity and the NGO World’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 554: 66–80. Synková, T. 2017. ‘Reformists and Revolutionists: Social Work NGOs and Activist Struggles in the Czech Republic’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 75–93. Thelen, T., L. Vetters and K. von Benda-Beckmann. 2018. ‘Stategraphy: Relational Modes, Boundary Work, and Embeddedness’, in T. Thelen, L. Vetters and K. von Benda-Beckmann (eds), Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State. New York: Berghahn, pp. 1–19. Tsing, A.L. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vetta, T. 2012. ‘NGOs and the State: Clash or Class? ’, in B. Petric (ed.), Democracies at Large: NGOs, Political Foundations, Think Tanks. New York: Palgrave, pp. 169–90. Weber, M. 2005 [1922]. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins. Yarrow, T. 2008. ‘Life/History: Personal Narratives of Development amongst NGO Workers and Activists in Ghana’, Africa 78(3): 334–58. Ziai, A. 2007a. ‘Development Discourse and its Critics: An Introduction to Postdevelopment’, in A. Ziai (ed.), Exploring Post-development: Theory and Practice, Problems and Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 3–17. Ziai, A. (ed.). 2007b. Exploring Post-development: Theory and Practice, Problems and Perspectives. London: Routledge.

______. 2012. ‘Post-development: Fundamentalkritik der “Entwicklung”’, Geographica Helvetica 67: 133–38. ______. 2016. ‘Post-development: Premature Burials and Haunting Ghosts’, Development and Change 46(4): 833–54.

Zimmermann, A.M. 2013. ‘State as Chimera: Aid, Parallel Institutions, and State Power’, Comparative Politics 45(3): 335–56.

Part I

Engagements and Encounters

Chapter 1

An Association for Emerging Technologies and the Bases of Its Longevity

The Example of Yam Pukri in Burkina Faso Sylvestre Ouédraogo

Introduction The winds of liberalization in the 1990s led to an enormous increase in private companies in Africa, as well as in enterprises within what I call social and solidarity economies (SSE) – that is, social enterprises (Ouédraogo 2009) based on notions of solidarity, including some in the development sector. Every day, dozens of the latter sort of enterprise are founded and recognized as such by the public authorities. In Burkina Faso, Act 10/92/ADP of 15 December 19921 allowed the creation of such associations and provided the basis for their increase.2 The survival of African associations of this type is due to a number of factors. Here, I shall describe the example of Yam Pukri,3 which I founded in 1997. Yam Pukri is an association that focuses on emerging technologies (training, information, support, consulting), especially information and communication technologies (ICT). Usually, associations oriented towards ICTs are very short-lived, for they change very rapidly. In this context, the fact that this association has survived for over twenty years suggests a relatively long lifespan. The aim of this chapter is to share my experience of the Yam Pukri association, and in particular its relations with its environment, including collaboration and exchange with other actors in the field, such as international donors, other Burkinabe associations and the state of Burkina Faso Notes for this chapter begin on page 55.

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itself. The overriding question I would like to pose here concerns the factors determining Yam Pukri’s longevity. After a short introduction to the association, I suggest three arguments in answering this question. First, I shall explain the origin of the idea and the initial motivation for founding an association in the first place. This is followed by a section on what could be described as good practice in the conduct of its activities. Third, I shall assess a range of actions that can be recommended to associations, assessments that also address the questions of competition between them and NGOs and of their relations with the state. In Burkina Faso, there are no differences in the practice of activities between an NGO and an association: both intervene in the non-profit sector and the public sphere. Activities with a social character are the task of both associations and NGOs. However, the state grants certain favours to NGOs as national or international associations recognized as being of public benefit. An NGO may for this purpose profit from tax exemptions on imported products and the state’s administrative and institutional assistance, but in return it has to have a transparent administration and financial management, as well as keep statistics on the realization of its projects within its area of intervention. One can say that in practice the difference between an association and an NGO is the size of their respective interventions. If the scope of an association’s field of intervention is considered wide enough, the state can grant it the status of a public benefit. Otherwise, it will have to wait and work to merit this status. To sum up, this chapter offers an admittedly personal but nonetheless informed and profound analysis of the work of a Burkinabe association, with all its challenges, requirements and potential.

Presenting the Yam Pukri Association In the national language, Mooré, Yam Pukri means ‘awakening of consciousness’. In West Africa it has been a pioneering organization regarding training, information and consulting on ICT (Ouédraogo 2004b, 2017). Based in Burkina Faso and intervening all over Africa, mostly in Burkina, Niger and Mali, Yam Pukri has supported and continues to support civilsociety organizations, as well as national and international institutions in their digital work (Ouédraogo 2002, 2003a, 2003b). By means of a solid yet flexible team, since 2002 Yam Pukri has acted as an incubator and a network for exchanging information on ICT through its website.4 Yam Pukri has five independent sections: the research and projects section, consisting of four economists, two of whom are postgraduates; the website development and multimedia applications sec-

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tion, with two computer engineers specializing in software development; the video production section, comprising two people; the maintenance section, led by two specialized engineers; and finally the training section, where most of the staff work in their respective fields of competence. The administrative office, consisting of a secretary and a coordinator, is responsible for accounting and administrative management. Yam Pukri also carries out entrepreneurial training, welcoming five to ten young graduates from Africa, Europe or the Americas every year to complete their studies in Burkina Faso. Most of them find work afterwards. The permanent team is made up of ten persons and may grow according to needs and activities. More than ten thousand individuals and organizations have so far benefited from its services in training and consulting, and over two hundred thousand from services concerning information about emerging technologies. These individuals and organizations participate in professional fairs, ICT workshops and online presentations. Yam Pukri’s objectives are thus, first, contributing to the valorization of African expertise in ICT; second, providing information on ICT in Africa; and third, helping organizations efficiently integrate ICT into their organizational structures. Yam Pukri’s primary mission is to promote ICT use in all lines of business and thus to contribute to the development of Burkina Faso’s digital economy. Yam Pukri originated in the basic idea of allowing Burkinabe people to shed their fears of computers and technology, which I experienced as a felt need. Yam Pukri is an association with local reach and its headquarters in a two-story building run 50 per cent on solar energy. Over twenty social businesses have followed Yam Pukri’s example, recognizing it as a pioneer in promoting emerging technologies in the areas of education and agriculture. Drawing inspiration from its own environment, Yam Pukri has manufactured objects related to technology, such as mousepads made from local leather and computer covers made of calabash, wood or other local products. Since 2006, it has guaranteed the Country Gateway – that is, the development portal in Burkina Faso in collaboration with the Development Gateway Foundation set up by the World Bank. Among Yam Pukri’s many distinctions are its citation in 2012 as Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite des Arts, des Lettres et de la Communication (Officer of the Order of Merit in Arts, Letters and Communication) in the category of Postes et Télécommunications (Posts and Telecommunications). The association has received several honorary awards like the one of the Burkinabe government and the World Summit Award as well as the nomination of its first director as an ASHOKA Fellow,5 Ashoka6 being an international organization that honours social entrepreneurs.

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Genesis of the Idea for an Association in the ICT Sector Yam Pukri is an association grounded in the conviction that young people should profit from ICT. I had previously been active in a scientific club at high school in the 1980s and, having led the club for several years, had acquired the necessary basics. When I arrived at high school in 1979, I found a club called Club Jeunes Sciences (Young Sciences Club) and joined it. In the beginning, this club was made up of European teachers using their free time to follow the scientific activities they wished. By the time we arrived, most of these Europeans had begun to return home, and pupils joined the club. In high school, we did some amateur electronics and had projects for biogas, a black and white photo laboratory, solar energy, gardening – anything that came to our minds. We also organized video projections of scientific documentaries in the town’s high schools and colleges. In 1985, the Club Jeunes Sciences became an affiliate of the Clubs UNESCO, associations to promote UNESCO ideals, namely the search for peace through science and culture. We mostly worked with the earnings from our photographic work. At Club UNESCO we learned about DIY. We did not wait to obtain finance before undertaking any activity, we just started! I can say that we invented manufacturing laboratories at that moment with our DIY work. When I left school, I went to the University of Ouagadougou. However, I realized that our handmade electronics from high school could not be standardized and that our products were more expensive than Chinese alternatives. I therefore sought out other experiences and decided to embark on computer training. However, I waited until the end of my studies before really launching the project. Quite naturally, the idea was born to set up an ICT association for young people. At this time, I was coordinating more than twenty Clubs UNESCO in high schools and colleges in Ouagadougou. I began to invest my own resources in starting these activities, just as we had done in high school. Our association functioned 100% autonomously. I was already doing computer services (including statistical data entry) and had the resources to play with. Associations have always existed in our part of the world but only to meet specific needs (assistance with the construction of houses and sheds, ploughing fields, collective hunting, team games, etc.). Modernity has led to the institutionalization of associations as permanent structures. I can say that the idea of Yam Pukri is inspired more by the sort of association that is based on spontaneity and pleasure. Based on my many years of professional experience, I note that many people create or found an association in response to a call for projects

An Association for Emerging Technologies

Figure 1.1. The team of Yam Pukri, 2016. © Sylvestre Ouédraogo.

Figure 1.2. Training organized by Yam Pukri, 2017. © Sylvestre Ouédraogo.

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Figure 1.3. Handing over of training certificates, 2016. © Sylvestre Ouédraogo.

Figure 1.4. Working room at Yam Pukri, 2016. © Sylvestre Ouédraogo.

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or simply because they want to submit an application to a project. Most likely, such an association will not work if it does not benefit from the project, and it will probably also cease all activities at the end of the project. I am involved, for instance, in an association of vintage car collectors in Burkina Faso, which is run on its own resources, without waiting for any external help.

Conducting the Activities of the Association An association generally carries out two types of activity: non-profit activities for the benefit of its members and the population, and profitgenerating activities to finance its own functioning. An association that only does activities on a non-profit basis will necessarily need external support to survive. Equally, an association that only conducts lucrative activities has lost its primary purpose. We therefore have to maintain a balance between social and economic activities. To cover its operating costs, Yam Pukri asked around high schools and colleges if they had a room available. As a result, Yam Pukri’s first computer room was created in a technical high school on the outskirts of the centre of Ouagadougou. I told myself that although we do not have computers as yet we will start with the theoretical training and the use of scientific calculators, as most students cannot make correct use of them. Then, having acquired two second-hand computers financed with FCFA 450,000 (about EUR 690) of our own resources, activities could begin. These resources come from my consulting services in project evaluation and in the analysis and IT processing of survey data. Six months later, a law professor who had heard of my project in Switzerland but who is now retired saved us by offering ten microcomputers. We thus decided to open another location next to the university in order to have our main office outside the high school and thus avoid the problems of strikes by pupils, which might disrupt our training courses. I believe that a passion for technology enables diverse solutions to problems to be found. I am keen on technology and sometimes come across people, above all Europeans and Americans, who are astonished to find people in Africa being passionate about an object or a concept. It is true that the dominant passion in French-speaking West Africa seems to be soccer or traditional boxing. However, one does also find lovers of technology who like finding solutions to problems. Because this is our passion, Yam Pukri is committed to non-profit activities such as information on ICT, punctual support to repair the

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c­ omputers of certain people or associations, and the creation of blogs for individuals and organizations. When an association conducts an activity because there is funding, it is not very motivated by the result and may abandon its activity for the slightest reason. Whenever members actually find pleasure in the activity, conversely, passion comes into play, meaning that from this moment on we always find a way of continuing the activity. For this reason, Yam Pukri frequently refuses money from certain donors or redirects them towards other associations that specialize in a given topic. This allows us to concentrate on our favourite activities. Once, we refused funding for a project on electronic recycling because we did not have the necessary competence but knew of another association that specializes in this area. This is possible if the management team’s running costs are not too high. We try to achieve this at Yam Pukri by having young and rotating teams, which we place on the job market as soon as we discover a better opportunity for them. Yam Pukri’s organization is not democratic. The emphasis is on the potential of members and their abilities to do a given job, rather than on purely elective systems. This enables us to have competent people carrying out the work. The door is open to anyone to look for a better job, and those who leave the organization’s permanent team can reapply at any time for a specific job. This passion-based approach has worked at Yum Pukri because of the demand for more than just short interventions by the association and because of our willingness to bear certain costs for training courses, computer repairs or website design. This is what I call the positive impact of free service. Out of every ten individuals who profit from our free services, one or two come back to ask for a service that can be charged for, and this motivates us to continue. In practice, we no longer have a family life but spend all our time at the Yam Pukri centre tinkering with something or helping someone.

Internalization of Management Fees In my experience, one needs to be able to intervene and to repair things  by  oneself in order to reduce the organization’s running costs as  much as possible. The members’ expertise must be available at a lower cost and must be directed to external work or services wherever possible. In computing, I have frequently seen organizations repairing computers at prices that exceed the costs of new equipment in a one-year budget.

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In most cases, associations are trapped by their projects. When a new project arrives, they recruit a new team for it. It would be more beneficial to integrate the old projects, recruit only the necessary additional staff and invest in the training of others. There is a huge demand for ready-made teams with great experience. Most often, such staff are expensive and leave the organization as soon as their project ends because the resources available in Burkina Faso cannot pay them a salary. It is therefore preferable to have individuals who are not so expert but are less expensive, rather than strong specialists who, in most cases, lack creativity and quick adaptability and will quickly abandon an association when resources start drying up. At the beginning of Yam Pukri, I used human resources within my reach, namely my brothers and sisters. This worked according to the motto ‘You eat at my place, so you should also help me.’ This family support has allowed one start-up with only a few resources, but ultimately other motivated and competent people from the outside reinforced the team. I suggest that if you give young people an occasion to express themselves and let them evolve by developing skills and then continuing elsewhere later on, this gives a boost to motivation. Yam Pukri actually works like an incubator: we employ young people who take their first steps in the workaday world, and at the slightest opportunity of promotion in another situation we let them go. Some have been able to set up on their own account, while others have been able to continue their studies in Africa, Europe or the United States. Eighty percent of the young people who have taken their first steps in the world of employment with us have been recruited by the state. This constant renewal of resource persons allows the association to stay young and to have great capacities for innovation.

Being Obsessed with Big Projects I learned from my professional experience that many associations close down because they have run big projects. Small projects do not attract the interest of big donors because their management costs are the same, whether there are ten projects or two hundred. Thus, they prefer to fund joint projects, which regroup national or regional networks. The difficulty here is that the association is forced to work with other groups that it does not control and that are often too busy with other tasks. Large-scale international partners also want their projects to have a great impact; they do not want to work with small associations whose scope is very ­localized.

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I have seen many associations fail with this type of project, and my own organization too has struggled with regional projects we have run. At Yam Pukri, we therefore encourage others to create further associations as we have done, instead of extending our association into multiple locations. In fact, we tried to establish ourselves in several places, but due to the problems we encountered in doing so we have closed all our offices bar one. We then established informal cooperative relations between these associations, which we meet for occasional activities. I once told an American partner: ‘We are currently experimenting with the activity. It’s our first time. We are all in the same boat because we want to succeed together. So, you should help us with your ideas.’ The answer was: ‘We have many projects, and we cannot keep track of all of them. Get on with it!’ It is true that it is not easy for a small group abroad to manage dozens of projects in Africa. Most such groups only do financial management – that is, merely send off financial resources and wait for activity reports. Sometimes the partner in Africa is blocked, unable to move forward, with no mechanism to help him in the short term. He has to cope with it and adapt the project, sometimes to the point of going off topic and thus finding himself marked as a project embezzler. There are various categories of international partners, and if the African organization does not know how to handle them, it will run into problems. Joint projects with organizations specializing in the topic in question are often formulated with external partners that are interested in the project and often bid with the partner in Burkina Faso. In this case, the partner receives support and can achieve results because the two entities work together. Donors or organizations that specialize in the granting of funds often do not have numerous individuals monitoring their projects. They are more concerned with receiving reports on implementation than with helping the organization on the spot do a good job (see Paragi in this volume). International private donors and decentralized cooperation are also sensitive to the use of resources and often want the African partner to reproduce a given model. They often refuse to support studies or basic research at the beginning of a project, thinking that this is a waste of resources. If most of these projects do not end well, it is because they fully rely on the opinion of one or a few foreign or Burkinabe individuals and not on the genuine needs of the population. This problem often starts with the planning and definition of a joint project. As soon as the international partner asks for existing needs or submits offers, the African partner in most cases will give a positive response, even if there is no need.

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Adaptability and Flexibility during Activities African associations must know what they want if they want to survive in the long term. Yam Pukri adapts its activities according to the expertise available and avoids over-complex activities that can get out of hand, as ICT is a vast field. In order to work well, an association needs good will and active members with a certain expertise. It also needs members who are paid by the association to manage certain projects or conduct certain activities. It is these individuals you will see most often when you visit what are mainly well-established, urban associations. However, their staff is often not stable and leave the association at the slightest opportunity. Yam Pukri has learned to work with its existing human resources, which often have slightly different characteristics depending on the changes. If, for example, the Android developer leaves the organization and has no time left to devote to our association, we can postpone an Android development project requiring sound knowledge. We will instead propose new services that match the abilities of new staff members. As a manufacturing laboratory, we undertake many experiments with the resources at our disposal. This allows others to discover our potential. We do not wait for a project in order to initiate an activity. It happens that we support conjoint associations and work without charge on their account. Our charges are thus flexible, and a free service for a third-party organization can be charged at EUR 500 in the case of another organization if we know it has significant resources at its disposal. Working on evolving technologies and engaging ourselves in activities without waiting for external funding makes this flexibility possible. A solid leader capable of providing an impulse for change and flexibility is indispens­ able (see Hahn in this volume). The Red Cross, for instance, initially had the mission of saving injured soldiers. At the end of the war, it reoriented its mission to undertake other activities that were no longer related to wounded soldiers.7

The Overwork of Associations or the Lure of Projects In my view, the world of associations constitutes a new industry with its own rules: a successful association submits more and more projects to the point where it is no longer able to realize them all. It then turns back to square one and is sometimes forgotten or placed on the donors’ blacklist. A successful association should therefore accept that it must refuse to run several activities at the same time because it will certainly commit

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suicide in doing so. Sometimes I ask farmers’ organizations, ‘When do you work?’ They answer: ‘Sometimes at night because during the day we spend all our time receiving visitors and, as leaders in our field, we have all kinds of meetings.’ Then I ask: ‘So you do not have time to work anymore, and in some years you will be set back to where you had started because you have exhausted your energy doing other things than your basic work?’ The dilemma for successful associations is therefore huge because it happens that other associations compete against them in the same field. They then have to try to either enhance their activity or do something else in order not to compete with more recently established associations that they have sometimes helped to set up. In one call for projects, our association did not apply because we knew that many others would do so. They then put us on the steering committee. We then noticed that most of the applicants had referred to us as a support organization for their activities. Associations often apply for the same projects. It is thus normal that competition emerges at this level. We also noticed that a particular association may want to be the leader in its domain. However, those associations that are in the media every day are not necessarily those that work the most. International partners, eager to achieve results, often want to work with already experienced organizations to avoid difficulties and to be sure of having immediate results. Sometimes they want to reinvent the wheel by saying, ‘We are the ones who introduced this or that development approach in Africa’, which is often wrong. This climate of mistrust and the practice of putting forward a small organization in order to sell its model create frustration among the large associations, which are apt to think that it was up to them to experiment with this or that approach because they were the pioneers in the field. It must also be said that old associations are often not easy to manipulate and that certain organizations prefer to create their own associations, so they can do what they want. This is how we interpret the proliferation of associations that may be set up around a single given project. When the project ends, the association disappears with it.

Conflicts of Interest between Associations and the State in the Conduct of Certain Activities In the first instance, the state only supports associations that have the status of an NGO – that is, ones that are of public utility. If an association does not have this status, it will find it difficult to obtain direct support from the state, or worse, it might sometimes find itself to be a rival of the

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state in certain projects that it wants to undertake itself. A game of cat and mouse is continually going on, and sometimes the situation is too tense. We have had some of our activities reclaimed and institutionalized by the state. Even if this increases the scope of activity, it also removes from us the primary role that we wanted to play, although the goal stays the same – that is, to satisfy the greatest number in the provision of basic social services. Having the status of a public utility is a good thing, but it is also constraining. For instance, regular reports must be filed with the authorities. For us, an association with a social vocation should not take on the state’s role by wanting to manage large-scale projects. If it has the support of the state, the activity can continue at the end of its funding. If it does not have support from the state, it will be forced to stop its activities in this field. Public–private partnerships (PPP) sometimes emerge in places where the state transfers the management of certain activities to associations in exchange for compensation. This type of partnership could be called PCSP or PAP (public-civil society partnership or public-association partnership). Quality services can then be offered at a lower cost if the association is specialized in the issue concerned, and the state also saves resources as a result. For some large-scale projects, external partners request the participation or endorsement of the state to ensure that the activity will not be monopolized by the NGO and that the state can continue to provide the service at the end of the project if it assesses it to be innovative and of public utility. Collaboration with the state is therefore sometimes necessary, and in this case the state’s guarantee will make resources available. If the state finds that the beneficiary NGO is not capable of running the project, it either recovers it, entrusts it to another NGO or simply abandons it. These are often problematic situations that cause serious problems for NGOs, especially if they are new and the state is not sure of their ability to manage the activity properly.

Conclusion The Yam Pukri association differs from conventional associations in Africa in many ways. These characteristics may help in maintaining its longevity: 1. It is based on a small group of enthusiasts who originally focused on their pleasure in sharing technology rather than on any desire to resolve existential problems (health problems, water, agriculture),

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although in the end the solutions found by technology can help in solving these problems as well. 2. The association’s core members live from other resources, and therefore its survival is not overdependent on the number of projects it can carry out or the funding it can find. 3. Of necessity, it has become a social enterprise because it undertakes lucrative activities from time to time that help finance its social activities. 4. Over the years, it has developed collective centres for information and communication, becoming a network for sharing experiences with emerging technologies in Africa, an incubator, mentor and coach of young people who want to learn and have a go at entrepreneurship. The challenges for an association like Yam Pukri are to be one step ahead of the others and to avoid mimicry and merely following fashion. Today, new associations are calling themselves laboratories, incubators, etc. in order to keep up and attract funding. Although working in the same field, Yam Pukri does not want to display its status as an incubator or start up too openly, as trends change quickly. We could say that there are no magic or ready-made recipes for an association to survive for a long time, especially in the very volatile field of ICT, where everything changes at an unprecedented pace. Rooms filled with computers are no longer used because each apprentice now buys his or her own computer. Basic training is no longer popular because people are more interested in applications than in complex software. The computer is neglected in favour of mobile phones (Ouédraogo 2004a), and the terms ‘collective cyber cafe’, ‘collective cyber centre’ and ‘collective centre for information and communication’ are being discarded in favour of the concepts of incubators, social enterprise, start-ups, social entrepreneurs and projects with high added value and strong social impact. We no longer say we are ‘fighting drought’ but ‘working on resilience’. As projects with a local reach are no longer popular, we are now looking for projects involving large networks, regional projects, strong alliances and the strong impact of development activities in a relatively short period of time. Each organization must learn to adapt in this dynamic environment, where the play on words is more important than the fundamentals of activities (see Schultz in this volume), because the problem of the appropriation of technology by African actors is still relevant. African associations would benefit from studying survival strategies, but they are more concerned with seeking funding and showing their success to others than in pausing for a moment in order to analyse their

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careers. When they look in the rear-view mirror, they tend to say – like the man in the street – ‘Inchallah, it’ll be OK.’ If we want solid organizations in Africa, a different approach must be tried: financing projects not only through calls or competition but supporting those associations that take action without waiting for possible funding; working not only on this or that theme but being open to any kind of support. This will help avoid the aberrations we often see. When money becomes available for the fight against diarrhoea, we will see the emergence of associations to fight diarrhoea even when we are concerned with other problems. The notion and very purpose of projects become salient at this level. Should international organizations define funding priorities that are often not the priorities of certain beneficiaries and thereby force NGOs to construct projects to meet this demand? Or should they listen to African NGOs and support them according to their actual needs? The scarcity of resources also makes matters difficult for international partners, who are obliged to meet quality requirements for projects comparable to those of private companies. In turn, international NGOs impose complex project formats on African NGOs, with efforts being more focused on compliance with protocols than on the benefits and results to be achieved in the field. The bureaucratization of NGOs is therefore a real concern for NGOs that want to focus on achievements in the field and not on writing extensive reports. Sylvestre Ouédraogo has since 2017 been the Regional Director of the Pan African Institute for Development. He is coordinating the project to support social and solidarity economy businesses in Africa with FGC funding. He is also the founder of Yam Pukri, an association that has worked in the field of ICT for development for more than 20 years. He has been a research professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University Ouaga 2 since 1997 and has headed the master’s Department in Social and Solidarity Economy since 2014. Ouédraogo is also responsible for scientific and educational training at the Institute for Open Distance Learning (IFOAD) at the University Ouaga 2.

Notes The original version of this chapter is in French and has been translated for the publication of this edited volume.

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1. See www.droit-afrique.com/upload/doc/burkina/Burkina-Loi-1992-10-association.pdf (retrieved 9 December 2019). 2. The transitional government of 2015 has passed the new Act N° 064-2015/CNT (OJ N°07 of 18 February 2016) on associations, which overrides the 1992 Act. For the former law on freedom of associations see: http://www.droit-afrique.com/upload/doc/burkina/ Burkina-Loi-1992-10-association.pdf. For the current law see: https://www.ilo.org/dyn/ natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/101523/122351/F-1724755500/BFA-101523.pdf (retrieved 8 January 2021). 3. See www.yam-pukri.org (retrieved 9 December 2019). 4. See also: www.burkina-ntic.net (retrieved 9 December 2019). 5. See https://www.ashoka.org/en-gb/fellow/sylvestre-ouedraogo (retrieved 8 January 2021). 6. See https://www.ashoka.org/en-gb (retrieved 8 January 2021). 7. See www.icrc.org/fr/qui-nous-sommes/histoire/fondation (retrieved 9 December 2019).

References Ouédraogo, S. 2002. ‘Promotion des technologies de l’information et de la Communication pour le développement humain du Burkina Faso (2002– 2005)’, Rapport sectoriel: Formulation d’une stratégie d’appui aux Télécentres Polyvalents Communautaires, PNUD, Burkina Faso. Retrieved 9 December 2019 from http://www.burkina-ntic.net/ressources/assets/docP/Document_N078. pdf. ______. 2003a. ‘Les technologies de l’information au Burkina Faso, une course de fond’, Annuaire Suisse de Politique de Développement 22(2): 77–79. Retrieved 9 December 2019 from https://journals.openedition.org/aspd/547. ______. 2003b. ‘Pour une approche africaine des technologies de l’information’, Annuaire Suisse de Politique de Développement 22(2): 31–33. Retrieved 9 December 2019 from http://journals.openedition.org/aspd/529. ______. 2004a. ‘Burkina Faso: Coping with Poverty’, in Kitty Warnock and Dipankar De Sarkar (eds), Completing the Revolution: The Challenge in Rural Telephony in Africa. London: The Panos Institute, pp. 27–29. Retrieved 9 December 2019 from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/wp-content/ files/2011/03/completing_the_revolution_burkina_fasoIhlND8.pdf. ______. 2004b. L’ordinateur et le djembé / The computer and the Djembé: Entre rêves et réalités / Between Dreams and Realities. Paris: L’Harmattan. ______. 2009. ‘Entrepreneuriat social et nouvelles technologies: L’expérience de l’association Yam Pukri (Burkina Faso)’, Netsuds n°4 (Accès aux nouvelles technologies en Afrique et en Asie: Tic et service universel). ______. 2017. ‘Paradoxes et turbulences dans le cyber espace africain: silicon versus “marigot” valley’. Burkina – Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication website. Retrieved 9 December 2019 from http:// www.burkina-ntic.net/spip.php?article2195.

Chapter 2

‘I Will Not Tell Anyone until You Have Left’: The Ending of a Development Relationship Remembered Karen Lauterbach

Introduction What does it mean to end a development relationship and how do the different actors involved experience and perceive it? This chapter presents and discusses an account of how a particular development relationship between a peasant movement in Burkina Faso and a Danish NGO ended. The account is a personal one and is based on my own experience of working for the Danish NGO, where one of my first assignments was to visit the organization in Burkina Faso and to pass on the information that the relationship was being terminated. This mainly implied an end to funding from the Danish NGO to the Burkinabe organization. Based on this account, the chapter provides analytical reflections on the role and significance of personal and social relationships in NGO cooperation. The chapter discusses what including such relationships in the analysis can tell us about NGO cooperation and argues that a focus on the personal is an important addition to the predominantly institutional focus in the existing literature. This, moreover, complements our understanding of NGOs in Africa operating in situations of economic dependence and insecurity, as it points to the many ways in which both personal and institutional relationships are perceived as being a crucial part of nongovernmental development arrangements (Elbers and Arts 2011).

Notes for this chapter begin on page 70.

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Looking at the particular moment at which an NGO relationship ends (a liminal moment in a sense) and at how different actors handle such situations offers a rare occasion to acquire insights into how these actors position themselves in and read a situation that is outside the ordinary lifeworlds of NGO projects. What is at stake in these particular moments differs from the ordinary concerns of maintaining and creating successful relationships and development outcomes (Mosse 2004). Portraying an organization as a success in donor eyes might become less important than valuing and expressing what a long-term commitment and relationship mean and symbolize. This situational perspective provides an opportunity to see how both institutional and personal relationships matter in NGO cooperation and how they overlap and coexist, rather than being opposed. I argue that, by opening up the perspective on NGO cooperation to include personal relationships as well, it becomes possible to see more layers in such cooperation. In this chapter, I show how the institutional and personal layers sometimes engage and reinforce each other while at other times allowing us to see how power relations can be inverted. Taking into consideration the level of the personal provides insights into a different set of relationships in which other criteria than the transfer of financial transactions are at stake, such as reciprocity, mutuality and interdependence. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the world of aid ­workers, reflecting a growing interest in the development and NGO literature (Hindman and Fechter 2011). This new literature highlights the importance of including the everyday experiences of those who work in development as a supplement to the hitherto dominant focus on institutions, policies and discourses. NGO actors are increasingly being recognized as more than just the transmitters and implementers of strategies and policies. They are instead approached as mediators, which implies that they are seen as doing something with and to development projects and not merely as neutral tools of development. This shift in perspective is also an acknowledgement of the agency of NGO workers, who are not merely subjected to the institutional structures within which they work but also make sense of these structures through ‘the kinds of knowledgeability and capability they have vis-à-vis the world they live in’ (Long 1997). The personal lives and career trajectories of NGO workers and the affective dimensions of development work matter and should thus be taken into account when analysing development and NGO work (Hindman and Fechter 2011; Mosse 2011). Despite the substantive anthropological engagement with the broad world of non-governmental development, which takes an ethnographic approach (aidnography),1 relatively little attention has been paid to the experiences and stories of those working

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in development (Hindman and Fechter 2011: 12). The volume edited by David Mosse, Adventures in Aidland (2011), a collection of ethnographic accounts, points to the double roles played by development actors. They are both persons who position themselves in insecure and contingent social and institutional hierarchies, and experts who reveal and convey a particular kind of professional knowledge that is seen as universally shared (Mosse 2011: 16). This doubleness can be viewed as a dilemma between, on the one hand, having to technify and simplify the complex realities of development, and on the other hand, having to deal with unstable professional lives and identities in the development and NGO world (Mosse 2011: 18–19). Opening up the approach to include NGO workers also allows the importance of social relationships in NGO work to be recognized, both as part of the professional work and in a more personal sense (see Yarrow 2011).2 In this chapter, I will pay particular attention to the significance and symbolism of social relationships between both NGO workers and organizations. I follow Yarrow (2011) in seeing personal relationships in NGO work as more than an aspect of strategizing or nepotism. Valuing or emphasizing particular relationships can also be a way of upholding a particular ideological position such as autonomy or independence, as such being an expression of agency.

Approach This chapter is an autoethnographic3 account of my work as an NGO professional with a Danish NGO and its partner organization in Burkina Faso. It centres on a visit to the partner organization in Burkina Faso I made in autumn 20004 and has been written on the basis of my personal memories of this visit.5 Moreover, the account also draws on a review of a number of photographs of the visit, as well as some of the gifts I received (including traditional woven cloth, a Mossi Zazaigo antelope headdress, a basket with groundnuts, chicken, a leather bag and purse, a hoe and music cassettes) as a way to revive these memories. The photographs6 were particularly interesting to review, as they represent a different version of the visit than official reports. I did not write field notes during the trip but wrote a travel report later as part of my job, which I submitted and discussed with my colleagues after the visit. While preparing and reporting the visit (which was called a ‘monitoring’ visit), I consulted and used a number of project documents and reports. These documents provided information on the particular projects and activities the Danish NGO was supporting, as well as the projects’ financial accounts. I also, at the time of the visit, relied on conversations with my predecessor and

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colleagues who had been involved in the partnership with the Burkinabe NGO before me. Reports and documents, like the ones referred to above, constitute the official language of the development world. These documents are used to secure funding and to assess whether an organization is suitable for a development relationship. These traces of development outcomes and achievements can be said more broadly to be part of an audit culture of development that is designed to judge whether interventions are successes or failures (Strathern 2000). In this chapter, I draw on a different kind of archive, one of memories of personal experiences, photographs of ceremonial events and objects given as gifts. This archive conveys a different picture of NGO relationships than the corpus of project documents and reports. The latter is concerned with the development interventions per se, whereas an archive of memories and objects of exchange sheds light on the emotional, personal and social environment that is also part of the NGO world (see Ouédraogo in this volume). The issue of the sources of knowledge that we draw on reflects a broader debate on what is considered valid knowledge in discussions and analyses of non-­governmental development. Lewis, Rodgers and Woolcock (2008) propose to include fiction as a source of knowledge about development and argue that fictional stories add to other sources of knowledge in that they provide a different perspective and insights into the values and ideas of the societies involved in development (Lewis, Rodgers and Woolcock 2008: 208). This can be linked to a broader argument about knowledge being intimately shaped by the form in which it is represented. The autoethnographic account presented below is not fictional, but it does represent an alternative account to conventional NGO narratives. It derives from the lived experience of an actor in a particular example of NGO cooperation and is personal in the sense that it does not follow the narrative scheme of an NGO project or intervention (a project logic), but rather one NGO staff member’s memories of being there.

An Account of a Project Visit and the Ending of an NGO Relationship In August 2000, one month before I graduated from university, I found employment with one of the larger Danish NGOs. I was hired on a parttime six-month contract, and one of the requirements for getting the job was the ability to speak French. One of my first assignments was to travel to Burkina Faso and to visit one of the NGO’s long-term partners to announce that the Danish NGO was withdrawing from Burkina Faso

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and hence ending the partnership. The NGO I was working for was going through a process of re-strategizing due to new requirements on the part of the Danish Development Agency – that is, they wanted to concentrate development work in fewer countries based on strategic priorities. This meant that the NGO was withdrawing entirely from the West African region, and from its engagements in Burkina Faso in particular, which was, in fact, the last country in the region in which it was still active. The relationship between the two NGOs mainly consisted of transferring funds from the Danish NGO to the Burkinabe NGO. Moreover, staff who had been involved in this cooperation before me had paid visits to the Burkinabe NGO, reflecting a long-term history of engagement that also involved more personal relationships. However, there had also been a regular turnover of staff, depriving these relationships of much continuity. It may seem surprising that a young and newly employed staff member was given this task. One pragmatic reason was that only very few members of staff were able to speak French, but more broadly, I think it reflected the relatively low strategic importance given to cooperation with the Burkinabe NGO at that moment. As part of its re-strategizing, the Danish NGO was also changing its work from a more conventional service delivery approach to working within a rights-based framework. It therefore perceived ending the partnership as an aspect of implementing this overall process, rather than having much to do with the relationship between these two partners specifically. The relationship was already something of the past and therefore not worth much attention.

Background The cooperation between the Danish NGO and the Burkinabe NGO dated back to the beginning of the 1980s, when the former started to provide humanitarian assistance as a response to the drought in the Sahel. In 1987, it began longer-term cooperation. The Burkinabe NGO had been established in the late 1960s as a peasant movement and as a reaction to periods of drought, as well as to numerous unsuccessful development interventions by both the Burkinabe state and development agencies from abroad. The founder, who was also the president of the movement, had been involved in the state’s agricultural extension work, but realizing that this was not working he set up the peasant movement. The philosophy behind the movement was to draw on the region’s cultural roots and former institutional arrangements. The movement was organized into groups at the village level that were then gathered into larger groups and headed by the overall movement. Although emphasizing local and traditional ways of organizing and working, the NGO soon

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began drawing on the support of international donors. The founder and president was able to combine a development philosophy of autonomy and self-reliance with cooperation with both large international donors and authoritarian political regimes. It is important to stress the crucial role of the founder and president when it came to balancing the multiple demands and expectations of different actors. He had to be able to establish relationships with outside organizations and donors while at the same time acquiring legitimacy locally, which in this particular case implied respecting and cultivating the philosophy on which the movement had been founded while at the same time satisfying donor requirements and conditionalities. There is no doubt that the founder showed much skill in occupying this leadership position, which was increased further when he later took up political office.

The Visit My visit to the Burkinabe NGO in autumn 2000 was scheduled to last around a week, the plan being to visit and monitor the different project sites and to have formal meetings with the president and staff at the headquarters. It was not my first time in Burkina Faso, as I had done fieldwork for my master’s thesis in Ouagadougou for three months in spring 1999. However, I was new to the particular context, to the Burkinabe NGO and to my role as an NGO professional. On the first day of my visit, the president welcomed me in his office. We were the only people present in the room, and the atmosphere was informal, friendly and relaxed. I came to the meeting with a good amount of anxiety, excitement and nervousness, as it was my first encounter with this important and much respected figure and because I had to announce the bad news about my NGO ending the relationship. The meeting, however, took a different turn from what I had expected and had an air of friendliness, protectiveness and a junior–senior relationship to it. After initial greetings, I handed over a letter, written by myself, but signed by the general secretary of the Danish NGO, announcing that they could no longer fund projects in Burkina Faso and much to their regret had to end the long-term partnership between the two NGOs. The president read the letter quietly. After a moment of reflection, he looked at me and said: ‘It is not your fault, and I will not tell anyone until after you have left.’ I was prepared to discuss and explain the decision, and to put it into the larger strategic and policy context, but the president did not ask many questions. Rather, he expressed regret at facing the ending of a long relationship and also some understanding. It turned out that the topic was not discussed or mentioned during my visit. At the time, I found the decision

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not to talk about it a bit odd, as I thought it would make it easier for the president if he were not the messenger but instead have someone from the donor NGO itself explain the decision and be the focus of questions. At the same time, I was also relieved that I did not have to face the movement’s ordinary members with this message. In this way, I read the decision as the president wishing to protect not only me but also the visit and the expectations of his members. After the initial meeting in the president’s office, a general meeting was held outside. A large number of people were present – around fifty as I recall – all professional employees of the movement’s various departments or the leaders of its various subgroups. Those present at the meeting were sitting in a large square. I was seated on one side next to the president and some of his assistants with two round tables in front of us, and we were served water. The leaders of the movement made a few speeches of welcome, and I was also asked to speak. Three people were playing music and singing; one was drumming on a calabash, one playing a traditional guitar (djeli n’goni) and the third person singing. The meeting had a ceremonial character in accordance with its aim of welcoming a guest and paying respect to her person. During my visit, I went to see the projects that had been supported by the Danish NGO. This included grain banks, a local radio station and fields where dikes had been built and new drought-resistant plants and grasses introduced. My purpose in making these visits was to see which activities had been implemented and how they worked, and to ask a number of questions related to their sustainability. Besides watching the activities and asking questions, I was welcomed with gifts, food and ceremonies with dancing and music, and many of the visits included taking a number of ‘family’ photographs. Between twenty and thirty people were present at each of the project sites, which often required carrying chairs, drinking water and other items for use at the visit from some distance, evidently requiring quite a lot of preparation in advance. In the evenings, I was left on my own, either resting at the small hotel nearby where I was staying or driving around in the town and the surrounding area with one of the NGO drivers, whom I came to know well, despite the short time I was there. When it was time for me to leave and travel back to Denmark, I had another one-on-one meeting with the president. I do not recall much from the meeting besides us reconfirming our bonds of partnership despite the ending of the funding and the president offering me a personal gift as a token of our relationship. The gift was an old Mossi Zazaigo antelope headdress accompanied by a letter saying that I had received the item as a gift and was allowed to take it with me when leaving the country. As the president and I were taking the same plane to Paris, I travelled with

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him in his car to Ouagadougou and the airport. We made a stop at his house in Ouagadougou, where ten to fifteen people were waiting outside to see him. We had something to drink and had time to rest before the night flight to Paris. When we arrived at the airport, he was welcomed by the staff, who greeted him as tonton (uncle in French). We waited in the VIP lounge of the airport, where he met quite a number of acquaintances. Upon arrival at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport the next morning, we said goodbye, as we were joining separate immigration queues; ‘Just go’, he said, ‘I have to wait much longer than you.’ When I returned to work, I wrote the obligatory travel report, which was presented and discussed with colleagues in my section. I do not recall the report sparking a lot of debate or discussion, but my main concern had been to write a clear and well-structured report, as it was my first trip and major assignment for the NGO. As I was only employed for six months, I wanted to make an impression of good and solid work and show that the task had been conducted successfully. These concerns about how to write a ‘good report’ reflect Stirrat’s point that consultancy reports serve an aesthetic purpose rather than having an impact on the projects they describe. Stirrat lists these aesthetic purposes as, for instance, the report’s structure and its appeal to objectivity (which does not leave much room for critical reflection and uncertainty) and legitimacy (Stirrat 2000: 41–42). As part of the ending of the relationship, the president of the Burkinabe NGO was invited to come to Copenhagen to pay a visit to the Danish NGO. This was merely a courtesy visit, as there were not many projectrelated issues that needed to be discussed. The visit consisted in short meetings with the leadership of the Danish NGO, as well as introducing the president of the Burkinabe NGO to other smaller NGOs that were working in Burkina Faso and in the wider region. This visit constituted the formal ending of the relationship.

Development as Relationships By discussing the above account of the ending of a long-term development relationship between a Danish NGO and a Burkinabe NGO, I focus on the role of relationships in non-governmental development. Relationships matter not only as ways of making connections locally; they are also ways of relating to others across wide physical distances and in more momentary forms. The ending of a cooperative relationship between NGOs illuminates and amplifies different aspects of the importance of social relationships in non-governmental development.

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The following discussion is divided into three subsections. First, I discuss how seeing NGO cooperation as a matter of entering into social relationships also provides a lens through which to study positionality in NGO work. I argue that this perspective allows us to see positionality in terms not only of the inequalities in relationships between European and African NGOs but also of relationships that are more reciprocal in nature. Secondly, I discuss how a visit to a partner NGO manifests and symbolizes the strength and enduring nature of a relationship. This implies that the relationship has to be performed and that it is through these performances that NGO collaboration becomes ritualized. Ending an NGO relationship compromises these performances of success and engagement. Accordingly, this particular visit can be seen as representing a paradox of engagement and detachment. Thirdly, by way of conclusion, I discuss relationships in non-governmental development from a more personal angle and argue that they should be seen as a particular layer of development that is often hidden beneath the official rhetoric and the institutional perspectives.

Relationships as Positionality At first glance, we might perceive the relationship between a donor NGO and a partner NGO as marked by an omnipresent inequality. This inequality becomes particularly visible when taking an institutional perspective. One NGO transfers funds to another, a relationship that requires knowledge of how to satisfy donor demands in order to secure future funding and collaboration. Seen from this overall perspective, relationships between NGOs in Africa and Europe, as well as between those who actually work in these organizations, reflect an overall global financial inequality that also manifests itself in unequal positions of power. However – and this is my argument in this section – if we take a closer look at the relationships between NGO workers and the positions they occupy, we obtain a more nuanced picture of what these relationships entail. In other words, moving away from seeing relations as existing merely between institutions allows us to see a multitude of layers of engagement that include more than the narrative of inequality between donating and receiving NGOs. In the above account, and in particular during the first meeting between the president of the Burkinabe NGO and me, we see how the act of ending the NGO relationship becomes a reciprocal relationship on a personal level. The first event in this meeting involved me handing over a letter announcing the ending of the relationship, an act in which I occupy the position of a power holder or a patron. Soon afterwards, in the second event, the president said that I was not to

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blame personally and furthermore announced that he was not going to tell anyone of this decision while I was visiting. This utterance and act symbolize a number of things, but here I wish to point out the switching between or doubling of roles and positions and the reciprocity involved in the act itself. By withholding information about the withdrawal, the president too positions himself as a provider and protector and hence as a patron, primarily to protect both himself and me. There are different aspects to the way he protected me, which all relate to a situation in which I was not complying with the ethical norms of what a social relationship should be like. These ethical norms refer to the importance of creating and maintaining social relationships of mutual dependence and reliance that were now being broken by the formal ending of the partnership. This non-compliance put me in a weak and perhaps subordinate position. The president avoided a direct confrontation in which I had to announce the withdrawal publicly and hence take the responsibility for it, which would lead to the nature of the relationship being revealed for what it was and probably some embarrassment as well. The protection he provided could also be seen more literally in the sense of protecting both of us from people who might become upset and seek some form of revenge or resistance; for instance, through the use of spiritual power. Moreover, the decision to hold back the information can be interpreted as an expression of gratitude, not one directed towards me as an individual, as our relationship was a new one, but rather gratitude for the almost twenty years of cooperation between the two NGOs. By not announcing the withdrawal, the president showed that this relationship was a valued one that he would not compromise or disrespect. In this way, he acted like a classic father figure who protects and provides for his junior dependents. By saying that I was not to blame, he recognized the importance of personal relationships and distinguished them from the more institutional and bureaucratic ones. It is worth noting, however, that valuing these personal relationships had no effect or influence on the institutional side of the relationships in the immediate situation, including the decision to end the relationship that the Danish NGO had already taken. The president also protected himself by retaining control of how the information would be passed on to the NGO’s farmers groups and how this might influence his role as their provider. He protected himself from the humiliation of losing a donor and from having this exposed in public and thus losing face. In other words, seen through an institutional lens, I represented the donor/patron, and his organization was the recipient/ client. By also looking at how personal relationships came to play a role in the ending of the NGOs’ cooperation, we can see that these relation-

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ships contain elements of reciprocity because the president not only receives but also gives in the form of protection and gratitude. I represented the patron by default, but I also became his client, as he controlled how the visit unfolded and thereby assumed a position of power over me.

Relationships as Ritual and as Movements of Engagement and Detachment Postponing the announcement of the withdrawal and the ending of the partnership also demonstrated the symbolic importance of the visit. It was an occasion on which to demonstrate and perform the success of the collaboration, to confirm its involvement and to show appreciation and gratitude. This is a well-known function of donor visits that was not particular to this visit, but one could argue that appreciating a successful relationship takes on a different meaning when it is about to end (it is a liminal moment, as noted above). Development rituals such as project visits, project reporting and other documentation that form a part of all development projects serve the purpose of ­presenting a development intervention as successful by following a certain aesthetic form (Mosse 2004; Stirrat 2000). These successes are future-oriented in the sense that prospective activities and funding depend on them. As nobody besides the president and myself knew that the partnership between the two NGOs was about to end, it is evident that this dynamic was still at play during the visit. However, reflecting on it retrospectively, it seems that the importance of gift-giving and the performance of success is not only about cultivating future relationships but also about acknowledging the relationships that already exist in the present and that are of the past. In this way, I argue that the relationships that are established and that become ritualized are about more than the development project in and of itself. They represent a form of reciprocity in which something is returned to the giver (in the form of gifts but also gifts in the form of reports and documents) and in which the unequal positions in the development relationship are disturbed and disguised (see Paragi in this volume). Significantly, giving gifts to the donor representative was a crucial element of the visit. Interestingly, this appears more explicitly when seen through alternative development archives. The photographs, for instance, show that giving gifts and wearing them was a central element of the visit. One photograph shows a member of staff and members of a farmer group helping me put on a cloth and carry a basket of groundnuts that I had received as gifts at one project site. The photo conveys a relationship in which I am clearly the recipient but also one in which the others ­present act as

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helpers. They play an active role in assisting me in receiving the gifts and performing this part of the visit. Furthermore, these gifts constituted what were considered to be tokens of the particular lifeworld we were in and hence tokens of the project in its widest sense. The objects had been made locally and were part of the livelihoods of the people living there, as well as, in some cases, part of their cultural heritage (music, masks). In this way, the donor (here represented by myself) was given something of the place and something that was linked to the place. This can be seen as creating a relationship between the recipient and the place as an addition to the relationship between the giver and the recipient. At some point during the visit, I ceased to feel at ease with having to receive these gifts, as it seemed to me that the gift-giving was taking precedence over the monitoring of project activities. I tried to resist by saying to one staff member that this was not necessary. In response, I was told that I had to allow people to show their appreciation and gratitude for the cooperation by offering me the gifts, and that I had to allow myself to receive them. I stopped resisting verbally but felt there was a wide discrepancy between my being celebrated and appreciated as a representative of the long-term donor NGO and the imminent ending of this relationship, which I had come to announce. At a different level, the visit and its double purpose of ending the NGO relationship and visiting project sites constitutes a paradox of engagement and detachment (Candea et al. 2015). With regard to my own involvement, and as alluded to in the above section, taking part in the gift-giving rituals of donor visits formed a stark contrast to having to end the NGO cooperation. This perceived contrast was reinforced further by the difference in what was being exchanged. The gifts were of a more personal character in the sense that they were offered to a person (this was particularly the case with the mask), and moreover they were also linked to the place. They were, in other words, imbued with meaning and with attachment. Sticking to the analysis of institutional relations, detachment seemed less difficult, given the explanations, strategies and time-bound project documents that represented development relations in a modern, bureaucratic and detached form, of which ending and closure formed a part. From the perspective of the president, the simultaneity of engagement and disengagement also represented a contradiction. As the president and founder of the Burkinabe NGO, he was in a position in which he was expected to establish and maintain relationships with outsiders. Although autonomy and independence were aspects of the philosophy on which the movement was based, its success and continued existence also depended on successful relationships with actors and

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institutions that could bring in funding.7 His position and power therefore depended on his ability to cultivate such relationships. Obviously, publicly announcing the ending of the relationship would not resonate well with his maintaining such a position. It would rather be a situation in which the impossible merging of engagement and detachment would occur. The rituals of the visit not only represented the relationship between the two NGOs and their respective members of staff, it also represented the relationship the president had with his constituency – that is, the members of the movement. By not telling the staff and members about the withdrawal and the content of the letter, he did not have to compromise the intentions and the purposes of the rituals that were such an important part of the visit.

Conclusion: Personalized Relationships of NGO Cooperation This chapter has provided a personal account of the ending of a development relationship. In the account, I have highlighted the importance of including personal relations when taking a relational approach to NGO cooperation. I have shown that institutional and personal relationships both overlap and exist as parallel sets of relationships. I have argued that the importance of relationships can be seen in how they are ritualized during a development encounter; for instance, through the performance of dance and music and through gift-giving. This further shows that development relationships are enacted not only through formal monitoring visits and meetings (with a focus on policy and the implementation of activities) but also through rituals and the exchange of tokens, gestures and signs. This observation reflects the broader point that a development project cannot be reduced to activities and project plans but is also about and part of the wider lifeworlds of those who take part in it. Two letters were exchanged during the visit, as described above. The first letter was a letter between institutions announcing, explaining and regretting the end of an NGO relationship. The second letter was a letter certifying the authenticity of an object that had been exchanged during the visit and specifically that the object (a mask) had been given and received as a personal gift.8 These two letters symbolize the double perspective of this chapter, namely relationships in NGO cooperation as both official relations between institutions and as personal relations between individuals. Moreover, to echo Yarrow (2011), the letters also show that personal relationships in development do not necessarily represent the flip side of accountability and transparency. In this respect, Yarrow criticizes the assumption that personal relations are by default self-interested.

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Instead, he proposes to drop the opposition between the personal and the institutional in studying development work (Yarrow 2011: 44). The two letters are tokens of the reciprocity of a relationship between NGOs, yet one in which personal as well as institutional relationships are both entangled. The two letters also represent detachment as a gift being taken away (ending a development relationship) and engagement as a gift being given. They symbolize a broken and yet maintained reciprocity that invites us to think about development as both institutional and personal, as both engagement and detachment. These letters also reflect the ability of the president to shift the situation of power momentarily. This was a situational moment in which he could carve out some room for man­ oeuvre and invert or level out the power hierarchy. Drawing on personal memories and archives are ways in which we can privilege and see such moments of agency and manoeuvring and can do so without foregrounding discrepancy and failure. Karen Lauterbach is Associate Professor at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has extensive research experience on Christianity in Africa (Ghana, Uganda and Burkina Faso) with a focus on the career trajectories of young pastors and social becoming, spiritual power and relationships of exchange and displacement. She has also worked with and volunteered for a number of Danish NGOs. She is the author of the monograph Christianity, Wealth and Spiritual Power in Ghana (Palgrave, 2017) and has co-edited Faith in African Lived Christianity – Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives (Brill, 2019).

Notes 1. See for instance Green (2009), Hagberg and Widmark (2009), Mosse (2004) and Mosse (2013). 2. It is important to note that I took part in this NGO work and its encounters as an insider as far as the NGO collaboration was concerned, not as an external expert or as someone with senior status derived from being part of the university system, as in the case described by Green (2009). Nor did I undertake this work with the aim of later writing an ethnographic account of this particular organization or project in order to contribute a critical academic reading to the situation. This implies that the experiences and memories on which this chapter draws were generated from an insider’s perspective and that analytical reflection was detached from actual experience. 3. On autoethnography as method and genre, see Anderson (2006). Ellis, Adam and Bochner (2011) define the aim and method of autoethnography as a process in which the author ‘retroactively and selectively writes about past experiences’ (ibid.: 275), being an approach that recognizes and includes ‘subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher’s

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5.

6. 7. 8.

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influence on research’ (ibid.: 274). It also involves an analytical aspect, so that it is more than telling a story (ibid.: 276). I define my approach as an ‘actor-autoethnography’ because my aim while doing the work was not to write about it. I was thus an actor in the first instance and the autoethnographic element having been added retrospectively. The particular account described and analysed in this chapter took place in 2000 and was part of my work for a Danish NGO (2000–2003). In addition, I had been member and chairperson of a Danish–Senegalese friendship association in 1998–2003, a post that also serves as background experience for my reflections here. Moreover, I have taught postgraduate courses on NGOs, civil society and development in Africa over the past decade, an intellectual and academic experience that also adds to my engagement with the field. The information presented in this account has been discussed with a former colleague (phone conversation, 4 June 2018), who was my predecessor and was responsible for the development projects implemented by the NGO in Burkina Faso. I have also obtained information on the beginning of the NGO cooperation from another former colleague who visited Burkina Faso in 1987 to start the formal NGO cooperation (written correspondence, 5 June 2018). The photographs are not included here for reasons of their subjects’ anonymity. This represents an interesting coexistence of a ‘logic of extraversion’ (Bayart 2000) and an ideology of autonomy and reliance embedded in the institutional traditions and practices of the place. Such a letter was necessary, as to buy ancient items of cultural value to take out of the country was not allowed (as far as I understood), unless they had been received as gifts.

References Anderson, L. 2006. ‘Analytical Autoethnography’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35(4): 373–95. Bayart, J.-F. 2000. ‘Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion’, African Affairs 99(395): 217–67. Candea, M. et al. 2015. ‘Introduction: Reconsidering Detachment’, in M. Candea et al. (eds), Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1–34. Elbers, W., and B. Arts. 2011. ‘Keeping Body and Soul Together: Southern NGOs’ Strategic Responses to Donor Constraints’, International Review of Administrative Sciences 77(4): 713–32. Ellis, C., T.E. Adams and A.B. Bochner. 2011. ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 36(4): 273–90. Fechter, A.-M. 2012. ‘The Personal and the Professional: Aid Workers’ Relationships and Values in the Development Process’, Third World Quarterly 33(8): 1387–404. Green, M. 2009. ‘Doing Development and Writing Culture: Exploring Knowledge Practices in International Development and Anthropology’, Anthropological Theory 9(4): 395–417. Hagberg, S., and C. Widmark. 2009. Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid: Methods and Meanings in Development Cooperation. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

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Hindman, H., and A.-M. Fechter. 2011. ‘Introduction’, in A.-M. Fechter and H. Hindman (eds), Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Challenges and Futures of Aidland. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, pp. 1–19. Lewis, D., D. Rodgers and M. Woolcock. 2008. ‘The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge’, Journal of Development Studies 44(2): 198–216. Long, N. 1997. ‘Agency and Constraint, Perceptions and Practice: A Theoretical Position’, in H. Haan and N. Long (eds), Images and Realities of Rural Life. Assen: Van Gorcum, pp. 1–20. Mosse, D. 2004. ‘Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice’, Development and Change 35(4): 639–71. ______. 2011. ‘Introduction’, in D. Mosse (ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York: Berghahn, pp. 1–32. ______. 2013. ‘The Anthropology of International Development’, Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 227–46. Stirrat, R.L. 2000. ‘Cultures of Consultancy’, Critique of Anthropology 20(1): 31–46. Strathern, M. 2000. ‘Introduction: New Accountabilities’, in M. Strathern (ed.), Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–18. Yarrow, T. 2011. ‘Maintaining Independence: The Moral Ambiguities of Personal Relations amongst Ghanaian Development Workers’, in A.-M. Fechter and H. Hindman (eds), Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Challenges and Futures of Aidland. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, pp. 41–58.

Chapter 3

Becoming an Expert and Negotiating Development

A Development Studies Programme in Germany Ulrike Schultz

We all want to be experts. All the white people, they come to our countries and get a lot of salary, and so much money goes to them. Why I cannot be like that? —Second-year male student from Rwanda We have the consciousness to look at the European mind as more advanced. It is not taught in schools, but if you ask anyone from the street, they have this perception that people from Europe (because they are developed) are more advanced; that we have not done much in terms of development … we are not developed. And of course, this comes from the colonial powers … But I come to realize that it is just an imposition. —Second-year male student from Kenya

Development studies is a contested field in which practitioners and academics negotiate ‘development’ and try to find solutions for ‘problems’, such as poverty, illiteracy and gender inequality, which are framed as development issues. Accordingly, the objective of development studies programmes is generally twofold: although the aim is to qualify students academically for the field of development and reflect on development theories and practice, at the same time the study programmes aim to prepare students for professional careers in the field of development assistance. Uma Kothari describes this tension as inherent to the field of development studies: ‘Development studies is not only about describing and understanding planned interventions, but also about analyzing discourses of development and seriously interrogating processes of Notes for this chapter begin on page 91.

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socioeconomic, political and institutional change’ (Kothari 2005: 7). Her account refers to the paradoxical situation that while development studies is perceived as a programme in which students are trained to become development practitioners it also brings together a scientific community that critically reflects on the theoretical assumptions and power relations, which legitimize the activities of the development industry. For instance, we read the following on the website for the development studies programme in Friedensau, which started in 2008: ‘The M.A. prepares you thoroughly for an academic career in development through its emphasis on project planning courses, and a focus on disaster management as well as a critical lens on global power relations and postcolonial perspectives’ (Theologische Hochschule Friedensau 2018). As an academic, I feel more committed to what the university website describes as ‘the critical lens on global power relations and a postcolonial perspective’ than to preparing students to become experts in poverty analysis or project planning. However, development is also part of the lifeworlds of the students who come to Friedensau to study. They come from countries in which a wide range of policies and issues of public concern, such as gender equality, social protection or climate change, are framed as development issues. Moreover, a degree in development studies serves as an entry qualification to a huge global job market. Taking into account the high levels of graduate unemployment in many African and Asian countries, jobs with NGOs, international organizations or other institutions dealing with development assistance and humanitarian aid are an important employer for university graduates – sometimes the only one. International organizations and NGOs are looking for people with specific skills (i.e. project planning, evaluation and monitoring methods) or for experts in specific parts of the development discourse (genderbased violence, human rights, microfinance, social protection, poverty reduction and so on). In addition, some of the students have worked for NGOs before or are even sent by NGOs from their respective countries of origin. They study to make the work of their NGO more professional and to make themselves eligible for leadership positions. Within the development industry, there is a distinct hierarchy of degrees depending on the university, the country in which you do your degree, the language you study and so on. This reflects global power relations within the development industry, as well as the hierarchization of degrees on the global educational market. By looking at a small university in Germany that forms part of the global network of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I ask whether and how the lifeworlds of students who come there from so-called ‘developing countries’ are reflected in or erased by the study programme and

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consider how it shapes their expectations and experience of studying development in Germany. In doing so, I aim to contribute to the debate on ‘decolonizing’ development studies while at the same time looking for practical short-term strategies to deal with the tensions and dilemmas I address in the following account. The chapter starts with reflections on my positionality, the experiences that shaped my argument and the people who contributed to this chapter. This is followed by a short account of how I refer to the discourse on ‘decolonizing knowledge’. I will then discuss the content of the programme, what constitutes practical knowledge and access, and hierarchies in development studies programmes before finally discussing how to address the tensions and dilemmas involved in teaching development studies.

Background and Positionality I was asked to write this chapter by the editors of this book at the symposium on ‘Histories in Oblivion’ at Goethe University, Frankfurt, in November 2017. However, the idea of writing it emerged much earlier when I was asked to talk on the Development Studies Master’s programme in Friedensau at a conference of the ESSA (Sektion Entwicklungssoziologie/ Sozialanthropologie of the German Society for Sociology) in Bonn in June 2013. Reflecting on this request, the idea emerged of developing a presentation together with some of the students. Following this up, I approached some senior students, and we conducted a group discussion in one of the classes on the meaning of development and the motivation for enrolling in a development studies programme in Germany. Based on the group discussion and our own understanding, we came up with a presentation entitled: ‘Can We Have a Common Agenda? Experiences from an International Development Study Programme’, which I presented with one of the students in Bonn and one year later in a public lecture at the University of Vienna. The question of the common agenda addressed different issues. First, it addressed the multiple meanings of development. Despite the long history of development, which has been a popular concept for almost seventy years, its meaning is still vague – a buzzword (Rist 2007) linked to many other buzzwords (see Ouédraogo in this volume), such as poverty, civil society, social capital and gender, which are all essentially contested concepts (Cornwall 2007). Secondly, the question of the common agenda also addressed the tensions mentioned by Uma Kothari between development practice and critical reflections on

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­ evelopment discourses, which also became evident in a group discusd sion. Some students experienced this tension as their own personal challenge. This points to the third issue addressed by the question of the common agenda: for most of the students studying in Friedensau, development is not only an intellectual endeavour but also part of their lifeworlds. Development is not only an object of their studies, as they belong to communities and societies that are equally the object of development studies. While for me teaching ‘development’ issues means to study the ‘other’ in the form of undeveloped communities, for most of the students in Friedensau ‘development’ is part of their identity: for instance, their educational success is framed as reflecting the development efforts of their own societies. In many cases, the students aim to become development experts while at the same time being perceived in popular discourses as somebody who needs to be developed. Deconstructing development or, as some scholars advocate, abandoning the concept altogether is for them more than just an intellectual undertaking. As my positionality in this debate is quite different to those of the students, I decided to write this chapter alone to reflect on it. However, I am grateful to Annette Witherspoon and Nan Nan Cho Thel, who presented with me on the development study programme in Friedensau, and to all the students and alumni who discussed ‘development’ and challenged my position, especially Kwaku Arhin Sam, Phyu Phyu Win and Robinson Moguso. Furthermore, my positionality is also central to this chapter because of my role as a teacher, who is, in a sense, the opposite of the students. Reflecting on a development study programme in Canada, Langdon (2013: 392) argues the decolonizing teaching also means decentring the role of the lecturer as the framer of decolonizing knowledge. Following his argument, I will now briefly reflect on my role as a lecturer in a development studies programme. In a discussion of the failure to invite African scholars to a public series on climate change in Africa in a German university, one of the organizers defended this by mentioning that critical postcolonial thinking is more common in a European context. This points to the existence of two big challenges for scholars teaching ‘development’. First, it shows that reflexivity, which is claimed to be a central aspect of the process of decolonizing, is not as widespread as we expect and that ‘critical thinking’ is a construct that can actually create new relationships of power. However, this statement might also relate to the power relations in the field of development that allow parts of the community to be critical while others find they need to please the mainstream in order to survive economically and build a career. Here, I want to reflect on the first point and use it as an

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entry point to explaining my position in the field and how this influences my role in the development studies programme. In my professional understanding and in the way I position myself within the field of development studies, critical thinking and challenging the underlying assumptions of development discourses is essential. It is not only related to teaching development studies but also part of my engagement with the public sphere. There is also a commitment on my side to qualify students to campaign over issues of inequality and exploitation in their professional work. Teaching German students in a university in Berlin was challenging and sometimes not successful, as the students I taught were working for international organizations without addressing power relations but instead just living the privileged life of an expert; however, to focus on the critical reflection in my teaching seems the right thing to do. Within an international programme, teaching nonEuropean students is, as I shall argue in this chapter, much more complex. In teaching critical (academic) thinking and postcolonial theories the way I do, I also exercise power over students not only because of the complexity of the language of postcolonial theory but also because of my position as a privileged academic from Germany. While the students gave me the opportunity to learn from their experiences and to listen to opinions and concepts regarding development that are usually not listened to, I was not sure anymore what my role in the process of decolonizing knowledge could be, and I am still not certain about it. Development studies is a contested field that is subject to power relations and structural inequalities that cannot be addressed solely by teaching post-development theories and encouraging students to think critically. It also needs solidarity and personal engagement, which can mean following up a visa application, looking for financial support for a ticket or supporting a student by finding accommodation in Berlin so that he or she can get a summer job. Moreover, issues of discrimination and inequality within and outside the university also need to be addressed. Furthermore, as the students will ultimately also be looking for a job, it is my responsibility to support them in this endeavour. This means supporting them in looking for opportunities and becoming development experts (see Burton, Paragi and Sundberg in this volume).

Decolonizing Development Studies: Theoretical Reflections Since the 1990s, there have been ongoing discussions about the way development studies and development practices are reinforcing postcolonial power relations and global inequalities. In the beginning, this was

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mainly expressed by development scholars and practitioners (Chambers 1983), and new concepts addressing these power relations emerged within the field of development studies (participatory approaches etc.). This was accompanied and followed by post-development approaches (Escobar 1997; Sachs 1992), which radically challenged the ‘development discourse’. Although the critiques of Escobar and other post-­development scholars is fundamental, it entered the mainstream development ­discourse and became, for instance, a part of teaching ‘development theories’ (Sumner and Tribe 2008). However, there are still arguments that there is still a need to decolonize development studies and that the coloniality of development is being neglected (Langdon 2013). But what does ‘decolonizing’ mean in the context of development studies? In my attempt to contribute to the discussion on decolonizing development studies, I will refer to the concept of ‘decolonizing knowledge’. By doing so, I focus on what Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodriguez (2010: 49) calls ‘the materiality of knowledge’. In her paper ‘Decolonizing Postcolonial Rhetoric’, she criticizes postcolonial scholars for detaching ideas from practices and demands the uneven organization of knowledge production in the modern-colonial world system be addressed (2010: 57). In agreement with this notion of decolonizing knowledge production, I will argue in this chapter that the endeavour to decolonize development studies is twofold: there is a need to decolonize the curriculum not just by teaching post-development theory but also by questioning the reading lists and including authors from colonized and peripheral countries and communities in development studies textbooks. However, besides changing the curriculum, development studies programmes also have to address the power structures that determine who has access to the field, who is allowed to speak and act, who has the financial means to enter the space and finally who has access to the job market. Furthermore, I will emphasize not only the materiality of knowledge production but also the way in which this knowledge production forms part of the lifeworlds of people who are on the periphery of the world market for education. The experience of students from African or Asian countries for whom ‘development’ is part of their lifeworlds is erased from the curricula of developments studies programmes and does not enter into reflections on what decolonizing development studies means. In accordance with this, I will focus on the institutional aspects and will scrutinize how the lifeworlds of students from countries that are categorized as ‘developing countries’ shape their experiences of studying ‘development’ in Germany.

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The Content of a Development Studies Programme Negotiating Development in the Classroom Teaching post-development and postcolonial theories is now part of many development studies programmes, and it has gained a place in mainstream development studies textbooks (Ziai 2017). Given the way the post-development idea is received, it also often leads to binary divisions being made such as ‘Global North’ versus ‘Global South’ and to a further homogenization of ‘Third World’ experiences (Mohanty 1984), which not only neglects the different experiences of students but also erases the history of communities and societies from different places in the so-called developing world.1 Even though post-development approaches refer to the coloniality of development, the colonial legacy of development as such is neglected (Kothari 2005) in the way post-development approaches are discussed within the development discourse. There seems to be a need to historicize development and not just to perceive it as an ‘invention’ of US President Truman in 1949 in order to protect Western interests (Ziai 2017: 2721). There is also a need, for instance, to include postcolonial writers such as Fanon and Mamdani in the reading list of a class on development theories. For Sumner (2006: 647), the key to decolonization is how heterogeneity in the ‘Third World’ is addressed and whether this opens up a space for alternative voices. There is a need to address coloniality and to show how places are incorporated differently in the capitalistic and colonial world system. The classroom is not only divided along binaries such as the colonizer and the colonized or students from the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’: in a typical classroom in Friedensau, there are West Africans and East Africans, mestizos and indigena, Kikuyu and Maasai, Ethiopian Orthodox and Ethiopian Muslims, Asian Americans and White Americans and so on. Moreover, instead of discarding the concept of development, students prefer to search for an alternative concept of development, even though they agree with the post-development critique that ‘development’ is a Western concept. For them ‘development’ cannot easily be abandoned because it is part of their own lifeworlds. For instance, they may have worked for NGOs, which depend on ‘development funding’, or may need to stick to the concept because their future job perspectives lie in the development industry. As in many other development study programmes, students coming to study in Friedensau attend a course on development theories in their

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first semester. At the beginning of the class, they are asked to define development. A typical response is to define development as a transition from ‘bad’ to ‘good’, or from a perceived lower state to a higher state. As I realized later, this statement does not necessarily mean that students who define development in this way necessarily believe in it as a linear process. Students can be very critical of Western influence and the way development organizations influence values and lifestyles in their respective societies and communities. By defining development in the abovementioned way, students refer to what they have learned at school, university and in the NGOs in which some of them have worked before coming to Friedensau. In many countries, questions like gender equality, education and health, as well as political issues, are framed by the development discourse. Students seem to think that studying development means following the development discourse: as Escobar (1997: 85) states, ‘development created a space in which only certain things could be said and even imagined’. In line with this, many students construct their culture as opposed to development and follow a linear concept of history involving development and modernization. However, most of the students also hear other voices and have experiences that contradict the development discourse. There is a general awareness of global inequalities, unequal power relations in development cooperation and the colonial legacy of development. Readings like Escobar, Mamdani and Said, discussions about structural adjustment policies and looking at precolonial gender orders opens up a space in which the students can reflect on this aspect of their knowledge and experience, which is erased in the development discourse. A student from Kenya explained what happened to him in Friedensau: When I had an understanding that we, as the people from the South, we are not developed, but over time I had a shift in my understanding that we in the South, we are very much developed in some areas. This development we have had imposed on us is a definition, which comes from outside that tries to come to us and subjugate us and pulls our minds to things that, if we don’t behave in a certain way, if we are not A, B, C, D, it means that we are not developed. I think it is a forced ideology … In our concept of development in Africa we are already developed. I don’t call myself from a developing country. Those who call us a developing country took our resources. This came to me here (in Friedensau). (Second-year male student from Kenya)

This statement is typical of some students who come to Germany to obtain an academic degree and who might aim to continue their studies by doing a Ph.D. For them, the classroom opens up a space in which to discuss and reflect about their experiences outside the development dis-

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course and address postcolonial power relations. However, this is only one side of the story. While many students would agree with the sentiments expressed in the above statement, a large group of students come to Friedensau to become development experts and find a job in the development industry. For them, academic knowledge should enable them to become development experts. In agreement with Chambers (2005), students who position themselves as part of the development discourse and want to become development experts are often not prepared to drop the concept of development but rather want to discuss what kinds of change should be perceived as good. This is indicated by statements like: Development is an ongoing process. Something that makes you better or the community. I don’t want to compare countries. (second-year female student from Ethiopia) I had a perception of development, as I had worked for an organization – it comes from the West. If you want development, you have to search for resources. This was my understanding of development, but since I came here I got a different understanding of how development should be. It is not all about foreign aid that makes the third world develop but the human participation inside. (Second-year female student from Myanmar)

For the students quoted above, studying ‘development studies’ is not so much about questioning development concepts or examining the legacy of colonialism as about appropriating and localizing development. It is also about gaining knowledge in order to be part of a community of development practitioners and scholars who negotiate development. The curriculum must also include this dimension and provide opportunities to students to become development experts in their own societies. This leads us to the question of the relationship between theoretical reflections and professional knowledge within the field of development studies.

What about ‘Practice’? In a phone call I had recently with a former student who works in the programme department of a NGO and supports the Master’s programme by organizing field trips and facilitating internships, he argued that students have to be prepared for the field and also mentioned that in this context ‘critical thinking is not sufficient’. He continued by saying that students need to know the methods and processes that are relevant to work in the field of development cooperation and humanitarian aid. In this example, it seems that critical thinking and being an expert are ­mutually exclusive,

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and even that critical thinking makes you unsuitable for the practice of development. In the phone call, I did not challenge this presumption but argued that we indeed prepare students to work in the field of development cooperation and humanitarian aid. We offer courses in project planning, disaster management and financial planning, as well as in research methods, content that can also be useful in the work of a development expert. Practical professional knowledge is also required by the university board and reflects the history of the programme, which was intended to qualify people to work in the Church-run NGO. It is also a concern of students who want to be prepared to do ‘NGO work’ or to become development experts. Knowing about development practice seems to be an entry point for a good job. A second-year female student from West Africa explained this as follows: ‘Expatriates come from developed countries. They are the ones who get the big money. We also want to become experts. People on the ground are doing the work, but they cannot become experts.’

The quotation above points out the contradictions and ambiguities of the debate over praxis versus theory within the field of development. Students working in NGOs in their home country know about the practice of development before they come to Germany to study in order to become professionals – that is, development experts. In many cases, to be a development expert also means not working on the ground anymore but sitting in an office and doing office work, as one of the students put it. This contradiction points to a common dispute between development practitioners and development anthropologists and other development scholars doing fieldwork in ‘developing countries’ about what constitutes practical knowledge. In my own professional career, encounters with development practitioners often culminated in a discussion about how much practical knowledge should be included in our curriculum, and I was automatically assigned to defend the importance of theoretical knowledge. However, reflecting on my own experience of doing fieldwork for over 25 years in different communities that have been exposed to development aid, the question came up: ‘What is practical knowledge in the field of development studies?’ For instance, I was looking at a GTZ project in Kenya promoting improved stoves at the end of the 1980s; they had ceased being used two years later but were still narrated as a successful project. I investigated microfinance in Sudan in the 1990s and early 2000s and supervised a Ph.D. research project on microfinance in a village in Kordofan (Abdalla 2013; Abdalla and Schultz 2014; Schultz, Makkawi and El Fatih 2006); from this I realized that for some clients microfinance was localized and appropriated but that it also led to indebtedness and

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dependence for other clients. In my recent long-term research on voluntary repatriation and return migration programmes as conducted by the IOM, UNHCR and some NGOs, I found that return programmes reinforce ethnic divisions, are not based on profound information on the security situation on the ground and often worsen the situation of those living in, for example, Sudan or South Sudan (Schultz 2012, 2014, 2015). There are many more examples of this type of ‘practical knowledge’ that are based not only on my own research but also on my supervision of Master’s and Ph.D. theses and an ongoing relationship with those I met doing fieldwork right from the beginning of my academic career. What type of knowledge is this? Reflecting upon my experiences and sharing them with the students, common responses are: ‘You know the situation’ or ‘You know Africa’. In making this reflection explicit, I am not claiming that I know the reality, that my knowledge is the only real knowledge, but I do want to deconstruct the idea that academia is about theories and that development cooperation is about praxis. Conceptualizing praxis like this not only devalues the knowledge of development anthropologists and the results of fieldwork that scrutinizes the impact of development cooperation on the ground, but also the knowledge of people on the spot, including those who worked in NGOs with a local reach in their country of origin before coming to Germany to gain professional knowledge as experts. This hierarchization of different types of knowledge has many dimensions and is related to the construction of who is perceived as an expert. A development expert is part of a transnational technical elite characterized by a specific relationship with ‘local knowledge’ (see Sundberg in this volume). Experts have to distance themselves from the world with which they have to engage (Mosse 2011). For the development industry, therefore, not only does practical knowledge constitute specific technical skills, it is also often perceived as the opposite of on-site expertise and capacities.

Postcolonial Hierarchies and Higher Education … the system of relations establishes a discursive practice that sets the rule of the game: who can speak, from what points of view, with what authority and according to what criteria of expertise … (Escobar 1997: 87).

In line with Escobar’s statement, my own experience and some more recent publications (Langdon 2013; Spiegel et al. 2017), I argue that decolonizing development studies is not only about postcolonial curricula but also about putting structures in place that open up spaces and access to institutions of higher education and job markets for the less privileged. It

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is therefore necessary to look at the structures that organize access to the development industry.

Access to the Field of Development Studies Academic research on development studies programmes often classifies students in accordance with a binary division such as ‘Global North’/‘Global South’ or along lines of citizenship. This binary division and classification system are somewhat superficial, making other categories of difference invisible (like class, gender and religious affiliation) and also contributing to the homogenization of students from non-Western countries. However, looking at the admission process, this practice of dividing the citizenships of applicants in line with a binary division into ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ or ‘high-income’ and ‘low-income countries’ (Spiegel et al. 2017) seems to be the most relevant. Many programmes have restrictive access policies not only because of the quality of the programmes and the high numbers of applicants but also in reflection of postcolonial hierarchies and the international migration regime. Generally, development studies programmes require an English proficiency test and other formal requirements like a Bachelor’s degree (for admission to a Master’s programme) in a relevant field, school certificates and other certificates like passport copies. All these have to be originals and sealed and, in some cases, translated by recognized official translators. This process also reflects power relations and structures of inequality in which only certain papers are accepted and certain bureaucratic knowledge is crucial in order to be successful in the admission process. Behind this policy there is also a degree of discrimination, which is hidden behind the apparently neutral bureaucratic procedure. This nonetheless becomes visible in some practices: for instance, some programmes also expect students from countries like Uganda, Ghana and Zimbabwe to do English proficiency tests, while students from French-speaking Canada are not required to do so (Spiegel et al. 2017: 276). In a study of online development study programmes in the United Kingdom, it was found that applicants from ‘low-income countries’ who had been studying in top-ranking universities in the UK or North America were asked to do a new language test to be admitted to a programme (ibid.). In the case of German universities that offer development studies programmes in English, some universities accept students without English proficiency tests if they studied a programme with English as the language of instruction for their Bachelor’s degree. This is also the practice in the

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development studies programme in Friedensau. However, how far these exemptions go and whether they apply to all students in the same way are issues that are constantly being negotiated and related to the experiences of students coming from the respective universities. This degree of relative openness is not only due to the small size of the university but also to a long history of cooperation between the educational institutions of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The university is unique in the way it is not only part of the German educational system but also accredited by the Adventist Accreditation Agency. There is always a tension between the need to fulfil the state’s requirements and the standards of the system on the one hand and the culture of a global church network and its educational institutions on the other, the latter, in many cases, being more inclusive than national education systems.2 However, recently, a new challenge has emerged not only for Friedensau University but also for other development studies programmes. In the above-­ mentioned study (Spiegel et al. 2017) on online development studies programmes, the authors refer to the experience of a British university that increased its flexibility regarding the language requirement by accepting, as with the policy in Friedensau, prior degrees in English and letters from employers as proof of English-language competence. The university was then pressured by the UK government to create more restrictive admissions criteria. There seems to be a growing interest on the part of European governments to influence the admission policies of universities and bring them in line with the objective of national and European migration polices. This is illustrated by the practices of German embassies in processing visa applications. Embassies often create their own restrictive admissions criteria. For instance, some students from India were forced to do an English test before being given a visa, even though they had already been admitted to the Development Studies Master’s Programme in Friedensau. In some cases, visa applications from African students were rejected with the argument that the study programme bears no relationship to the acquired Bachelor’s degree, notwithstanding the fact that the students had already been admitted by the university. Financial requirements like putting money in a blocked account (up to €10,000) act as an additional barrier for most students from countries that are subject to the visa regime. The more restrictive immigration laws and the interference of national governments in admissions policies show the limited ability of universities in a highly hierarchized global system to ‘decolonize development studies’. However, it also shows that there is a responsibility on universities as part of civil society to take a stand and try to influence migration policies. In line with Spiegel et al. (2017: 277), I therefore argue that ‘decolonizing development studies’ has to start with the

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admissions process (see also Langdon 2013). Before I reflect on the pedagogical dimensions of decolonizing development studies, I will briefly describe who the students are who were admitted to the programme and made it to Germany.

The Students Regarding citizenship, as of June 2018, most of the students enrolled in the Master’s programme in International Social Science (Development Studies) in Friedensau come from what is generally perceived to be the ‘Global South’. Depending on which countries are categorized as part of the ‘Global South’, only one or three out of 49 are not from countries of the ‘Global South’. The classification system of the World Bank (World Bank 2017) can be used to confirm this pattern: out of the 49 students, seventeen come from ‘low-income countries’ (Tanzania, Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Ethiopia), thirty from lower ‘middle-income countries’ (Sudan, Kenya, Ghana, Myanmar, Bangladesh), only two from high ‘middle-income countries’ (Peru and Brazil) and one student from the US (‘high-income country’). This pattern becomes even more pronounced when using the classification system of the UN. In this case, 26 students come from countries (Myanmar, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Haiti, Burundi, Bangladesh, Liberia, Benin, Sudan) belonging to the 47 ‘least developed countries’ according to the United Nations (2018). Although these classifications are problematic, the above patterns show that the students in Friedensau are rather part of the periphery when it comes to access to quality education (as defined in the international education market). This becomes even more evident when we realize that nearly all students studying in Friedensau join the Master’s programme with Bachelor degrees acquired in their home countries, either in state universities or Adventist educational institutions. However, despite this general pattern, there is also a great diversity within the student body, not only regarding categories of difference such as gender and religion, which are usually highlighted in the university’s own discourse but also regarding prior knowledge, skills and abilities that are relevant for studying successfully. This is not necessarily visible in the documents submitted by the students. There is generally a problem for students who have not been exposed very much to the English language in their education, nor in their everyday lives back home. There are also differences in the culture of teaching and in being required to write papers or do presentations before coming to Friedensau. Students from Myanmar in particular stress that they were not used to being asked about their

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opinions or even just contributing to the lectures orally. Many students had never written an academic paper before coming to Friedensau, or if they had, they had never received personal feedback about their performance. There is also a distinct class difference between students from one country or region; however, this is difficult to grasp. Visiting students from Kenya, Ghana, Sudan and Myanmar in their homes, I could see huge differences in respect of class, access to education and financial means. Generally, most students come from a middle-class ­background – study fees and other financial requirements function as entry barriers for lower-class students – though the global church network, with its tradition of sponsorships and donations, also allows some less well-off students to come to Friedensau.

Anti-colonial Pedagogy? For Langdon (2013: 392), decolonizing means also ‘unlearning coloniality and … building teaching approaches that encourage this unlearning’. It is not easy to teach with a Western academic background and within a Western educational system and see the differences in educational backgrounds mentioned above not only as deficiencies and problems. It needs a constant process of reflection and intensive communication to understand where the students come from. There is also a need to appreciate the journey some of them have made: from a shanty town in Khartoum to Friedensau, from being an Adventist pastor in northern Kenya to becoming a development studies student in Friedensau, from a Buddhist village in the delta region of Myanmar to an Adventist village in Saxony-Anhalt. Acknowledging the diversity of the students without constructing difference is only possible by interacting with them and getting to know each of them outside the classroom. On a campus university, there are many possibilities to meet (in the student club, in the canteen, at the sportsground), and there are many personal encounters in everyday interactions. However, a low-threshold offer of supervision is also required, including tutorials in academic writing and consultancy services. Some students question the reading load and the requirement to write assignments. They perceive this as purely academic knowledge and ask for more content that is related to the job market. However, ‘becoming an expert’ also includes writing and presentation skills, a certain way of speaking and reasoning, and acquiring the habitus of a Western academic. For instance, talking to alumni, they stress that by studying in Germany they were able to improve their writing skills, which helped them find a good position with an NGO.

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Often, students also feel that their knowledge, their experience and the degrees they have already acquired are not valued anymore and that they have to start from the beginning. A student from Sudan mentioned this in a meeting I had with her about a paper she had written: ‘I learned nothing in Sudan.’ This was a matter of questioning not only her earlier academic performance but also her identity as somebody who had been successful and achieved something. Other students, some of them well into their thirties and already working in their home countries as teachers or NGO workers, referred to the experience of ‘feeling like children’. This is also reinforced by ethnic and racial hierarchies on campus regarding student work or accommodation (Blau and Schultz 2017), which can only partly be explained by their lack of German language skills. Given this context, teaching in Friedensau must enable the students to become development experts, to continue their education by doing a Ph.D. and to open up a space in which hierarchies and categories of differences can be twisted, removed and turned upside down. However, this cannot be done by just imposing critical reflection skills on the student. Many development scholars teaching students from African or Asian countries use development rhetoric by describing their objectives in teaching development studies. Students have to be empowered or become conscious of the global structure of inequality. However, some students in the class might follow a totally different personal and political agenda. I remember a discussion in which a group of students defended structural adjustment policies and perceived them as the key to the stability and economic achievement of their countries, the emergence of a middle class and specific consumption patterns. In line with this, there is a need to question the idea that students from ‘low-income countries’ are objects of development (Langdon 2017). However, disadvantages and the hierarchies of the global education system must also be taken into account. But how can we teach within a field that contains so many ambiguities and dilemmas without imposing our own way of thinking on the students who depend on us to get their degrees? How can teaching development studies be done without reproducing stereotypes and binary divisions? And finally, how can we counteract hierarchical structures within the development aid industry? Some of the formats used in the development studies programme in Friedensau seem encouraging. During a field trip to an east European country, students learn how to do a baseline study and how to write a proposal. They come in the role of future experts to European countries addressing social exclusion and migration policies. The ascribed roles – the European as the expert and people from Africa or Asia as the beneficiaries – are further challenged by the fact that for several years this

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excursion has been led by African guest lecturers who had studied in Friedensau. This also points to another promising change: some classes are now taught by alumni who mainly come from African countries. The encounter with the NGO workers in the east European countries also facilitates a discussion regarding who can speak on whose behalf and what participation means in the context of development cooperation. In the qualitative research methodology class, students conducted research on intercultural life and discrimination on the campus. Discussing their results, they started a discussion on intercultural relationships on campus, which also led to a new consciousness about the legacy of colonialism and racism and discrimination on the campus. In the internship programme, some students who had started recently did not do their internship in their home country but went instead to other ‘low-income countries’: for example, one student from Ghana did his internship in an NGO in Myanmar. In his internship report, he reflected on his experience by questioning the development paradigm, as well as the possibility of getting a job in Myanmar after completing his studies. Outside the classroom, other encounters proved helpful in opening up new spaces for communication. For instance, some students visited secondary schools in the structurally disadvantaged areas of Saxony-Anhalt and taught a module on migration and refugee experiences. There is also a policy of maintaining an alumni network with alumni from different continents and regions. However, activities such as those described above are often limited by the funding structure. For instance, students mainly get funding for their internships in their own countries, but not if it is in another socalled developing country. Excursions are usually funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akdademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD)) only for so-called ‘Bildungsinländer’, students who have done their last degree in Germany. The DAAD’s alumni programmes address regional networks and cooperation with German institutions but not the networking of alumni from different countries, regions or continents. This also reflects the notion that students from African countries have to go back home to develop their countries, while students from European countries will become experts.

Conclusion Reflecting in this chapter on my own experience of teaching development in a small university in Germany, I have argued that development studies is a contested field full of ambiguities and dilemmas. While there is a need

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to include the voices of those who are the objects of development in the curriculum, decolonizing knowledge production implies also addressing the existing power structures that regulate not only who has access to study programmes but also ‘… who can speak, from what points of view, with what authority and according to what criteria of expertise …’ (Escobar 1997: 87). Furthermore, I have stressed that students from societies and communities that are perceived as part of the ‘developing world’ cannot easily drop the concept of development. As development is part of their lifeworlds, and as many of them will look for a job as a development expert, teaching development studies must address these ambiguities and tensions and open up a space in which global power structures can be addressed, development can be negotiated and localized, and students can become qualified as development experts. By taking this into account, a development studies programme can also serve the interests of NGOs that have a local reach but cannot easily distance themselves from the world of development. This space could take the form of curriculum workshops in which scholars and practitioners meet regularly. Here, it is important to include development scholars from non-European universities and academic cultures and practitioners from NGOs of the respective countries. Students must also be involved in constant reflection on the content of the programme and the existing power structure, which will shape their future careers. Group discussions like those that have informed my argument in this chapter could be offered on a more regular basis. Moreover, as I have also argued in this chapter, decolonizing knowledge also needs institutional development. For instance, the university in Friedensau is developing scholarships that will make access to the programme easier for students from marginalized communities. Another reason for addressing the tensions discussed in this chapter is to support alumni in their attempts to develop a career in the development industry while at the same time maintaining a critical distance from the premises of the development discourse. As mentioned above, some alumni are teaching in Friedensau and are involved in the supervision and mentoring of students. However, alumni work must include networking in a more structured way. For this, the university attempts to establish regional alumni networks; in 2018, the first such network was established in Myanmar. There is also a plan to conduct workshops in Friedensau in which those alumni who work in NGOs can reflect on their experiences. However, this needs funding, which is difficult to obtain given the current national and international funding structure. There are other constraints as well, such as the workloads of the lecturers and the need for European scholars to comply with the standards of a very competitive

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academic system. However, decolonizing knowledge production is also a matter of giving up privileges, which is not easy to do. Ulrike Schultz is a Professor for Development Sociology and the head of the MA course in Development Studies at Friedensau Adventist University. Before coming to Friedensau, she taught in Berlin, Bochum and Khartoum. Her main research fields are migration, refugee and mobility studies and gender and intersectionality. In her current research project, she looks at belonging and citizenship in the context of migration in the two Sudans. Her regional focus lies in North East Africa and East Africa. A special interest in her academic life lies in the cooperation with African universities. She has conducted workshops and summer schools in Sudan, Ghana and Nigeria.

Notes 1. I struggled in this chapter with naming. I did not want to use official classifications of the development regime, such as ‘developing countries’ or ‘low-income’ and ‘highincome countries’, but I also did not want not to refer to the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, which also constitutes a binary division, and thus homogenizes the experiences of people living in these countries. Therefore, I tried to be more specific and mention the regions, societies and communities the students come from. However, in some cases, I could not avoid a classification in line with the above-mentioned binary divisions, because they also reflect power relations in place. 2. At the beginning of my career in Friedensau, it was surprising to learn that the Church does not influence the curriculum of the study programme.

References Abdalla, G.A. 2013. The Influence of Financial Relations on Sustaining Rural Livelihood in Sudan. Münster: Lit Verlag. Abdalla, G.A., and U. Schultz. 2014. ‘Erinnerung an eine schwere Zeit: Widerstand und lokale Aneignung von Mikrofinanzprojekten im Sudan’, in G. Klas and P. Mader (eds), Rendite machen und Gutes tun? Frankfurt: Campus, pp. 61–71. Blau, J., and U. Schultz. 2017. ‘Diversity Management und Interkulturelles Leben in Friedensau’, Dialog 2017(1): 2–3. Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First. London and New York: Routledge. ______. 2005. ‘Critical Reflection of a Development Nomad’, in U. Kothari (ed.), Radical History of Development Studies: Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies. London: Zed Books, pp. 67–87.

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Cornwall, A. 2007. ‘Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing the Development Discourse’, Development in Practice 17(4–5): 471–88. Escobar, A. 1997. ‘The Making and Unmaking of the Third World through Development’, in M. Rahnema and V. Bawtree (eds), The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 85–93. Gutiérrez Rodriguez, E. 2010. ‘Decolonizing Post-colonial Rhetoric’, in E. Gutiérrez Rodriguez, M. Boatcă and S. Costa (eds), Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 49–67. Kothari, U. 2005. ‘Radical History of Development Studies: Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies’, in U. Kothari (ed.), Radical History of Development Studies: Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–14. Langdon, J. 2013. ‘Decolonizing Development Studies: Reflections on Critical Pedagogies in Action’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies: Revue Canadienne d’études du développement 34(3): 384–99. Mohanty, C.T. 1984. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Boundary 2 12(3)–13(1): 333–58. Mosse, D. 2011. ‘Introduction: The Anthropology of Expertise and Professionals in International Development’, in D. Mosse (ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–31. Negrón-Gonzales, G. 2016. ‘Teaching Poverty’, in A. Roy et al. (eds), Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World. Oakland: University of California Press, pp. 149– 76. Rist, G. 2007. ‘Development as a Buzzword’, Development in Practice 17(4/5): 485–91. Sachs, W. (ed.). 1992. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books. Schultz, U. 2012. ‘“Juba ist unser Ort”: Politics of Place im neuen Südsudan’, Perpherie 126/127: 218–49. ______. 2014. ‘Rückkehr oder Vertreibung? Die Returnees in Juba’, IZ3W 340: 6–9. ______. 2015. ‘“Als ob es nur Dinka und Nuer gibt …” Ethnische Zugehörigkeiten in Khartum und Juba’, in G. Hauck, I. Lenz and H. Wienold (eds), Entwicklung, Gewalt, Gedächtnis. Münster: Westphälisches Dampfboot, pp. 157–76. Schultz, U., A. Makkawi and T. El Fatih. 2006. ‘The Credit Helps Me to Improve My Business: The Experiences of Two Microcredit Programs in Greater Khartoum’, Ahfad Journal 23(1): 50–65. Spiegel, S. et al. 2017. ‘Decolonizing Online Development Studies? Emancipatory Aspirations and Critical Reflections – A Case study’, Third World Quarterly 38(2): 270–90. Sumner, A. 2006. ‘What is Development Studies?’, Development in Practice 16(6): 644–50. DOI: 10.1080/09614520600958363. Sumner, A., and M. Tribe. 2008. International Development Studies: Theories and Methods in Research and Practice. Los Angeles: SAGE. Theologische Hochschule Friedensau. 2018. ‘Master of Arts International Social Science’. Retrieved 02 July 2018 from https://thh-friedensau.de/ master-of-arts-international-social-sciences/.

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United Nations. 2018. ‘List of Least Developed Countries’. Retrieved 2 July 2018 from https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/wp-content/uploads/ sites/45/publication/ldc_list.pdf. World Bank. 2017. ‘World Bank Country and Lending Groups: Country Classification’. Retrieved 2 July 2018 from https://datahelpdesk.worldbank. org/knowledgebase/articles/906519. Ziai, A. 2017. ‘“I am Not a Post-Developmentalist, but…”: The influence of Post-Development on Development Studies’, Third World Quarterly 38(12): 2719–734. DOI:10.1080/01436597.2017.1328981.

on opportunities

Chapter 4

Alternatives to Consultancy and NGOing

Developing Anthropological Team Research in West Africa Sten Hagberg

Introduction As a discipline, anthropology seeks to represent perceptions and experiences, to deconstruct dominant narratives and received wisdoms, and to explore people’s lifeworlds and everyday practices. In this endeavour, the relationship between the researcher and his or her research assistants, key informants and other interlocutors is central, albeit not always explicitly clarified. In some works, the reflexivity of the researcher occupies a prominent place in the methodological section or even throughout the entire analysis. The purpose tends to be to clarify the specific intersubjective conditions under which the ethnographic material was produced as a way to validate the research results. In other works, the researcher’s relationship with his or her research assistants and interlocutors is more opaque and remains unarticulated in the analysis. Both cases may imply problems if taken to the extreme: while the reflexivity may well turn into navel-gazing, making the thoughts and emotions of the researcher seem more important than those of his or her interlocutors, opaque relationships may allude to a ‘scientific objectivity’ of a kind that anthropology does not adhere to. The different relationships in which the individual researcher and his or her interlocutors are engaged are indeed central to reflect upon, particularly when a lone anthropologist is replaced by a team of researchers. The multiple relationships between researchers and Notes for this chapter begin on page 109.

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interlocutors then take on new forms that in turn make possible methodological and epistemological opportunities. At the same time, working in closely knit research teams may operate to decolonize anthropological knowledge production in new and interesting ways in the sense that, at best, the boundaries between outsiders and insiders, foreign and national anthropologists, is productively bridged in description and analysis. The chapter draws on long-term anthropological research in Burkina Faso and Mali to address the methodological and epistemological opportunities of working in small, close-knit research teams. While anthropologists always work with specific interlocutors (key informants, local experts, gatekeepers, brokers), the way in which the anthropological teamwork methodology that we have developed over the years has come to shape knowledge production and the analytical gaze on grassroots perspectives on political conflict, democratic practices and security challenges in Burkina Faso and Mali is the focus of this chapter. In particular, I would like to discuss three methodological devices that have a particular bearing on the study of democracy and security from below, in order to explore the perspectives and experiences of ordinary citizens at the grassroots. Throughout the chapter, I argue that anthropological team research presents important alternatives to consultancy assignments and work for NGOs. Instead of maintaining a firm distinction between basic and applied anthropology, I suggest that conceptually and methodologically sound team research can engage anthropology in both development work and societal challenges in new, innovative ways. In general, the idea of working in research teams represents an ambition to move away from the lone individual researcher that is so typical in anthropological research. More specifically, several reasons have led us to develop a team research methodology. First, working in teams has always been a central element of my research as a way to compare and discuss – and to contradict and share – ethnographic material and methodological choices. It has also become an important way to enrich knowledge production of the lone anthropologist. Second, the growing issues of access to the field and security issues have favoured the development of research teams. Teamwork facilitates the skilful combination of team members’ networks, actions and personalities. Third, training is central to the kind of collective inquiry that we have been developing over the years. Young researchers become acquainted with research methodology and knowledgeable about how to carry out and conceptualize research projects. Fourth, working in teams allows comparative qualitative research much more than the extended case-study method developed in a specific locale. The comparative ambition is key to team research, given that the single researcher cannot cover several localities

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and settings in a meaningful way, including building rapport and trust with informants. Among all these reasons, one could also highlight the very practical security issues, given that it has become increasingly difficult to access many areas for anthropological research (Ayimpam and Bouju 2015; Hagberg 2019; Hagberg and Körling 2014; Laborde et al. 2018). Yet growing insecurities have also come to articulate much more profound changes in how to do anthropology, particularly when it comes to the contributions of assistants, co-workers and other colleagues in the research process (Eriksson Baaz and Utas 2019). Furthermore, working in contexts where there are very limited resources to fund field research, as many of our colleagues in African countries experience, the team research methodology offers alternatives to consultancy and NGOing (Lewis and Schuller 2017). As Sundberg and Schulz highlight in this volume, NGOs today are one of the most important employers of graduates in many African countries. Not only do they provide career perspectives but also a job in which graduates can make use of their degrees. At the same time, those African scholars who want to do research are often obliged to work for NGOs in order to acquire funding. In this case, however, they are obliged to give priority to the NGO’s interests, to do their own research on the side or to give up their academic ambitions entirely. While working for an NGO might be a good option, the fact that NGOs are almost without an alternative on the job market and set very clear rules for data collection are definitely relevant downsides of the admittedly vast field of research delivered through NGOs. Hence, rather than doing research instead of working for development, we are engaging with development organizations and ­policymakers while simultaneously conducting anthropological field research. Throughout the chapter, I demonstrate that working in research teams does not exclude individual, reflective work but that it does require a skilful combination of collective inquiry, joint analysis and individual reflexivity. This is particularly so in anthropological research on conflict and security in dangerous terrains (Ayimpam and Bouju 2015; Eriksson Baaz and Utas 2019; Hagberg 2019; Hagberg and Körling 2014; Laborde et al. 2018; Nordstrom and Robben 1997; Richards 2005). My empirical examples draw on research in Burkina Faso and Mali, showing how we have, in different ways, tried to combine collective and individual work as integral parts of the research process. In this vein, we also draw upon work done by colleagues in similar contexts, notably the ECRIS approach (Rapid Collective Inquiry for the Identification of Conflicts and Strategic Groups) (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan 1997; see also Olivier de Sardan 2008).

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The chapter is organized as follows. First, I describe the ways in which we have been working in teams in Burkina Faso and Mali. Second, I discuss three methodological devices for doing anthropological research on security and democracy from below. Third, I highlight epistemological challenges related to the research methodology and show how we seek to address them in fieldwork and analysis, followed by a discussion of the publication strategies we have deployed in the ambition to write and publish collectively. In the concluding section, I argue that anthropological team research may contribute to decolonizing anthropological knowledge production.

Background to the Research Team Methodology The kind of research we have been conducting in small, close-knit research teams has generally focused on ordinary citizens at the grassroots, on the marginalized, on the vulnerable or on the poor (Carrel and Neveu 2014; Hagberg 2001). In a way, it comes close to conventional anthropological research on culture and society, seen from below, as it were, with the additional focus on short-term sojourns and teamwork. Over the years, I have worked in teams in various ways, especially in relation to research activities in Mali and Burkina Faso during the last decade. My background in development anthropology has certainly played a role in this. Between 1988 and 1992, I was a UN Junior Professional Officer in Burkina Faso, first in a natural forest management project and then in a natural resources management project. This was the time when Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) – a term referring to a discrete study in rural communities during which a multidisciplinary team of researchers looks at a set of issues clearly defined by the study’s objectives – was having its heyday, with Robert Chambers as the front figure (Chambers 1983). Yet a distinction was soon drawn between RRA and PRA – that is, Participatory Rural Appraisal, where the emphasis was more on the process and on how to involve the community in planning and decision-making (Chambers 1993). PRA was defined as ‘a family of approaches and methods to enable rural people to share, enhance, and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act’ (Chambers 1994: 953). These participatory approaches drew on ethnographic fieldwork techniques, in contrast to the quantitative surveys and fixed questionnaires that had hitherto dominated development practice. Yet these approaches, even though they were talked about as a radical rupture, were also part of a development agenda whereby development aid would be made more effective and participatory. I was inspired by these approaches but remained

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sceptical of the salvation discourse that often followed in their wake. An interesting attempt to use some of these approaches but to integrate them into anthropological fieldwork was the ECRIS developed within the APAD,1 a development anthropology network predominantly in Europe and Francophone Africa (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan 1997). In the 1990s, we used various multidisciplinary participatory approaches in commissioned studies in Zambia and Burkina Faso (Hagberg 1995, 1998; Hagberg, Gomgnimbou and Somé 1996; Hedlund and Hagberg 1995). Yet, while using these approaches was very positive, I always felt sceptical of the inherent populism suggesting that ‘more of the activities previously appropriated by outsiders are instead carried out by local rural or urban people themselves’ (Chambers 1994: 953). While such a general statement on the importance of taking local people’s views and perspectives seriously is valid for most anthropologists, there was an anti-­ intellectual element to PRA, meaning that anyone could become a trained fieldworker without any degrees or diplomas in relevant academic disciplines such as anthropology. The anti-intellectualism of PRA was, to my mind, insufficient, unsatisfactory and problematic, coming close to ideological populism (Olivier de Sardan 2008; see also Hagberg et al. 2018): how come anthropological fieldwork, albeit in the disguise of PRA, needs no training, unlike any other research activity? Despite my scepticism, participatory approaches did influence my future research work, if not in the way some PRA pundits would have thought. A central tenet has been to combine individual and collective approaches to research, regardless of their sources of funding. The research team methodology has been developed both as part of conventional research projects and as commissioned research and consultancy activities. The methodology therefore offers, I argue, alternatives to consultancy and NGOing (Lewis and Schuller 2017). Let me now turn to the ways in which we have come to develop a team research methodology in Mali and Burkina Faso. In 2008, in collaboration with my colleague Yaouaga Félix Koné at the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Bamako, I led a research team doing social analysis on work and employment opportunities in three field sites in Mali. The study was commissioned by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) as a means of improving understanding of processes of inclusion and exclusion in the case of people living in poverty (Hagberg et al. 2009; Hagberg 2011). Later, members of this research team became involved in research projects on municipal politics and local democratic culture in Mali, a research activity that has been ongoing since 2011; sometimes team members have been in charge of specific case studies in selected municipalities, while at other times they have been involved

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in joint fieldwork in one municipality (Hagberg et al. 2019a). In October 2016, under the auspices of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and in partnership with the Bamako-based research centre Point Sud,2 we led what was partly the same team in a study of security from below in two Malian municipalities (Hagberg et al. 2017a). As already stated, I have been working in Burkina Faso since 1988, carrying out longer conventional ethnographic field research in a few specific localities, multisited fieldwork, shorter field visits, collective fieldwork, and analyses of local media and public debates. In the 1990s, I worked on a research project on the management of natural dry forests in central Burkina Faso with Moustapha Gomgnimbou and the late Evariste Poda at the Institut des Sciences des Sociétés (INSS) in Ouagadougou.3 Since 2011, I have been leading a Burkinabe research team focusing on municipal politics and local democratic culture in Burkina Faso together with Ludovic Kibora at the INSS. Most often, we have worked at different field sites in order to be able to make a comparative ­ethnography of municipal politics. However, since the fall of President Blaise Compaoré in October 2014, the Burkinabe research team has focused on popular narratives of and perspectives on Burkina Faso’s sociopolitical ­transformations  – including the October 2014 revolution, the popular resistance against the coup d’état in September 2015 and an ethnographic study of the different democratic elections in November 2015 and in May 2016 (Hagberg et al. 2015, 2017b, 2018, 2019a). The study of social phenomena from the grassroots or from below is common to anthropological research: development, poverty and p ­ olitics are all fields in which such studies have been particularly suitable. Luisa Michelutti focuses on ‘the process of vernacularization of ­democratic ­politics’ – that is, the ways in which the values and practices of ­democracy become embedded in particular cultural and social practices, in the ­process becoming entrenched in the consciousness of ordinary people. She argues that ‘the moment when democracy enters a particular historical and socio-cultural setting it becomes vernacularized, and through vernacularization it produces new social relations and values, which in turn shape political rhetoric and political culture’ (Michelutti 2007: 641). In my own work, I have tried to explore how concepts like forest management, poverty, work, development, politics and democracy become vernacularized. Yet studying ‘from below’ does not exclude the integration of research from above, nor does it postulate that studying from below is inherently better than doing so from above. To my mind, the importance of studying social phenomena from below is to cast light on those perspectives that are seldom integrated into mainstream political and economic analysis. Notions such as ‘ordinary citizens’, ‘from below’ and ‘the

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grassroots’ signal the use of methodological populism, where the representations and practices of ordinary citizens (the poor, the dominated, the oppressed) merit most attention in the social sciences (Olivier de Sardan 2008: 246; see also Bayart, Mbembe and Toulabor 2008; Carrel and Neveu 2014; Hagberg et al. 2017b). In the following paragraphs, I discuss three methodological devices that have a particular bearing on the study of democracy and security from below, in order to explore the perspectives and experiences of citizens at the grassroots. This is particularly relevant in zones of conflict, where democracy and security are likely to come under fire.

Methodological Devices The fundamental trademark of anthropologists is to have been ‘there’ and thus to be informed about how local people reason and perceive things, including modern phenomena like democracy and development. However, in considering security issues, it may sometimes be too dangerous to do conventional ethnographic fieldwork. This is a tricky issue for any scholar with the ambition to understand the everyday realities and perceptions of society (Andersson 2016; Ayimpam and Bouju 2015; Hagberg and Körling 2014; Laborde et al. 2018). Yet, rather than changing research site or even country when personal risks and political insecurities are growing, I argue that we have to revisit our methodological devices. Like Paragi (this volume), as researchers we have to see how we can still explore the perspectives and experiences of people at the grassroots, even if our own presence is as restricted as in the study of Palestinians and Israelis. In the study of democracy and security as seen from below, the anthropological fieldworker faces a number of constraints and challenges. One such challenge is personal security through exposure to dangerous situations (Ayimpam and Bouju 2015; Richards 2005). Hijacking, banditry and hostage-taking constitute an ever-present threat in the present-day Sahel (and certainly elsewhere). The issue of personal security is one of exposing oneself and one’s research partners, assistants and interlocutors. The decision whether or not to go to dangerous places poses an ethical dilemma. Standard considerations are always key to deciding where people could carry out fieldwork, and a risk assessment regarding the individual fieldworker must be made on the basis of available knowledge. Yet, the issue of security is also a question of what kind of ethnography we can produce and what fieldwork techniques we can use. Another challenge is conducting research on elections and political pro-

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tests that might also constitute insecure terrains. Elections may simply go wrong and lead to escalating violence. A seemingly peaceful situation may quickly degenerate into riots and chaos, violence and panic. Of course, other forms of violence and violent acts create difficulties for doing research on coups d’état, popular resistance and people living in areas under occupation of some sort (Hagberg et al. 2015). Yet, it is precisely in these circumstances that well-grounded research is badly needed in order to understand ongoing social and political transformations and to respond to media eager to get analysis of, or from, the field (Hagberg and Körling 2014). In the following, I discuss three distinct methodological devices through which we have tried to face the challenges of doing anthropology in dangerous terrains in Burkina Faso and Mali. The first methodological device concerns the need for methodological flexibility. A detailed planned study may simply not take place because of a curfew or just an uncertain situation in the area (Benjaminsen and Ba 2018; Hagberg and Körling 2014; Laborde et al. 2018). Flexibility might sound self-evident for any serious research plan, but in the kind of work we carry out it is a necessity in very specific ways. Prior to all team research, we organize a workshop with all the researchers involved in the particular study. Together we assess the possibilities of doing research and draw upon the networks and acquaintances of each and every one of us. We stress that no risks should be taken and that escalations of insecurity must result in an immediate return home. Flexibility is a methodological device, a central asset for the individual researcher’s personal security. Yet, even in insecure and dangerous situations, it often proves possible to make contact with people who are willing to discuss the issues at hand. It is important to obtain information and insights when these are scarce resources. As a ‘White’ non-national European researcher, one has definite advantages in doing research in African contexts in terms of access to certain networks, though it may be hard to hide, if not impossible, to go unnoticed when sociopolitical situations deteriorate (Lecocq 2002). However, sometimes it is simply too dangerous to conduct fieldwork in the way one would like to do. In my view, the appropriate response to such a situation is not to abandon the project or work in another country and/or region but to be flexible and rethink the methodological design. A ‘Black’ national African researcher working in his/her own country has definite advantages in terms of accessing networks but is also exposed to the imminent dangers of being a citizen of the country in crisis. Although a Burkinabe or Malian researcher might be able to go to areas where foreign researchers cannot, as an individual Burkinabe or Malian researcher he or she is simultaneously more exposed to the

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c­ onsequences of asking the wrong questions in the wrong places. One of my Ph.D. students who comes from an African country commented on my research on popular struggle in Burkina Faso: ‘Some research themes are better conducted by non-national researchers.’4 Methodological flexibility would require a reconsideration of how to do something meaningful when the field is not accessible or when the fieldwork site is simply too dangerous. Laborde et al. (2018) demonstrate how a research programme in northern Cameroon, where the Boko Haram insurgency is ongoing, had to be substantially redefined by, for example, integrating local, non-academic field researchers living in the ‘Red Zone’ when neither national nor international researchers could access the area any longer. ‘This gradual shift in the structure of our research network facilitated a multi-epistemological research partnership between academic scientists with little or no local field experience and non-academic practitioners with field knowledge’ (Laborde et al. 2018: 380). In an article published a few years ago, Gabriella Körling and I reflected on how we had tried to pursue a research project on municipal politics in Mali in the midst of the 2012 political turmoil (Hagberg and Körling 2014). One option that we deployed when the field was not accessible any longer was to turn to analysing mass media and public debate. In this case, previous long-term research experiences made possible opportunities to deconstruct public debates and analyse the issues that were being discussed in public. The specific interest in local and national debates – in contrast to those dominated by international news agencies (RFI, France24, BBC) – did add to the international news reporting on the Malian crisis (Hagberg and Körling 2012). Another option that I have used in research in Burkina Faso was to engage with social media (Hagberg 2015; Hagberg et al. 2015). In this sort of context, when we enter the field of digital anthropology, the issue of engagement takes on new forms.5 First, it may be difficult to identify the person behind the Facebook profile. Second, interpreting narratives and statements disseminated in the social media requires careful and reflective methodological safeguards, so as to ensure that one is not simply reproducing consciously orchestrated conflicts and fake news. Third, the researcher’s own mass media and social media participation may lead one to new Facebook friends and new perspectives while also possibly closing doors because taking a public stand may make other people treat the researcher with more caution. The second methodological device pertains to scientific rigour. Even when doing research in insecure situations and dangerous places, scientific rigour must be safeguarded. When the field is not accessible any longer – or at least, when access is suspended, only scanty documentation

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exists and guesstimates tend to dominate news reporting – the ­reliability of our findings is more critical than ever. Journalists and so-called security experts tend to base their reporting at best on a few interviews with a small range of people or at worst on hearsay. Such a procedure is simply not good enough. It is then more important than ever to triangulate information by having different perspectives and viewpoints. If not, the researcher easily turns into an instrument fabricating and reproducing stereotypes and hearsay. This might sound self-evident, but in a context where we publish comments and observations instantly online, our take on specific issues requires more social responsibility than if the paper is published in a scientific journal (a few years later) with a specific jargon (hard to understand for non-specialists) and a rather limited readership (a mostly academic audience). This has a bearing on what Didier Fassin calls ‘the public afterlife of ethnography’, which entails three distinct intellectual operations: translation, discussion and expansion (Fassin 2015: 595; see also Fassin 2018). In our teamwork on the popular insurrection and the subsequent sociopolitical transformations in Burkina Faso (Hagberg et al. 2015, 2017b, 2018), we experienced the public afterlife of the research in the sense that our research results were discussed in press articles, radio broadcasts and television interviews in the country. The scientific rigour of our work was what gave our analysis credibility. Moreover, it takes systematic training and hard work to do that, being thus remote from all those who pretend to do anthropological research without any specific training or education. The third methodological device is teamwork itself and the transformation of the lone anthropologist doing fieldwork into an anthropological team research. In collaboration with Malian and Burkinabe colleagues, we have developed ethnographic methods for conducting short-term fieldwork in small teams (Hagberg et al. 2009, 2017a). In a study commissioned by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), we conducted fieldwork in the municipalities of Niono and KalabanCoro in Mali. This time, however, I could not myself participate in the Niono part, given that the terrorist movement, the katiba Macina led by the Islamist preacher Amadou Koffa, was active in the region in addition to the many armed groups. But although I could not do fieldwork in Niono, my Malian colleagues could (Hagberg et al. 2017a). This inability to access the field is uncomfortable for any anthropologist, but it does illustrate that sometimes the team of researchers is more important than the individual researcher (see Benjaminsen and Ba 2018; Hagberg 2019; Hagberg et al. 2017a; Laborde et al. 2018). To deal with such situations, the teamwork approach involves gathering in workshops before, during and after fieldwork to engage in joint

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reflections. Therefore, it is not so much a question of whether or not one team member can join in the fieldwork but more of how we as a team can make sure that we do field research that is worthy of the name. The important point is how to make sure that research procedures are conceptualized prior to fieldwork and that actual field notes and observations are documented when the fieldwork is finished. The sharing of interviews and observations pertains to team leaders as well as to field researchers. Those doing fieldwork should share information and knowledge, but team leaders must also share insights and accumulated experiences with the team. Senior scholars with long-term regional ethnographic knowledge and reading are likely to be able to place fresh information in a larger context. Most often, we try to work in what we call ‘known terrains’ (terrains connus) to at least some team members, so as to place current ethnographic material in a longer-term framework. To do this, team leaders must share what they know so as to get fieldworkers involved in the research process. Hence, the short-term team research still requires long-term ethnographic knowledge of the region, but the teamwork approach does dissolve the idea of the lonesome anthropologist doing fieldwork. In Burkina Faso, we have done joint fieldwork – or, perhaps better, have conduced parallel field research leading to joint papers and articles (Hagberg et al. 2015, 2017b, 2018, 2019b). In that context, too, the comparative methodology has been critical in understanding the sociopolitical transformations involved. The collective or joint fieldwork offered new insights and the sharing of ideas, thus strengthening the validation of research results. These three methodological devices boil down to the issue of co-­ publication and the transformation of the anthropological persona. In the next section, I will discuss the epistemological challenges involved in coproducing and co-publishing research results.

Epistemological Challenges in Teamwork So far, I have tried to explain how we have proceeded in doing research in teams, especially in dangerous situations. While I have done fieldwork myself in the midst of quite complicated and somewhat dangerous political processes in both Burkina Faso and Mali, the issue here is the role of anthropological fieldwork on contemporary political and security issues. As the anthropological trademark is still very much related to the idea that the researcher has been ‘there’ and has talked to ‘local people’, teamwork not only makes possible methodological opportunities but it also creates epistemological challenges.

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Doing anthropology in research teams means collaborating with and trusting the colleagues you are working with, especially when it comes to the kind of data produced. The opposite situation is valid too – that is, the team members must trust me, as well as the other team leaders. In this context, my long-term commitment to Burkina Faso and Mali plays a certain role, paired with the fact that the Burkinabe and Malian team leaders (Ludovic Kibora and Yaouaga Félix Koné) are people for whom collegiality and friendship go hand in hand. To build trust, we always start with a joint workshop during which concepts and questions are discussed in detail, local notions are translated, and semi-structured interview guides are refined. We also clarify expectations regarding the research once it is done and the ways in which the report on it will be published. Most importantly, we also discuss issues of the authorship of the final report right from the beginning. The purpose is to establish a joint understanding of the issues involved, how to pose questions and whom to interview. The very selection of field sites precedes the pre-fieldwork workshop and is most often done informally by team leaders in consultation with other team members. In the case of the individual research projects that might be continuing side by side with teamwork, we seek to emphasize that individual researchers can also be strengthened by joint teamwork (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan 1997; Hagberg 2011; Hagberg et al. 2017a, 2019a). When fieldwork is to be conducted jointly, we often separate and work alone or in pairs during some days and then reconvene every other evening. This is a way to develop specific case studies and to triangulate information, including new ideas and new turns. The fundamental aspect of joint fieldwork is nevertheless trust – information, data and ethics must be shared for this work to be solid, sound and worthwhile. One question that arises is how the categories that we have predefined influence the kind of narratives we produce. This is less a question than one might think because we are working in countries and regions of which we have previous research experience. Therefore, we are continuously weighing words and interrogating categories throughout the research process. To some extent, teamwork and its corollary, the comparative endeavour, do require conceptual clarity in a way that one does not conventionally associate with ethnographic case studies. For instance, in our study of security challenges in Mali, working with notions like lakana (‘security’ or ‘bringing security’ in Bambara) or hakili la tigè (‘tranquility’, ‘absence of worries’) helped us to arrive at a common understanding. Yet in many other languages spoken in Mali it was more difficult to find an appropriate translation of the word ‘security’ (Hagberg et al. 2017a: 20). Hence, while we did find a translation into the national

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l­ anguage, Bambara, we had more difficulties in obtaining appropriate translations into other languages. Another example concerns the notion of ‘making politics’ (ka politiki ke in Bambara/Jula), which is most often used to express ‘lying’ or ‘cheating’ in everyday language. Thus studying politics inevitably encounters the problem of language. To circumvent such language problems, we often ask people to describe the characteristics of ‘security’ or ‘politics’ rather than define what these words really entail. A related issue concerns the standardization of writing and analysis when co-authoring reports and studies. In the team, one sometimes runs into the problem of knowing exactly what was said and how it was said beyond how those statements were understood and experienced by the individual researcher who conducted the fieldwork. Forming bits and pieces of narratives, hearsay and observations into a solid analysis is a challenge for anthropologists used to working alone. Joint analysis is a remedy to overcome overly standardized writing and allow triangulation within the research team to ensure that the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts – that is, that all interviews, observations and reflections would contribute to constructing the findings. Since 2017, we have moved a step further and launched a series of joint publications, particularly in the form of collectively authored books.6 This is a conscious step and has the double ambition of developing collaborative research and making visible the contributions of research assistants and partners. When writing about democracy and security, joint publications by national and international researchers will help create credibility in various ways. The only risk is that the argument is diluted when confronted with the perspectives and experiences of the whole team. In August 2016, we conducted a commissioned study in Burkina Faso that was in fact a post-fieldwork workshop during which we discussed and drafted a report for presentation at a national workshop in December 2016, later published as a book (Hagberg et al. 2017b, 2018). In that way, we were able to spend time together to process material from fieldwork done between 2014 and 2016. While such occasions are rare, they do present important advantages when it comes to joint analysis and, ultimately, joint publication. In 2018, we held another post-fieldwork workshop where we discussed and drafted parts of a commissioned report on security from below in Burkina Faso. Once again, we made a joint analysis under mine and Ludovic Kibora’s leadership (Hagberg et al. 2019b). In 2019, we hosted a post-fieldwork workshop on analysing a commissioned study on women leadership in Burkina Faso (Hagberg et al. 2021). A final epistemological issue concerns the reading and comprehensive analysis of the relevant scientific literature. In teamwork, the historical

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background and regional ethnographic expertise have turned out to be critical in analysing political conflict, democratic practices, security from below and female leadership. Such a reading requires individual work and in-depth reflection. Analysing the recent sociopolitical transformations in Burkina Faso certainly required a thorough reading and cognizance of the regional ethnographic and historical literature. In general, the analysis of that literature falls back on the senior researchers and team leaders with well-established academic careers. The junior team members are less likely to be able to contribute substantially to such analysis, but they are at the same time trained to integrate this component of teamwork. Yet, there might be interesting exceptions to this; for instance, when a team member has specialist knowledge on a certain aspect to be analysed. When working together with team leaders, the other team members are simultaneously trained on the spot and acquire important insights into the craft of anthropological research. That said, all team members are supposed to do their best and to contribute substantially if they are to be co-authors.

Conclusion This chapter has drawn on long-term anthropological research in Burkina Faso and Mali in order to discuss methodological and epistemological opportunities in working in small, close-knit research teams. These teams are ‘close-knit’ because they are, fundamentally, based on trust and comradeship; team members are co-workers and co-authors under the guidance of two team leaders. While anthropologists always work with key informants, local experts, gatekeepers and other brokers, I have discussed the ways in which the anthropological teamwork methodology that we have developed in Burkina Faso and Mali has come to shape knowledge production and the analytical gaze on democracy and security. At the end of the day, the lone anthropological persona is here turned into a member of a research team in which she/he contributes and develops his or her ideas, analytical gaze and reflections. This collective work does not exclude single-authored publications, but it does require that divisions of labour and authorship are clarified right from the outset. Anthropological team research may also contribute to decolonizing anthropological knowledge production and research practice: first, the boundaries between outsiders and insiders, foreign and national anthropologists, may be overcome; and secondly, working in a team may continually construct and deconstruct preconceived notions and received wisdoms before, during and after fieldwork. Furthermore,

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anthropological team research may also offer alternatives to consultancy and NGOing (Lewis and Schuller 2017) in that international development organizations and NGOs can well support team research that relies on having a solid scientific basis, as well as provide a larger sample than an individual researcher can collect in a short time span. These methodological and epistemological opportunities also impose constraints when it comes to the creativity and independent thinking of the individual researcher and his or her own individual reflexivity and personal assets during fieldwork. Moreover, this is also a question of how to combine individual and collective research strategies in relation to interlocutors. A confidence given to one researcher may not always be destined to be told to other team members. Similarly, the risk that, say, a Swedish anthropologist runs in criticizing government policy in public debates may be dangerous to national anthropologists of the country concerned. That risk is simultaneously a powerful asset: the legitimacy of anthropological research may be strengthened if the divide between insider/outsider and national/international is bridged in the research team. It is far more difficult for power-holders to dismiss a team of national and international anthropologists that have come up with controversial research findings than an individual national or international researcher’s findings. The necessity of some members to act as bridges within the research team has been documented elsewhere (Laborde et al. 2018) The anthropological teamwork described here has also made the research more publicly visible. Our joint publications have created an interest far beyond the conventional academic audience, making the public afterlife of ethnography (Fassin 2015) an integral part of teamwork. Newspaper articles, radio and television interviews, and lots of discussion on social media, have meant that scientific rigour has been a central tenet for us. The team research methodology that we have developed over the years is the direct output of various funding sources and different collaborative partners. International donors like the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency have funded some research activities, whereas others have been sponsored by research councils and projects. The combination of research funding and development assistance funding has made it possible to offer alternatives to consultancy and NGOing. So many African academics are obliged to do consultancy to make ends meet and, sometimes, even to acquire new empirical data for further research that a way out of that trap is in itself a very positive step. A central element has always been to put academic rigour at the forefront, rather than a kind of ‘quick and dirty’ development anthropology. This

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has been possible because academic collaboration has always preceded any development or policy agenda. However, it is thanks to substantial support from various sources of funding, including international development organizations, that we have been able to develop a particular kind of anthropological team research methodology. So, rather than pointing to the epistemological and methodological differences between doing anthropology in the field ‘out there’ and doing anthropology in a modified way in less accessible and even dangerous terrains, the anthropological teamwork methodology offers new opportunities. In so doing, it also fulfils another research objective: to strengthen research capacity and critical social sciences in countries where consultancy and NGOcommissioned assignments predominantly influence the kind of research that is carried out. The team research methodology has influenced my Burkinabe and Malian colleagues’ careers and, by extension, their lifeworlds. They have been able to develop their research and publish internationally much more. In so doing, they are also obliged to adopt positions and thus follow ongoing debates and discussions. Needless to say, my own work has also changed by adopting this research process. To quote one slogan of the very important civil society movement Balai Citoyen, which helped oust Blaise Compaoré from power in October 2014: ‘Ensemble, on n’est jamais seul.’ Sten Hagberg is Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden, where he is also Director of the Forum for Africa Studies. He has conducted long-term anthropological field research in Burkina Faso since 1988 and in Mali since 2008. Thematic fields include dispute settlement, environment, development, poverty, political violence, democracy and mass media. Current research considers democracy and municipal politics, as well as opposition and protest, and the nexus of democracy and security. Hagberg is engaged in promoting new forms of anthropological research methodologies and knowledge production, and is one of the founders of the research lab Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Comparative, Engagée et Transnationale (LACET, https://www.lacet.org/).

Notes I would like to thank the editors of this book, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for insightful comments and relevant criticisms of an earlier version of the chapter. I also benefited from discussions at the Frankfurt workshop in November 2017. But first and foremost, I would like to thank my companions de route in developing this anthropological ­methodology for team research: Ludovic O. Kibora at the Institut des Sciences des Sociétés

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in Burkina Faso, and Yaouaga Félix Koné at the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Mali. This chapter is single-authored because I wanted to share my thoughts on our work from my own vantage point. In other publications, we have discussed this methodology as a team (Hagberg et al. 2017a, 2017b, 2018). 1. The APAD stands for the Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development: http://apad-association.org/en/. 2. Point Sud is a research centre based in Bamako, Mali, that aims to support research on local knowledge. It has developed strong links to German academia, notably the Goethe University in Frankfurt, under the joint leadership of Professor Mamadou Diawara and the late Professor Moussa Sissoko: http://pointsud.org/. 3. INSS is part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST) in Burkina Faso, a national umbrella organization composed of four research institutes. 4. My categorization of ‘White non-national European’ and ‘Black national African’ researchers has been made overly schematic in order to make these points about race and nationality. It does exclude Black African non-national researchers; for example, a Burkinabe working in Niger or a Cameroonian doing research in Benin, and r­ esearchers of the African diaspora working in an African country, as well as White national researchers, like a French-Burkinabe researcher working for the Burkinabe state. 5. In recent decades, there have been debates in anthropology about how to carry out research in the digital era. In earlier works, reference was made to cyborg anthropology, but nowadays the term ‘digital anthropology’ is used. Horst and Miller suggest that digital anthropology should evolve into a new sub-discipline of anthropology, including looking at the materiality of the digital work. ‘Not only are we just as human within the digital world, the digital also provides many new opportunities for anthropology to help us understand what it means to be human’ (Horst and Miller 2012: 4). 6. The book series Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies is a free, open-access electronic as well as hard-copy publication by Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies, focusing on collaborative work: http://www.afrikastudier.uu.se/en/research-on-africa/ uppsala-papers-in-africa-studies/.

References Andersson, R. 2016. ‘Here Be Dragons: Mapping Ethnography of Global Danger’, Cultural Anthropology 57(6): 707–31. Ayimpam, S., and J. Bouju (eds). 2015. ‘Enquêter en terrains difficiles: objets tabous, lieux dangereux, sujets sensibles’, Civilisations: Revue internationale d’anthropologie et de sciences humaines 64. Bayart, J.-F., A. Mbembe and C. Toulabor. 2008. Le politique par le bas en Afrique noire. Nouvelle édition augmentée. Paris: Karthala. Benjaminsen, T.A., and B. Ba. 2018. ‘Why Do Pastoralists in Mali Join Jihadist Groups? A Political Ecological Explanation’, Journal of Peasant Studies 46(1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2018.1474457. Bierschenk, T., and J.-P. Olivier de Sardan. 1997. ‘ECRIS: Rapid Collective Inquiry for the Identification of Conflicts and Strategic Groups’, Human Organization 56(2): 238–44. Carrel, M., and C. Neveu (eds). 2014. Citoyennetés ordinaires: pour une approche renouvelée des pratiques citoyennes. Paris: Karthala.

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Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First. London and New York: Routledge. ______. 1993. Challenging the Professions: Frontiers for Rural Development. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. ______. 1994. ‘The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal’, World Development 22(7): 953–69. Eriksson Baaz, M., and M. Utas 2019. ‘Exploring the Backstage: Methodological and Ethical Issues Surrounding the Role of Research Brokers in Insecure Zones’, Civil Wars 21(2): 157–78. DOI: 10.1080/13698249.2019.1656357 Fassin, D. 2015. ‘The Public Afterlife of Ethnography’, American Ethnologist 42(4): 592–609. DOI: 10.1111/amet.12158. ______. 2018. ‘The Public Presence of Anthropology: A Critical Approach’, kritisk etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology 1(1): 13–23. Hagberg, S. 1995. Whose Forest Counts? Rhetoric and Realities in Participatory Forest Management in Burkina Faso. Report 27. Stockholm: Development Studies Unit, Stockholm University. ______. 1998. ‘Money and Meaning in Forest Management: A Case-Study from Burkina Faso’, in Amelie Berger (ed.), Twice Humanity: Implications for Global and Local Resource use. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute, pp. 149–61. ______. 2001. Poverty in Burkina Faso: Representations and Realities. ULRiCA 1. Uppsala: Uppsala University. ______. 2011. ‘Trajectoires de l’anthropologie du développement à la suédoise’, Ethnologie Française XLI(3): 509–19. ______. 2015. ‘“Thousands of New Sankaras”: Resistance and Struggle in Burkina Faso’, Africa Spectrum 50(3): 109–21. ______. 2019. ‘The Ethnography in/of the Red Zone: Challenges, Frustrations, and Engagements’, Mande Studies 21: 13–31. Hagberg, S., and G. Körling. 2012. ‘Socio-political Turmoil in Mali: The Public Debate Following the “Coup d’État” on 22 March 2012’, Africa Spectrum 47(2/3): 111–25. ______. 2014. ‘Inaccessible Fields: Doing Anthropology in the Malian Turmoil’, Anthropologie & développement 40–41: 143–59. Hagberg, S., M. Gomgnimbou and D. Somé. 1996. Forêts classées et terres des ancêtres au Burkina Faso. Working Papers in Cultural Anthropology 3. Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2009. ‘Analyse sociale au Mali: inclusion et exclusion à travers les opportunités du travail et de l’emploi’. Study commissioned by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2015. ‘Au cœur de la révolution burkinabè’, Anthropologie & développement 42: 199–224. Hagberg, S. et al. 2017a. Vers une sécurité par le bas: Étude des perceptions et des expériences des défis de sécurité dans deux communes maliennes. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 1. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2017b. Transformations sociopolitiques burkinabè de 2014 à 2016: perspectives anthropologiques des pratiques politiques et de la culture démocratique

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dans ‘un Burkina Faso nouveau’. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 2. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2018. ’Nothing Will Be as Before’: Anthropological Perspectives on Political Practice and Democratic Culture in ‘the New Burkina Faso’. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 3. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2019a. Démocratie par le bas et politique municipale au Sahel. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 4. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2019b. Sécurité par le bas: Perceptions et perspectives citoyennes des défis de sécurité au Burkina Faso. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 5. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hagberg, S. et al. 2021. ‘Femmes de devant!’: Leadership féminin au Burkina Faso. Uppsala Papers in Africa Studies 6. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Hedlund, H., and S. Hagberg. 1995. ‘He Who Looks Up is the Man with Chickens’: Bio-history in Participatory Rapid Appraisal – The Case of Petauke in Zambia. Report 26. Stockholm: Development Studies Unit, Stockholm University. Horst, H., and D. Miller (eds). 2012. Digital Anthropology. London and New York: Berg. Laborde, S. et al. 2018. ‘Co-Producing Research in the “Red Zone”: Adaptation to Fieldwork Constraints with a Transdisciplinary Approach’, The Geographical Journal 2018(84): 369–83. DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12264. Lecocq, B. 2002. ‘Fieldwork Ain’t Always Fun: Public and Hidden Discourses on Fieldwork’, History in Africa 29: 273–82. Lecocq, B. et al. 2013. ‘One Hippopotamus and Eight Blind Analysts: A Multivocal Analysis of the 2012 Political Crisis in the Divided Republic of Mali’, Review of African Political Economy 40(137): 343–57. Lewis, D., and M. Schuller. 2017. ‘Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Non-governmental Organizations’, Current Anthropology 56(5): 634–51. Maguire, M., C. Frois and N. Zurawski (eds). 2014. The Anthropology of Security: Perspectives from the Frontline of Policing, Counter-terrorism and Border Control. London: Pluto Press. Michelutti, L. 2007. ‘The Vernacularization of Democracy: Political Participation and Popular Politics in North India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(3): 639–56. Nordstrom, C., and A.C.G.M. Robben (eds). 1997. Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture. Berkeley and Los Angeles CA and London: University of California Press. Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. 2008. La rigueur du qualitatif: Les contraintes empiriques de l’interprétation socio-anthropologique. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant. Richards, P. (ed.). 2005. No Peace No War: Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Part II

Politics and Donors

Chapter 5

Career Trajectories of Tanzanian Aid Workers

Structural Inequalities and New Management Practices in Public Foreign Aid Molly Sundberg

Introduction Knowledge-based development and local ownership of aid are two key components of contemporary efforts to make international development cooperation more ‘effective’ and ‘results-oriented’ (OECD 2005; Vähämäki, Schmidt and Molander 2011).1 One of the ways in which these two objectives converge is through donor strategies to support and invest in partner-country development expertise by recruiting and contracting aid workers locally (in aid-receiving countries) both within donor agencies and in the partner organizations with which donors collaborate (Koch and Weingart 2016; Wall 2016). This chapter centres on a particular category of such locally recruited aid workers, notably the Tanzanian desk officers employed by public foreign donors to manage the everyday administration of aid in donor field offices and embassies. Many of these national desk officers have previous experience of domestic NGO work. The chapter explores these aid workers’ roles, professional profiles and career aspirations through two main questions. The first question concerns national staff’s previous NGO experience and its role for aid agencies’ production and use of contextual knowledge about development. Many Tanzanian desk officers working for foreign donors outrank their foreign colleagues in terms of knowledge of the dynamics of poverty and development specific to certain contexts in Notes for this chapter begin on page 133.

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Tanzania. This is because their experience from domestic NGOs has offered first-hand insights into the recipient side of aid in Tanzania – that is, into the lifeworlds of ordinary citizens and the everyday work of local-level Tanzanian development organizations, both of which are usually located far away from the development elites in urban Dar es Salaam. Current practices in human resource management make the nature and scope of this kind of professional experience rare in many foreign donor agencies. The second question concerns the impact of other staffing practices among public donors on the professional influence and career aspirations of national desk officers. Tanzanian employees’ authority and autonomy are challenged by structural inequalities between national and posted staff, as well as neoliberal management practices that favour short-term, ‘flexible’ labour. These orient national desk officers’ career aspirations towards private sector jobs, in which they work as consultants to donor agencies rather than as in-house staff. The chapter is structured as follows. It begins with a description of the research methods and empirical focus of the study. It then gives a brief overview of how local knowledge has been understood and produced historically in international development cooperation. This is followed by two sections each describing a current trend in donors’ human resource management, one pertaining to in-house recruitment practices and the desired expertise in national and posted staff; the other to the outsourcing of aid work. Based on the case study of one Tanzanian desk officer, whom I call Michael, I then describe how these trends are linked to structural inequalities between national and posted staff, thus influencing the career trajectories and aspirations of national desk officers. The chapter ends with a reflection on what this may imply for the future role and authority of contextual development knowledge in public donor agencies.

Research Methods The chapter is based on an anthropological study conducted in 2017 on the role of national, technical employees in public foreign aid. It consisted of interviews with forty development professionals and observations of the eighteen foreign aid agencies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for which these professionals worked. The agencies were bilateral agencies from eleven countries, several multilateral state aid agencies and one development bank. All but one represent countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance Committee. OECD/DAC is the OECD’s forum for discussing questions pertaining to aid, poverty reduction and development. Thirty-

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four of those interviewed were Tanzanian citizens employed in the aidreceiving country by the embassy or field office of a particular foreign agency or ministry,2 rather than by its organizational headquarters in the donor country. These I call national staff. All but one occupied technical positions, as opposed to administrative or diplomatic ones, meaning that they were in charge of the daily management of aid interventions in specific sectors, such as health or education. Their tasks included assessing funding proposals, designing interventions, following up on the implementation of interventions, commissioning audits, evaluations and other kinds of consultancy work, and pursuing continual dialogue with agency partners. They generally fell under the category of ‘desk officer’, though their specific titles could be programme officer, project manager, advisor or analyst. Twenty-two were male and twelve female. The study also included interviews with six foreign staff members holding management positions (five male and one female). These individuals shared the nationalities of their employers and had been sent out from donor headquarters to lead their country’s development cooperation with Tanzania at its office in Dar es Salaam. These I call posted staff. All interviews concerned national staff’s functions, positions, views on foreign aid, professional profiles and lifeworlds.

Local Knowledge in Foreign Aid As former colonial powers, many European states have a history of using local knowledge of developing countries as a strategic management tool. During British colonial rule, historical and ethnographic knowledge was accorded considerable professional weight among colonial officials (Kothari 2005). As the colonial powers turned into foreign aid donors and development cooperation partners, the production of contextual development knowledge came to be materialized in, for example, strategies to incorporate locally produced knowledge and expertise. They included integrating participatory methods into project cycles, such as rapid rural appraisals, and accounting for social differentiations of poverty based on, for example, gender. Meanwhile, the national independence of many former colonies also marked the beginning of a growing legitimization of supposedly universal technocratic expertise, as a reaction to and discrediting of colonial forms of knowledge and practice (Kothari 2005: 438). A significant turn occurred in the 1980s, with the rise of a neoliberal critique of contemporary development paradigms. Neoliberal approaches to aid have most commonly been associated with macroeconomic reforms, such as privatization, contraction of the public sector and structural ­adjustment

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towards a market-driven economy. They have also entailed a shift in donors’ understandings of their roles as ‘developers’ in terms of a new belief in universal, technocratic solutions to globally diverse development challenges. Today’s professional development expertise, Kothari writes, is primarily about ‘technical know-how’ (Kothari 2005: 430). ‘Experts’ are those defined as having specialized competence in certain themes and techniques, such as gender analysis or environmental impact assessment, which they apply indiscriminately across the globe, with little regard for social and historical context (ibid.: 436). These experts exemplify how a single way of defining, measuring and advancing development has come to be construed as globally applicable, while alternative perspectives are dismissed as culturally constructed or are co-opted by rendering them technical and adjusting them to mainstream forms of expertise, instruments and frameworks (see Schultz in this volume and Kothari 2005; Mehta 2001; Rajak and Stirrat 2011). At the same time, today’s aid effectiveness agenda compels donor agencies to invest in host-country expertise, partly in order to make aid more ‘results-oriented’, by tailoring interventions to their particular contexts (Vähämäki, Schmidt and Molander 2011), but also to honour principles of ‘local ownership’. Recruiting and contracting expertise in aid-receiving countries forms part of efforts to ‘localize’ aid. Aid localization refers to practices of transferring power, influence and professional authority from foreign to host country actors, by, for example, increasing the share of national staff in foreign development organizations (Wall 2016).3 National desk officers in technical positions are meant to represent such donor investments in host country expertise. Certainly, their employment is partly economically motivated, since recruiting staff locally costs much less than sending out staff from donor headquarters in Europe or North America (Roth 2015). Nevertheless, recruiting locally is meant to signal donors’ recognition of in-country expertise. As such, it reflects an assumption that nationals know, represent and can translate ‘the local’ better than aid workers sent out from donor countries (Crewe and Harrison 1998; Oelberger, Fechter and McWha-Hermann 2017; Peters 2016). This assumption has been criticized as representing an unreflective and essentializing understanding of national staff and their knowledge and representativeness of the marginalized in their society (Peters 2016). In reality, as researchers have pointed out, nationals working for foreign agencies are usually members of the upper social strata of aid-receiving countries, being socially, economically and spatially (if not also ethnically or religiously) remote from the main groups being targeted for poverty alleviation (see e.g. Eyben 2011; Roth 2015).

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In-House Staffing: Desired Expertise in National and Posted Employees My research fully concurs with findings that question the idea that ‘local knowledge’ about poverty is naturally vested in ‘local people’. Most Tanzanian desk officers I interviewed belonged to the country’s small academic elite. While fewer than 4 per cent of Tanzanians were enrolled in tertiary education in 2015 (UNESCO 2017), 90 per cent of these desk officers had a Master’s degree, and more than half of these had obtained a university degree abroad, in either Europe, North America, Asia or South Africa. Some had grown up in what they described as ‘humble conditions’, where scholarships and part-time work, rather than family money, had helped them through secondary school and university. However, almost all came from socio-economic environments remote from the millions of rural Tanzanians in resource-poor settings, who constitute the primary target groups of foreign agencies’ aid. That said, both Tanzanian and posted staff I spoke with insisted that national desk officers outranked their foreign colleagues when it came to ‘local knowledge’, which in this context referred to certain skills and resources. While they included fluency in Kiswahili and other vernacular languages, as well as being a Tanzanian national and citizen, they mainly referred to three other qualities. The first was being well acquainted with the domestic development landscape in terms of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the major actors engaged in a specific sector and the structural constraints facing these actors. The second concerned having knowledge of socio-professional norms and bureaucratic systems governing the conduct of Tanzanian development actors (especially public ones). The third entailed having professional networks in Tanzania’s development industry. These skills and resources, described as critically valuable by both posted managers and national desk officers, are not expertise automatically obtained by virtue of one’s nationality as Tanzanian, nor even by one’s personal upbringing in Tanzania; rather, they derive from one’s professional experience. How national desk officers’ professional experience differs from that of posted desk officers is connected to practices in human resource management in donor agencies and the different qualifications desired in posted and national staff respectively. One such practice pertains to the scope and nature of professional experience expected from new recruits. In donor countries, many agencies hire staff with relatively little work experience. Several bi- and multilateral aid agencies operate programmes targeting young professionals under the age of 30 or 32 that require a Master’s degree, a couple of years

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of work experience (preferably in countries receiving foreign aid) and the passing of various types of entrance exams.4 National staff hired in aid-receiving countries, on the other hand, often enter foreign aid agencies with considerable work experience. In Tanzania, as in many African countries, the competitiveness of jobs in international aid and the high costs of tertiary education mean that by the time they start working for a foreign aid agency national aid workers have often accumulated years of professional experience prior to, alongside and after their university studies. Two-thirds of my Tanzanian interlocutors had previously been employed by Tanzanian NGOs with a local reach and/or local government bodies. Although they did not necessarily define these previous jobs as ‘development work’ comparable to their current jobs with foreign donors, their previous jobs had nonetheless implied regular support to and engagement with ordinary, rural citizens within the framework of projects and programmes that had received foreign funding. Another practice concerns the promotion of staff recruited in donor countries, which encourages international mobility and, consequently, a high turnover of posted staff in agency field offices. To make a career in international development, overseas assignments are critical merits on one’s résumé. Donor-country recruits often enjoy opportunities to take on postings abroad in their organizations’ overseas offices. Among the junior levels of donor-country recruits, professionals are likely to move from one overseas post to another every two to four years in order to improve their CVs (Koch and Weingart 2016: 121). Few undergo preparations for their assignments abroad in terms of learning about the host society or studying local languages. Moreover, during the few years posted staff stay in each country, they often live and work in secluded, wealthy neighbourhoods, which further limits their contact with the majority population (Eriksson Baaz 2005; Kothari 2005; Mosse 2011). The consequence is that donor employees sent out from headquarters acquire quite select knowledge and experience of the past and present realities of the countries in which they work. They have been criticized both for living in secluded ‘bubbles’ (Mosse 2011) detached from the ­everyday realities of ordinary citizens, and for working in a ‘perpetual present’ (Lewis 2009), striving for constant renewal without regard for past experiences. In contrast to the high mobility of agency staff recruited in donor countries, locally employed aid workers tend to remain for longer periods of time, either at a particular office or within the partner country’s development industry in general. In interviews with both posted and Tanzanian aid workers, the latter were described as valuable sources not only of local development knowledge but also of the agency’s institutional memory

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and historical knowledge of development and aid in Tanzania writ large. They were the staff who provided continuity in a workplace otherwise caught up in a constant state of staff transition. They were the source of lessons learned from previous development interventions initiated by the agency and other actors in Tanzania. They also made sure nothing fell between the cracks when one posted employee left and another came in, instructing newcomers on the content of their work portfolios. Moreover, they represented the agency’s long-term contact point with Tanzanian partners and were the ones to introduce new posted staff to these partners. A final aspect of human resource management among today’s foreign donors pertains to the composition of expertise desired in employees. At donor headquarters, desk officers, analysts and advisors are increasingly expected to work in complex, multisectoral environments, to collaborate with specialists from many different fields of expertise and to take on new assignments with shifting content. Hence, new positions rarely demand academic backgrounds in one particular discipline or years of professional experiences in a single development sector but rather target persons with multiple areas of expertise. Moreover, the increasing dominance of procedural and finance-related dimensions of aid have implied that skills in management, economics and administration have grown in demand among development actors on both the donor and receiving sides of aid (Koch and Weingart 2016: 70–71; OECD 2009: 42). Examples of this trend include the emergence of positions such as ‘results advisors’, ‘monitoring and evaluation specialists’ and ‘poverty advisors’, the emphasis placed on skills in computer software and in-house administrative systems, the increasing popularity of specialized economists (such as environmental or health economists) and a rising number of expert positions filled by generalists and administrators (Koch and Weingart 2016: 71). Meanwhile, desk officers employed in partner countries are often sectorial specialists recruited to manage the agency’s support to one or two particular development sectors (for a critical perspective on sectorial knowledge, see Brun in this volume). Since foreign aid agencies are attractive employers and usually hire nationals with specialized competences, national technical staff often have academic degrees and past work experience in a particular development sector in their country. They therefore bring to their agencies a deeper level of expertise not only of the wider development context of the partner country but also of the specific sector they are assigned to work in.

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Outsourcing Aid Work A parallel trend in donor human resource management concerns the increasingly managerialist approach to staffing centred on flexible labour and the outsourcing of aid work to subcontractors, both foreign and national. In recent decades, aid volumes have steadily grown following the general rise in donor states’ gross national incomes, as have the scope and number of development interventions. Many public agencies tackle the challenge of mounting work by using temporary staff or consultants in preference or addition to increasing the number of permanent employees (Hindman 2011; House of Commons 2017). As aid labour is contracted out, agencies have increased their use of private (for-profit) companies to design, implement and evaluate development interventions (Nagaraj 2015; Doing Good 2017). The USA and UK, two of the biggest sources of total foreign aid flows in the world, are the hosts of some of the biggest development contractors and in recent decades have developed sizable markets for international development contracting (Nagaraj 2015: 587). Nearly a quarter of USAID spending in 2016 went to private firms, and in 2010 USAID spent more money on for-profit contractors than it did on non-profits, UN agencies and the World Bank combined (Nagaraj 2015: 588). In the UK, a fifth of bilateral spending in 2015–16 went to private contractors, a figure that had almost doubled in five years (Doing Good 2017). More than half of the top twenty contractors5 of Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) were for-profit companies in 2012. The underlying rationale behind outsourcing agency work has been borrowed from the corporate logics of multinational business in that it expects flexible, specialized labour to raise administrative efficiency and reduce labour costs and economic risk by allowing organizations to respond to the immediate human resource needs of each operation in a ‘just-in-time’ manner (Hindman 2011: 185–86). According to Hindman (2011: 169–70), the growing participation of foreign technical service contractors in international development cooperation has altered the self-identification and motivations of those doing aid work. Fewer and fewer are inclined to classify themselves as aid workers, preferring to identify themselves with the consultancy firms for which they work or the particular development projects they have been assigned to work on. Such projects may engage professionals from a handful of different employers, who enter and exit the project according to when in the project cycle their technical services are needed. While some of these employers may be firmly anchored in the realm of development work, others may generally operate outside it (Nagaraj 2015: 587).

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Hence, many of those doing the actual aid work are motivated less by a desire to ‘do good’ or an interest in foreign cultures than by personal economic profit, delivering contractually agreed products and services and thus facilitating future work contracts overseas (Hindman 2011: 176). This stronger orientation around personal and economic interests should be seen in light of the unpredictability and short-term nature of contracted labour, its lack of investment in the long-term development visions of its contracting partners and the generally limited ability of consultancy services to effect change beyond the duration of their contract periods (Aidleap 2015; Hindman 2011). Individuals and firms depending on fixed-term contracts are continuously on the lookout for new work opportunities and link aid interventions more directly to income-­ generating opportunities. My research suggests that the changing professional profile of aid workers also applies to national experts in aid-receiving countries, and not only those contracted by foreign aid agencies but those employed by them. Interviews with Tanzanian donor employees suggest that many national desk officers, including those with a background in NGO work, see their future careers in private sector aid. This is partly explained by the new opportunities that are opening up in this area. While foreign donors still heavily rely on contractors from their own countries, international principles concerning local ownership increasingly compel foreign aid agencies to use partner-country actors (or demand that foreign partners include a certain share of national staff) to implement and design aid interventions (Nagaraj 2015; OECD 2017). In Tanzania, the private sector remains small, with most of the money being spent on consultancy going to foreign firms (TACO 2013). However, under the current national administration of President John Magufuli, new labour and tax laws have been introduced favouring Tanzanian workers and companies over foreign ones. These help Tanzanian consultancy firms compete for contracts and for Tanzanian aid workers to compete for jobs in international consultancy firms (Houreld 2016; Price Waterhouse Cooper 2016). The attractions of private sector aid among Tanzanian donor staff also have to do with the structural inequalities that discriminate against national staff in public foreign aid agencies. As an example of this, the following section presents the career trajectory, current work and professional aspirations of one Tanzanian aid worker I call Michael. Though Michael was working for a foreign, bilateral aid agency, he had a background in domestic NGO work. His story is representative of the experiences of many Tanzanian desk officers I interviewed. Through his testimony, the rest of the chapter brings to light some of the implications of donor employment practices on the career trajectories of Tanzanian aid

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workers, showing how they affect the role and authority of contextual knowledge of development in public foreign aid.

Structural Inequalities Facing National Staff in Public Foreign Aid Michael was a middle-aged man from northern Tanzania. He had studied agricultural economics as an undergraduate and later entrepreneurship and business development at Master’s level, all in Tanzania. Before he embarked on his current job, he had spent fourteen years working for a number of local, national and international NGOs engaged in agricultural development in Tanzania. His job at the agency mainly consisted of supervising ongoing aid interventions in the field of private sector development and sustainable economic growth, focusing on agriculture. In Michael’s view, his professional experience of working for NGOs with a local reach was very useful in his present work. Compared to his European colleagues, who had been sent out from headquarters, he was very familiar with the economic, ecological and cultural contexts of agro-business in Tanzania, and he also knew the landscape of the different actors operating in the sector. His agency was involved in neither the design nor the implementation of the projects included in his own portfolio. The agency’s task, as performed by Michael, was rather to fund and supervise partner organizations that planned and implemented the aid interventions in question. In this context, Michael’s professional experience of working for, with and alongside many of the organizations engaged in the field of agricultural development was favourable because, as he put it, ‘I know who are the relevant partners, I know how to work with them and I know their approach.’ His experience made it easier for him to facilitate and assess the work of current agency partners and pass judgement on the potential of prospective partners. Because he was aware of the capacity and track record of most of the major NGOs in his field and the constraints and opportunities of the environments in which they worked, he was better informed than his foreign colleagues and better able to determine the feasibility and relevance of development interventions. He knew, as he put it, ‘what worked and what didn’t work’, as well as how to read between the lines in progress reports submitted by his agency’s partners. When asked about his future career plans, Michael replied that he planned to stay with the agency for a number of years. Unlike his posted colleagues, who came and left every two or three years, the Tanzanian desk officers usually remained longer and offered a bridge between

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outgoing and incoming staff. That continuity, Michael remarked, was important in project management. Michael was aware that his decision to commit to his job for longer than a couple of years was in a way a privilege, since many Tanzanian donor staff do not have the chance to choose the length of their employment. In fact, while his agency recruited Tanzanian project officers on a permanent basis, following a year of probation, many aid organizations in Tanzania, including most of those for which Michael had previously worked, recruited Tanzanian desk officers on fixed-term contracts. In fact, more than half of the eighteen organizations my Tanzanian interlocutors worked for in Dar es Salaam employed Tanzanian desk officers on a temporary basis. At several agencies, contracts that used to be permanent had been replaced by temporary ones, subject to renewal once a year, or every second or third year. The prevalence of temporary contracts is a growing trend in international development cooperation, which strikes a false note with donors’ emphasis on learning from experience and their declarations of their appreciation of national staff as vessels of institutional memory (Hindman 2011; Oelberger, Fechter and McWha-Hermann 2017; Roth 2015). In line with the general arguments in favour of labour flexibility, the most commonly cited rationale behind employing national staff on a temporary rather than a permanent basis is that aid priorities change regularly and national desk officers are often thematic specialists, hired to manage the agency’s cooperation in a specific sector or programme. Hence, their sector expertise may become obsolete if the agency phases out its engagement in that sector. However, several Tanzanian aid workers I spoke with questioned that rationale, given that their employment contracts were shorter than the time span of the aid interventions they were hired to administer. Most of my interlocutors’ temporary contracts covered one to three years, while donors’ commitments to larger sector programmes may extend over three to five years. Some Tanzanian employees only had contracts of one or two months at a time. The economic and psychological strain of insecure employment was frequently brought up in interviews, and almost everyone recruited on a fixed-term contract expressed a desire for permanent employment. However, secure employment is no guarantee of being able to retain national staff. Although Michael was hired on a permanent basis, he could not see a future for himself at his agency. One important reason for this was the lack of opportunities for promotion. In Michael’s organization, there was a limited career track for national project officers in that it was mostly tied to salary levels. Michael had joined the agency at the highest possible level for national employees. ‘I have no chance of going further’, he concluded matter-of-factly. Limited promotion opportunities

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have been shown to constitute a significant source of grievance among national employees in foreign aid agencies around the world (Roth 2012, 2015). Some of my Tanzanian interlocutors had remained in the same position for more than two decades. The absence of proper career tracks for Tanzanian desk officers was brought up in almost all interviews. Bilateral agencies, like the one Michael worked for, usually offer the least upward mobility. Here the highest ranking positions, those with specialist, advisory and representative functions, such as first and second secretaries and sector team leaders, often require citizenship or permission to work in the donor country, or at least skills in the language(s) of the donor country. Therefore, they are rarely occupied by individuals from aid-receiving countries and are often only advertised in the language(s) of the donor country (Koch and Weingart 2016: 123–24). The language requirement is motivated by the need for high-level staff to be able to communicate and report to donor headquarters and, by extension, to the citizens in the donor country, whose taxes contribute to the funds managed by the agency. One of Michael’s Tanzanian colleagues believed that the lack of promotion opportunities for national staff reflected their foreign employers’ vested interest in them as sources of institutional memory. He argued that, while it was expected that the foreign employees would move across countries and positions to broaden their expertise, gain ‘international experience’ and climb corporate ladders, it was equally expected of national staff to remain in the same place and work position in order to provide the solid rock and institutional memory that kept the agency together. In a sense, the mobility of the agency’s core staff hinged on the immobility of its locally recruited staff. The general human-resource structure of foreign donor agencies, especially bilateral ones, reveals a strong correlation between status, privilege and nationality. Management, representative and advisory positions are commonly held by staff from donor countries, while national staff grow in number as one descends the office hierarchy. Support staff positions, such as receptionists, administrators and drivers, are usually recruited locally.6 The nearest superiors of almost all Tanzanian desk officers I interviewed were posted staff holding positions such as team leader or councillor (see also Roth 2015). At the technical level, which generally includes both national and posted staff doing similar work, posted staff generally enjoy vastly superior salaries and benefits (ibid.: 145). Overall, posted experts earn on average four times what is paid to national experts in similar positions (Carr et al. 2010: 330; see also Koch and Weingart 2016: 127). Although Michael had a Master’s degree and sixteen years of professional experience, and enjoyed the highest salary rate available to national staff in his agency, his monthly remuneration (salary and benefits) was sig-

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nificantly lower than those of his colleagues who had been sent out from headquarters to do similar work. The employment inequalities between national and posted staff nurtured perceptions among Michael and other Tanzanian desk officers that the knowledge and opinion of posted colleagues mattered more than their own. In Michael’s view, national staff like himself, whom he referred to as ‘supporting staff’, generally lacked the authority assigned to their posted co-workers, whom he called ‘the leaders’. Many Tanzanian desk officers in fact referred to their foreign colleagues as their superiors or supervisors, even when the latter were not formally higher up the organizational hierarchy. Michael compared the hierarchical structure of his agency with his previous experience working for NGOs: ‘In NGOs you can go into meetings and speak anything and contribute anything. But for us, you are not free to speak, because your words need to be authorised [by the agency management] … so you lose that freedom of contributing, sharing, speaking in public … there is more of a hierarchy.’ The hierarchy Michael referred to concerned not only the relationship between national and posted staff within his office but also that between the office and agency headquarters. Judging from his own experience, desk officers in NGOs, whether Tanzanian or international, had ‘more power’ to take decisions. This meant they had more opportunities to both influence the priorities in the organization and advance operations more effectively: ‘You have more power to review proposals, develop contracts, sign, initiate … within a short time you can complete many procedures. At [his current office] I’d say more procedures need approval, so it’s more bureaucratic.’ Hence, for Michael, having more individual power meant having control of one’s everyday work and being able to take independent decisions, and enjoying professional recognition and knowing that one’s opinion mattered. In fact, several of my Tanzanian interlocutors who had left NGOs to work for public foreign agencies explained their career move as a desire to work closer to international aid policy. While their current desk jobs distanced them from the ‘realities on the ground’, they pulled them closer to the centre of donor decision-making. They had expected that working on the inside of large European or North American aid agencies would provide them with opportunities to enable major funding decisions to be better informed about the development contexts they intended to influence. Tanzanian desk officers described a number of ways in which they normally attempted to infuse agency policy and programming with ‘local knowledge’. One was to explain to their posted colleagues and bosses the particular dynamics within a certain network of development actors, or in a particular development sector, partner organization, or

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­ eographical area of intervention. Another was to recommend approprig ate agency responses to the delays, complications, conflicts, unexpected opportunities and side effects of aid interventions. A third was to provide alternative interpretations of seemingly objective progress measurements and identify new or alternative risk parameters that took account of the contextually specific conditions of partner organizations and operations. In short, infusing donor agency work with local knowledge often meant questioning their foreign colleagues’ assumptions about how development worked by highlighting the specific and often complex realities ‘on the ground’, especially where they differed from their colleagues’ experiences of other countries or contexts, or from general agency rationales. The local knowledge that my interlocutors used in these situations did not necessarily originate with them; it could also be information they passed on from their agency’s partners. The relationships that national desk officers build with agency partners may offer them privileged access to information about the latter’s ongoing operations, challenges and conditions. In this context, national desk officers serve as mediators and translators between their agency and its partners, often critically scrutinizing the information coming from the latter but also trying to translate this information into donor language that may help their foreign managers understand the contexts and conditions in which their Tanzanian partners operate. A few years into their new jobs, however, few national desk officers were convinced of their actual ability to influence donor priorities and decisions. Some were quite disillusioned over how the voice and authority of Tanzanian technical staff were treated. They felt that headquarters’ power and bureaucracy, and the subordinate employment terms, lower status and temporary work contracts of national desk officers in agency field offices, compromised both their ability to influence corporate policy and programming and their professional autonomy in terms of making everyday decisions in their work. As a result, Michael and several other Tanzanian desk officers were considering alternative work places in the future.

Private Sector Aid: An Attractive Career Alternative I asked Michael where or with what he wished to work in the future, assuming he did not envisage himself continuing in the foreign agency for which he was currently working. ‘I’d like to become independent’, he replied. His plan was to manage his own business, preferably as a consultant. In fact, Michael had already been working as a private consultant

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alongside his regular job, taking on short-term contracts on his days off. He had founded his business together with two other Tanzanian development professionals. Like the technical focus of his full-time work, the firm specialized in agricultural business development. His regular job at the foreign agency provided him with a valuable network to draw on in search for suitable contracts. Whenever his annual leave was coming up, he scanned the terrain among his colleagues, asking if anybody knew of possible consultancy opportunities. His long-term ambition, Michael asserted, was to work full-time in his firm. Michael believed that foreign aid agencies needed to work in a more ‘demand-driven’ fashion. While insisting that he was not referring to his own employer, he recounted aid interventions that had failed disastrously because they had not engaged the communities they were meant to assist. Knowledge of local needs and conditions, he asserted, was something his firm could provide, given its owners’ long-term engagement in the field in which they offered their services. Certainly, Michael’s insistence on the potential value of his and his Tanzanian colleagues’ expertise need to be understood in light of the continual pressures put on national employees and consultants to demonstrate their professional competence vis-à-vis foreign employers and contracting clients, both of which tend only to offer performance-based, short-term work contracts. Indeed, another reason why Michael had started working as a consultant on the side was his personal livelihood. ‘If you have everything covered, you can fully focus on the work. But for us’, he explained, referring to the Tanzanian staff at the agency, ‘we also think about what kind of short-term consultancy we can get’. Some private employers, he noted, offered benefits in terms of free housing and allowances covering the school fees of employees’ children. His current employer only extended such benefits to staff sent out from donor headquarters, not to its Tanzanian employees. Aid workers who enjoyed such perks stayed longer in their workplaces and devoted themselves more fully to their work, he insisted. There were many Tanzanians working for for-profit development actors in Tanzania, he explained, who earned more money than he did, including professionals employed by the organizations with which his agency was partnering. The projects included in Michael’s portfolio had been developed by organizations from the same country as the agency, and these in turn collaborated with Tanzanian organizations in charge of implementing the projects. Though Michael did not refer to the latter organizations in particular, he argued that Tanzanians employed in organizations funded by his agency earned more money than he did. ‘We are funding them’, Michael exclaimed; ‘Sometimes it’s a big challenge to have someone you have to manage and supervise and know he is paid

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more than you.’ When working in the private sector, he too had earned more money than he did today. For Michael, in other words, the lower salary rates of public agencies relative to the financial profit potential in the private sector made consultancy work attractive, whether as a side business (which was his current work scheme) or as a full-time job (his future ambition). Michael’s testimony sheds light on some of the advantages and drawbacks of the different kinds of aid work available to national development experts in Tanzania, and it helps to explain these aid workers’ career trajectories and professional aspirations. Some of the disadvantages of foreign public employment also apply to international NGOs, such as the temporariness of work contracts and the inequalities in remuneration, professional recognition and voice between national and posted staff (see, e.g., Oelberger, Fechter and McWha-Hermann 2017; Sundberg 2019). Other drawbacks for Tanzanian employees, such as the lack of promotion opportunities and the limited professional autonomy and authority due to heavy bureaucratic regulation and the concentration of power in overseas headquarters, are more salient in foreign, public agencies than in private organizations. For this reason, the non-­governmental realm of aid offers attractive labour opportunities for Tanzanian aid workers. That said, neither Michael nor most other Tanzanian desk officers wished to return to work in NGOs. An important reason is that NGO jobs in Tanzania, which pay more than those in foreign public agencies, are few in number among domestic NGOs and highly competitive among international NGOs. At the same time, the for-profit realm of aid offers the advantages of non-governmental aid – less bureaucracy and regulation – but often also higher financial returns than non-profit NGOs. In this light, the attraction of private sector work is understandable for nationals working in foreign public aid (perhaps more attractive than for those working in, for example, international NGOs). In fact, half of my Tanzanian interlocutors, both men and women, who shared ideas of what they wanted to do five or ten years down the line said they wished to join the private sector of development work in Tanzania.7 Some wanted to work for international consultancy companies or for-profit Tanzanian organizations contracted by these or by foreign donors directly. Others, like Michael, wished to start their own businesses.

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From NGO Worker, through Public Donor Staff, to Aid Contractor: What Happens to Contextual Development Knowledge? A not uncommon career trajectory for university-educated aid workers in Tanzania begins with NGO work in a local setting and continues on to public foreign aid. But it does not stop there. My Tanzanian interlocutors expressed aspirations to take a further step – into the private aid sector. The motivation behind these career steps varied. Several Tanzanian aid workers with a background in domestic, non-profit NGOs said they were originally attracted to public aid agencies because of their desire to influence donor policy according to their visions and experiences of development in Tanzania. Certainly, personal, material gains also often played a role, such as higher salaries, more benefits or better conditions of employment, which many of the big donor agencies offer. However, once inside, few Tanzanian professionals had found they were given the kind of influence they had hoped for. Institutional hierarchies favouring posted staff over nationals, and headquarters policy over field office interests, not only silenced their voices but restricted their room for manoeuvre in their everyday work; it also kept their salaries and careers from advancing and maintained their employment in a permanent state of temporariness. Under those circumstances, it is not difficult to understand these Tanzanian professionals envisaging their long-term careers elsewhere. One such career option that attracted my interlocutors’ interest was the private development sector, whose recent growth owes much to donors’ current tendency to outsource aid labour to private companies in both donor and aid-receiving countries. While contracted aid work is even less likely to offer national aid workers opportunities to influence donor policy, it could generate higher material rewards and greater individual autonomy and influence over their daily work. As consultants, they may not be able to change ill-targeted aid programmes, but at least they could choose not to sell their services to them, and if that choice were not available, at least agreeing to contribute to them would pay off financially. Hindman (2011) writes that the new breed of contracted aid workers coming from overseas is less motivated by any higher mission of global development and more by personal, professional advancement and economic profit. At the same time, she and others observe how private aid contractors are heavily staffed by former employees of public foreign aid agencies, who have left their government jobs for the higher wages in the private sector (Gilligan 2012; Hindman 2011: 176; Nagaraj 2015: 602). My research similarly suggests that contracted work available to national

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professionals appeals to a fair number of ‘regular’ aid workers who used to work for domestic NGOs or public foreign aid agencies. Many of them retain strong development ideals and convictions about which development paths are right for their country. Their choice to work in the private sector may well have a lot to do with personal gain, but it may equally be a result of their inability to pursue their ideals, or even keep their jobs, in the non-profit aid sector. My research shows that making aid more contextually appropriate often entails questioning the applicability of donor managements’ priorities and assumptions to complex, local conditions. While this is already hard for in-house national staff to do, it is even harder for the consultants they contract. In a contract-based partnership, the contractor’s main obligation is to service the client in the most cost-efficient and effective way. Rather than trying to assert their autonomy, for-profit development contractors ‘pride themselves on their ability to deliver standardized and contract-conforming services’ (Nagaraj 2015: 599). Therefore, donors should perhaps be concerned if their national staff – who have a genuine background in local-level development work – leave the agency to work as consultants, selling their knowledge on the open market rather than using it to influence aid policy. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent my interlocutors’ career aspirations reflect the beginnings of a shift in careers for qualified Tanzanian aid ­workers from public to private aid. At the very least, the indications are that continuing structural inequalities, coupled with neoliberal staffing practices, may pose a double risk for donor agencies’ commitments to provide contextually appropriate or ‘locally owned’ aid (see Ouédraogo in this volume). Such inequalities and practices not only continue to limit the influence of in-house, contextual development expertise, they also expose agencies to the risk of losing this expertise altogether. Molly Sundberg is a researcher in anthropology at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests include international development, foreign aid, governance and post-conflict reconstruction, primarily in East Africa. She has previously worked for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. She is the author of the book Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda (2016, Palgrave Macmillan).

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Notes 1. The ‘aid effectiveness’ agenda in international development cooperation formally started with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), when over a hundred governments, as well as development institutions and NGOs, committed themselves to five partnership arrangements: (i) ownership – ‘partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies, and coordinate development actions’; (ii) alignment – ‘donors base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions, and procedures’; (iii) harmonisation – ‘donors actions are more harmonised, transparent and collectively effective’; (iv) managing for results – ‘managing resources and improving decision-making for results’; and (v) mutual accountability – ‘donors and partners are accountable for development results.’ 2. The organizational structures of different public foreign aid agencies differ significantly. In some donor countries, foreign aid is managed by one or several public agencies independently of any government ministry, their own offices being separate from the donor country’s embassy in aid-receiving countries. In other donor countries, foreign aid is managed by a ministry rather than a separate agency and is an integral part of the embassy’s work in the aid-receiving country. In this chapter, I generally refer to central structures of public aid management located in the donor country as headquarters, decentralized structures located in the aid-receiving country as field offices, and the larger institutional structures managing foreign aid on behalf of a donor state as agencies. 3. Localization may also entail channelling donor funds straight to host-country partners (rather than to UN agencies and international NGOs), relocating the headquarters of international NGOs from donor to aid-receiving countries and various forms of work that originate with host-country groups or support host-country initiatives (Wall 2016). 4. Examples include the Junior Professional Officer Program of the United Nations, the World Bank’s Young Professional Program, the Development Cooperation Trainee Program at GIZ (the German Development Cooperation Agency), the Junior Experts in Delegations program at the European Commission, and the Bilateral Associate Expert program at Sida (the Swedish development cooperation agency). 5. Measured in terms of monetary value. 6. In Germany, for example, national staff made up nearly 70 per cent of the total staff of GIZ in 2012, but only 11 per cent of national employees held leading or senior positions (Koch and Weingart 2016: 128–29). 7. Twenty-four of thirty-four Tanzanian interlocutors expressed ideas about future career aspirations (seventeen men, seven women). Of these, twelve (nine men; three women) voiced an interest in the private aid sector. Hence, though more men than women discussed future career plans, among those who did, an interest in private sector aid did not seem to be gender-specific.

References Aidleap. 2015. ‘Why Aid Shouldn’t be Outsourced’, Aidleap. Retrieved 26 March 2018 from https://aidleap.org/2015/11/02/why-aid-shouldnt-be-outsourced/. Carr, S.C. et al. 2010. ‘International–Local Remuneration Differences Across Six Countries: Do They Undermine Poverty Reduction Work?’ International Journal of Psychology 45(5): 321–40.

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Crewe, E., and E. Harrison. 1998. Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid. New York: Zed Books. ‘Doing Good and Doing Well: A Growing Share of Aid is Spent by Private Firms, Not Charities’. 2017, The Economist, May. Retrieved 16 March 2018 from https://www.economist.com/news/international/21721635-they-needdiversify-growing-share-aid-spent-private-firms-not-charities. Eriksson Baaz, M. 2005. The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid. New York and London: Zed Books. Eyben, R. 2011. ‘The Sociality of Aid and Policy Convergence’, in D. Mosse (ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 139–60. Fechter, A.-M., and H. Hindman (eds). 2011. Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Challenges and Futures of Aidland. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Gilligan, A. 2012. ‘“Poverty Barons” Who Make a Fortune from TaxpayerFunded Aid Budget’, The Telegraph, 15 September. Retrieved 28 March 2018 from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9545584/Poverty-baronswho-make-a-fortune-from-taxpayer-funded-aid-budget.html. Hagberg, S., and C. Widmark (eds). 2009. Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid: Methods and Meanings in Development Cooperation. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 45. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Hindman, H. 2011. ‘The Hollowing out of Aidland: Subcontracting and the New Development Family in Nepal’, in A.-M. Fechter and H. Hindman (eds), Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Challenges and Futures of Aidland. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, pp. 169−91. Houreld, C. 2016. ‘Exclusive: Foreign Firms Hit by Tax Demands Rethink Tanzanian Expansion’, Reuters, 29 November. Retrieved 16 March 2018 from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-economy/exclusive-foreignfirms-hit-by-tax-demands-rethink-tanzanian-expansion-idUSKBN13O0HO. House of Commons. 2017. ‘DfID’s Use of Private Sector Contractors: Eighth Report of Session 2016–17’. Retrieved 27 April 2018 from https://publications. parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmintdev/920/920.pdf. Koch, S., and P. Weingart. 2016. The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer: The Impact of Foreign Aid Experts on Policy-Making in South Africa and Tanzania. Cape Town: African Minds. Kothari, U. 2005. ‘Authority and Expertise: The Professionalisation of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent’, Antipode 37(3): 425–46. Lewis, D. 2009. ‘Anthropology, Development and the “Perpetual Present”: Knowledge, Power and Practice’, in S. Hagberg and C. Widmark (eds), Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid: Methods and Meanings in Development Cooperation. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 45. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, pp. 53−71. Mehta, L. 2001. ‘The World Bank and its Emerging Knowledge Empire’, Human Organization 60(2): 189–96. Mosse, D. (ed.) 2011. Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.

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Nagaraj, V.K. 2015. ‘“Beltway Bandits” and “Poverty Barons”: For-Profit International Development Contracting and the Military-Development Assemblage’, Development and Change 46(4): 585–617. OECD. 2005. ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.’ Retrieved 23 November 2017 from https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/ paris-declaration-on-aid-effectiveness_9789264098084-en. ______. 2009. ‘Better Aid. Managing Aid: Practices of DAC Member Countries’. Retrieved 15 March 2018 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/dcr-2012-en. ______. 2017. Localizing the Response: World Humanitarian Summit – Putting Policy into Practice. Retrieved 3 January 2021 from https://www.oecd.org/ development/humanitarian-donors/docs/Localisingtheresponse.pdf. Oelberger, C.R., A.-M. Fechter and I. McWha-Hermann. 2017. ‘Managing Human Resources in International NGOs’, in J. Word and J. Sowa (eds), The Nonprofit Human Resource Management Handbook: From Theory to Practice. New York: Routledge, pp. 285–303. Peters, R.W. 2016. ‘Local in Practice: Professional Distinctions in Angolan Development Work’, American Anthropologist 118(3): 495–507. Price Waterhouse Cooper. 2016. ‘New Requirements for Work Permit Applicants Following under New Immigration Law – Tanzania’. PWC Blog, September 9. Retrieved 16 March 2018 from http://pwc.blogs.com/legal/2016/09/newrequirements-for-work-permit-applicants-following-under-new-immigrationlaw-tanzania.html. Rajak, D., and J. Stirrat. 2011. ‘Parochial Cosmopolitanism and the Power of Nostalgia’, in D. Mosse (ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 161−76. Roth, S. 2012. ‘Professionalization Trends and Inequality: Experiences and Practices in Aid Relationships’, Third World Quarterly 33(8): 1459–74. Roth, S. 2015. The Paradoxes of Aid Work: Passionate Professionals. New York: Routledge. Sundberg, M. 2019. ‘National Staff in Public Foreign Aid: Aid Localization in Practice’. Human Organization 78(3): 253–263. Tanzania Association of Consultant (TACO). 2013. ‘Need to Enact Law to Guide the Consultancy Industry’. Retrieved 14 November 2018 from http://www. tzdpg.or.tz/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/TACO_Fact_Sheet_2013-07. pdf. UNESCO. 2017. ‘United Republic of Tanzania’. Retrieved 17 November 2017 from http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/tz?theme=education-and-literacy. Vähämäki, J., M. Schmidt and J. Molander. 2011. Review: Results Based Management in Development Cooperation. Stockholm: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Wall, I. 2016. Localisation and Locally-Led Crisis Response: A Literature Review. Copenhagen: Local to Global Protection. Word, J., and J. Sowa (eds). 2017. The Nonprofit Human Resource Management Handbook: From Theory to Practice. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 6

The Contribution of National NGOs to Development in Burkina Faso Review and Prospects Alain J. Sissao

Introduction Burkina Faso is a country with limited resources but committed people willing to work to overcome the crisis of underdevelopment. This situation has led to the emergence and proliferation of civil society initiatives in the form of various organizations and associations,1 generally called non-governmental organizations (NGOs), working for the development and protection of the rights of the people. Despite the presence of a very large number of NGOs, and despite the government’s recent efforts to implement statements and declarations about improving living conditions (for example, the Convention on the Rights of the Child), the ­development challenge is still far from having been won. The inability of the state and its institutions to cater for the development needs of its citizens has resulted in civil society-led interventions aimed at complementing the state’s efforts. In Burkina Faso, many NGOs are working in different fields of development, such as health, education and the environment. In some cases, however, NGOs are experiencing difficulties in relation to their financial resources and how they manage human resources. The main objective of this research is therefore to understand how they manage to work under these conditions and what problems they face.

Notes for this chapter begin on page 151.

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Several circumstances explain the emergence of NGOs in Burkina Faso. Indeed, the conditions of their establishment differ from one organization to another, which also explains their variety. They fall into a large number of categories, many of them related to the specific conditions of their creation, operation or membership, as laid down in laws and regulations. Many of them work in the areas of poverty reduction, illiteracy, women’s empowerment and the rights of children and young people by promoting self-development actions. Others work to ‘provide technical, civic and practical training to neo-literate villagers in specialized training centres, to support the implementation of projects undertaken by trained farmers financially and technically, and finally, to promote and favour the development of economic, social and cultural activities, etc’ (MEF/DGCOOP 2014). During the period from 2013 to 2015, the social field was the one that most interested NGOs, as it covers education, training, health, drinking water and sanitation. In 2013, 128 NGOs created 4,234 jobs, 2,849 permanent and 1,385 temporary. Those thus employed consisted of 3,882 nationals, 352 expatriates and 1,352 volunteers. The present chapter highlights the difficulties encountered by national NGOs in their activities, particularly in terms of funding, which considerably reduces their levels of activity. I shall also describe NGOs’ access to sources of international funding. Finally, I shall emphasize the limits placed on national NGOs with respect to levels of confidence in their use of collected funds, which tends, rightly or wrongly, to tarnish their image.

Methodology This chapter is mainly based on a quantitative study combining both primary and secondary sources. The secondary sources were mainly documents in the archives of the Directorate of the Partnership with NGOs (Direction du Partenariat avec les ONG, DP-ONG)2 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Cooperation (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères et de la Coopération Régionale, MAECR), and more specifically from the General Directorate of Cooperation (Direction Générale de la Coopération, DGCOOP). This took the form of a review of annual reports submitted to the DP-ONG. In total, there were 217 organizational documents comprising 32 activity reports and 185 data sheets for 2012. Two other key secondary documents were: 1. Canevas de collecte de données socio-économique des ONG/AD (2012),3 from which the review focused on presentation, balance sheets, physical banks, staffing, sources of funding and challenges; and

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2. Contribution des ONG au développement du Burkina Faso (2014–2015),4 a review focused on the contribution of NGOs to the development of Burkina Faso in 2014, the main sources of funding for NGOs, their main target groups, their investments in the various regions of the national territory, the situation with the implementation of forecasts in 2014, and the balance of NGOs’ interventions and contributions, depending on their areas of intervention. The primary sources consisted of some qualitative elements, such as semi-structured interviews, focus-group discussions and individual interviews. These tools were used to source data from officials in the DP-ONG and the Ministry of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Security (Ministère de l’Administration Territoriale et de la Décentralisation et de la Sécurité, MATDS), as well as the staff of certain NGOs.

NGOs in Burkina Faso The Genesis The document review revealed that from 1992 to 2016 most NGOs were foreign organizations wishing to establish themselves in Burkina Faso to work in various fields. These NGOs (Terre des hommes, Solidar Suisse, etc.) were subject to the procedure for official authorization to act, for which they had to enter into an agreement with the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances, MEF),5 which granted them certain privileges, such as customs exemptions in importing their operating and development equipment. In return, they were made subject to a number of obligations in respect of the annual reports they must file with DP-ONG services and were required to comply with the laws and regulations relating to the activities of NGOs in Burkina Faso. Presently, there are two main types of NGO in Burkina Faso: national NGOs, which have signed agreements or conventions with the MEF, and foreign NGOs, which have also signed agreements with the MEF as well as associations with local, regional or national reach. To these two types, a third can be added; namely, NGOs with both international and national status, though they are actually domestic representatives of international NGOs that have adapted their goals and objectives to the Burkinabe context. The case of Amnesty International Burkina Faso is a good example of this. Created in the 1990s initially as a simple association dealing with the defence and protection of human rights by Burkinabe activists linked to the worldwide Amnesty International movement, through the years, the Amnesty International Group of Ouagadougou has become a well-

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known NGO whose analyses of the state of human rights in Burkina Faso matter and are seen as an objective indicator of respect for or failure to respect the fundamental human rights of the country’s various populations.

Objectives The vast majority of NGOs in Burkina Faso pursue humanitarian and social missions. By statute, they are non-profit organizations. Thus, the main objectives they pursue are, among others, poverty reduction, literacy development, women’s empowerment and youth development through the promotion of self-development initiatives. Some examples are as follows: • ARCAD (Association pour le Renforcement des Capacités de Développement Durable des Communautés)6 undertakes capacity-building and sustainable community development. • The Tisserin Foundation was established in 2008 to work for the protection and promotion of vulnerable and disadvantaged people in West Africa, such as those with disabilities and out-of-school children and women living on the outskirts of the city of Ouagadougou or in rural areas. • RECOPA (Réseau de Communication sur le Pastoralisme),7 which has existed since 1998, works to improve the living conditions of pastoralists. Its establishment was the result of a meeting that was part of an information project for farmers between 1995 and 2000. • The Tin Tua Association is a non-governmental development organization working in Gulmu (eastern Burkina Faso). Tin Tua in Gulmancema, a language spoken by the Gulmanceba (Gourmantchés), means ‘Let’s develop ourselves.’ • The African Solidarity Association (AAA) was created in Burkina Faso in November 2004 to support people living with HIV/AIDS and their families, as well as orphans and vulnerable children who are victims of the AIDS pandemic, thus enabling them to integrate into and live in the social and economic life of Burkina Faso. • The Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer du Burkina Faso8 (CEAS Burkina) was created in 1982 and currently has 36 employees. Its activities and areas of intervention focus on appropriate technology and renewable energy, agro-eco-environment and sanitation, and the agroprocessing of food and non-food products. • OCADES CARITAS (Organisation Catholique pour le Développement et la Solidarité)9 started its activities as an NGO in 1956 and became

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CARITAS Voltaic in 1961. On 5 February 1998, it changed its name to CARITAS Burkina. In 2013, CARITAS was recognized as a public utility association. The OCADES NGO is an initiative of the Confederation of Bishops of Burkina Faso. It has fifteen member associations with 1,200 employees and 1,050 volunteers.

Roles and Achievements of NGOs The summary of the 2012 activity reports on the contribution of NGOs working in the field of development, a document written by the Directorate for the Promotion and Monitoring of Partnership with NGOs (Direction de la Promotion et du Suivi du Partenariat avec les ONG, DPSP/ ONG), shows that as of 2012, NGO development actions were focused on four main areas of intervention: social, production, production support and governance. The activities involved are many and range from the creation of socio-economic infrastructure to sensitization activities and the social care of the vulnerable. These and other areas of activity are discussed below.

The Social Field More than 38.92 billion FCFA (EUR 59.33 million) were mobilized to finance activities in this area, including the construction of school infrastructure (51 schools built/rehabilitated, 398 literacy centres opened, 16 houses for teachers built, classes equipped with 885 desks) as part of the investment framework for education. With regard to social protection, investments have been directed towards marginalized groups living in poverty, but there have also been activities in relation to their care provision, empowerment and capacity-building. Altogether, more than 1.17 million people have been supported. Indeed, for all NGOs, 945,713 people have benefited from care and sensitization activities. The water, sanitation and hygiene sector was also targeted for NGO interventions, facilitating access to safe drinking water and promoting hygiene and sanitation.

Agricultural Production A total of 2.88 billion FCFA (EUR 4.39 million) was invested in the field of production (i.e. farming and breeding, but also the environment). Included in the actions undertaken here were the construction of manure pits (1,585) and the development of arable land. Thus, in 2012, the amount

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of land that was developed was of the order of 5,233.7 ha. These development activities made it possible to recover degraded lands for cultivation. In the livestock sub-sector, 210 beekeepers were equipped; 162 cattle, 208 sheep and 40 pigs were raised; 114 tons of fodder was produced; 230 poultry production units were installed; and 550 people were supported in the formation of herds. In terms of support for production, NGOs invested more than 7.92 billion FCFA (EUR 12.07 million) in the development of 158 wells (built or rehabilitated) and 11 dams. In respect of capacity-building, 11,277 producers were trained in 2012. Microcredit facilities to fight poverty were also introduced, with 1,981 people having been granted loans for their businesses. Some NGOs are promoting the agro-processing of food and non-food products. The aim is to contribute to the training of farmers, ensuring that previous training is followed up, and to equip trainees with adequate materials for their activities – in short, instituting a supportfollow-advice chain. As an illustration, CEAS (Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer) trains more than 5,000 people a year as part of its activities. The main beneficiary is the Nafa group (nafa means ‘benefit’ in Dioula), which receives technical support for the production of shea butter.

The Environment and Sustainable Development In the environment sector, interventions centred on the restoration and management of natural resources. Here, 303,500 seedlings were produced for reforestation and hedgerow production, and 133,229 trees were planted. The interventions also focused particularly on supporting and training local populations in the implementation of appropriate technologies and renewable forms of energy.

Health Many NGOs are active in the field of health in Burkina Faso, targeting particularly malaria and HIV/AIDS (Association African Solidarity or AAS). For example, AAS’s primary mission is to support people living with HIV/AIDS and their families, as well as orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) who are victims of the AIDS pandemic. AAS interventions enable beneficiaries to live with dignity and to integrate themselves into the social and economic life of Burkina Faso. AAS’s assistance takes the form of sponsorship and donations of drugs, medical equipment, school equipment and transport equipment.

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Education and Training Education and training are among the areas receiving most support from NGOs in Burkina Faso. Indeed, several NGOs intervene in non-formal education through literacy programmes. Tin Tua focuses on the struggle against illiteracy, though it also offers technical and civic training, as well as training in income-generating activities and food security. In education, its investments include the construction of schools, the rehabilitation of 37 classrooms, the construction of school latrines (18), the granting of educational scholarships (1,327) and supplying school kits (4,657).

Governance The promotion of good governance has been a flagship activity of NGOs in Burkina Faso. Their actions in this area have concerned the fields of economics, local and administrative governance, and the promotion of human rights. Their activities have been devoted to capacity-building training to equip citizens with the knowledge, skill and attitude needed to promote good governance. Altogether, they have invested more than 2 billion FCFA (EUR 3.05 million) (MEF/DGCOOP 2015). The balance sheet shows that of the 48,365 people who have had their capacities strengthened, 1,391 have been elected to local government, while another 2,769 people were made more aware of the electoral system and the need to vote. NGOs also contribute to good governance through advocacy, many of them having mounted successful campaigns involving various issues, including environmental protection, women’s empowerment and education and training. In the field of education, the Ministry of National Education and Alphabetization (Ministère de l’Enseignement National et de l’Alphabétisation, MENA) has played a leading role in drawing attention to key issues. In the area of environmental protection, there have been advocacy campaigns on desertification and climate change. COP21, the 21st Conference of Parties held in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has been strongly supported by NGOs in advocating projects to reverse the impact of climate change. Their advocacy has been both dynamic and perceptible.

Human Rights The international and national NGOs working on human rights in Burkina Faso should be dealt with differently than the NGOs I have been discussing so far. The reason for this is due first to the fact that their con-

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stant struggles against violations that are often perpetrated by the state’s representatives – including the police and army – make them appear as ‘enemies’ of the government or the state. Officials who do not hesitate to express their dissatisfaction with them openly are actually afraid that the negative reports that human rights activists regularly publish about the country jeopardize the image of good governance that the officials want to sell to the international community.

Finance and Funding Operational Budgets for Projects Over the past ten years, NGOs have invested heavily in Burkina Faso’s development, particularly among local populations. Indeed, since 2008 annual reports show a contribution of at least 30 billion FCFA (EUR 45.7 million) per year. In approximate detail, these contributions can be summarized as in Table 6.1 below. From Table 6.1. we can see that NGOs invested considerable funds in Burkina Faso from 2008 to 2015. These investments complement the state’s investments in the various sectors. Customs and tax exemptions can also be regarded as sources of finance that are incorporated into the framework of the partnership, these funds being mobilized from foreign organizations.

Sources of Funding NGOs in Burkina Faso rely on several sources of funding to be able to carry out their activities and run their organizations (MEF/DGCOOP). These sources of finance are of various kinds and include NGOs’ own funds generated through membership dues and contributions from Table 6.1. Budgets allocated by NGOs during the last ten years in Burkina Faso Year

Amount Invested

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

34 billion FCFA (EUR 51.3 million) 41.50 billion FCFA (EUR 63.5 million) 57 billion FCFA (EUR 86.9 million) 43.37 billion FCFA (EUR 66.1 million) 52.73 billion FCFA (EUR 80.4 million) 43.85 billion FCFA (EUR 66.8 million) 63.36 billion FCFA (EUR 96.6 million) 73.19 billion FCFA (EUR 111.6 million)

Source: MEF/DGCOOP, 2014, 2015

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­ eneficiaries, the sale of by-products and services delivered by NGOs. b Other resources come from income-generating activities carried out by NGOs, which in the case of international NGOs are subsidized by their headquarters. However, the income generated by such activities rarely suffices to achieve the NGOs’ economic autonomy from international development partners. The most important sources of finance remain to be external, coming mainly from financial and technical partners such as bilateral and multilateral agencies, decentralized cooperation or other institutional partners, as well as the private sector (MEF/DGCOOP). NGOs in Burkina Faso partner with both bilateral and multilateral agencies, as well international NGOs (INGOs), for various forms of support, including funding. The main multilateral partners are the European Union; the World Food Program (WFP); the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an organization of the United Nations specializing in development assistance to improve standards of living, nutritional status and agricultural productivity, especially in cases of famine, food shortages and agricultural crises; United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), among others. The main bilateral partners are Taiwan,10 Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United States, Denmark, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Belgium, Canada and France. The INGOs include Oxfam, Lutheran World Relief, Green Earth, Handicap International, Water Aid, Eau Vive, Plan Burkina and Terre des Hommes Switzerland. Data available for 2014/15 show that NGOs access various sources of funding, including public funding, from the state. State funding takes the Table 6.2. Distribution of financing by source (in billions in FCFA, in millions in EUR) Funding Sources

Contribution

Percentage Total (%)

Own resources Bilateral partners Decentralized cooperation Private organizations Multilateral partners State of Burkina Faso Beneficiaries Total sources filled Total sources

18,467.40 (EUR 28.153) 15,561.76 (EUR 23.724) 13,684.05 (EUR 20.861)

29.15% 24.56% 21.60%

11,435.23 (EUR 17.433) 1,154.30 (EUR 1.760) 703.11 (EUR 1.072) 61,005. 86 (EUR 93.003) 63,363. 04 (EUR 96.596)

18.05% 1.82% 1.11% 96.28% 100%

Source: MEF/DGCOOP 2015: 15

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form of projects and programmes reserved for implementation by NGOs. These include the Programme d’Appui au Développement Sanitaire (PADS)11 in the health sector and the Fonds pour l’Alphabétisation et l’Éducation non formelle (FONAEF) 12 in the education sector. Under FONAEF, NGOs were required to implement the literacy component. Overall, however, in the first place the majority of NGOs are funded by their own resources, which make up the largest share of contributions. They are followed by bilateral partners, private donors, multilateral partners, state structures and beneficiaries. The latter contribute the smallest share, their contribution not being significantly different from that of the state.

Staffing Data available for 2012 and 2013 show that NGOs and DAs were staffed from various sources, including both local and foreign or expatriate staff. The majority, however, are local staff. The staff also comprise permanent, non-permanent (contract) and volunteer staff. In 2012, the staff database showed that the total number of NGOs (165) employed 5,291 people, 5,037 Burkinabe and 254 expatriates. There were 3,732 permanent positions and 1,559 non-permanent positions, and the volunteers registered in that year numbered 2,727. Thus NGOs offer employment and jobs to Burkinabe, who draw salaries and wages from them, making NGOs an important source of employment and income. Regarding the salaries of NGO employees, 9.7 billion FCFA (EUR 14.8 million) were paid to them in wages. Also, in 2013, 128 NGOs contributed to the creation of 4,234 posts, 2,849 permanent and 1,385 temporary. There were 3,882 national employees, 352 expatriates and 1,352 volunteers.

Challenges The major difficulties NGOs face in Burkina Faso are the multiplication of challenges and current criticisms of the role of NGOs in civil society. In this regard, it is important for NGOs to be able to show the public what their work consists of and to inform the public about their concrete achievements.

Operational Challenges In terms of NGOs’ operational challenges, the following were mentioned in the interviews and focus-group discussions: apart from delays in

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implementing activities due to delays in the allocation of resources, the interlocutors pointed to the decrease in resources mobilized from partners due to the latter’s own financial difficulties. This decline in budget was, at least partly, a result of the financial crises in 2008. However, regardless of such constraints, the main challenges occur within the lifeworlds in which the NGOs operate. As mentioned above, NGOs in Burkina Faso have only a weak capacity to mobilize internal resources, and they struggle with inadequate financial, material and human resources, which limits their activities. Low levels of coordination of the various activities of different NGOs operating in the same area of ​​intervention and in the same domain additionally complicate the organizations’ effectiveness. Other major problems mentioned during the focus group discussions related to the weak involvement of communities in their work, low levels of social mobilization to conduct certain activities as well as social and cultural barriers. The latter are mainly social or cultural practices that sometimes constitute obstacles to development such as excision, the levirate, etc. Last but not least, the interviewees stressed the illiteracy of the beneficiary populations, because those who are unable to read or write in French or in their own African languages prevent convincing results in respect of raising awareness of issues like HIV/AIDS, hygiene, etc. These operational challenges determine the extent of possible mobilizations, as well as the quality and quantity of programming interventions and their impacts.

The Challenge of Achieving Investment Parity among the Country’s Thirteen Regions Another important challenge is the inability to achieve a proper regional balance in the distribution of interventions. Undoubtedly some regions might be needier than others, as we can see in the disaggregated statistics presented in Table 6.3. For instance, in 2014 NGOs contributed 63,363,041,200 FCFA (96,596,334 EUR) in development support. Of that total, as much as 23.41 per cent remained in the Central Region, while each of the other regions received less than 10 per cent, with the Cascades Region receiving the least at 1.35 per cent. During the last few years, the consequences of such unequal distribution seem to have unfolded with alarming effects. Outside of the Central Region, particularly in the eastern and northern regions, jihadist groups gain ground by exploiting the social, political and economic frustrations that have prevailed in communities for decades (International Crisis Group 2020).

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Table 6.3. NGOs investment by region (in billions in FCFA, in millions in EUR) in 2014 Regions

Amount

Percentage Total (%)

Centre Sahel Centre Ouest Centre Nord Hauts Bassins Nord Est Centre Sud Boucle du Mouhoun Plateau Central Centre Est Sud-Ouest Cascades Total disaggregated amount Total not disaggregated amount TOTAL

14,831.63 (22.611) 4,940.50 (7.532) 4,358.96 (6.645) 4,290.75 (6.541) 3,415.88 (5.207) 2,863.58 (4.366) 2,537.38 (3.868) 2,051.04 (3.127) 2,013.10 (3.069) 1,817.33 (2.771) 1,357.36 (2.069) 947.02 (1.444) 854.72 (1.303) 46,279.25 (70.552) 17,083.80 (26.044) 63,363.04 (96.596)

23.41% 7.80% 6.88% 6.77% 5.39% 4.52% 4.00% 3.24% 3.18% 2.87% 2.14% 1.49% 1.35% 73.04% 26.96% 100%

Source: MEF/DGCOOP 2015: 8

The Challenge of Realistic Forecasting The available data for 2014 show that realizing forecasts has been a big challenge. For instance, compared to the FCFA 28.56 billion (EUR 43.54 million) budgeted for that year, as much as FCFA 32.05 billion (EUR 48.86 million) was actually invested. This was well above the sum budgeted and represented a completion rate of 112 per cent. The breakdown shows that: • Twenty-one (21) NGOs had an achievement rate of less than or equal to 50%. • Thirty-one (31) NGOs had an implementation rate of between 50% and 100%. • Forty-four (44) NGOs had a completion rate above 100%.

The Challenge of Accessing International Sources of Funding NGOs have become an important aspect of global governance, which is no longer the sole responsibility of governments. Other actors such as civil society, the private sector and parliamentarians have a role to play in solving global problems. Civil society is an important player in democratic debates. Today, democracy is no longer just a matter of citizens

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electing parliamentarians to pass laws; it is now increasingly about forms of participatory democracy that allow ordinary citizens to intervene in political debates. This includes direct pressure from NGOs on powerholders and lobbying parliamentarians in parliamentary discussions on issues of development policy. It is important to view the foregoing in the light of the general literature on donor fatigue (Bernal 2017; Sampson 2017) and the problem of project funding, which is always short term (Sampson 1996 and 2017; Schuller 2017; Synková 2017), as distinct from programme funding, which is long term and includes core funding for institutional development. But we have to be aware that programmes are generally implemented through consecutive projects and are only prolonged after the positive evaluation of the corresponding projects, which makes the two forms interdependent. There is also the issue of donor capture, where NGOs implement donors’ projects rather than their own (Bernal 2017; Sampson 2017). These issues all affect the work of NGOs in Burkina Faso.

The Challenge of Financial Management Financial management is an important aspect of the NGO sector’s work. The various funders demand various forms of accountability for the use of their funds. While some funders rely on organizations’ own internal financial mechanisms, others come with their own mechanisms, which they require the NGOs to adopt and use. The latter puts undue pressure on the organization, especially when they are already understaffed and often without support for staff. This creates the conditions for the misapplication or misappropriation of funds, which breeches financial accountability requirements. Such breeches raise scandals that tarnish the image and work of NGOs. Fortunately, in the case of Burkina Faso’s NGOs, such scandals are rare. However, wherever they exist, they damage the reputation not just of the affected NGO but of all NGOs, making donors more sceptical and therefore less inclined to make donations. This issue can be linked to weaknesses in the management and operational capacity of mainly national NGOs. It can be said that national NGOs suffer from a lack of trust from donors, a scarcity of funding and inadequate means of operation.

Conclusion To conclude, it can be said that NGOs are undoubtedly making very important and complementary contributions to the development of

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Burkina Faso. Their role is to participate in the development of the country through various activities that reduce poverty and social barriers in project areas. Thus, issues related to health, education, nutrition and capacity development are also important for all NGOs. NGOs often constitute an interface between the population and donors, and their activities complement the work of the government and the state. They also form an important partner for independent work outside the state. While NGOs in Burkina Faso have drawn support from diverse sources, their own sources are the largest. From such sources various programmes affecting the socio-economic system of the country are implemented in the areas of education and training, health, agriculture, governance and environmental protection that are additional to the state’s own efforts. Given their contributions, it should be emphasized that national NGOs and the state complement each other in their actions in the sense that the former are used in decentralization initiatives as resource organizations because of their expertise. This cooperation should continue without eroding the state’s sovereign place as the ultimate bearer of the responsibility to utilize public resources to tackle the development needs of its citizens. Yet, this should be done together with NGOs, as they constitute some form of representation outside the state that has specific expertise in community and human development work. Yet, the work of NGOs is not without its challenges. These may be operational and relate to staffing, funding, equity or financial management. On the one hand, national NGOs can show results in their areas of intervention, but they suffer partly from a lack of resources to be able to carry out their missions properly. On the other hand, they are very fragile because of the lack of credibility attributed to them by others. Some scandals over the use of funds raised may tarnish the image of NGO work generally. Cases of bad practice are rare, but they can damage the reputation of all NGOs and make donors more suspicious and therefore less inclined to make donations. This issue must be linked to the weaknesses mainly of national NGOs and the need to strengthen their managerial and operational capacities. It can be said that national NGOs suffer from a lack of trust from donors, a scarcity of funding and inadequate means of operation. The scarcity of international resources has deepened in recent years as a result of the global financial crisis. Compared to international NGOs, they are in a situation of inequality, weakness and often subjugation because they are obliged to align their agendas with those of certain international NGOs. As soon as funding is withdrawn, they also fail to ensure the sustainability of the project due to a lack of substantial support or planning by the donor. They may lack resources totally to the point where some actors are forced to tap into their own resources or those of

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their family to continue operating. People’s perceptions do not help the situation because they think that it is the promoter who is proving unable to ensure the sustainability of the project. The low level of literacy among the population, which does not often engage in sustainability efforts, reinforces this fragility. In the end, national NGOs risk simply disappearing if a new international charter for their operation is not initiated to overhaul the international system of aid to recipient countries; a system that integrates national NGOs in an effective and sustainable way. We must revise this to avoid their disappearing permanently, because even though international NGOs exist, there is no reason why national NGOs should disappear. The reasons for their existence are many, including their special skills and expertise, as well as their role in youth employment. The role of NGO actors is to promote development through the mobilization of resources in order to reduce poverty in fragile areas. Good governance is necessary to enable NGOs to carry out their activities well. For some time now, these actors and their organizations have become a pillar of development practice. International efforts at developing the world’s poorest countries expect much from NGO actors. However, despite the importance of their work in transnational development programmes, donors overlook the extent to which precarious living and working conditions prevail among Burkinabe NGO actors. This is a misunderstanding on the part of donors because they often do not have profound insights into their partners’ living and working conditions. Men and women who are responsible for the implementation of development ideas at the grassroots level are involved in NGOs’ global networks but often do not have stable financial situations themselves (Kalfelis 2015). Their own professional activities depend on their ability to position themselves despite their extraordinary degree of weakness with regard to the web of global development practices. Whoever wants to have a future in this field must react sensibly to the requirements of the superordinate donor organizations. This also means coping with the often paradoxical and contradictory requirements of these globally active NGOs. In order to satisfy the demands of the international players, actors on-site must present resources and, if necessary, feign having them. Alain J. Sissao is Director of Research and Professor at the Institut des Sciences des Sociétés of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has published books and articles in the fields of African literature and development issues and gives lectures at various universities in Burkina Faso. Sissao participated in the round table on NGOs in 2015 and in the follow-up symposium in 2017 at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. For

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his research on NGOs in Burkina Faso, he was funded by the DAAD fellowship.

Notes  1. The Ministry of Territorial Administration, through its adoption of new texts during the transition, distinguishes between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development associations (DAs) on the basis of their respective scale of activity, budget and certain financial obligations. From the outset, the choice is therefore between the two modes, while recognizing that a DA can be turned into an NGO if it increases its activities. These texts are an equality measure that correct older texts that did not allow national structures to register in the field they wanted, unlike foreign structures.  2. This structure has a very changing history and has had various names since its founding in 1984. I refer here only to its current name.  3. Template of Socio-Economic Data Collection for NGOs/DA (2012).  4. Contribution of NGOs to the Development of Burkina Faso (2014–2015).  5. Since 2016, Ministry of Economy, Finance and Development (Ministère de l’Economie, des Finances et du Développement, MINEFID).  6. Association for Capacity Building for the Sustainable Development of Communities.  7. Communication Network on Pastoralism.  8. Albert Schweitzer Ecological Center in Burkina Faso.  9. Catholic Organization for Development and Solidarity. 10. In 2018, however, Burkina Faso ended its diplomatic relations with Taiwan. 11. Support Program for Health Development. 12. Fund for Literacy and Non-Formal Education.

References Bernal, V. 2017. ‘NGO Fever and Donor Regimes: Tanzanian Feminist Activism within Landscapes of Contradictions’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 37–55. International Crisis Group. 2020. ‘Burkina Faso: Stopping the Spiral of Violence’. Africa Report N° 287. Retrieved 8 January 2021 from https://d2071andvip0wj. cloudfront.net/287-burkina-faso-spiral-of-violence.pdf. Kalfelis, M.C. 2015. ‘Flexible Due to Poverty: Lifeworlds of Local Development Actors in Burkina Faso against the Background of International Expectations’, Paideuma 61: 143–64. MEF/DGCOOP. 2014. Contribution des ONG et associations au développement (rapport de synthèse 2013–2015), 43 pp. ______. 2015. Contribution des ONG/AD au développement du Burkina Faso (rapport 2014), 108 pp. Sampson, S. 1996. ‘The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania’, in C. Hann and E. Dunn (eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge, pp. 121–42.

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______. 2017. ‘Introduction: Engagements and Entanglements in the Anthropology of NGOs’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 1–18. Schuller, M. 2017. ‘Introduction to Part I: Dilemmas of Dual Roles, Studying NGOs, and Donor-Driven “Democracy”’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S.Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 21–25. Synková, H. 2017. ‘Reformists and Revolutionists: Social Work NGOs and Activist Struggles in the Czech Republic’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 75–93.

Chapter 7

Artisanal Mining – A Necessary Evil Narratives Legitimating Large-Scale Mining as a Pathway to Development Bettina Engels

Introduction The extractive sector is currently expanding worldwide, which is related to the recent ‘resource boom’, high world market prices for raw materials and the climate and financial crises (Bebbington and Bury 2013; Chuhan-Pole, Dabalen and Land 2017; Engels and Dietz 2017; Hilson 2014; Özkaynak and Rodríguez-Labajos 2012). While the expansion of large-scale mining (LSM) has, unequivocally, substantial negative social and ecological impacts, it is consistently promoted by governments, international financial and economic institutions and mining companies as a ‘win-win’ scenario for development. At the same time, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has also been growing explosively in recent years, due to rising mineral prices and increasing difficulties in earning a living from agriculture. In many rural areas of Latin America, South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, ASM is one of the most important economic activities for communities (Hilson and Gatsinzi 2014; Jønsson and Fold 2011). Worldwide, more than 40 million people are currently engaged in ASM (DELVE 2020). The debate around ASM is generally characterized by two positions: policymakers, development experts, researchers and corporate actors either aim to formalize and thereby control ASM, or they want to eliminate it altogether, whether by urging artisanal miners to take up Notes for this chapter begin on page 168.

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‘­alternative livelihoods’ or to criminalize them or both (Jønsson and Fold 2011: 481–82). This is accompanied by narratives that demonize ASM and denounce the social and ecological harm it causes, while at the same time both governments and international development organizations (staterelated institutions of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation, faith-based and secular organizations) promote LSM by multinational companies as a driver for development (Ayelazuno 2014; Bush 2009; Spiegel 2014; Tschakert and Singha 2007). This is entangled with the question of which forms of resource exploitation and – linked to this – which ideas and pathways of development are to be considered legitimate. This chapter explores how the powerful narrative of multinational companies that presents LSM as a pathway to development is formed and sustained. I argue that this narrative draws on a storyline of ASM as an ‘evil’ that is constructed by state and corporate actors, as well as NGOs, in order to legitimize the expansion of LSM. In a case study of Burkina Faso, I analyse the narratives on the mining sector and its impacts as deployed by government agencies, mining companies and a variety of national NGOs. Burkina Faso is a case in point because of its recent ‘commodity boom’: its extractive sector, namely gold mining, has been expanding massively since the late 2000s, currently making it the fifth largest on the continent (after Ghana, South Africa, Sudan and Mali; Metals Focus 2017). In the analysis, I show how certain national NGOs are putting forward a narrative that links LSM to development, thereby referring to a theory of modernization and a concept of development that sees it as macroeconomic – that is, as focusing on national economic growth, which is capital-intensive and state-centred. In order for this narrative to be consistent, the relevance of ASM for development and for the lifeworlds of myriads of people has to be denied. This is achieved through a storyline that presents ASM as ‘evil’. Narratives are ‘both a particular category of communication and a method of cognitive organization’ (Jones and McBeth 2010: 329–30), being socially constructed and building on language and symbols to ascribe meaning to a phenomenon. A narrative describes a setting and defines a problem: it identifies who is guilty of causing the problem, who suffers from it, who is able to solve it; it constructs a causal relationship, and it offers a solution to the problem (Hajer 1995; Jones and McBeth 2010; Moezzi, Janda and Rotmann 2017). Narratives thus promote and legitimize both policies and practices. Analysing them is therefore not an end in itself but is done with the aim of understanding how the strategic use of language and symbols influences policy decisions. Through narratives, certain interpretations of a social phenomenon come to be taken for granted while others are excluded from the sphere of what is thinkable,

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what can be proposed and what has a chance of being accepted as an option. Within the analysis of policy narratives, the concept of storylines refers to simplifying components from a broader discourse and [integrating] them into meaningful and compelling accounts of a public issue (Hajer 1995). Storylines frame issues by arguing how they should be understood and tackled: they represent intentional mobilisations of discourse. Coalitions of actors adhere around ­storylines, add to their development, and contribute towards their institutionalisation in changed policy practices. (Smith and Kern 2009: 79; see also Hajer and Versteeg 2005)

The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, details of the methodology used and data from the case study are provided. This is followed by a presentation of the historical development, regulation and economic significance of the mining sector in Burkina Faso, of the conflicts related to it, and of how artisanal gold mining is practised in the country. Then the narrative that presents LSM as a pathway to development and the model of development it refers to are analysed. I dismantle in detail a storyline supported by a variety of actors to pursue their respective interests – one that promotes LSM as a pathway to development while simultaneously demonizing artisanal mining. For the mining companies and state authorities, this narrative fulfils the function of legitimizing the expansion of industrial mining, while for the national development NGOs it enables them to raise funds for their projects. The Burkinabé case reveals that narratives not only promote certain arguments and policy pathways, they also necessarily exclude others, thereby creating social reality, including, for instance, the establishment of political institutions.

Data and Methodology The empirical material for the case study was collected during several research trips.1 In total, I carried out around eighty semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions in Ouagadougou, at six industrial mining locations (five gold mines and one zinc mine) and at numerous artisanal gold-mining sites. Interview partners included representatives of ministries and subordinate authorities, local state and traditional authorities, NGOs and social movements, unions and grassroots initiatives, mining companies and their lobbying organizations and village residents and others involved in informal artisanal mining. Interlocutors were selected so as to include a wide range of NGOs engaged, in one way or another, in mining issues, several major mining companies and almost

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all the relevant state agencies. Interviews were semi-structured and conducted in French, except for one, which was held in English. Focus-group discussions were conducted in a mixture of French and Mooré, one of the main languages spoken in Burkina Faso (mostly with translation into French). In addition, there were numerous informal conversations, observations at the locations and participation in the various social movements’ meetings and mobilization events. Furthermore, at six industrial mining locations (the Bissa, Essakane, Youga, Taparko and Karma gold mines, as well as the Perkoa zinc mine), a standardized questionnaire was used to survey 45–65 residents at each location about the impacts of mining (for details, see Drechsel, Engels and Schäfer 2019).2 Secondary sources include reports, mainly from the Burkinabé press, and documents from international organizations such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, think tanks, the national mining ministry and related agencies, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), mining companies, trade unions and Burkinabé NGOs. Qualitative data (interview transcripts, documents, field notes, etc.) were fed into software for qualitative data analysis and coded inductively using In Vivo to identify how participants in the discourse over the ‘mining boom’ speak about LSM and ASM: what are their main arguments? What are the main problems and threats they identify, and what solutions, if any, do they put forward? What are the key terms that appear repeatedly in the statements, and what meanings do people ascribe to these terms? Subsequently, whether arguments vary systematically either between or within groups of actors (mining companies, state agencies, NGOs) was probed. The aim of this form of data analysis was to successively reconstruct the storylines and narratives that are brought forward to legitimize – and possibly contest – the expansion of large-scale mining.

Mining in Burkina Faso A key characteristic of gold mining in Burkina Faso is the tradition of artisanal gold mining, which began long before colonization (see Lanzano 2018). From the second half of the 1990s onwards, many African states, including Burkina Faso, reformed their mining laws as part of the economic liberalization and ‘structural adjustment’ demanded by international financial institutions. In combination with the increasing prices for resources, this led to a significant expansion of industrial mining from the late 2000s onwards (Campbell 2009). Burkina Faso is a case in point: its twelve currently active industrial mines – eleven gold mines and one

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zinc mine – all started production in the late 2000s (Web Map 2021). Furthermore, they are all run by multinational companies, which, under the country’s mining laws, must have national subsidiaries. In 2019, 50.3 tons of gold were produced, and a continuation of the trend of increasing gold production in the country (Kaboré 2020). In 2016, 38.53 tons of gold were extracted, of which 38.26 were mined industrially and 0.204 artisanally (DGMGC 2017). However, the scale of artisanal gold production is supposed to be significantly greater: a recent study by the National Institute of Statistics and Demography calculated a figure of 9.5 tons in 2016 (MEF 2017). A report by the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration estimates that at least seven tons a year of artisanally mined gold do not appear in the statistics because it is smuggled overland into neighbouring Togo and from there into Europe, destined in particular for Switzerland (Guéniat and White 2015: 3).

Artisanal Gold Mining While in 2017 the industrial mines in Burkina Faso directly employed a total of 9,651 people, the large majority in less qualified and badly paid positions (AN 2016: 47; Kaboré 2018) – at least 1.2 million people – live from artisanal gold mining (Chouli 2014: 29; Guéniat and White 2015; OCDE 2018). The recent report of a parliamentary commission estimates the number of artisanal gold-mining sites to be more than a thousand (AN 2016: 2, 24), most of them operating without concessions. The official concessions for artisanal mining are held by national and local economically (and often also politically) influential actors, though the extraction sites (site d’orpaillage) themselves are worked by artisanal miners, known as orpailleurs, who do so at their own risk, with little or no infrastructure or support offered by the concession holders. In general, orpailleurs organize themselves into teams: some climb into the depths with a torch, while others secure them from above and supply them with food and drinking water. The concession holders make the largest profits overall in artisanal gold mining. Nevertheless, artisanal mining, by and large an informal activity, offers a considerable number of people a source of income, even though it must largely be pursued under precarious conditions and with high economic and health risks. In any case, artisanal mining plays a central role in the lifeworlds of many people in Burkina Faso, as in numerous other African states. Besides the teams that work in or at the pits, numerous other people – men and women of all ages, as well as children and young people – are involved in processing the artisanally mined gold and in providing the extra work and

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care that is required to keep the sites running (such as the sale of water, food and other products for daily needs, as well as catering and various other services). Several thousand people live and work at some of the largest extraction sites, and some sites have existed for years or even decades (INSD 2017; Lanzano 2018; Mégret 2008). The residents of these settlements live almost exclusively from artisanal mining. Artisanal gold mining is also frequently practised near villages, meaning that those involved in doing it do not have to live at the extraction sites permanently. Many households thus live partially from artisanal mining and partially from farming and animal husbandry; for example, some family members are involved in gold mining while others are engaged in subsistence farming, or they mine gold temporarily in the season between sowing the seed and harvesting. The boom in industrial mines in Burkina Faso has direct effects on artisanal mining as a livelihood activity. Burkinabé mining law unambiguously gives precedence to industrial mining (Loi No. 036-2015 and CNT, Article 73). Where an industrial mine is installed, artisanal mining is prohibited unless the operator agrees to dedicate a part of it to the artisanal miners. Given the high number of people living from artisanal mining and the fact that artisanal miners as such do not have access to compensation, it is hardly astonishing that the elimination of artisanal mining is among the main causes of mining-related conflicts.

Mining Law and the Expansion of Industrial Mining Burkina Faso’s first mining law, the Code Minier, became effective in 1997. It liberalized the sector, as private economic mining activities were both permitted and encouraged (Gueye 2001; Luning 2008: 390). With the first reform of the Code Minier in 2003, the taxes and tariffs were re-regulated in order to make the Burkinabé mining industry even more attractive to foreign investors. As of late 2018, exploration and exploitation permits for industrial mining had been issued for almost half of the surface area of the country (DGCM 2018; Harris and Miller 2015: 15–17; MME 2014: 32). More than seven hundred exploration licences exist, including 99 granted in March 2018 alone (OCDE 2018). Since 2009, gold has been Burkina Faso’s most important export product, exceeding cotton: 65 per cent of the country’s total export earnings and 16 per cent of its tax revenues come from gold extraction (Moore Stephens 2017: Tables 10 and 12). In 2017, mining accounted for 8.3 per cent of the country’s GDP (Nabolé 2018). The attractiveness of the Burkinabé mining sector for multinational corporations is

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due, among other factors, to its comparably low rates of taxation by international standards: until the latest adjustment of the Code Minier in June 2015, corporate tax for the mining industry was set at 20 per cent, significantly less than in most other African countries (for example, 30 per cent in Sierra Leone and Tanzania, 35 per cent in Ghana; KPMG 2017). Since the reform of 2015, it has been set at 28 per cent (for details of mining taxes in Burkina Faso, see Dorin 2017). On 26 June 2015, the government passed another reform of the mining law. Unlike the previous one, the new mining law is oriented rather towards accruing state revenues through mining. This was the result of persistent campaigns by Burkinabé NGOs for a more just distribution of state revenues generated from the industrial mines (Engels 2018; ORCADE 2018); however, the reform likewise reflects the global trend, pushed forth by the World Bank, towards investment-friendly mining laws focusing on revenue transparency and ‘good governance’. In the current process of implementing this reform, however, mining companies are using all possible means to bypass the new code; they argue, for instance, that since their mining conventions, or contracts, were ratified at the time of the old mining codes, the new code does not apply to them. As a result of these objections, NGOs have had to engage in a sustained effort to push for the full implementation of the 2015 mining code. Furthermore, NGOs argue in favour of close state control of the mining companies, just compensation within a national compensation scheme and more state revenues to be distributed adequately. At all mining locations in Burkina Faso, NGOs and loosely organized groups campaign locally against the accompanying effects of the mines on the lifeworlds of residents, such as the massive generation of dust, water contamination, noise and tremors due to blasting, forced resettlement, and the loss of grazing areas, agricultural land and cultural and spiritual sites. People in communities deploy a host of strategies, both individually and collectively, to raise their claims: addressing the mining companies and local authorities personally and with letters; participating in consultations; and more confrontational forms of protest, such as riots, demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and blockades. Protests often emerge spontaneously, meaning that they are not planned by formal organizations, though this of course does not mean that there are no structures of social organization behind them or that no clear claims are raised. The main claims are for jobs for workers from the communities, compensation (land, money), non-damage of cultural sites (such as a mosque or a graveyard), approval of artisanal mining and investment in the local physical and social infrastructure; for example, paved roads, schools, and health and women’s centres (Drechsel, Engels and Schäfer 2019).

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Principal Narrative: Large-Scale Mining as Development Virtually all state actors both nationally and locally – i.e. the Ministry of Mines and Energy and its related agencies, and the provincial and local authorities – argue in favour of LSM. It goes without saying that the mining companies also vigorously advocate it. On behalf of the population, a variety of NGOs are engaged in topics related to the extractive sector. Among them are national developmental NGOs that manoeuvre between communities, international donors, state agencies and the personal interests of founders and staff. Most of them are, at the same time, engaged in advocacy work and project implementation. They are mostly based in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Their ­founders and staff are relatively well-educated ‘middle class’ people (though there are reasonable doubts on the narrative of ‘African middle class’; see Southall 2018 and Therborn 2012). This does not mean that they would not advocate the interests of poor and rural people; however, the NGOs are not primarily membership-based organizations with internal democratic structures, and they are not accountable towards members or the population whose interests they advocate but towards their donors. Some of these developmental NGOs end up being incorporated by state agencies and mining companies. The authorities or companies themselves also create or encourage the creation of NGOs (with material incentives such as project funding, per diems, income-generating activities, etc.) so they can take part in mandatory consultation processes and corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. In Burkina Faso, the best known independent developmental NGO that is engaged in the extractive sector is the Organisation for Community Capacity Building for Development (Organisation pour le Renforcement des Capacités de Développement, ORCADE). It carries out projects in the fields of artisanal and industrial mining, decentralization and local development, regional integration in Africa and gender. In the discourse on mining within Burkina Faso, developmental NGOs adopt an ambivalent position. They argue that LSM as such is not a problem and that ‘win-win’ solutions do exist. One of their principal arguments refers to an alleged deficit in communication: due to absent or false communication between the mining companies and state authorities on the one hand and communities on the other – or, more precisely, from the former to the latter – people on-site cannot understand what an industrial mine is, what the rights and duties of a mine and residents are, what claims can justifiably be raised in relation to a mine and so forth. Following these arguments, the problem does not necessarily relate to

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Figure 7.1. Advertising banner ‘Bissa Gold, a partner for development in Burkina Faso’, 2017. © Bettina Engels.

the severe impacts that digging an industrial mine has on people’s lifeworlds – the fact that entire villages are forcibly resettled or that people lose their land and the bases of their incomes – but rather to the possibility that they do not understand what is going on because private sector actors and state authorities are not engaging in adequate communication. One conclusion that representatives of developmental NGOs draw from this is that they should promote their own activities: if you fund our projects, we can educate the local people, and hence we can prevent them addressing their claims through protests and riots: ‘In cases where fireraising [of mining facilities] has not occurred, this is [because] we have been present’, one spokesperson of a developmental NGO explained in an interview3 (Ouagadougou, 10 March 2015). According to the overall narrative, industrial mining could and should contribute substantially to the development of the country; the problem, according to the developmental NGOs is that the people on-site in the affected villages at the mining locations hardly see anything of these development effects. The term ‘development’ is ever-present in the discourse on mining, including in the public statements, brochures and websites of developmental NGOs, state authorities and multinational mining companies. For

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example, Bissa Gold, one of the largest gold mines in Burkina Faso, run by the Russian company Nordgold, promotes itself as a ‘partner for the development of Burkina Faso’ (see figure 7.1.), and in its brochures it explicitly refers to the Millennium Development Goals (Bissa Gold SA 2017), notwithstanding the fact that in 2016 these were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals. Representatives of mining companies argue that with the revenues from the extractive sector the country will become ‘independent’: ‘Previously, funds from development cooperation were Burkina Faso’s main source of revenues’, a spokesperson of a multinational mining company stated. ‘With the mines, the country is now becoming independent’ (interview, Ouagadougou, 13 September 2015). Moreover, small and medium-size enterprises in Burkina Faso would be promoted as a result of collaborations with the mining companies. Economic actors on-site would thus get to know about health and safety standards or women’s entrepreneurship, for example. Mining companies present this as a sustainable development effect: ‘This is sustainable; it will remain after we have left’ (ibid.). This sort of framing is hardly surprising, given the fact that many big mining companies deliberately recruit staff trained within the development community, namely previous NGO personnel, as community relations or communication managers. At the same time, the mining companies emphasize that development is not their own job but rather a task for the state. Furthermore, in interviews, many representatives of mining companies blamed the state for not investing its revenues in development instead of in salaries, cars and other benefits for high-ranking state functionaries. As a consequence, it is argued, the mines are unjustly attacked for the state’s omissions: ‘They take five years to build a school. After three years, the population will become impatient and attack the mine’ (interview with mining company representative, Ouagadougou, 18 March 2015). Following the arguments of the mining companies, the expansion of the extractive sector promotes the development of the country – still one of the world’s poorest and ‘least developed’, ranking 182 out of 189 on the human development index in 2019 – by boosting its national economy and feeding the state budget with royalties and taxes. Many developmental NGOs agree with this in principle: ‘The state benefits from the mining companies’, a representative of a NGO with a local reach said. ‘Thus, people get something out of it, too’ (interview, Gaoua, 10 March 2017). All in all, in their narratives on the ‘mining boom’, mining companies and many state agency and developmental NGO representatives take for granted the notion that LSM is contributing significantly to the development of Burkina Faso. In doing so, they are building unambiguously on a typical concept of development established by modernization theory;

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namely, that development is necessarily linked to the arrangement and expansion of the industrial sector, that it is capital-intensive and that ‘development’ is a matter of national macroeconomic growth.

Storyline: Demonizing Artisanal Mining This understanding of development does not go uncontested. This becomes obvious particularly with regard to the juxtaposition of largescale and artisanal (orpaillage) mining. Residents of mining areas and representatives of some NGOs frequently refer to the difference in terms of the opportunities for work created by industrial and artisanal mining respectively. Residents point out that artisanal mining has significant development effects, as successful artisanal miners invest in local social infrastructure, and artisanal mining stimulates other local economic activities through petty trading – women preparing food and selling water etc. ‘With orpaillage …, yes, there are risks; but the revenues remain a hundred percent in the country. With the multinationals, ninety percent is taken abroad, and we have to beg them to give us some small projects’, one resident of a mining area complained (interview, Houndé, 1 March 2018). ‘Here, an orpailleur has donated the region’s best ambulance. In contrast, the mine has not even managed to buy a simple cart to carry off the hospital waste’ (ibid.). As this does not necessarily fit into the narrative of LSM as the pathway to development, a storyline is constructed that demonizes orpaillage. In a sharp dualism, industrial mining is presented as being regulated, controlled and sustainable while artisanal mining is depicted as anarchic and dangerous. First and most obviously, the negative social and ecological impacts of artisanal mining are emphasized again and again: allegedly the exploitation and abuse of, and violence against, minors and women, including sexualized violence; child labour, as artisanal mining sites tempt minors to drop out of school to work at the sites; drug abuse; the high risk of accidents; and health and ecological damage due to the use of cyanide and mercury. Artisanal mining sites are represented as unorganized, and artisanal miners as irrational and threatening, standing with their backs to the wall and thus ‘ready for anything’ (interview, Ouagadougou, 13 September 2015). Closely linked to this, a striking aspect that appears frequently in the arguments of the representatives of mining companies and state authorities, as well as of some NGOs, is that artisanal miners are behind all the conflicts related to mining, as well as behind the ‘manipulation’ of people from the communities. When, for instance, the Karma mine, located close

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to Ouahigouya in Yatenga province, was set on fire in January 2015, according to a spokesperson (interview, Ouagadougou, 10 March 2015) for a national authority, the orpailleurs were behind it. They know exactly what it is all about, and manipulate the chiefs, the young people, the sheiks, the religious authorities. They tell them that whites will come and destroy their mosque. … The orpailleurs have their structures and can easily manipulate the illiterates on-site.

This narrative is reproduced by the mining companies and national authorities alike: ‘Behind almost all demonstrations are the orpailleurs. They push local people to make impossible claims’, another representative of a national authority stated (interview, Ouagadougou, 18 March 2015), without further explaining what these ‘impossible claims’ might be. Some NGOs take the same line: ‘The orpailleurs have weapons, and they are ready to defend themselves’ (interview, Ouagadougou, 14 September 2016). Empirical evidence proving that artisanal miners are ‘behind almost all’ the protests against LSM is slim. In contrast, in many cases, nationwide active NGOs such as the Democratic Organisation of Burkinabé Youth (Organisation Démocratique de la Jeunesse du Burkina Faso, ODJ) and the largest human rights organization, the Burkinabé Movement for Human and People’s Rights (Mouvement Burkinabé de Droits de l’Homme et des Peuples, MBDHP), have frequently been involved in mobilizing activities (Diabaté 2016; ODJ 2016a, 2016b), as have local alliances such as the Coordination of Socio-Professional Associations and of the Youth of Tuy Province (Coordination des Associations Socioprofessionnelles et de la Jeunesse du Tuy) in the case of the Houndé gold mine in 2017–2018 (CCJ 2017, 2018). These organizations are, in contrast to the developmental NGOs, membership-based and primarily engaged in advocacy work rather than implementing projects funded by multinational donors. Their membership is broad, both regionally (they are represented in almost all provinces of the country, both in urban and rural areas) and socially with regard to class, gender, generation and ethnicity. Most striking in the narrative that is reproduced by the mining companies, national authorities and some of the developmental NGOs is the fact that artisanal miners are presented as being external or opposed to the rural population. In practice this cannot be confirmed. Though many artisanal miners indeed migrate within Burkina Faso to areas where gold has been found or is assumed to have been found, at least as many are from the villages, often practising artisanal mining as one incomegenerating activity among others. However, constructing a dualism of artisanal miners on the one hand and village residents on the other

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strongly supports the storyline that demonizes and delegitimizes artisanal mining. For the state authorities and mining companies, representing artisanal miners as a risk to the environment and social development, and as irrational and irresponsible, functions as an efficacious legitimization and promotion of large-scale industrial mining, which, implicitly or explicitly, is constructed as the rational, sustainable and efficient alternative, able to control the environmental and health risks and to generate state revenues and therewith developmental effects. Recently, however, the state authorities and mining companies have realized that this demonizing approach has not been successful in getting rid of the artisanal miners. In contrast, they face the considerable risk of being attacked, both physically and in public debates, when they fight artisanal mining too aggressively. Consequently, they have begun to shift towards a new narrative, presenting artisanal mining as a necessary evil: ‘From the government’s perspective, if orpaillage could be erased, one would do it. But this will never work out. It is a necessary evil’ (interview, representative of national state authority, Ouagadougou, 18 March 2015). The policy that emerges from this is to formalize artisanal mining with the clear aim of regulating and controlling an economic sector and social space that they perceive to be ‘ungoverned’ and therefore a potential danger. The most frequent claim made here by the authorities, mining companies and developmental NGOs is that artisanal miners should be ‘­organized’ – not in terms of political organization for the promotion of their interests, but organized top-down into cooperatives in order to sensitize and ‘educate’ them, whether they want it or not: ‘They must be organized into cooperatives [and] decentralized in order to be well controlled by the state’, as a spokesperson for a mining company put it (interview, Ouagadougou, 16 March 2015). For those NGOs that argue in line with this, the narrative of artisanal mining as ‘anarchic’ again fulfils the function of raising funds for their activities: if orpailleurs do ‘bad things’, this is often due to a lack of information, skills and organization, one NGO representative argued in an interview. His own organization was searching just then for external partners (i.e. funding) in order to provide training for artisanal miners and to ‘organize’ them into cooperatives (interviews, Ouagadougou, 15 September 2015 and 16 September 2016). With the aim of organizing artisanal mining in this way, in late 2016 the National Agency for the Embedding of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (Agence Nationale d’Encadrement des Exploitations Minières Artisanales et Semi mécanisée, ANEEMAS) was created as a national authority coming under the Ministry of Mines and Energy. Its task is to organize

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artisanal miners according to the size of the sites, to establish local agencies for the purchase of artisanally mined gold at a fixed price, to guarantee taxation and to provide education on techniques, environmental and health issues and the like. ANEEMAS is not supposed to be an institution of the state monopolization of ASM, as previously existed in Burkina Faso with the Burkinabé Precious Metals Counter (Comptoir Burkinabé des Métaux Précieux, CBMP), which was privatized in 2001 (for details, see Gueye 2001). Rather, it is to be subordinated to the logic of liberalization, a logic that goes unquestioned (see Konkobo and Sawadogo 2020). The turn towards accepting artisanal mining as unavoidable, as a segment of the economy and society that authorities at different levels have to deal with, is also willingly shared by some developmental NGOs, many of whom have become engaged in projects related to the potential negative social and ecological effects of artisanal mining, such as child labour and sexual exploitation and the use of mercury and cyanide, etc.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have outlined the principal narrative on mining put forward by the state authorities and mining companies, which presents and legitimizes industrial mining as a pathway to development, whereby development is understood in the sense of modernization theory as macroeconomic growth that is capital-intensive and state-centred. This narrative draws on the storyline that constructs artisanal mining as ineffective and dangerous, as opposed to its industrial counterpart, which is an effective and sustainable part of development. This narrative functions to legitimize the expansion of LSM by presenting it as a ‘win-win’ model and shifting the roots of conflict from industrial to artisanal mining. At the same time, it legitimizes the activities of certain NGOs: the information and ‘dialogue’ that target communities affected by industrial mines and the training and ‘organizing’ of artisanal miners respectively. My aim is not to decide what is empirically ‘correct’ about the various claims and counter-claims. Rather, I contest the assumption that artisanal mining is the main cause of mining-related conflicts. A considerable number of studies have demonstrated that artisanal mining sites are neither unorganized nor ungoverned (Arnaldi Di Balme and Lanzano 2013; Jacques et al. 2006; Luning 2008; Van Bockstael 2014; Werthmann 2017), though difficult conditions of work and living at many sites, including severe negative impacts such as child labour, sexual exploitation, drug abuse and the use of chemicals (cyanide, mercury), are without doubt present. The narrative that has been depicted here, however, hardly

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advances political measures to improve the living conditions of the people involved in artisanal mining, as first and foremost it serves to legitimize and promote LSM. Petra Tschakert and Kamini Singha (2007) have argued similarly that the use of mercury plays a central role in the discourses used to criminalize and marginalize informal artisanal miners. Again, the point is not that harmful chemicals are not used in ASM or that they do not cause damage to human health and the environment but that the discourse is considerably biased and that artisanal miners themselves are strategically silenced by it. It becomes clear at this point that narratives create meaning and exclusion, not only of arguments and possible policy pathways but also of people and social groups. This shades into policy formation and becomes materialized in institutions such as ANEEMAS, in the Burkinabé case. While the representatives of mining companies, state authorities and some Burkinabé developmental NGOs argue that development will be achieved through the revenues generated for the state budget by LSM (through royalties and taxes), people from the affected communities point out the impacts of industrial mining on their lifeworlds in terms of the loss of farmland and grazing areas, the pollution of water, the massive raising of dust and the rising costs of living. They point out that many locations where LSM occurs are even less developed than elsewhere in the country (for details, see Drechsel, Engels and Schäfer 2019). In Burkina Faso, a counter-narrative to the dominant narrative of the state authorities and mining companies certainly exists: some advocacy NGOs point to the repression of artisanal miners by the state’s security forces and the mining companies, including the use of physical violence, and to forced evictions without information, consultation or compensation. As opposed to the narrative of the state agencies and mining companies, however, until now this counter-narrative has remained relatively weak. The ensemble of actors that promote the principal narrative of LSM as a driver of development is relatively large, and the narrative itself is so efficacious because it suits several actors in pursuing and legitimizing their relative interests: for the mining companies to have access to mineral resources, for the state to enhance its revenues and for the developmental NGOs to acquire funding. Bettina Engels is Assistant Professor for Conflict and African Studies at Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Together with Kristina Dietz, she is director of the research group ‘Global Change – Local Conflicts? Conflicts over land in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in times of global transformation’. Her research and

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teaching focuses on structural change in the global countryside, radical transformation, contentious politics and conflicts over land and mining.

Notes 1. In March, September and December 2015; March–April and September 2016; March and September–October 2017; February–March, September–November 2018; and February– March, September–October 2019. 2. I am very grateful to Mohamed Dagano and Desiré Nikiema for conducting the questionnaire survey. I would also particularly like to thank Kristina Dietz, Hermann Moussa Konkobo, Lore Raport, Ouiry Sanou and André Tibiri for supporting my research through their invaluable patience and confidence. Kristina Dietz commented intensively on an earlier version of this chapter: many thanks for that! 3. Quotations from interviews have been translated from French into English.

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Chuhan-Pole, P., A.L. Dabalen and B.C. Land. 2017. Mining in Africa: Are Local Communities Better Off? Washington DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and The World Bank. DELVE. 2020. ‘A Global Platform for Artisanal and Small Scale Mining Data’. Retrieved 12 May 2020 from https://delvedatabase.org/. DGCM. 2018. Cadastre Minier. Ouagadougou: Ministère des Mines et des Carrières du Burkina Faso, Direction de la Géologie et du Cadastre Minier. DGMGC. 2017. La production minière. Ouagadougou: Direction Générale des Mines, des la Géologie et des Carrières. Diabaté, B. 2016. ‘Mine Houndé Gold: Les populations peuvent-elles espérer?’, Liberté: Bulletin d’Information du Mouvement burkinabè des droits des l’homme et des peuples 24–25. Dorin, A. 2017. ‘Burkina Faso’, The Mining Law Review 6: 27-39. Retrieved 6 December 2020 from https://www.extractiveshub.org/servefile/getFile/id/6498. Drechsel, F., B. Engels and M. Schäfer. 2019. ‘“The Mines Make us Poor”: LargeScale Mining in Burkina Faso’. GLOCON Country Report No. 2. Berlin: GLOCON. Engels, B. 2018. ‘Nothing Will Be as Before: Shifting Political Opportunity Structures in Protests against Gold Mining in Burkina Faso’, The Extractive Industries and Society 5(2): 354–62. Engels, B., and K. Dietz. (ed.). 2017. Contested Extractivism, Society and the State: Struggles over Mining and Land. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Guéniat, M., and N. White. 2015. Golden Racket: The True Source of Switzerland is Togolese Gold. A Berne Declaration Investigation. Lausanne and Zürich: Berne Declaration. Gueye, D. 2001. Small-Scale Mining in Burkina Faso. London: IIED. Hajer, M.A. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. New York: Oxford University Press. Hajer, M.A., and W. Versteeg. 2005. ‘A Decade of Discourse Analysis of Environmental Politics: Achievements, Challenges, Perspectives’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 7(3): 175–84. Harris, E., and J. Miller. 2015. Company Geodata: Growing African National Archives via Transfer of Corporate Geoscience Data. IM4DC Action Research Report. Perth: The University of Western Australia, Centre for Exploration Targeting. Hilson, G. 2014. ‘The Extractive Industries and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Introduction’, Resources Policy 40: 1–3. Hilson, G., and A. Gatsinzi. 2014. ‘A Rocky Road Ahead? Critical Reflections on the Futures of Small-Scale Mining in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Futures 62(Part A): 1–9. INSD. 2017. Enquête nationale sur le secteur de l’orpaillage. Ouagadougou: Institut National de la Statistique et de la Démographie (INSD). Jacques, E. et al. 2006. ‘Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mines in Burkina Faso: Today and Tomorrow’, in G. Hilson (ed.), Small-Scale Mining, Rural Subsidence and Poverty in West Africa. Warwickshire: Practical Action Publishing, pp. 115–34. Jones, M.D., and M.K. McBeth. 2010. ‘A Narrative Policy Framework: Clear Enough to Be Wrong?’, Policy Studies Journal 38(2): 329–53.

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Jønsson, J.B., and N. Fold. ‘Mining “From Below”: Taking Africa’s Artisanal Miners Seriously’, Geography Compass 5(7): 479–93. Kaboré, E. 2018. ‘Mine en 2017: Une valeur budgétaire de plus de 226 milliards de FCFA’, Economist du Faso 249 (30 April 2018). Retrieved 6 December 2020 from https://www.leconomistedufaso.bf/2018/04/30/ mine-en-2017-une-valeur-budgetaire-de-plus-de-226-milliards-de-fcfa/. ______. 2020. ‘Production minière en 2019: Baisse de la production mais hausse des recettes’, Economist du Faso (June 2020). Retrieved 6 December 2020 from https://www.leconomistedufaso.bf/2020/06/23/production-miniere-en-2019baisse-de-la-production-mais-hausse-des-recettes/. Konkobo, H.M., and I. Sawadogo. 2020. Exploitation minière artisanale et semi-mécanisée de l’or au Burkina Faso: Les acteur·trices de la chaîne opératoire, leur vécu quotidien et leurs perceptions des tentatives actuelles d’encadrement et de formalisation. GLOCON Country Report No. 5. Berlin: GLOCON. KPMG. 2017. ‘Corporate Tax Rates Tables’, KPMG. Retrieved 3 July 2019 from https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-ratesonline/corporate-tax-rates-table.html. Lanzano, C. 2018. ‘Gold Digging and the Politics of Time: Changing Timescapes of Artisanal Mining in West Africa’, The Extractive Industries and Society 5(2): 253–59. Loi No. 036-2015 and CNT. Loi No. 036-2015 and CNT portant code minier au Burkina Faso. 26 June. Ouagadougou: Le Conseil National de la Transition du Burkina Faso. Luning, S. 2008. ‘Liberalisation of the Gold Mining Sector in Burkina Faso’, Review of African Political Economy 35(117): 387–401. MEF. 2017. Exploitation minière au Burkina Faso: 9,5 tonnes d’or et 232,2 milliards de F CFA générés en 2016. Ouagadougou: Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances du Burkina Faso. Mégret, Q. 2008. ‘L’or “mort ou vif”: l’orpaillage en pays lobi burkinabé’, in M. Cros and J. Bonhomme (ed.), Déjouer la mort en Afrique: Or, orphelins, fantômes, trophées et fétiches. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 15–41. Metals Focus. 2017. Metals Focus Gold Focus 2017. London: Metals Focus. MME. 2014. Guide de l’investisseur minier du Burkina Faso. July. Ouagadougou: Ministère des Mines et de l’Energie du Burkina Faso. Moezzi, M., K.B. Janda and S. Rotmann. 2017. ‘Using Stories, Narratives, and Storytelling in Energy and Climate Change Research’, Energy Research & Social Science 31: 1–10. Moore Stephens. 2017. Initiative pour la transparence dans les industries extractives (ITIE Burkina Faso). Rapport 2015. Moore Stephens LLP. Nabolé, I.I. 2018. ‘Burkina: L’or a rapport 226 milliards de Franc CFA in 2017’, burkina24.com. Retrieved 9 October 2018 from https://burkina24. com/2018/04/17/burkina-lor-a-rapporte-226-milliards-de-f-cfa-en-2017/. OCDE. 2018. L’or à la croisée des chemins: Étude d’évaluation des chaînes d’approvisionnement en or produit au Burkina Faso, au Mali et au Niger. Paris: L’Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Économiques (OCDE).

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ODJ. 2016a. Déclaration sur le procès des jeunes injustement arrêtes par Bissa-Gold. Kongoussi, 4 September. Ouagadougou and Kongoussi: Organisation Démocratique de la Jeunesse du Burkina Faso. ______. 2016b. Déclaration sur les arrestations et la détention de 22 militants des villages riverains de la mine Bissa gold SA dans la commune de Sabcé. Kongoussi, 6 August. Ouagadougou and Kongoussi: Organisastion Démocratique de la Jeunesse du Burkina Faso. ORCADE. 2018. Etat des Lieux de la Mise en Oeuvre du Nouveau Code Minier du Burkina Faso: Organisation pour le Renforcement des Capacités de Développement/Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez/Oxfam. Özkaynak, B., and B. Rodríguez-Labajos. (ed.). 2012. Mining Conflicts around the World: Common Grounds from an Environmental Justice Perspective. EJOLT Report No. 07. Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade. Smith, A., and F. Kern. 2009. ‘The Transitions Storyline in Dutch Environmental Policy’, Environmental Politics 18(1): 78–98. Southall, R. 2018. ‘(Middle-) Class Analysis in Africa: Does it Work?’ Review of African Political Economy 45(157): 467–77. Spiegel, S.J. 2014. ‘Rural Place-Making, Globalization and the Extractive Sector: Insights from Gold Mining Areas in Kratie and Ratanakiri, Cambodia’, Journal of Rural Studies 36: 300–10. Therborn, G. 2012. ‘Class in the 21st Century’, New Left Review 78: 5–29. Tschakert, P., and K. Singha. 2007. ‘Contaminated Identities: Mercury and Marginalization in Ghana’s Artisanal Mining Sector’, Geoforum 38(6): 1304–21. Van Bockstael, S. 2014. ‘The Persistence of Informality: Perspectives on the Future of Artisanal Mining in Liberia’, Futures 62(Part A): 10–20. Web Map. 2021. ‘Mining Conflicts in Burkina Faso’, Web Map. Retrieved 12 January 2021 from http://www.mining-conflicts-burkina.net/. Werthmann, K. 2017. ‘The Drawbacks of Privatization: Artisanal Gold Mining in Burkina Faso 1986–2016’, Resources Policy 52: 418–26.

on reciprocity (beyond africa)

Chapter 8

The Price of Getting Donor Money Gift Exchange in Aid Relations and the Depoliticization of NGOs Beata Paragi

Introduction Foreign aid, when interpreted within the theoretical framework of gift exchange, is usually portrayed as unilateral gift, a sort of symbolic domination (Hattori 2001: 635; Hattori 2006). Indeed, many actors on the side of the recipients of aid, namely government actors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), receive unilateral transfers of resources without any financial obligation to reciprocate. Yet, if one looks at the vocabulary used in the aid industry, terms such as ‘gift’, ‘donation’, ‘grant’, donor ‘generosity’ and recipient ‘gratitude’ are frequently used alongside other, contradictory concepts. This chapter discusses the main findings of research conducted in the Palestinian territories, recalling findings published in various disciplinary journals (Paragi 2016a, 2017, 2018). It raises further critical questions regarding the politics of aid and the perceived purposes of aid effectiveness that are likely to be valid even over the borders of the Middle East. If foreign aid is unreciprocated in financial terms or unilateral in its nature, why do aid recipients talk about the price they allegedly pay for accepting it? How are the generous aid transfers related to the complex social, political and economic factors among which Palestinians have to navigate?

Notes for this chapter begin on page 193.

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Aid is a business, and actors have interests in realizing a ‘return on investment’ or ‘value for money’ (Andersen, Brown and Jean 2012: 35–37), which in Palestine is usually based on calculated ‘cost-benefit analyses’ (Tartir 2019: 230). Hence, while donors provide grants without the expectation of repayment, they request certain other resources from recipients, including in the Palestinian case,1 which raises questions about the nature of gift exchange in aid relations. Palestinian beneficiaries also frequently talk about the ‘price of getting donor money’. Usually, this means that the recipient is expected to ‘pay a price’ by returning what has been received in an abstract or indirect way. A typical example concerns the perception that Palestinian recipients are expected to refrain from violence against Israel and fight for their self-determination in alternative ways in exchange for foreign aid that supports the Oslo Peace Process and the two-state solution.2 This was illustrated well by the words of the late Palestinian politician Hani al-Hasan, who explained his opposition to the peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993 as follows: ‘It is true that we will get a handful of billions of dollars and that we will build a power station in Gaza and a sewage system on the West Bank. But this is not what the PLO is about.’3 The exchange of resources – between recipients and donors – deserves attention, as it is mentioned frequently in oral communications well over the borders of the Middle East. Although the data on which this case study is built come from Palestine, the mechanism and theoretical argument can be applied in many other contexts as well. Both exchange and reciprocity are terms widely used in international relations, describing, among other things, diplomatic, trade or aid relations (Keohane 1996: 3). Baldwin defined social exchange in the field of IR as ‘mutually rewarding behavior’ yielding mutual gains and cooperation (Baldwin 1998: 140), whether between governmental or NGO actors. In a similar vein, reciprocity in IR denotes ‘an ongoing series of sequential actions’ that is never balanced out, though it continues ‘to entail mutual concessions within the context of shared commitments and values’ (Keohane 1996: 4). It can also be associated with ‘an appropriate standard of behaviour, which can produce cooperation not only among sovereign states’ (Keohane 1996: 1) but also between NGOs implementing aid projects (Stirrat and Henkel 1997). The mutually accepted values and behavioural norms imply that it is not overt coercion but rather a consensus promising gains and benefits, which leads to or maintains aid cooperation. Although reciprocity is widely discussed in economic anthropology, in IR and foreign aid relations, too, ‘return gifts’ – the resources expected by donors or offered by recipients, depending on the context – have received far less attention. Most scholars look at donor–recipient relations

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as ­unilateral transfers of resources not involving exchange, even when they analyse these relations within the framework offered by gift theories (Furia 2015; Hattori 2001, 2006; Kapoor 2008; Mawdsley 2012). However, return gifts, and hence resource exchange, exists even in aid relations, despite grants being provided without the obligation to return the aid in financial terms.4 The main objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that how NGO actors in Palestine perceive their own lifeworlds is not unique to the Middle East, by exploring the kinds of return gifts they deliver and how they become entangled in aid politics. While NGOs are obviously interested in funding from foreign sources, a majority see this very same donor community as complicit in the Israeli occupation (Karmi 2005; Murad 2014; Tartir and Seidel 2019: xvi). This chapter will describe how NGO recipients become interested in adopting certain international norms that are sometimes portrayed as global or Western and, simultaneously, in accepting the rules of the game in order to remain eligible for further income (aid) on the one hand and show the instrumentality of their ‘return gifts’ on the other. It builds on data collected in the Palestinian territories, but as the history of this chapter5 shows, the perceptions and findings are not unique to the Middle East. The remainder of this chapter proceeds in the following way. Based on the theoretical framework and methods presented in the next section, the main section starts by (i) introducing the concept of return gifts in contemporary aid relations and their instrumental role in maintaining aid inflows. It will be followed by a discussion of the constraints of such asymmetrical aid relationships – that is, by (ii) recalling the inability of NGO actors to change dominant power structures in the context of aid and politics, and (iii) exploring the dominance of procedures and expertise over politics. In the conclusion, I discuss the value of NGO cooperation and of the resources they supply to their donors regardless of geographical locations.

Theoretical Framework and Methods A vast literature has grown up scrutinizing foreign aid policies and practices in the fields of international development and humanitarian cooperation on various grounds and from various perspectives. Some authors apply the conceptual framework offered by gift exchange theories known from economic anthropology (Lévi-Strauss 1969; Mauss 2002 [1925]; Sahlins 1972) and explored by sociologists and philosophers (Derrida 1992; Hénaff 2010a, 2010b; Osteen 2002; Pyyhtinen 2014) to foreign aid

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relations (Eyben 2006; Furia 2015; Hattori 2001; Kapoor 2008: 76–94; Korf et al. 2010). By doing so, they highlight the ambiguous nature of donor– recipient relations on the one hand and the importance of these relations between the giver and the recipient with regard to the given object (the gift itself) on the other. Relations between donors and NGOs, the subject of this chapter, can be compared to gift-giving6 in as much as the donor/ giver is interested in dominating the recipient/givee in symbolic terms by providing unilateral transfers (Furia 2015; Hattori 2001 following Parry 1986). The aid relationship, however, also implies a concern for reciprocity being combined with a sort of demand, or expectation, that the favour will be returned. The characteristics of gift exchange allow us to understand foreign aid as an instrument of state power enabling donors to acquire recipients, official actors and implementing NGOs on the recipient side and to do things they would otherwise not necessarily do by wrapping up cooperation, as Hattori (2006) put it, ‘into gestures of generosity and gratitude’. In aid relations, reciprocity can take a variety of forms and is often expected even when the donor explicitly denies having any such expectations (Baldwin 1985: 141–42). Acknowledgement, recognition, gratitude or return gifts play a stabilizing role in human interactions by contributing to the maintenance of social bonds between the giver and the recipient. As formulated by Simmel (2004 [1908]: 80, 95) in The Philosophy of Money: Exchange is the purest and most developed kind of interaction, which shapes human life when it seeks to acquire substance and content. It is often overlooked how much what appears at first a one-sided activity is actually based upon reciprocity… Every interaction has to be regarded as an exchange: every conversation, every affection (even if it is rejected), every game, every glance at another person … The idea exists among many people that a gift should be accepted only if it can be reciprocated, that is, so to speak, subsequently acquired. This leads on directly to regular exchange when, as often occurs in the Orient, the seller gives the object to the buyer as a ‘present’, but woe to him if he does not make a corresponding present in exchange.

The concept of reciprocity can hardly be separated from that of exchange, yet they are not always identical. To highlight the differences between the two terms – reciprocity in gift exchange versus reciprocity in market exchange7 – it is worthwhile recalling how Chris Gregory (1982: 100–1) described and distinguished exchanged objects in discussing Marcel Mauss’s work: Commodity exchange is an exchange of alienable objects between people who are in a state of reciprocal independence that establishes a quantitative relationship between the objects exchanged … Gift exchange [however] is an exchange of

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inalienable objects between people who are in a state of reciprocal dependence that establishes a qualitative relationship. (my emphasis)

As argued earlier, commodity exchange, barter or monetary exchange concerns the relationship between the objects exchanged. Gift exchange, however, establishes mutually dependent relationships between the sides involved, even if the thing given is money. This mutually dependent relationship is very typical of donor–­recipient cooperation in the aid industry. Donors are interested in spending their money; recipients are interested in fundraising. A clear supply– demand logic applies that results in them doing business together – that is, ­cooperation for the sake of international development or because of humanitarian concerns. However, this cooperation does not mean that the parties are equal partners. What they exchange is of a different nature. Donors deliver aid, aid recipients deliver just causes, or more precisely, marketable causes, as well as the related documentation that justifies further aid and the donor’s presence (see Lauterbach in this volume). How this logic works will be illustrated by recalling how some Palestinian NGOs described their cooperation with their donors. The data and findings presented in this chapter were the results of an EU-funded Marie Curie research project8 (AIDINMENA) that explored how the events dubbed ‘the Arab Spring’ and its regional consequences have challenged American9 and European donors’ aid policies in relation to the Middle East, as well as tracking certain changes to their aid policies in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine (Paragi 2019a). The research focused on the exchange and reciprocity aspects of foreign aid, which is usually portrayed as a unilateral financial transfer – that is, as a grant that is provided by the donor to the recipient. To improve understanding of the ‘price of foreign aid’ in countries that are in close proximity to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict – namely Jordan, Egypt, Israel and Palestine – I studied some of the political dilemmas that are embodied in foreign aid (supporting stability vs. democracy) by applying the anthropological theory of gifts to contemporary donor–recipient relations in the Middle East. As mentioned already, the main theoretical argument that foreign aid is a contemporary gift, the main goal of which is not political or economic development but to maintain friendly relations between the donor and the recipient has been sporadically discussed (Eyben 2006; Furia 2015; Hattori 2001, 2006; Kapoor 2008; Mawdsley 2012; Stirrat and Henkel 1997). Inspired by these works, I also used gift theory to investigate how international social bonds between donors and recipients have been shaped by foreign aid and how social cohesion and collective iden-

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tity within the recipient society have been challenged by the very fact of accepting contemporary gifts from external actors. To capture and measure Palestinian perceptions of foreign assistance and to refine developing theories on the ‘price of foreign aid’ and the ‘gift exchange’ aspect, empirical data were collected in two main rounds of interviews (2010, 2015). In both years, the research and questionnaires were designed by me, and the interviews were conducted in Arabic by native Palestinian interviewers. They had experience of both qualitative and quantitative data collection, lived in Palestine, and worked at the same research institute as me (Fafo, Oslo). In those years, there were about three thousand civil society organizations operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,10 so the sample was not representative. Respondents were selected through the logic of having solid experience of the dynamics of foreign assistance channelled to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as confirmed by the interlocutors (2015). Being rooted in the region as far as possible was also important (2010), as was achieving a roughly equal representation of voices from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in both rounds (2010, 2015). The interviews were recorded, transcribed in Arabic and translated into English. Separating data collection (done by native Palestinians) from research design and data analysis (conducted by myself) resulted in better quality data – that is, franker discussions, as the interviewers and the interlocutors shared similar cultural backgrounds, spoke the same language and shared the sociopolitical contexts too. The first round of interviews involved twenty one in-depth individual and three mini-focus group interviews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in July and August 2010. The respondents were all men between thirty and sixty years old (most were close to fifty years old) with diverse occupational backgrounds and not necessarily working in the aid industry. Their places of residence and work were in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Gaza City. All the interviews were semi-structured, with a series of openended questions concentrating on three main areas: (a) basic concepts and emic interpretations of international assistance; (b) past and present experiences with foreign aid and future expectations regarding its role and impact; and (c) the perceived priorities of foreign assistance with reference to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Paragi 2012). The second round of interviews was conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from July 2015 to September 2015. These interviews aimed to explore emic perceptions of the nature of relations, bonds and ties between aid-receiving NGOs and their donors by means of qualitative methods.11 Building on earlier research mapping emic perceptions on foreign aid in Palestine, its core objective was to reveal the NGO leaders’ or founders’ personal feelings and human experiences associated with or

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stemming from their daily interactions between the recipients and their donors. Altogether, twenty two people affiliated with NGOs operating on the regional level were interviewed: nine female, thirteen male; twelve in the West Bank, ten in the Gaza Strip. They all had rich experience of working with various regional, national and international aid organizations over many years. All the interviews were semi-structured; the vast majority of the interviews were face to face (twenty), though two were conducted via email correspondence, as they did not have the opportunity to meet the Palestinian interviewers in person. The interviews complemented other methods, such as ongoing desk research and descriptive quantitative analyses of survey data, but they offered more interesting findings than any statistical data did thanks to the gradual use of grounded theory. Transcripts of the interviews were processed by means of manual content analysis in 2010 and by constant comparative method and grounded theory in 2015.12 Recalling Corbin and Strauss (2015: 66), analysing involves making interpretations and interpreting means by assigning meaning to raw data in the form of concepts. The latter implies that a concept (for example, sacrifice or conditionality), as well as the core category (‘return gift’ in my research), reflects the ‘researchers’ understanding of the meaning implicit in the words and actions of participants. Hence, I must emphasize that it was I, the researcher, who conceptualized informants’ experiences and perceptions by interpreting what they said. Before moving ahead, I must also emphasize that the Palestinians receive both humanitarian aid and development assistance, and many NGOs benefit from both. As for development, this requires some caution even in the West Bank, let alone the Gaza Strip. The most elementary facts on the ground (Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005) – the islandlike aspect of large Palestinian population centres separated by Jewish settlements and other Israeli-controlled areas; the lack of a continuous political, state-like area to develop; infrastructure and transportation benefiting Israeli settlers and excluding Palestinians – question the feasibility of any macro-level ‘development’. Humanitarian assistance has been channelled both on a permanent basis – mainly to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to provide services to refugees – and on a temporary basis in emergency situations. Examples include the second intifada, or the aftermath of Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip (2012, 2014). One of the strongest critiques of the provision of humanitarian aid to Palestine is that it makes donors complicit in the Israeli occupation and prevents a genuine deal emerging because of its prolonged, massive presence (Karmi 2005; Murad 2014). However, as donors are present with a mis-

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sion to pursue – keeping the two-state idea and the Palestinian statelike institution system alive in the West Bank, as well as mitigating much human suffering in the Gaza Strip – the politics of aid and donor ­decision-making deserve attention.

Main Findings and Their Discussion The data analysis provided a large pool of findings. As their gift theory-related elements were discussed in the light of different analyticalconceptual perspectives (return gifts, shame, power) and have been published in various earlier articles (Paragi 2016a, 2017, 2018), the nature of the resources delivered by aid recipients to their donors will be recalled below only briefly. This will be followed by showing how Palestinian NGO actors perceive the link between politics and aid, and how they navigate in administrative and procedural terms in order to comply with aid effectiveness procedures and the related requirements.

Return Gifts in Exchange for Foreign Aid A central component while developing grounded theory was the ‘aid for pain’, ‘pain for aid’ logic or, rather, interpretation (Paragi 2017). Perceptions from Palestine indicate that ‘return gifts’ do exist even in financially unreciprocated foreign aid relations. Recipients return contemporary gifts by providing special resources to the donor; for example, materials documenting images and stories of suffering, which underpin the constant resource exchange. The fact that interlocutors explained the necessity of reporting in a transparent and accountable manner raised the idea that the very function of documentation is about returning the ‘gifts’ on the one hand and inviting further aid on the other. When donors ‘see the suffering’ in Palestine, ‘they give aid’. They can see it by obtaining various documents, such as proposals, appeals, reports, photos, videos, etc. (see Ouédraogo in this volume). These resources can be offered ex ante (to justify in advance why aid is needed, in appeals) and can be sent ex post as a return gift (to prove that donor aid has been used effectively and purposefully and to ensure the next instalment) in the form of reports to the donor (Paragi 2017). The common purpose is to justify the need for aid by building on various emotions. Chief among them are compassion, pity, solidarity and a sense of justice on the donors’ side. The resource offered, the return gift, is used instrumentally for fund-raising purposes in the donor country, as illustrated by the following examples:13

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Many of our donor partners implemented big solidarity campaigns in their countries with us, we participated in these campaigns via Skype, we talked to the people there about our conflict, suffering and the destruction of Gaza.14 [A]fter we finished the implementation of the project we send the final report to our donor, attached with some photos or documented short film about the project, in most of the cases, we make a closing ceremony to the project, and we invite VIPs from the local community and media cover, we put a banner with the donor’s name.15 These reports documented the killing of children [and] the destruction of homes. For instance, during the last war much assistance was sent to Gaza by Arab and Islamic charities; the war sights influenced them and moved [their] humanitarian feelings.16

The resources offered in exchange for foreign aid – especially papers documenting threats stemming from instability, vulnerability, poverty, conflict or any misfortune and associated promises concerning stability – are instrumental in convincing the ‘men behind the curtain’ (Schuller 2018: 23) – namely the donors’ donors – and in influencing decisions about the volume and allocation of aid (‘gift’). These also involve the taxpayers, public opinion and elites behind donor governments and the private philanthropists behind civil society organizations and ­foundations  – basically anyone who is well-positioned enough to recognize the threats, dangers and risks described in resources provided by implementing actors. Even though on-site implementing partners are increasingly involved, the donors’ donors have a lot of power to decide and control which projects and topics to finance and to what extent. The cause–effect logic implies that the better the donors and the population in the donor countries are informed and the more visible the problem is, the more generous the donor contribution will be. The perceived motivations on the aid donors’ side explain the constructed nature of the exchanged resources, ‘painful stories’ included. This does not mean that the stories delivered are fabricated – it only means that, in competing for foreign funding, the aid-receiving NGOs are forced to frame their activities and stories in a manner that is most appreciated during the process of fundraising. Yet, this contemporary gift exchange is still asymmetric. Donors transfer money for particular projects and programmes, while aid recipients provide documentation for the very same projects as return gifts. However, only the former – that is, the money – is valued and can be further exchanged on the market. This asymmetry and the related financial dependency explain why NGOs actors are forced to let go of their political stance. The price of obtaining donor money will be discussed in the next section (Aid and Politics).

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The instrumentality of the ‘return gifts’ deserves attention because Mauss’s ‘essential discovery’ was that social bonds between donors and recipient NGOs are not built on pure self-interest embodied in a prompt monetary exchange, a contract or barter but ‘through obeying the obligation of rivalry through displayed generosity’.17 As long as project reports, proposals and appeals include properly documented stories of poverty, underdevelopment or conflict, the return gift will entail further engagement and cooperation. NGOs delivering the documentation either mobilize empathy on the donor side or contribute to the strengthening of their self-esteem or narcissistic feelings (Chouliariaki 2013). Beyond that, the submitted documents also need to comply with the principles of accountability and transparency and other professional requirements set by actors on the donor side (see Adesoji in this volume). Writing proposals and reports is a skill that can be learnt,18 as evaluators seek for a particular vocabulary, phrasing, language and style. Although stories of suffering and underdevelopment are not commercial resources to be exchanged for foreign aid, by delivering them, aid recipients can exert power even over their stronger donors, thus producing long-term engagement. The stories and images also convey messages of the instability or various other threats that should be counterbalanced by aid (Paragi 2019a). As Janeway argued theoretically in a different context, the powerful may also be afraid of the weak, provided that power is seen as a more complex concept than simple domination and subordination. This fear may be based on ‘the existence of some real capacity, which is in the possession of the weak’ (Janeway 1975: 105). In the Palestinian case, it is the weakness itself that can be understood as power – that is, the combination of helplessness and injustice, coupled with the threat of regional instability – the cause and consequence of which is violence, which has to be prevented. This is not necessarily to be understood as power over the donor but certainly as the power to secure further foreign aid. Donors may feel pressure from the public if they did not try to alleviate suffering, mitigate the effects of injustice or prevent the escalation of regional tensions by means of foreign aid in an effective way. Hence, even NGO actors have a degree of power, even if only limited, because they are the only actors who can deliver resources documenting poverty, suffering, instability or other threats to their donors. Donors value these resources, as we shall see in the conclusion, as they ensure that donors remain accountable to their own taxpayers or donors.

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Aid and Politics: Palestinian Perceptions of Power Structures in the Context of Development Assistance and the Principles of Aid Effectiveness Development assistance provided to support Palestinian economic and institutional development has never been free from tensions, as the entire rationale behind foreign assistance can be understood as motivated by political, security and power-related concerns (Brynen 2000; Le More 2008). The Oslo peace process and the related two-state solution were to be supported and kept alive by giving priority to Israeli security concerns over Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty. As one of our respondents19 put it, ‘a lot of donors come and work in Palestine, not because Palestine is in need of economic support [for development or political purposes], but because of the special conflict we have with Israelis.’ This ‘special conflict’ started with the active participation more than a hundred years ago of France and Great Britain as the holders of League of Nations mandates in the region or, as many saw it, colonial powers in the first part of the twentieth century. Hence, competitive interpretations of contemporary colonialism will be discussed first. This will be followed by recalling emic perceptions of donor behaviour, which is seen as complementing the Israeli occupation or, as it has more recently been called, settler-colonialism (Tartir and Seidel 2019).

Development as a Continuation of Colonialism The contemporary accusation of colonialism and its logic are multilayered in the Palestinian case. On the one hand, some authors interpret the Israeli settlement policy and occupation within a framework of colonialism (Hilal 2015; Lloyd 2012; Salamanca et al. 2012; Tartir and Seidel 2019; Wolfe 2006) or describe it as a prime example of ‘necropower’ (Mbembe 2003: 27–30). On the other hand, the way European and American donors ‘support the peace process’ and Palestinian institution-building also reminds many of postcolonial or neocolonial patterns that undermine Palestinian national objectives – that is, the struggle for national selfdetermination and a sovereign state:20 ‘Donors [on the one hand] are seen as neocolonial invaders that are insincere and damaging to Palestine.’ While donors wrap up their political objectives as if they were technical, procedural or administrative expectations, the political vision of the recipients is secondary to concerns over aid effectiveness. As Khalidi and Samour (2011) argue, the donor-supported Palestinian statehood-by-2011 programme, which is also framed as a success from neoliberal institutional perspectives (Persson 2013), nevertheless ‘redefines and diverts

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the Palestinian liberation struggle.’ As the authors claim, the ‘neoliberal “governance” under occupation, however “good”, cannot substitute for the broader struggle for national rights, nor ensure the Palestinian right to development’ (Khalidi and Samour 2011: 6). Public employees within the Palestinian government working with international donors ‘understand that the type of institution building they pursue cannot provide stimulus for growth on its own, and they are fully aware of the ongoing pace of colonization and Israel’s control of most of their critical economic decisions’ (Khalidi and Samour 2011: 10). These perceptions are shared by NGO actors too, as many of them acknowledge the price they have to pay for the neoliberal support and institution-building the Palestinians enjoy. Our respondents affiliated mostly with Palestinian NGOs also mentioned that their European and American donors are ‘knowledgeable enough’ about the macro-level aspects mentioned above – that is, the realities of the Israeli occupation or Zionist settler-colonialism. Donors are seen as actors manipulating relationships within the Palestinian NGO community between civil society actors and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA):21 [A] common denominator among all of them [on the very broad spectrum of donors] is the clear awareness of the power dynamics in the [aid] relationship. All donors are very aware of the extent of influence that they could impose due to the local NGOs need for their funds. This power is not always used; it can be neutralized or at least alleviated. Within this logic any political funding intended to draw restrictions to the NGO’s activities, and push us to work at a certain directions serving donor interests.22

As these citations illustrate, there is no actor on the recipient side, the Palestinian scene included, who would accept the argument that donors provide money purely for the sake of their Palestinian partners or their final beneficiaries. The diversity of donor policies, motives and interests has been widely discussed in the field of development studies (Hoebink and Stokke 2005; Lancaster 2007; Lumsdaine 1993; Morgenthau 1962, 1963). Beyond these theoretical perspectives, donors’ motives might be detected in the  Palestinian case too. Chief among the donors’ concerns seems to be the general depoliticization of projects supported by donor money and the expectation that the Palestinian partners, their employees, volunteers, activists and beneficiaries will refrain from violence in relation to Israeli actors in defending their own individual interests (Hilal 2015; Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005; Le More 2008; Tagdishi-Rad 2011; Tartir and Seidel 2019).

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Without an independent Palestinian state on the horizon, the entire logic of international assistance raises questions regarding its causes and consequences. Exploring endurance and the value of lives in Palestinian refugee camps, Feldman (2015) argues that humanitarianism often turns to endurance as a purpose: helping people cope better with circumstances they cannot change. Radical arguments go further by claiming that donors in effect support the Israeli occupation or, in terms the phenomenon is frequently referred to, colonization (Hever 2015; Karmi 2005; Murad 2014; Wildeman 2019). Although each stakeholder is aware of its influence and norm-based responsibility for the situation, the majority is reluctant to acknowledge it publicly because of their vested interests. With reference to human rights and humanitarian assistance, Palestinians are not simply critical of their domestic political scene and international interventionism, as an ethnographic study has shown, but cynical as well (Allen 2013). A common reason for cynicism in the humanitarian and development field is the fading vision of a two-state solution. While aid organizations produce a lot of papers and documents and contribute to policy debates on aid effectiveness, most Palestinians’ political concerns remain more or less the same, especially as the Israeli restrictions and settler presence seem to be stronger than ever. In fact, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state seems unattainable as parts of the West Bank will likely be annexed in the near future.

Perceptions of Donor Agendas and the Israeli Occupation The donors’ officially stated objectives23 and diverse interests became even more complex after the first donor conference that accompanied the Oslo Peace Process (Brynen 2000; Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005; Le More 2008), but they can be reduced to a single crucial motivation: they are not interested in retreating from Palestine by giving up their activities and presence there. As a consequence, donors do not support their partner’s known political aspirations – that is, national self-determination and establishing an independent Palestinian state. Instead, as one interlocutor explained, the donor tries to push you away from what you believe in because they have all this money they have to spend. This makes the Palestinian partners uneasy; it makes them feel dirty even. Some donors ask some NGOs to do their work the way they want while including some aspects that don’t relate to the goal specifically. NGOS are often forced to bend to these conditions to receive the funds. The donors sometimes do use their power to bend the will and the goals of the NGOs.24

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The underlying conditions, the lack of sovereignty and the Israeli settler and military presence under which the Palestinian NGOs aspire to achieve their goals are far from favourable. However, donors aspire to challenge these facts on the ground (Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005) by providing aid only for purposes that are either apolitical, depoliticized or overtly humanitarian. As a consequence, NGOs, being financially dependent on foreign resources, cannot but accept the rules of the game. NGO actors are expected to tell ‘stories’ donors want to hear. While the images and stories of suffering are interesting, the real reasons for it are much less so. In the Palestinian case, donor policies and practices seem to pay little attention to the real underlying reasons of the suffering,25 being keen instead on providing generous assistance to mitigate visible suffering that is more in line with their own self-interests or agendas. Altruism is one such explanation, but other motives can also be identified. As one of our informants noted, these political purposes could be … to split the Palestinian society in Gaza by providing services to a certain segment, also … to strengthen a particular institution affiliated with a political party in order to strengthen the role of this institution within the Palestinian community. Also, one of these political purposes could be to create leaders in the Palestinian society that are loyal to their donor partners (international agencies) [so that they] will be able to implement their own interests or goals … Some of the donors come to Gaza for humanitarian purposes and, as they say, in order to support the Palestinian people, but I think some of them have other purposes and suspicious political goals [that] do not serve the Palestinian interests, such as espionage operations, transferring reports about the community and the Palestinian factions. These reports go to their countries and possibly reach Israel. 26

There are many other interests that donors and development agencies are likely to have. This is indicated by the literature (Brynen 2000; Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005; Le More 2008; Tartir and Seigel 2019), as well as by our respondents. In effect – and this is my interpretation following Rist (2008) – poverty and social inequality, not to mention Israeli control over the Palestinian territories and population, are ‘opportunities’. They justify the presence of government donors and large international NGOs by increasing their visibility, offering jobs to international experts (see Schultz in this volume), activists and volunteers, maintaining global power asymmetries and mobilizing a lot of money. Palestinians perceive these explanatory factors as follows: Before the [intra-Palestinian, Hamas in Gaza Strip vs. Fatah in the West Bank] division (2007), our relation with the donors was a formal relation only … but after [it] … they are supervising and follow up the activities in the

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i­ mplemented projects on the ground by themselves. The donor’s representatives come to Gaza and see by their own eyes the activities.27 [T]here are new polices by some donor institutions; they implement the projects by themselves, without working with any local NGOs, or at least with any kind of partnership.28 High interest of some donor organizations to build joint projects by engaging several local partners of NGOs mostly [results] in negative competition among local NGOs seeking to win the fund for themselves, creating a humanitarian marketplace instead of entrenching multilevel governance and distributing the responsibility to all local actors.29

As the perceptions above indicate, Palestinian NGOs put themselves in a delicate position if they want to draw attention to their own agendas, political problems or national priorities. Indeed, Palestinian recipients widely perceived donor behaviour and activities as complicit in the Israeli occupation, which is also illustrated by the following two citations: The donors are forced to carry the price of the occupation instead of their initial pronounced objective. The donors didn’t play the role that they were intended to play, especially politically.30 In Palestine, many donors try to alleviate the effects of the occupation rather than to change the equation and the roots of the problem.31

All the economic and development assistance, development plans and implemented projects alike have to take into consideration the realities, among others, of the legacy of the Israeli occupation, Israeli security concerns and the legal–political framework provided for under the Oslo peace process. When the process ‘went wrong’ for reasons discussed in the literature (Rothstein, Ma’oz and Shikaki 2004; Thrall 2017), the donor community could not merely adjust to the changing realities if it wanted to remain a visible actor. The conditions under which the NGOs had to operate were seen as power(ful) structures restricting aid activities in general and NGO agendas in particular. Our respondents listed (1) the Israeli occupation, (2) the settlements, (3) the Palestinian political scene, (4) the Fatah–Hamas division in the Gaza Strip, (5) the humanitarian situation there, (6) the settler colonialism in the West Bank, (7) the ‘neoliberalism’ of donor policies and (8) the war in Syria as explanatory factors influencing foreign policy interests and donor activities (Paragi 2016a: 106–7). This indicates that the donor community could never just support institutional development or reduce poverty in Palestine, as they also have to adjust to the realities created by Israeli regulations and restrictions concerning their actions and move-

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ments.32 The only alternative is to give up their activities. But the logic of international development cooperation (Rist 2008) allows donors neither to withdraw nor induce major political changes that are contradictory to their interests. Instead, in the West Bank, as well as in most other developing countries, proving the effectiveness of aid is one of the main priorities of donors. It is challenging to find donors tackling the conflict by confronting Israeli policies or Israeli restrictive measures. This is supported by the fact that aid effectiveness principles include, among other things, accountability and transparency requiring proper documentation, proposals and reports elaborating on change indicators and progress toward benchmarks. These principles produce a lot of discussion of technical–procedural matters on both sides of the aid relationship, which draws the attention away from discussions of politics.

Perceptions of the Administrative and Procedural Structures that Underlie Development Programmes and Undermine Palestinian Political Goals Recalling the gift logic discussed earlier, donors not only expect ‘return gifts’; they even have the power to decide how such ‘gifts’ are returned. They demand such resources (proper documentation) to justify their ongoing involvement in supporting the two-state solution, institutional development or security cooperation between Israel and the PNA in the West Bank. As this section will show, implementing NGO actors cannot but deliver these gifts in rigorous formats, complying with donor-defined administrative standards and time frames. Thanks to this procedural logic, not only do returned resources become very obligatory but aid recipients also become interested in accepting, if not necessarily cheering, the rules of the game in the absence of alternative resources. These rules include, but are not limited to, accepting the merits of aid effectiveness principles, complying with the expected technical procedures in proposal writing and project implementation, and financial and other reporting requirements during the project cycle. Expectations are high, so donors are selective in choosing the right partners. Not all NGOs fit the donors’ purposes. For example, Islamic NGOs with questionable or unpredictable political views are usually not supported by official donors in OECD countries (Paragi 2018; Petersen 2016). Donors are also under Israeli pressure to distance themselves from Palestinian actors that openly encourage the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.33 Beyond such political considerations, donor selectivity is usually closely related to the performance and productivity of the Palestinian

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partners. Indeed, earlier research also shows that ‘the quality of aid is endogenous to [the] recipient country’s characteristics’, among other things (Wane 2004: ii). As Wane argued, ‘more able recipient countries [NGOs included] receive better aid packages, because they have the capacity to screen and select projects conducive to development.’ This argument is supported by my own qualitative data as well. Only if they possess the necessary organizational, managerial and individual skills, language included, may NGOs enjoy a certain freedom in making their own decisions (Paragi 2016a, 2017). Hence, donors prefer working with those NGOs that can comply with the effectiveness-related requirements: We are working with absolute transparency, everything is clear, so there is a confidence that exists between us and our donor partners, especially those donors who have funded us in several projects over the past years.34 Donors are not necessarily concerned with the suitability of the projects that they sponsor. They are concerned with the start and end dates of their projects … I learned how to address the donors with the language that most suits their sensitivities; politically, ideologically and socially. You know the vocabulary to use with [a given] donor.35

Our respondents also spoke openly about the importance of ‘organizational and managerial skills’, project administration included. Only those actors who can process these skills will enjoy the trust of their donors. But while the necessity of partnership and ownership are widely emphasized in donor vocabulary, perceptions in Palestine reveal a more complex picture. While some Palestinian NGOs perceive themselves as ‘true partners’, others emphasized rather that they themselves are instrumentalized by donors (Paragi 2017). Recalling arguments from this latter group: The decision-making centres are not inside Palestine. If a local NGO is forced to modify the terms of a project or programme, they are forced to go back to the funding source. … The local NGO can’t make decisions on its own.36 I don’t think that the local NGOs are partners, because they are not peers. Local NGOs don’t make the decision in the relationship. They receive their orders from their foreign donors. I think that this is the case in 90 per cent of such relationships.37

Those that perceived themselves as ‘equal partners’ were proud of their ability to deliver excellent work, from proposal writing to project implementation to report writing (Paragi 2017). Palestinian NGO actors cannot stay in the business unless they acquire expertise in project management and proposal writing, the organizational capacities needed for

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project implementation, and language skills, to be able to deliver good quality ‘return gifts’ to their donors. Theorizing modernity and ambivalence, Zygmunt Bauman has discussed the role of experts and expert knowledge in depth. In fact, writes Bauman (1991: 216), it is ‘the purpose-oriented actions [defined in project proposals or donor–recipient grant agreements in the context of foreign aid] that bears the responsibility for generating such aspects of the human condition [in Palestine too] as are experienced as uncomfortable, worrying and in need for rectifying.’38 Indeed, those of my respondents who were affiliated with Palestinian NGOs also emphasized not only the instrumentality of the imported or adapted skills, capacities and expert knowledge in fundraising but also the very fact that the source of this knowledge is the international donor, who is usually of European or American origin: [W]e have learned proposal and report writing; we had capacity-building projects. Personally, I learned a lot through my work for many years with those experts … we have learned from the donors the modern management methods.39 I have learned many things from them, such as discipline on respecting the time, organizing the agendas and many other useful professional things.40

In turn, certain ‘local knowledge’, like language skills, was appreciated by donors: [A] lot of donor organizations hire Arab nationals to work for them, who better understand the local partners and the political and social reality.41 A lot of international NGOs have, over the years, started depending on local workers. … the local worker is familiar with the values and the political and social context of the subject communities. We tend to need far less explanation when dealing with local workers.42

It is clear that some elements of ‘local knowledge’ are useful, while others should be changed (see Sundberg in this volume). Poor administrative skills or non-bureaucratic ways of problem-solving are themselves problems to be tackled by actors in the aid industry. But as Bauman also says (1991: 216), ‘chasing a specific remedy for a specific inconvenience, the [foreign] expert-promoted knowledge is bound to throw out of balance both the system-like environment of action, and the relations between the actors themselves.’ The citations below referring to foreign donors undermining Palestinian traditions of gift-giving illustrate the merits of the argument that external knowledge and expertise, or ‘the spiritual essence’, following Mauss, may become part of the problem.

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Accepting that gifts are always received with a ‘burden attached’ (Mauss 2002 [1925]: 53), external donations may indeed have an adverse effect on mechanisms of social solidarity in Palestine: Close relationships [between the foreign donor and the recipient] are very important. The donors know and seek this. I think a certain level of comfort develops between donors and their partners with whom they have had previous success. This may lead to the exclusion of other local NGOs that may be more worthy. 43 International donor presence discourages private local donors from contributing to local NGOs. 44

The reason is not simply foreign money crowding out potential domestic resources. There is a ‘spirit’ present in international resources that is perceived as being more useful in accessing international funds in the aid industry than the strengthening of certain Palestinian values and solidarity mechanisms, not to mention the national-political aspirations for Palestinian independence. If understood as a continuation of colonialism, following post-development authors, development and the expert knowledge it comes with is the only legitimate form of enacting power over people; intervening in lives and having economic and political influence strengthens the donors’ power in the world. Recalling Bauman again, ‘access of expertise to the life-worlds [sic] of its clients (and vice versa) is mediated by the market. Expert services offered … in the wrapping of consumer goods appear in the modern world primarily as commodities’ (Bauman 1991: 220). The Palestinian case supports this theoretical argument, and not simply at the level of neoliberal donor policies. Right-wing Israeli governments, led mostly by Benjamin Netanyahu (1996–99, 2009–2013, 2015–present) in the past two decades, have always tried to offer economic benefits. For example, they grant job opportunities and work permits for jobs in Israel or on Israeli settlements and issue VIP cards to Palestinian businessmen and officers.45 This is a means of rewarding ‘good’ behaviour – that is, non-violence and participation either in peaceful trade relations or security cooperation with Israel (Ferziger and Wainer 2017; MFA 2010). From critical, international and Palestinian perspectives, Israeli permissions and donor money somehow complement each other because both expect cooperative behaviour and professionally reliable cooperation from Palestinians without offering the realization of the independent Palestinian state. In this context, one respondent in the Gaza Strip recalled a case where he asked one of our donors, ‘Thank you for feeding our stomach, but what about our minds?’46

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Conclusion: The Value of Return Gifts to Donors The main purpose of this chapter has been to demonstrate that generous foreign aid transfers are rarely unilateral, as recipients also deliver valuable resources to their donors. Funding actors and donors honour these gifts because aid organizations are often motivated by the same non-altruistic incentives that affect other organizations, as demonstrated by a case study in Rwanda (Rieff 2002: 187). Accepting that actors in the aid industry act rationally in fear of losing their ‘market share’ regardless of geographical location, they will easily rationalize their presence and activity on both ethical and practical grounds at least as much in Palestine as in Africa (Lischer 2003: 106). Having explored the relatedness of aid and politics, this study also showed how compliance with aid effectiveness principles and related procedural-administrative requirements set by the donors divert attention away from political concerns. The ‘pain for aid’ logic – that is, sharing stories of suffering and underdevelopment – could be understood as an alternative means to return aid, as it has significant value to the donors. Impressive amounts of money are exchanged for resources documenting images and stories of suffering and poverty and hence development needs and opportunities. These resources are valuable to the donors, whether they are public agencies or NGOs themselves, because they can account for the money they have already spent and can justify new projects and new money. This contemporary gift exchange can be understood neither as equal nor as symmetric when we look at the value of the resources exchanged in financial terms. However, the actors involved may ascribe quite a high value to them. As a matter of fact, Palestinian respondents, who were content with their relations with their donors, were indeed aware of the ‘power’ stemming from the value and quality of their work: … We implement the projects in a way that our donors like very much: we send the reports with photos and documented films for the activities, together with the financial report and vouchers. … Our donors like these documents and use them to fetch more funding for us and for other associations. … Our donors are pleased by our way of dealing; we deal with them as partners and not as a ‘donor versus recipient’ [relationship] only. … In many cases they ask us to send proposals to get [further] funding from them. … We make the decisions together.

Hence, as demonstrated in this chapter, allegedly weak aid recipients may also exert some power over their strong donors as long as they deliver the expected resources in a reliable manner. Thus, Palestinian

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NGOs take part in decision-making processes and may have some influence on how the money is spent provided they prove their competence in increasing aid effectiveness: If [Palestinian NGOs] allow the donors to influence their policies, strategies and decisions, they lose all ability to manoeuver. Donors will always want to interfere. They will always want to get most of the decision-making discretion because they provide the funds. In our organization, we don’t allow them … The only way for this to work is we constantly prove that our professionalism and dedication can always give us access to new funding and new donors.47 The goals behind our work and the nature of their relationship with us prove not only their professionalism and commitment but also their investment in the relationship … I think that I am absolutely a part of the decision-making process. I fill the application, and I assess what is needed in a certain project … I do not feel that the donors I am working and cooperating with are giving orders; sometimes I feel we are one team.48

The continuous cycle of resource exchange, composed of aid and contemporary ‘return gifts’, strengthens and maintains friendly relations, thus producing or imitating a sense of partnership between donor and recipient. Recipients, however, are expected to exhibit expertise and professionalism coupled with a commitment towards aid effectiveness principles and administrative assignments, and not necessarily a dedication to their own political vision. Contrary to their declared objectives, donors were perceived as being uninterested in the latter and much more concerned with the former. The price the Palestinian partners have to pay for donor money is accepting the rules of the game, not fighting for Palestinian self-determination by any means, giving up violence and being grateful for the money they receive. A related question, of course, refers to the ‘spirit’ conveyed by donor money. In light of Mauss’s claim that there is a magical force in the given thing, Marcel Hénaff (2010b: 126) argued that the implication of the donor in the thing given involves ‘a transfer of soul and of substantial presence’: The entire network of gift exchange consists on the fact that everyone must place something of himself at risk outside of his own place and receive something from others within its own space. (Emphasis in original)

There is not only money, but ideas, promises and illusions travelling back and forth in aid relations. The more the Palestinians receive by giving up violence against Israel and embracing peaceful adherence to Israeli measures, the more – it is promised – they will benefit from the peace process and related donor generosity by enjoying the so-called peace dividend (Peres 1993; Plaut 1997).

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But the resources exchanged can and should be acknowledged too: recipients living in either the Middle East or Africa also deliver the (threat of) instability, the (promise of) security and (images and stories of) underdevelopment, poverty and conflict-related experiences. If foreign aid, especially development assistance, aspires to transform the recipient societies in political, economic and social terms, actors in the recipient states aim to increase the amounts of foreign aid inflows for the constant promise of that transformation by delivering resources they uniquely possess. Beata Paragi graduated as an economist and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (2008). She works as an associate professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest. She was a visiting research fellow at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and a Marie Curie fellow at Fafo Research Foundation (Oslo). Her monograph Foreign Aid in the Middle East: In Search of Peace and Democracy (2019) was published with Bloomsbury. Her current research interest concerns privacy and related data protection in development; a revised article (Beata Paragi, ‘Digital4development? European Data Protection in the Global South’) was published by Third World Quarterly (2020), DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1811961.

Notes  1. There have been instances of concessional loans in Palestine too, but this has never been a typical form of assistance, and NGOs, the main actors in this chapter, never had to repay what they had received.  2. There is not enough space here to discuss the political effectiveness of violent measures of resistance pursued by actors in the Palestinian liberation movement (typical of the 1960s to the 1970s, the first intifada years 1988–1991 and second intifada years 2000–2005) versus non-violent ones (more visible since the 1990s). Neither has taken the Palestinians really close to the establishment of the independent Palestinian state, but non-violence has been honoured by certain Israeli actors and international donors.  3. See Hani al-Hasan, ‘Opposition to the Israel-PLO Accord’ (interview with Mideast Mirror, 9 October 1993), cited in Laqueur and Rubin (2001: 437–38).  4. The digital dimension of aid implementation (digital humanitarianism) is not a theme of this chapter, but it is worthwhile mentioning Sandvik (2019) in this connection. Following Mauss, ‘personal data’ may also be seen as return gifts benefiting the donors. As Sandvik has argued, among others, ‘digital humanitarian goods’ represent a new form of ‘gifting’ from beneficiaries to humanitarian actors and their partners.  5. The editors of this book are mainly doing research on Francophone West Africa at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. They were in the middle of organizing an academic event in 2017 when they came across my article published in Current Anthropology and found it inspiring enough (even if the paper is built on data collected in a different political-geographical context, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) to invite me to present the main argument. To avoid unnecessary duplication, this chapter attempts to

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 6.

 7.

 8.  9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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broaden the argument by interpreting the essence of return gifts not only at the mesolevel (that of the NGO) but also beyond it. The gift analogy rests on an acknowledgement that, just like the archaic gift, modern foreign aid is also ‘simultaneously and at once’ ‘both peace and war, both solidarity and strife, both alliance and animosity’ (Pyyhtinen 2014: 63). Neither concept has only the positive connotations of altruism, generosity, solidarity and charity, as many believe; both make it possible to express opposition without resorting to violence. In market exchange transactions nothing is for free – that is, a commodity always has a price that is known to both the seller and the buyer. In social exchange, the actors are aware of their moral obligation to ‘repay’ – return or reciprocate – what was given to them ‘for free’ without an explicitly set price. The phenomenon of this way of ‘trading’ is known as the principle, norm or rule of reciprocity. The final report summary (AIDINMENA, Foreign aid and stability in the Middle East) from 2016 is available at: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/108616/reporting/en. The US and Canada. For facts about Palestinian civil society, see: http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/pal​ estine.html and Jamal (2007). The NGO leaders we interviewed worked either in the field of humanitarian aid (mostly in the Gaza Strip), or implemented development projects (in the West Bank). A few of them were involved in both areas, and one actor claimed a watchdog role (Aid Watch Palestine). For their profiles, see the attached tables. The term ‘donor’ denotes those actors who provided assistance to them either as a result of fundraising activities or voluntarily. They might be government actors from OECD DAC countries (for example, the EU and its member states, development agencies, municipalities), international NGOs and even private actors. We did not ask for any detailed lists containing the names of former or active donors during the interviews, but some of them were named or referred to as an example by the interlocutors to underline their argument. For a detailed discussion of data collection, analysis and related ethical and methodological dilemmas, see Paragi (2019b). Some of the quotes citied in this chapter were used in some of my other publications. For the sake of consistency, I used the original English translation of the interview transcripts, even if they might contain some grammatical errors. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 10 August 2015 (GS5). Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza Strip, 16 August 2015 (GS7). Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Biet Lahia, 13 September 2015 (GS9). See Caille (n.d). There are professional organizations that specialize in successful proposal writing and project management and that sell their expert knowledge and services to less experienced actors in both donor and recipient countries. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Hebron, 28 July 2015 (WB3). Interview with a Palestinian NGO founder, Ramallah, 1 September 2015 (WB 10). Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 10 August 2015 (WB 7). Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Khan Younis, 5 August 2015 (GS 3). In October 1993, the donor community set two main goals: (1) to support the peace process and the negotiations for the sake of the final settlement during the transitional period; (2) to channel substantial resources to meet the short- and long-term development needs of Palestinians. The underlying assumption was that Palestinians will be more moderate and ready to accept further compromises if they recognize a peace dividend in the form of better living standards. Co-Sponsors Summary, Summary of Co-Sponsors at the Conference to Support Middle East Peace, Washington, 1 October 1993. Interview with a Palestinian NGO founder, Ramallah, 1 September 2015 (WB 10).

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25. Among these reasons, one may list Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods, trade included; the complicated legal jurisdiction protecting Israeli citizens; the consequences of radical settlers’ behaviour for Palestinians in the West Bank; and the blockade around the Gaza Strip. Others argue further that some Palestinian actors should also be held responsible – those that promote violence or radical and terrorist activities not only against Israeli citizens but also against Palestinians favouring negotiations with Israel, which undermines the Palestinian unity needed to negotiate with Israel effectively. 26. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 26 June 2015 (GS1). 27. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Khan Younis, 5 August 2015 (GS3). 28. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 11 August 2015 (GS6). While this opinion seems to be at odds with recent trends (involving Palestinian actors more), the interview was conducted in 2015, a year after the war in Gaza, which partially explains this perception. 29. Interview with a Palestinian NGO worker, Bethlehem, October 2015 (WB12). 30. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 10 August 2015 (WB 7). 31. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 1 September 2015 (WB 9). 32. Not only do non-governmental organizations in Palestine, Israel and the donor countries document these, the World Bank and the UN OCHA have also been recording the restrictive Israeli measures for about two decades. The Palestinian economy that is supposed to be developed has long suffered from Israeli restrictions on movement, access and trade. For details, see: https://www.ochaopt.org/ and Laursen and Nur (2017). 33. See, for example, a recent report by the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry (2019). 34. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza Strip, 16 August 2015 (GS7). 35. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Hebron, 28 July 2015 (WB3). 36. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 10 August 2015 (WB 8). 37. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 10 August 2015 (GS5). 38. One such ‘uncomfortable and worrying’ example is the ‘violent Palestinian behaviour’ that threatens the security of Israelis and their properties. This ‘inconvenience’ is defined as a problem by Israel and is pretty much tackled by security expertise shared with the Palestinian security forces, who cooperate with their Israeli partners, and by American military personnel (at least as of January 2019). US assistance for security purposes also qualifies as ODA (Official Development Assistance) but is rarely implemented by NGOs. For more on this aspect, see Thrall (2017). 39. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 10 August 2015 (GS5). 40. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 26 June 2015 (GS1). 41. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Nablus, 6 August 2015 (WB5). 42. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 10 August 2015 (WB 7). 43. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Ramallah, 10 August 2015 (WB 8). 44. Interview with a Palestinian NGO founder, Ramallah, 1 September 2015 (WB 10). 45. VIP cards issued by Israel, for example, allow businessmen and senior officials in the PA, including the Palestinian security services, to travel across Israel with fewer restrictions. 46. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Gaza City, 3 August 2015 (GS2). 47. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Bethlehem, 30 July 2015 (WB4). 48. Interview with a Palestinian NGO leader, Nablus, 6 August 2015 (WB6).

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References Allen, L. 2013. The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Andersen, M.B., D. Brown and I. Jean. 2012. Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid. CDA Collaborative Learning Projects. Retrieved 16 March 2017 from https://www.cdacollaborative.org/wp-content/ uploads/2016/01/Time-to-Listen-Hearing-People-on-the-Receiving-End-ofInternational-Aid.pdf. Baldwin, D.A. 1985. Economic Statecraft. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ______. 1998. ‘Exchange Theory and International Relations’, International Negotiation 3(2): 139–49. Bauman, Z. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Ithaca: Polity Press. Brynen, R. 2000. A Very Political Economy: Peacebuilding and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza. Washington: United States Institute of Peace. Caille, A. n.d. ‘Anti-utilitarianism, Economics and the Gift-Paradigm’. Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales. Retrieved 16 March 2016 from http://www.revuedumauss.com.fr/media/ACstake.pdf. Chouliaraki, L. 2013. The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of PostHumanitarianism. London: Polity. Corbin, J., and A. Strauss. 2015. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Derrida, J. 1992. The Given Time. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Eyben, R. (ed.) 2006. Relationships for Aid. London: Earthscan. Feldman, I. 2015. ‘Looking for Humanitarian Purpose: Endurance and the Value of Lives in a Palestinian Refugee Camp’, Public Culture 27(3): 427–47. Ferziger, J., and D. Wainer. 2017. ‘Israel Takes Steps to Help Palestinian Economy as Trump Arrives’, Bloomberg. Retrieved 21 May 2017 from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-21/ netanyahu-cabinet-debates-peace-incentive-offer-to-palestinians. Furia, A. 2015. The Foreign Aid Regime: Gift-Giving, States and Global Dis/Order. London: Palgrave. Greenberg, M.S. 1980. ‘A Theory of Indebtedness’, in K.J. Gergen (ed.), Social Exchange. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 3–26. Gregory, C. 1982. Gifts and Commodities. London and New York: Academic Press. Gouldner, A.W. 1960. ‘The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement’, American Sociological Review 25(2): 161–78. Hattori, T. 2001. ‘Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid’, Review of International Political Economy 8 (4): 633–60. ______. 2003. ‘Giving as a Mechanism of Consent: International Aid, Organizations and the Ethical Hegemony of Capitalism’, International Relations 17(2): 153–73. ______. 2006. ‘A Critical Naturalist Approach to Power and Hegemony: Analyzing Giving Practices’, in M. Haugaard and H.H. Lentner (eds), Hegemony and Power: Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hénaff, M. 2010a. ‘I/You: Reciprocity, Gift-Giving and the Third Party’, META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 2(1): 57–83. ______. 2010b. The Price of Truth: Gift, Money and Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hever, S. 2015. ‘How Much International Aid to Palestinians Ends Up in the Israeli Economy?’ Aid Watch Palestine. Retrieved 16 September 2015 from http://www.shirhever.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ InternationalAidToPalestiniansFeedsTheIsraeliEconomy.pdf. Hilal, J. 2015. ‘Rethinking Palestine: Settler-Colonialism, Neo-liberalism and Individualism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip’, Contemporary Arab Affairs 8: 351–62. Hoebink, P., and O. Stokke (ed.). 2005. Perspectives on European Development Cooperation: Policy and Performance of Individual Donor Countries and the EU. London: Routledge. Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry. 2019. The Money Trail: European Union Financing of Organizations Promoting Boycotts against the State of Israel. 2nd edition. Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Ministry. Retrieved 20 January 2021 from https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/nativ010819/en/strategic_ affairs_nativPDFeng010819.pdf. Jamal, A. 2007. Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Janeway, E. 1975. ‘On the Power of the Weak’, Signs 1(1): 103–8. Kapoor, I. 2008. The Postcolonial Politics of Development. London: Routledge. Karmi, G. 2005. ‘With No Palestinian State in Sight, Aid Becomes an Adjunct to Occupation’, The Guardian, 31 December 2005. Keating, M., A. Le More and R. Lowe (eds). 2005. Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground. London: RIIA. Keohane, R. 1996. ‘Reciprocity in International Relations’, International Organization 40(1): 1–27. Khalidi, R., and S. Samour. 2011. ‘Neoliberalism as Liberation: The Statehood Program and the Remaking of the Palestinian National Movement’, Journal of Palestine Studies 40(2): 6–25. Korf, B. et al. 2010. ‘The Gift of Disaster: The Commodification of Good Intentions in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka’, Disasters 34: 60–77. Lancaster, C. 2007. Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laqueur, W., and B. Rubin (eds). 2001. The Israel–Arab Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Laursen, T.B., and N.E. Nur. 2017. ‘Prospects for Growth and Jobs in the Palestinian Economy: A General Equilibrium Analysis’. The World Bank. Retrieved 30 January 2019 from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/952571511351839375/Prospects-for-growth-and-jobs-in-the-Palestinianeconomy-a-general-equilibrium-analysis. Le More, A. 2008. International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt, Wasted Money. London: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon.

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Lischer, S.K. 2003. ‘Collateral Damage: Humanitarian Assistance as a Cause of Conflict’, International Security 28(1): 79–109. Lloyd, D. 2012. ‘Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Palestine/Israel’, Settler Colonial Studies 2(1): 59–80. Lumsdaine, D. 1993. Moral Vision in International Politics 1948–1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mauss, M. (with an introduction by Mary Douglas). 2002 [1925]. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. Mawdsley, E. 2012. ‘The Changing Geographies of Foreign Aid and Development Cooperation: Contributions from Gift Theory’, Transactions 37: 256–72. Mbembe, A. 2003. ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture 15(1): 11–40. MFA. 2010. Measures Taken by Israel in Support of Developing the Palestinian Economy, the Socio-economic Structure, and the Security Reforms. Report of the Government of Israel to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee April 2010. Retrieved 30 January 2018 from https://mfa.gov.il/MFA_Graphics/MFA%20Gallery/ Documents/donors-april2010.pdf. Morgenthau, H. 1962. ‘A Political Theory of Foreign Aid’, American Political Science Review 52(2): 301–9. ______. 1963. ‘Preface to a Political Theory of Foreign Aid’, in R.H. Goldwin (ed.), Why Foreign Aid? Chicago: Rand McNally, pp. 70–89. Murad, N. 2014. ‘Donor Complicity in Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights’, Al Shabaka Policy Brief, Ramallah. Osteen, M. (ed.). 2002. The Question of the Gift: Essays across Disciplines. New York: Routledge. Paragi, B. 2012. ‘First Impressions and Perceived Roles: Palestinian Perceptions on Foreign Aid’, Society and Economy 35(3): 389–410. ______. 2016a. ‘Hegemonic Solidarity? Palestinian NGO Perceptions on Power and Cooperation with Their Donors’, Alternatives 41: 98–115. ______. 2016b. ‘Foreign Aid, International Social Exchange and Reciprocity in the Middle East’, in N. Underhill and I. El-Anis (eds), Regional Integration and National Disintegration in the Post-Arab Spring Middle East. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 72–97. ______. 2017. ‘Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice and Reciprocity from the Perspective of NGOs’, Current Anthropology 58: 317–39. ______. 2018. ‘Cultures of (Dis)Trust: Shame and Solidarity from Recipient NGO Perspectives’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 21: 486–504. ______. 2019a. Foreign Aid in the Middle East: In Search of Peace, Stability and Democracy. London: I.B. Tauris. ______. 2019b. ‘Matching Empirical Data with Theories in Interdisciplinary Research Projects’, SAGE Research Methods Case Studies. Parry, J. 1986, ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the “Indian Gift”’, Man 21 (3): 463–6. Peres, S. 1993. The New Middle East. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Persson, A. 2013. ‘Defining, Securing and Building a Just Peace: The EU and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, Ph.D. dissertation. Lund: Lund University.

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Petersen, M.J. 2016. For Humanity of for the Umma? Aid and Islam in Transnational Muslim NGOs. London: Hurst. Plaut, S. 1997. ‘Has Oslo Brought a Peace Dividend?’ Middle East Quarterly 4(2): 15–21. Pyyhtinen, O. 2014. The Gift and Its Paradoxes: Beyond Mauss. Surrey: Ashgate. Rieff, D. 2002. A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rist, G. 2008. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. Rothstein, R., M. Ma’oz and K. Shikaki (eds). 2004. The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Oslo and the Lessons of Failure: Perspectives, Predicaments, Prospects. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press. Sahlins, M. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine Transaction. Salamanca, O.J. et al. 2012. ‘Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies 2(1): 1–8. Sandvik, K. 2019. ‘Making Wearables in Aid’, Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 1(3): 33–41. Schuller, M. 2018. ‘Introduction Part I: Dilemmas of Dual Roles, Studying NGOs, and Donor-Driven “Democracy”’, in A. Lashaw, C. Vannier and S. Sampson (eds), Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 21–25. Simmel, G. 1965. ‘The Poor’, Social Problems 13(2): 118–40. ______. 2004 [1908]. The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge. Stirrat, R.L., and H. Henkel. 1997. ‘The Development Gift: The Problem of Reciprocity in the NGO World’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 55(4): 66–80. Tagdishi-Rad, S. 2011. The Political Economy of Aid in Palestine: Relief from Conflict or Development Delayed? London: Routledge. Tartir, A. 2019. ‘Securizing Peace: The EU’s Aiding and Abetting Authoritarianism’, in A. Tartir and T. Seidel (eds), Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance. Palgrave MacMillan – Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 227–48. Tartir, A., and T. Seidel (eds). 2019. Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance. Palgrave MacMillan – Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Thrall, N. 2017. The Only Language They Understand. New York: Metropolitan Books. Wane, W. 2004. ‘The Quality of Foreign Aid: Country Selectivity or Donors Incentives?’ Policy Research Working Paper. The World Bank. Retrieved 18 November 2018 from http:// documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/171951468765313837/ The-quality-of-foreign-aid-country-selectivity-or-donors-incentives. Wildeman, J. 2019. ‘Neoliberalism as Aid for the Settler Colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories after Oslo’, in A. Tartir and T. Seidel (eds), Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance. Palgrave MacMillan – Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 153–74. Wolfe, P. 2006. ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8(4): 387–409.

Part III

Memories and History

Chapter 9

Negotiating Tightropes

A Historical Appraisal of NGOs and Their Adaptability in Nigeria’s Changing Political Space Abimbola O. Adesoji

Background While both scholars of, and active participants in, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have attributed the emergence of this third sector to the struggle to democratize governance in Africa (Obadare 2014: 2; Willems 2014: 46–47), it is the subjectivization of Africans in their own land and their efforts to negotiate a just and equitable society by reclaiming their destiny from their oppressors that has given rise to these experiences (Mamdani 1996: 19). As Obadare argues, the exploration of ‘non-traditional’ territories and the deployment of NGO language have opened up new modes, spaces and perspectives of subjectivity and resistance. In this chapter, I explore the thesis that the early resistance against the imposition and establishment of colonial rule by the African elite organized under different banners, especially those that were better structured and organized, represented the birth of proto-NGOs in Africa. This was particularly true and representative of the Nigerian experience of colonialism. The agency of resistance created by various Nigerian groups fits well into what modern scholars refer to as NGOs, albeit not in the strict sense of the normative and philosophical construct of the concept, which is based in European history. Many of these agencies were created to counter European notions of superiority that became the justification for colonization. Although Nigeria was pacified with machine guns, the early resistance offered by these proto-nationalist groups, even after the formal imposition of colonial rule, provided the basis for a more

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­ rganized and intellectual form of resistance, in which European agencies o and institutions were used to combat colonial philosophies, especially from the 1920s (Ekechi 2002: 41–45). In a similar vein, the emergence of African-initiated churches and their resistance to the European mission churches also represented an early form of the third sector – that is, of proto-NGOs – especially when it is considered that many people sought solace in the alternatives provided by these churches’ doctrines and practices. By examining how Nigerians created a parallel religious movement like the indigenous churches, we become open to imagining their thinking, first as a means of expression and of freedom and as an alternative to the European churches, which were hardly separable from the colonial government; and secondly as a way to plug the holes left by the welfare failures of that government. In this context, they created schools and other necessities, which although not up to European standards were sufficient for their aspirations. It was not always the case that missionaries and colonizers shared entirely the same objectives, especially after the First World War. Missionaries began to see the colonial government as a rival, while the colonial government often imposed punitive policies on the missions for their failure to churn out loyal colonial subjects (Tishken 2002: 162–80). Whether it was the early resistance groups or the African independent churches, one thing they had in common – which is also characteristic of modern NGOs – was their recognition of the realities in which they were operating, which actually spurred their emergence at the outset. Their realization of the limitations imposed on the people, characterized by their inability to participate in what was meant to benefit them somehow, informed the emergence of these proto-NGOs. Thus, far from being detached from the social and political realities within which they operated, their emergence and activities were products of what they were part of. What they actually came up with was the outcome of continued interactions and negotiations, sometimes moderated by higher ‘outside’ forces or borne out of the need to recognize their peculiar disappointment or frustrations. Situated in the lifeworlds of colonized Nigerians, therefore, the early resistance groups shared in their limitations and disappointment just as the indigenous church did and sought to provide alternatives for them. The term ‘proto-NGO’ in this context connotes those groups that were not NGOs in terms of organization, structure, functions and the environment in which they operated but which, by reason of these same traits, fitted into the NGO mould. Although they could fit loosely into other sorts of groups, given the existence of a wide range of organizations, their categorization as proto-NGOs derives from the fact that, in broad

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terms, their nature, features and functions constituted the earliest type of group to play the role of modern NGOs. How they are labelled becomes all the more pertinent given their resistance to the systems then operating and their persistence in making claims against them and demanding accountability. By exploring these groups, my aim is to write into the dominant narratives the often overlooked experiences and histories of people on the margins and their efforts to affect the society around them. Admittedly, there is no shortage of scholarly works on NGOs and civil society in Nigeria, but this chapter will contribute to a growing body of literature exploring seemingly radical groups, cross-border and diasporic groups and other indigenous associations that were active in development work in Nigeria at different times in the past (Brass 2016; Coleman 1958; Dukor 2003; Mimiko 1995; Momoh 1995). Essentially, their vigour and the dispensation in which they operated notwithstanding, these groups had to work in increasingly restrictive environments, which limited their effectiveness. By means of a critical analysis of newspaper articles and secondary literature, this study explores why NGOs remain vigorous despite some slowing down of their activities. This is further aided by my reflections on governance and government–­ citizen relations going back to my days as a young undergraduate in the University in the late 1980s. Thus, my experiences, my formal and informal discussions and my having witnessed the excesses and neglect of military government – often justified by might – have formed part of a memory that has constantly been evoked, given the progressive degeneration of governance and the emergence of interests and actors seeking to fill the void.

Civil Society and Accountability: Nature, Forms and Contexts What was evident in the growth of modern civilization among Nigerians, particularly in the south, and especially among the Yoruba, was their early access to formal education – characterized by deep philosophical orientations and critical thinking – and to Christianity, with which they later had issues, leading to the emergence of indigenous churches. Their supposedly heathen beliefs and practices before their embrace of Christianity were guided by ethics that emphasized accountability or were meant to promote it. These included ties of kinship, oath-taking, traditional sanctions, cultic practices and wise sayings, all of which emphasize harmonious communal living based on sincerity, being rewarded for chastity and virtue, and being punished for wrongdoing (Delano 1973; Fadipe 1970: 118–34, 243–48, 279). These practices through which

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people were made accountable to others gave rise to the resistance to the foreign mission churches and the claims made against them. Given the strong links between the mission churches and the foreign power, which administered the Nigerian colonial state, the perception of the indigenous church was that it was calling the state to account, akin to what civil society does in present-day Nigeria. The emergence of transborder, diasporic groups, including during the era of nationalism in Nigeria, is another example of civil society holding people to account, not by demanding accountability as such, but by providing platforms for people to come together, express their thoughts and reach out to a wider audience with a view to exercising influence in moulding opinion. Viewed from a general perspective, therefore, civil society is defined as ‘society considered as a community of citizens linked by common interests and collective activity’ and as ‘all of the institutions, voluntary organizations and corporate bodies that are less than the state but greater than the family’. More specifically, they are seen as ‘voluntary, non-political social organizations that strengthen democracy, preventing a tyranny of the majority’ (Keane 2010; Stefan 2008). Essentially, given the variation in its structure and functions, both spatially and temporally, civil society is capable of diverse definitions and wide interpretations. The position of Keane (2010: 461–64) is relevant here: Contrasted with government, civil society meant a realm of social life – market exchanges, charitable groups, clubs and voluntary associations, independent churches and publishing houses – institutionally separated from territorial state institutions. This is the sense in which civil society is still understood today: it is a term that describes and anticipates a complex and dynamic ensemble of legally protected nongovernmental institutions that tend to be nonviolent, self-organizing, self-reflexive, and permanently in tension, both with each other and with the governmental institutions that ‘frame’, constrict and enable their activities.

Cohen and Arato (1992: xi) support the above formulation by defining civil society as the primary locus for the political expansion of democracy under existing liberal democratic regimes, as that sphere of social interaction between the economy and the state that is composed above all of the intimate sphere of the family, as well as the sphere of associations like voluntary associations, social movements and forms of public communication. Although they see its emergence as a new kind of utopia, more importantly civil society is considered as being endangered by the logic of the state and market systems. Kaldor (2003) identifies three broad versions of civil society: the activist, neoliberal and postmodern versions. The activist version emerged

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in the 1970s and 1980s and reflected the efforts to create autonomous public spaces that were dependent on transnational links in the context of authoritarian states like military dictatorships in Latin America and totalitarian communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Into this version fitted the understanding of civil society by intellectuals in Europe, the US and elsewhere as a ‘new politics’, a reference to the idea of a realm existing outside the political parties where individuals and groups aim to democratize the state and redistribute power, rather than to capture power in the traditional sense (Arato and Cohen 1995; Kothari 1989). This involved an effort to create a public space in which individuals could act and communicate freely, independent of both the state and capitalism. The neoliberal version is associated with ideas about the ‘third sector’ or the non-profit sector and was developed in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. It was based on the existence of a group of organizations controlled neither by the state nor the market but which played an essential role in facilitating the operation of both. This concept, which owes much to the Tocquevillian emphasis on associationalism, can be linked to neoliberal ideas about minimizing the role of the state under the assumption that NGOs, non-profit organizations (NPOs), charities and voluntary associations are more flexible and innovative than the state, and that they can substitute for the state in providing social services, check abuses by the state and poor governmental practices, and call corporations to account. Given the contention of both the activist and the neoliberal versions that emerged from discourses from Eastern Europe, Latin America and the US, the postmodern version of civil society argues for a more culturally sensitive concept, one that involves various national and religious groupings. It also involves a contestation of narratives, particularly in light of the postmodernists’ suggestion that there cannot be an arbitrary division ‘between “good” westernized civil society and “bad” traditional uncivil society’ (Kaldor 2003: 8–10). What is relevant here is that civil society includes all the groupings that are included in the different versions. Malena, Forster and Singh (2004) offer a social accountability perspective in explaining the role of civil society in holding governments to account. This approach involves a broad range of actions and mechanisms that citizens, communities, independent media and civil society organizations can use to hold public officials and public servants accountable. These include, among other things, participatory budgeting, tracking public expenditure, monitoring public service delivery, investigative journalism, public commissions and citizen advisory boards. When complemented and reinforced by such conventional mechanisms as political checks and balances, accounting and auditing systems, administrative

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rules and legal procedures, these measures have the ability to contribute to improved governance by increasing development and effectiveness through better service delivery and empowerment (ibid.). Kaldor (2003) distinguishes between moral and procedural accountability in relation to civil society. Whereas she sees moral accountability in terms of an organization’s accountability to those it was established to help, procedural accountability relates to internal management. She argues that the contradiction between them applies to NGOs as a subset of civil society. She contends further that most civil society actors have some sort of procedural accountability, which depends on the social composition of the group, forms of funding and the type of organization (see Paragi in this volume). However, the extent to which mechanisms of procedural accountability help to ensure moral accountability varies, being dependent, as it were, on the accountability of NGOs. Routley (2010), in her exploration of corruption and NGOs, went beyond the perception that sees NGOs either as organizations set up to access international resources fraudulently or as agents opposed to corruption and supporting progressive change. Instead, she argues that they often become involved in grey practices through their concern with the proper functioning of the state while at the same time contradicting the fairness and equality that are perceived to lie in a procedural rationality whereby individuals are understood as cases. In other words, they were often caught up in the contradiction of seeking to defend culture in respect of how it is being done on the one hand while championing rights on the other hand. The violation of the principles of good governance through grey practices has aptly been described as ‘obtaining rather than demanding accountability’ and often results in obtaining certain individuals services that are not provided universally. This position aptly corroborates Ikelegbe’s (2001) perspective that whereas civil society groups should move beyond democratization to embrace the sustaining of democratic values by protecting pluralism, accountability, responsibility and participation, it can sometimes become parochial, divisive, lethargic, incoherent or even corrupt given the multi-ethnic nature of some countries – like Nigeria – in which they operate, the lack of a truly autonomous existence, the absence of internal democracy and poor understandings of the workings of government. Apparent in this discourse is the notion that the desire to provide alternative platforms to promote social well-being, transparency and accountability was paramount in the emergence of civil society, irrespective of the version, the circumstances of their emergence and flourishing, the specific goal they set out to achieve and the climate in which they had to operate. But then, they are often caught up in a web of parochialism,

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improper accountability and involvement in grey practices, sometimes unconsciously. Beyond limiting its ability to promote transparency, such weaknesses have the tendency to attract criticism, as has been the case in the operation of civil society in Nigeria and elsewhere. This notwithstanding, the ability of civil society to challenge existing systems and offer alternatives, which modern civil society engages in, is arguably a continuation of what groups operating under different platforms have done in the past and through which they secured for themselves opportunities to ventilate their thoughts, define or chart their identities and ensure the freedom to run similar organizations without obstacles and restrictions.

African Indigenous Churches, Mission Churches and the Colonial State In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, earlier attempts to spread Christianity in the Benin kingdom and Itsekiri kingdom of Warri met with limited success (Ryder 1960, 1968). But the revived missionary activities in the first half of the nineteenth century were to prove decisive to the penetration of Christianity in southern Nigeria. This was particularly the case with the arrival of the Wesleyan Mission Society (WMS) and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) from 1842, followed later by other missions (Ajayi 1965; Ayandele 1966). Significantly, the adoption of a variety of evangelizing strategies, such as church services and open-air and doorto-door teaching sessions, the construction of mission houses to lodge converts, and the establishment of schools and hospitals all contributed to the growth of Christianity (Adiele 1990: 87–101). The expansion of missionary work during the colonial period ensured that by the end of that period Christianity had emerged as the dominant religion in eastern Nigeria and as a major religion in western and central Nigeria. However, beginning in 1891, Nigeria’s religious groups began to secede from the white-dominated churches and to establish independent religious movements of their own. These included the United Native African Church, which seceded from the Anglican Church in 1891; secession from the Anglican Faith in 1901, resulting in the emergence of the African Church; secession from the Methodist Church in 1917; and the emergence of the Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim (Coleman 1958: 175–78). This trend, which gave birth to indigenous churches, was informed by the protests of Nigerians aided by other Africans like Edward Blyden, an Afro-American. Among other reasons for secession, were the superior attitudes of the white missionaries, who did not see

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anything good in the structure of African social life worth preserving. This display of a superiority complex, which was meant to make Africans meek, passive, ashamed and unduly deferential to the missionaries, led to disillusionment. In particular, the rejection of African customs like polygyny, which gave a partial fillip to the growth of Islam in western Nigeria, as well as the Europeanization of the church and of Africans were seriously resented. Significantly, the links that were believed to exist between the Christian missions and the imperial and colonial governments were considered a major factor in the unwillingness of the missionaries to condemn the excesses of colonial rule openly, particularly discrimination, inequality, exploitation, denial of opportunity and all the other features characteristic of alien rule. This perceived conspiracy between the missionaries and the colonial government, underscored by such features as the whiteness of both, the fact that the missionaries were supported by the government’s military power, the blanket permission and protection given to white missionaries to work in the colonial territories and the position of the reigning British monarch as head of the Anglican Communion all combined to strengthen the protesters’ resolve to exact accountability (Coleman 1958: 108–9; Winfunke 1900). In addition, the inability of some of the European priests, businessmen and administrators to live what they taught and separate their persons and beliefs from their practices, as well as their race from their religion, worsened their relationships with their congregations. These were manifested in such diverse forms as carousing, drunkenness, greed and other unchristianly propensities. These were in addition to the imposition of foreign music, different hymn and prayer books and the construction of pews, among other things, all of which were seen as non-essential (Agbebi 1903; Lagos Weekly Record, 11 April 1903; Lagos Standard, 1 July 1903; Winfunke 1900). Indeed, it was argued that the desire to reform existing Protestant Christian missions and make them more relevant to the needs of Africans’ everyday lives was a motivating factor for the Aladura leaders and their followers, given the spiritual, cultural, political and social circumstances of their emergence (Ayegboyin and Ishola 1997: 21). Similarly, as Barrett (1968) argues, independence involved rebellion against a Christianity that had become ‘over-Europeanized’. This created a longing in the hearts of a number of Africans to find a mode of religious expression that was psychologically and sociologically satisfying. The leadership of the mission churches was especially alleged to have placed many obstacles in the way of the African converts by imposing European customs and traditions on them. In seeking to keep the missionaries on their toes, the protestors engaged in violent criticisms that were meant to expose the weaknesses of the mis-

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sion churches, particularly their inability to reconcile their Bible-based teaching with the practices they engaged in. Besides, their radical inclinations or predilections and their activities, which were manifested in the ultimate decision to break away, offered them alternative platforms on which to propagate the gospel and were obviously devoid of the more notable problems and flaws that had characterized this activity under the mission churches. By providing basic amenities and infrastructure like schools, vocational training centres and sometimes dispensaries, the indigenous churches met needs outside the already established churches, thus somehow fitting the category of the proto-NGO. It turned out that they sometimes sourced funds from the colonial government, which they had hitherto condemned as conspiratorial partners of the mission churches. Interestingly, like modern NGOs, the indigenous churches also tended to proliferate because of quite mundane issues. Reminiscent of the activities of the indigenous churches, in the postcolonial era Pentecostalism has grown and flourished not by making demands on the state but by providing alternative platforms to meet citizens’ needs. This in a sense validates Obadare’s (2007) argument that NGOs and religion-based organizations exhibit an amoeba-like nature, exploiting and inserting themselves in vacuums created by the state’s dysfunctionality, as well as being able to provide meaning and help citizens make sense of the chaotic nature of modernity. Nigerians in the 1980s and 1990s sought solace in Pentecostalism in order to adapt themselves to the new and uncertain realities, just as humans in general may appeal to supposedly higher spiritual forces when faced with the unknown (Adesoji 2017: 1159–62; Marshall 1992: 20–21, 1993: 222–24; Ukah 2005: 253–54). In the recent political history of Nigeria, there were religious NGOs deploying their strength in numbers and supplying economic resources to make up for government failures, challenging the state’s hegemony by negotiating issues of inclusion and setting the agenda for the state so that the existential boundaries separating political authority and religious authority were no longer visible. This supports Obadare’s argument that religious NGOs now have an interest in seizing the public space as opposed to just playing a part in it. Their expressions of discontent were often reformist, correcting abuses and misappropriation, as well as seeking inclusion within the hierarchy of the church (Shankar 2014: 27). The Nigerian elite thus understood religion as transcending a benign belief system in order to exert practices of power (ibid.). This builds on the colonial Christian elite’s (that is independent churchmen or mission adherents) understanding of the political use of religion to create a transnational force in West Africa (Ajayi and Crowder 1975: 514–41). Obadare (2018) confirms this position better with his argument that since the advent of civil

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rule in Nigeria in 1999 Pentecostalism has risen as a force, appropriating state power and transforming the country’s dynamics, and in the process reviving or even strengthening the struggle for supremacy between Christians and Muslims. Interestingly, the proto-NGOs of the nineteenth century, like the independent churchmen and their breakaway religious organizations, as well as the Pentecostal groups and other religious NGOs of the twentieth century, did not just share in the travails of the people they came to ­represent – they were part of their lifeworlds. First, this was because they were part of the same society. Second, they suffered the same fate as the people and so had a proper understanding of the issues and problems the latter faced. Besides, their desire for change, no matter how meagre or negligible, was apparently a major factor in their popularity. Thus, through their criticism, the offer of alternative platforms and the provision of basic amenities, no matter how ineffectual, they sought to address such problems as the dehumanization and disillusionment arising from Europeans’ superiority complex, the toleration of colonial government excesses resulting from what was perceived as the conspiratorial silence of the missionaries, and the destruction of self-worth as a result of the condemnation of African ways of life. Essentially, a proper understanding of Nigerian lifeworlds and the ability to relate to them was a major stimulus in the emergence, activities, sustenance and relative effectiveness of the groups. However, with religious NGOs seeking to help people make meaning out of life, offering help and being involved in politics, starting in the late twentieth century, the scope was widened. This pushed NGOs into the limelight and conferred greater recognition and legitimacy on them, particularly given the increased abdication of governments at different levels.

Nationalist Agitation, Associations and Responsibility Among the various groups and associations that emerged to champion the quest for improving the lot of the people and for inclusion in or freedom from colonial rule, a few stood out, such as the National Congress for British West Africa (NCBWA) and the West African Students’ Union (WASU). Their significance derives from the fact that, like modern NGOs, they were more interested in improving the well-being of colonial subjects. More importantly, they were formed outside Nigeria and had grown considerably before seeking to gain support within Nigeria and make an impact on Nigerians, this being how many NGOs emerged, operated or were funded. The NCBWA was formally established following a confer-

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ence held in Accra in 1920 attended by a few educated Africans in the British West African territories. It resolved among other things to ask for a legislative council in each territory, half of whose members would be elected Africans; the appointment and deposition of chiefs by their own people; the abolition of racial discrimination in the civil service; the repeal of certain ‘obnoxious’ ordinances; and the establishment of a university in West Africa. It then presented a memorandum to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. WASU, on the other hand, emerged in London in 1925 from the Nigerian Progress Union organized earlier in 1924 by Ladipo Solanke, a Nigerian of Egba Yoruba extraction. It had among its objectives the provision of a hostel in London for students from West Africa, the promotion of goodwill and understanding between Africans and other races, and it fostered a spirit of self-help, unity and cooperation, national consciousness and racial pride among its members (Coleman 1958: 203–4) Obvious in the emergence of these groups was the realization of the encompassing nature of the colonial state, a seeming octopus from which the postcolonial state took its cue. The colonial state, like its postcolonial successor, had grown to such an extent that it could not be tackled just anyhow but required forces both within and outside itself to contend with it. Thus, tackling the colonial state required elaborate measures and extensive networks cutting across colonial boundaries and involving the coming together of like-minded people, as well as reaching out to other groups that could assist them. This informed and sustained their crossborder orientations and attitudes, as was seen clearly in the efforts of WASU in particular to reach out to different international organizations and traditional institutions in a way that did not threaten the colonial enterprise. Of particular importance was the publication of views and opinions through its journal and the stimulation of political and racial consciousness among those Nigerians who came under its influence (ibid.: 204–5). This explains why the colonial government did not ban it or restrict its operations (Coleman 1958: 206–7). Such networking was expected to mobilize goodwill, funds and manpower to help the actors and their associations and in the long run contribute towards improving the well-being of Nigerians. The modi operandi of modern NGOs are not markedly different from those of these associations. But unlike the African churches, which vehemently criticized the mission churches with a view to bringing about change and eventually broke away when they discovered their inability to force such change from within, these nationalist associations were more like platforms for the ventilation of nationalist thoughts and avenues for reaching out to a larger audience with a view to attracting international attention to their unmet needs. Their non-violent methods bear eloquent testimony to this

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assertion. Highly significant in this respect was their use of transborder, transnational and diasporic influences to support their local campaigns, in the process achieving wider results while still tied somehow to a particular country or region. Placed in the context of modern NGOs, these groups sought to meet needs that the state, by reason of its constitution, was not willing to meet or was ready to obstruct or leave unattended, a position that placed them in the category of the proto-NGO. Conversely, by seeking to meet some needs, these associations and similar ones filled a vacuum that would not otherwise have been filled, with its attendant consequences for the lives of the people. Thus, in attempting what they considered better deals, these associations laid the foundations for what many post-Cold War NGOs in Nigeria would do later. While the vibrant organizational spirit of the Nigerian elite – which manifested itself in various attempts to put the colonial government under pressure to introduce or accommodate change – represented in itself a proper understanding of the workings of NGOs, none of these organizations operated with the overt, absolute or extensive financial and political backing of external donors, as became the norm for NGOs in post-Cold War Africa. This singular but crucial factor in their existence and operations shaped their identities and imposed fewer constraints on their vigour and modi operandi, unlike with modern NGOs.

The Modern State and NGOs: Building on or Deviating from a Legacy? Modern NGOs were forged within the context of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the so-called New International Order, liberal democracy and the fall of dictators across Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America (Willems 2014: 46, 49). In Nigeria in particular, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists constituted the strongest opposition to the military leadership and its attendant disregard for human freedoms that were characteristic of the postcolonial state. But their struggle was usually devoid of external backing because the world order saw and regarded all issues of governance and the economy through the parochial lens of the Cold War. As soon as it became evident that the Iron Curtain was about to collapse, the United States and its allies began to romanticize these activists’ blocs because they considered them vital to creating new norms of governance and development in African states. These groups, many of which were later organized as NGOs, were meant to partner the state in development- and governance-related issues. Human rights, democracy and accountability were to become the new norms, which the state

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was considered unable to deliver without the active participation of the ‘Third Sector’ (Lewis 2002: 569–70; Willems 2014). Their emergence therefore represented an international policy construct for Africans, and their identities were mostly alien to African understandings. By reason of their emergence, they often experienced identity crises, being neither distinctly Euro-American nor African, but rather representing a reduced version of both, their activities often fitting into the structures of their donor agencies (Lewis 2002: 569–70). Like their predecessors, they often sought accommodation within the newly emerging liberal government, and many of them justified their goals of accommodation in their understandings of human rights issues and development policies and their readiness for robust engagement, credentials that were lacking in the entrenched military rule. Just as their predecessors’ goals brought them into confrontation with the colonial government they sought to replace, these NGOs also faced up to dictators, who felt threatened by their advocacy, operations and strong external base. They were thus considered more as part of the opposition, the genuineness of their criticisms and activities notwithstanding. Nigeria’s dictators, particularly those from General Ibrahim Babangida to General Sani Abacha, hunted down many NGOs activists because they felt that they threatened the security of their regimes. The environment in which Nigerian NGOs operated was often unsafe as a result of their constant clamour for sociopolitical and structural changes, which made them easy targets of dictatorial regimes. The latter subjected NGO members to constant harassment and long periods of incarceration without trial under punitive retroactive decrees promulgated specifically for that purpose. The repressive nature of the Nigerian state, particularly from the 1980s to 1999, determined and characterized the identity and nature of the NGOs that emerged and their negotiations for inclusive governance, a wider political space, adherence to and respect for citizens’ human rights and a return to democratic rule (Ajayi 1993; Ihonvbere and Vaughan 1995; Momoh 1995). What is relevant here is Gary’s argument (1996) that the complexity of NGO–state relations in Africa has considerably weakened the African state from both above and below, with the state using its remaining coercive and bureaucratic power to co-opt and control the growing NGO sector, which it perceives as a threat to its power and legitimacy (see Engels in this volume) and which in a way is a sign of its very weakness. Significantly, the struggles of the NGOs predate their prescription as policy goals by international donors, who viewed NGOs as harbingers of liberal democracy (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Guyer 1994; Mamdani 1996; Orvis 2001; Owusu 1997; Willems 2014: 48). As a matter of ­principle,

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many NGOs that sought to call the Nigerian state to account had been active and had made their presence felt before the donors became involved in their activities and introduced funding to support their struggles for democratic governance. Although welcomed by the NGOs and contributing significantly to their engagement with Nigeria’s brutal dictators, this source of funding nevertheless produced its own challenges. On the one hand, the state increasingly regarded these NGOs as covert agents of foreign interests aiming to unseat regimes and secure favourable economic and trade deals with more pliant governments or l­eaders. On the other hand, attempts were made to castigate and demonize them mainly as an avenue for drawing funds from donors, thus enriching some of the individuals who headed these NGOs. These perspectives appeared plausible given the level of poverty prevalent in Africa generally, especially among the organizers of NGOs, who mostly came from intellectual circles in Nigeria, a class that was deliberately pauperized and pressured by the state in order to undermine its attempts to bring the state to account. Again, the portrayal of these NGOs as mainly donor-funded and what was perceived as their heavy reliance on donors often placed these groups in opposition to the state and consequently contributed to the insecure environment in which they had to operate. However, beyond their labelling by the state and their demonization, what is apparent is that NGOs in Nigeria were driven by intellectuals who by virtue of their training, experience and pedigree in the society were cast as being in opposition to the status quo, abhorring injustice and the oppression of society by the political elite (Said 1996: xvii). The experiences, functioning and adaptability of NGOs in Nigeria serve to illustrate Said’s argument that the intellectual is either the servant or the master of the actualities of their environment.

NGOs in Nigeria: Adaptation, Transition and Responses to Emergent Realities The dilemma in which Nigerian NGOs are caught presents an interesting paradox for observers of their history. These NGOs have become popular and earned enviable credentials by fighting and engaging with the dictatorships, a feat that brought civil rule back to the country, yet people suddenly found themselves struggling to transit and adapt to the new reality of democratic governance. While a prominent NGO like the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) – formed in the aftermath of the annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential election – has since ceased

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to exist, at least judging by its inactivity, some new ones were formed and have tailored themselves to Nigeria’s developmental challenges. Since 1999, the more vigorous NGOs have been those that sought to monitor the government’s commitment to financial accountability and transparency. Hence anti-corruption NGOs seemed to have become the norm. Again, the policy prescriptions of the Washington Consensus and the international donors seemed to have achieved their aim of instituting liberal democracy by the turn of the century, coupled with the prescriptive policies now centred on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ostensibly with the aim of achieving an equitable world. From the focus on sustaining and promoting democracy and democratic values that was in vogue in the 1990s, NGOs have not only proliferated in Nigeria, they have been formed to take care of diverse needs ranging from health, education, children, women, widows, orphans and the poor and the disabled, among others. Some also cater for specific issues like the environment, social responsibility and agricultural and community development. Whereas the increasing dereliction of government responsibilities and the need to act as the watchdog of democratic governance, or even simply to meet specific needs, among other considerations, were the catalysts in these developments (Gary 1996: 150), many have wondered aloud how these groups obtain the funds to sustain their programmes, especially given their non-profit nature and the declining financial support from foreign donors. The often-touted sources of income are contributions from members and donations by well-meaning individuals and organizations, including even government as part of public sector participation. However, Shivji (2007) has rightly argued that the anti-state stance of the so-called donor community was the real push behind the upsurge in NGO activity, which proliferated without any critical examination of their place and role or their underlying ideologies and premises. He stressed that this proliferation was aided by the preponderance of an urban-based educated elite in the NGOs, given their understanding of the language of modernization. These educated elites comprised radicals who saw NGOs as a possible terrain of struggle for change, well-intentioned individuals – compatriots and mostly former government bureaucrats who shifted to the NGO world once they found that donor funding was being directed there – driven by altruistic motives to improve the conditions of their fellow human beings. As Gary (1996) has argued, there are growing signs that African elites, who have been accused of hijacking the state for their own interests, may hijack the NGO sector as well, particularly given the growing interest of well-placed bureaucrats and politicians in NGOs. However, in their dependence on donor organizations, NGOs are mostly compelled to seek donor funds through customary procedures

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set by the funding agencies. Consequently, the degree of independence that they exercise in relation to donor agendas varies depending on the perspectives of its leadership, while their scope for action is also limited (Shivji 2007: 31–32). In other words, far beyond doing things to please the people that they purport to serve, NGOs by their very nature derive not only their sustenance but also their legitimacy from the donor community. This is a situation that could lead to what Brass (2016: 228–31) describes as resource dependence leading to goal displacement, particularly given the greater concern of donors for their countries’ political, economic or security interests. Besides, a substantial number of NGOs have been set up to respond to whatever is perceived to be in vogue among the donor community at any particular time. More importantly, their vision or mission statements, though inserted into their charters, are often vague, amorphous and meaningless and are easily taken over by the so-called strategic plans and log-frames provided by donors (Shivji 2007: 32–33). For those NGOs that apparently did not depend on donor funds or whose dependence has been reduced over time, many have turned to government or different levels of government agencies for support while still posing as independent voluntary organizations. Although this trend is not new given the need of dictatorial military governments to checkmate the activities of strong foreign-funded NGOs in the 1990s, which led to the establishment of government-sponsored NGOs, the trend has been cleverly perfected in the contemporary period. The common trend in this period has been the emergence of several groups seemingly acting independently but either established by elites in government or generously funded by them. The ease with which they emerged and can function without any restrictions, and obviously not lacking funding, lends credence to this assumption. Known as ‘government-organized NGOs’ (GONGOs), they became overwhelmingly noticeable during the prolonged military rule of General Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha and the persistent tinkering of these leaders with the programme of transition to civilian rule. The strength of such civil society groups as the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD), National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADL) and Campaign for Democracy (CD), first as human rights campaigners and later as pro-democracy activists, provided the pressure needed to stimulate the emergence of GONGOs (Ikelegbe 2001: 10–11; Mimiko 1995: 152–55). Not surprisingly, the strong moral and financial support they received from the government made it possible for such groups as the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), led by Arthur

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Nzeribe, and Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), led by Daniel Kanu, either to promote dictatorship one way or the other or to derail the political transition process at different times (Ashiru 2013: 134; Dukor 2003: 148–51; Obadare 2016: 100; Olukoshi 2002: 236; Olukotun 2004: 39). This form of adaptation, as well as being what Gary (1996: 154) has described as bureaucratic regulation or administrative co-optation, is still continuing, dictated as it were by the type of government in power and the interests it seeks to defend or promote. The pervasive nature of progovernment groups is made more obvious with the entrenchment of civil rule and obviously proliferates in election periods, with each such group attempting to outdo the others. In the same vein, the flow of funds for development programmes has led to the rise of emergency NGOs, mostly formed by political elites or their cronies to draw resources, which, on the face of it, were meant to meet specific developmental needs but which ended up in the wallets and foreign accounts of these elites, thereby fuelling corruption. Other dimensions of corruption involved NGOs returning a certain percentage of the grants they have been awarded to government officials involved in the evaluation or coordination of such programmes or the award of grants in what is termed ‘return to sender’, as well as the donation of slush funds to the NGOs of political officeholders, their wives and cronies by contractors who have benefited from contracts awarded by these politicians (Smith 2010). Exceptions to these forms of adaptation, however, include those NGOs that catered for special interests, mostly those that fall within the purview of government responsibilities, like care of the elderly, widows, motherless babies, persons infected with HIV/AIDS, internally displaced people, the physically challenged, ex-prisoners and rehabilitated drug users, among others. In a few cases, different levels of government either provided occasional grants and donations or bankrolled their specific expenses depending on their level of advocacy and how well they were able to reach out to leaders in government. In all, the desire for survival, sustenance and relevance is central to the adaptation strategies of these NGOs. By far the most significant development of civil society or pro-­ democracy groups was their emergence or transformation as accountability monitoring groups. This was the case with those that have not fizzled out completely. Of NGOs in this category, the Movement against Corruption and Injustice in Nigeria (MACIN), the Centre for AntiCorruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) and the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) stand out. SERAP was established in 2004 with a mandate to harness the potential of international human rights law in increasing transparency, accountability and the

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protection of economic and social rights in Nigeria. It offers free legal advice and services for victims of corruption and those whose economic and social rights have been violated to obtain redress. Beyond media advocacy and capacity- and institution-building, SERAP has worked with anti-corruption agencies in Nigeria, securing, for example, landmark judgements on corruption within different government agencies and the spending of looted funds recovered since 1999 (SERAP n.d.). Of particular importance was the Federal High Court’s ruling arising from a case compelling the Senate President of the Eight National Assembly, Dr Bukola Saraki, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, to account for the spending of N500 billion (1.2 million EUR) as running costs for the legislative body between 2006 and 2016 and disclose the monthly allowances of each member (Onanuga 2017; Vanguard, 29 October 2017). Notwithstanding the hostile environment in which they operate, given their persistent demands for accountability, SERAP is a perfect example of how NGOs may influence the environment or the lifeworlds in which they operate without being submerged by strong negative tendencies in the environment. Perhaps the realization of the large-scale destruction and disruption that corruption has done to the Nigerian state and elsewhere – in terms of the psyche of its citizens and its endemic or entrenched nature – has informed this commitment. The arrested development of the country, when compared with the very opulent and wasteful lifestyle of its leaders, might also explain the commitment to fight it to a standstill, exposing in the process incidents of corruption, challenging leaders and actively prosecuting corruption-related cases, especially those that have an effect on the public good or the welfare of ordinary people. This involves sharing in people’s pains about the poor state of their development. Through their activities, therefore, SERAP provides a template for how the state should be run more transparently. Nevertheless, one major issue that has generally not been resolved as far as the politics of NGOs is concerned is that of transparency. This becomes pertinent given the position and privileges given to these NGOs as better managers of resources. This understanding led to funds being redirected from the state to NGOs as a primary focus of development ab initio. As in the 1990s when the military dismissed civil society associations as subversive, given their refusal to disclose their sources of funds and how they spent them, so it is with the new generations of NGOs. While it is understood that they have many layers or levels of accountability to the donor agencies and other interested partners, it is also pertinent to consider and be open to those whose interests their projects were meant to benefit, including the state, which in one way or the other

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is also an interested party. Otherwise the state’s claim that they were agents of destabilization would suffice, as would the categorization by Smith (2010) of different kinds of NGOs – GONGOs; BONGOs (Bankorganized NGOs), IONGOs (Individual-organized NGOs), LABONGOs (Lagos-based organized NGOs), PONGOs (Post Office Box-NGOs) and E-NGOs (E-mail-NGOs) – as serving parochial goals or being formed for pecuniary gain.

Conclusion As a third force that is seen as a means of quickening the pace of development around the world, particularly in developing countries, NGOs have become a phenomenon encompassing issues of diverse interests and diverse forms. Their engagement with holding the state to account is a tradition spanning both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Whereas the colonial state was indirectly engaged by the African indigenous churches, other groups like the NCBWA and WASU engaged the state with a view to acquiring benefits for its members while also promoting or championing common causes that others coming after them could benefit from. Common to these proto-NGOs were the demands to exact accountability by means of their often-hostile criticisms and condemnation of practices they considered detrimental while also providing alternative platforms for the expression of opinions and the meeting of needs. As with the proto-NGOs, the need to hold the state to account, given its overbearing nature, failures of service delivery and general non-performance explains the emergence and growth of modern NGOs. Although they try not to be overtly confrontational, in keeping with the tradition that existed before them, NGOs are mostly misjudged by the state, particularly given their tremendous external support and the challenge they pose to the state in demanding accountability. In all, what is obvious is that given their methods of operation and the results emanating from their existence, NGOs have not actually fitted perfectly into the role of ‘angelic deliverer’ – a replacement for the state in Africa – conceived for them by the international community. They have almost nothing to show for the tremendous support, goodwill and resources they have garnered from donors over a long period of time. Although this could be explained by different factors, what is significant is that the effect of the changing focus of international funders, the changing terms and conditions under which funds are made available and the steadily falling levels of such funding (necessitating some desperate measures on the part of the NGOs and their managers or leaders) have all combined either to push them to the edge or force

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them to adapt as the case may be. Their proliferation, which is obviously a product of the milieus in which they operate, could be a genuine response to individual and group needs, but it also smacks of a burning desire and readiness to draw private benefit from these flows of largesse. Whereas the process of their adaptation will continue, given the different interests they are accountable to, NGOs require a positive reinvention of their goals, methods of working, affiliations, activities and perceptions of how best to survive in increasingly restrictive environments – or shrinking spaces – without compromising their values. This will require greater openness, the creation of more awareness and perhaps a consolidation of fractured groups in order to present stronger and more effective fronts to international donors and related interests. It will also involve seeking more diverse but also more transparent means of funding their organizations locally, rather than being financially dependent mostly on external donors, with all the attendant consequences. Abimbola O. Adesoji is a Professor of History at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His research interests are traditional and contemporary Yoruba History and the sociopolitical history of Nigeria. His most recent articles have appeared in Journal of Asian and African Studies (2017), African Identities (2017), African Study Monographs (2017), The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics (2018), Journal of Knowledge Economy (2018) and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (2019).

References Adesoji, A.O. 2017. ‘The New Pentecostal Movement in Nigeria and the Politics of Belonging’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 52(8): 1159–73. Adiele, S.N. 1990. ‘Early Strategies of Proselytization in South-Eastern Nigeria’, Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies 22(2): 87–101. Agbebi, M. 1903. ‘Inaugural Lecture’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 14 March 1903. Ajayi, J.F.A. 1965. Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841–1891: The Making of a New Elite. London: Longman. Ajayi, J.F.A., and M. Crowder. 1975. ‘West Africa 1919–1939: The Colonial Situation’, in J.F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa. London: Longman, pp. 514–41. Ajayi, R. 1993. ‘The State against Civil Society in Nigeria’, Philosophy and Social Action 19(4): 33–35. Ashiru, D. 2013. ‘Democratisation and Politics of Self Succession in Africa’, in M. Nyamanga Amutabi and S. Wanjala Nasong’o (eds), Regime Change and Succession Politics in Africa: Five Decades of Misrule. New York: Routledge, pp. 123–41.

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Ayandele, E.A. 1966. The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914: A Political and Social Analysis. London: Longman. Ayegboyin, D., and S. Ademola Ishola. 1997. African Indigenous Churches. Lagos: Greater Heights Publications. Barrett, D. 1968. Schism and Renewal in Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Brass, J.N. 2016. Allies or Adversaries: NGOs and the State in Africa. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, J.L., and A. Arato. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press. Coleman, J.S. 1958. Nigeria: Background to Nationalism. Berkeley: Longman. Comaroff, J.L., and J. Comaroff. 1999. Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Delano, I.O. 1973. ‘Proverbs, Songs, and Poems’, in S.O. Biobaku (ed.), Sources of Yoruba History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 77–85. Dukor, M. 2003. ‘Social Movements and Political Resistance in Nigeria: Problems of Agenda and Social Action’, in M. Dukor (ed.), Philosophy and Politics: Discourse on Values, Politics and Power in Africa. Lagos: Malthouse Press, pp. 145–63. Ekechi, F.K. 2002. ‘The Consolidation of European Rule, 1884–1914’, in T. Falola (ed.), Colonial Africa, 1885–1939. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 27–51. Fadipe, N.A. 1970. The Sociology of the Yoruba. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. Gary, I. 1996. ‘Confrontation, Cooperation or Co-optation: NGOs and the Ghanaian State during Structural Adjustment’, Review of African Political Economy 68: 149–68. Guyer, J.I. 1994. ‘The Spatial Dimensions of Civil Society in Africa: An Anthropologist Looks at Nigeria’, in J.W. Harbeson, D. Rothschild and N. Chazan (eds), Civil Society and the State in Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, pp. 215–30. Ihonvbere, J., and O. Vaughan. 1995. ‘Nigeria: Democracy and Civil Society: The Nigerian Transition Programme, 1985–1993’, in J. Wiseman (ed.), Democracy and Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Routledge, pp. 132–53. Ikelegbe, A. 2001. ‘The Perverse Manifestation of Civil Society: Evidence from Nigeria’, Journal of Modern African Studies 39(1): 1–24. Kaldor, M. 2003. ‘Civil Society and Accountability’, Journal of Human Development 4(1): 5–27. Keane, J. 2010. ‘Civil Society, Definitions and Approaches’, in H.K. Anheier and S. Toepler (eds), International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 461– 64. Kothari, R. 1989. Politics and the People: In Search of a Humane India, Vol. II. Delhi: Ajanta Publications. Lewis, D. 2002. ‘Civil Society in African Contexts: Reflections on the Usefulness of a Concept’, Development and Change 33(4): 569–86. Malena, C., R. Forster and J. Singh. 2004. ‘Social Accountability: An Introduction to the Concept and Emerging Practice’, Social Development Paper 76. World Bank.

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Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Oxford: James Currey. Marshall, R. 1992. ‘Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria: An Overview’, in P. Gifford (ed.), New Dimensions in African Christianity. Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, pp. 9–21. ______. 1993. ‘“Power in the Name of Jesus”: Social Transformation and Pentecostalism in Western Nigeria Revisited’, in T. Ranger and O. Vaughan (eds), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa: Essays in Honour of A.H.M. Kirk-Greene. London: Macmillan Press, pp. 216–24. Mimiko, N.O. 1995. ‘From Agitation for Human Rights to the Pursuit of Power: The Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Nigeria’s Aborted Democratisation Programme, 1986–1993’, in N.O. Mimiko (ed.), Crises and Contradictions in Nigeria’s Democratisation Programme, 1986–1993. Akure: Stebak, pp. 150–66. Momoh, A. 1995. ‘The Rise of Civil Association, Militarism and Popular Struggles in Nigeria: 1986–1994’, CODESRIA Eighth General Assembly, 26 June–2 July. Obadare, E. 2007. ‘Religious NGOs, Civil Society and the Quest for a Public Sphere in Nigeria’, African Identities 5(1): 135–53. ______. 2014. ‘Introduction: Turning the Tables on Gellner: Alternative Discourses of Civil Society in Africa’, in E. Obadare (ed.), The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa. New York: Springer, pp. 1–3. ______. 2016. Humor, Silence and Civil Society in Nigeria. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ______. 2018. Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria. London: Zed Books. Olukoshi, A.O. 2002. ‘Basic Pitfalls of Prevalent Efforts at Understanding Elections in Africa’, in M. Cowen and L. Laasko (eds), Multiparty Elections in Africa. Oxford: James Currey, pp. 218–50. Olukotun, A. 2004. Repressive State and Resurgent Media under Nigeria’s Military Dictatorship, 1988–1998 Research Report 126. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Onanuga, A. 2017. ‘Court Orders Saraki, Dogara to Account for N500b “Running Cost”’, The Nation (Lagos), 30 October. Orvis, S. 2001. ‘Civil Society in Africa or African Civil Society?’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 36(1): 17–38. Owusu, M. 1997. ‘Domesticating Democracy: Culture, Civil Society, and Constitutionalism in Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 39(1): 120–52. Routley, L. 2010. ‘The Negotiation of “Corruption” by NGOs in Eastern Nigeria: Engagements with Local Culture and Global Governance’. Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Ryder, A.F.C. 1960. ‘Missionary Activities in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early 19th Century’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2(1): 1–26. ______. 1968. ‘Portuguese Missions in West Africa’, Tarikh 3(1): 14–22. Said, E. 1996. Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage Books. SERAP. n.d. ‘Who We Are: SERAP: Promoting Transparency and Respect for Socio-Economic Rights’. Retrieved 29 April 2018 from http://serap-nigeria.org/ who-we-are/.

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Shankar, S. 2014. ‘Civil Society and Religion’, in E. Obadare (ed.), The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa. New York: Springer, pp. 25–41. Shivji, I.G. 2007. Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa. Nairobi and Oxford: Fahamu–Networks for Social Justice. Retrieved 1 November 2017 from https://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/ngoafrica. pdf. Smidt, H. 2018. ‘Shrinking Civic Space in Africa: When Governments Crack Down on Civil Society’, GIGA Focus (4). Retrieved 30 April 2018 from https:// www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publication/shrinking-civic-space-in-africa-whengovernments-crack-down-on-civil-society. Smith, D.J. 2010. ‘Corruption, NGOs and Development in Nigeria’, Third World Quarterly 31(2): 243–58. Stefan, Z.P. 2008. Tocqueville on Civilian Society: A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality. Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte (Felix Meiner Verlag). Tishken, J.E. 2002. ‘Christianity in Colonial Africa’, in T. Falola (ed.), Africa vol. 3 Colonial Africa, 1885–1939. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 157–81. Ukah, AF-K. 2005. ‘Those Who Trade with God Never Lose: The Economics of Pentecostal Activism in Nigeria’, in T. Falola (ed.), Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honour of J.D.Y. Peel. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 253–58. Willems, W. 2014. ‘Theorizing Media as/and Civil Society in Africa’, in E. Obadare (ed.), The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa. New York: Springer, pp. 43–59. Winfunke, N.A. 1900. ‘The Cause of the Establishment of Indigenous African Churches’, Lagos Weekly Record, 28 July.

Chapter 10

From Development State to Non-state Development

Counterpart Careers, West German Aid and Asymmetrical Interdependence in Late Socialist Tanzania Eric Burton Introduction Expatriates and counterparts are central actors in development work. Sending expatriate aid workers, including foreign professionals (experts, advisers) and volunteers, was and continues to be a major tool used by governments and non-state aid agencies to intervene in countries deemed to be in need of such support. In many cases, these expatriate ­workers interact with formal or informal counterparts, a term usually defined rather loosely as referring to ‘all local stakeholders of a development project … who stem from the recipient country’s society and represent the recipient side’ (Büschel and Speich 2009: 8, translation by the author). Given that development permeates so many sectors of politics and society, those who act as counterparts include authorities as well as technical experts and professionals such as teachers and engineers, community workers or nurses. The counterpart to an expatriate aid worker might be a minister or the leader of a regional department – that is, someone wielding substantial influence – or a fieldworker merely responsible for executing tasks. Given these varying levels of expertise and status, counterpart relations involve very different hierarchies and career trajectories. This chapter presents an analysis of counterpart relations and career trajectories in a long-term regional development programme in the Tanga region in north-east Tanzania, the Tanga Integrated Rural Development Notes for this chapter begin on page 246.

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Programme (TIRDEP), which ran from 1972 to 1991 in cooperation with the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ).1 The chapter discusses the shift from state-led development to a much more diversified development sector in which non-state organizations have played a crucial role, using the lens of counterpart relations and career trajectories. A focus on counterpart relations enables us to trace how Tanzanians tried to tap into the various resources that became available through international development cooperation. It also allows us to recognize that practices of state-led development were not simply replaced by new institutions and actors. Quite the contrary, several Tanzanian development professionals who entered the NGO sector and private consultancies, as well as multilateral institutions such as the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s, had worked, and even continued to work, in official projects and institutions. The counterpart has figured as an essential determinant for the success of development projects and advisory functions. During a period of ‘understudying’, the counterpart was supposed to acquire the knowledge and skills of the expatriate so that when the expatriate left she/he would be able to handle all responsibilities independently, ensuring selfreliance, continuity and sustainability (see, for instance, Poleykett and Mangesho 2016). In practice, however, relations have often diverged from this image of a harmonious master–apprentice relationship, which was supposed to abolish knowledge hierarchies. According to Maria Eriksson Baaz’s (2005) reading of identity in development aid, which is inspired by postcolonial theories, the ‘paternalism of partnership’ masks material inequalities and hierarchies of power.2 Structural contradictions in development cooperation between the rhetoric of horizontal partnerships on the one hand and de facto asymmetries on the other have been recognized as producing dilemmas, tensions or even structural violence (Büschel 2014; Rottenburg 2009; Spies 2009; Spitzberg 1978). These insights from recent anthropological and historical accounts of development work echo neo-Marxist studies from the 1970s, which interpreted technical aid, with its emphasis on knowledge transfer and counterpart relations, as a building block in the reproduction of dependency and inequality, as ‘a means of continuing social and economic domination’ (Spitzberg 1978: 7; see also Altbach 1978). In the 1980s, however, a number of sociologists and anthropologists, who were often involved in the development sector themselves as consultants or aid workers, challenged this structural view and suggested alternatives to such across-the-board judgements. Investigating counterpart relations in specific projects and conceptualizing development practices as ‘negotiations’ in ‘arenas’ or at ‘interfaces’, they have pointed out the unintended consequences and undesired

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­ roject outcomes that may result from competing agendas. In their methp odological framework, actors from different backgrounds and equipped with different resources meet in the contact zones of development work and struggle over the allocative dimensions of development interventions (see, for instance, Bierschenk 1988; Bierschenk and Elwert 1993). The outcomes of these struggles are diverse, as the political capital necessary for on-the-ground interventions is usually concentrated in counterparts’ hands. More recently, anthropologist-cum-consultant Thomas Hüsken concluded from his fieldwork in the Middle East that there is no single centre of power in development work: power relations, he argues, are polycentric (Hüsken 2006: 265–66; similarly: Illi 2001). Evidence from TIRDEP, the programme under scrutiny here, confirms notions of negotiations and polycentric power relations – albeit only to some extent. West German project leaders who had worked in TIRDEP noted in interviews that they had to stick to the ‘rules of the game’ in regional and local arenas because they depended on the cooperation of counterparts as political gatekeepers, bureaucratic intermediaries and mobilizers to fulfil the goals stipulated in project cycles. Without Tanzanian administrators, professionals and workers, these goals were impossible to reach. For Tanzanians, in contrast, TIRDEP provided channels through which to employ strategies of ‘extraversion’ – that is, efforts to mobilize resources from external sources in asymmetrical relationships (Bayart 2000) – overcome existing constraints and obtain access to material resources and opportunities for further education. Still, in terms of setting the agenda and controlling funds, they usually remained in a weaker position. Counterpart relations in the programme under scrutiny here (as, I think, in many other interventions in the development sector) were thus marked by what I call asymmetrical interdependence. This term is meant to draw attention to both inequalities and room for manoeuvre – that is, to larger structures of dependence as well as agency – in negotiating these structures.3 These insights build on earlier studies. The notion of development as a field of agency and negotiations – rather than as a homogenizing and omnipotent ‘machine’ or discourse (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994) – has led historians to argue that development provided a powerful language to make claims for material and other resources in the context of decolonization and the Cold War (Cooper 2010; Engerman 2011). In studies of practical development work, however, ‘partners’ and ‘counterparts’ have often been portrayed monolithically and with little understanding for the context-dependency of their agency (Elmer, Kuhn and Speich Chassé 2014; v. Oppen 2015; Zürcher 2014). This chapter thus adds to the limited number of historical studies that have scrutinized the opportunities and

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constraints that ‘counterparts’, ‘partners’ and ‘local development experts’ face in colonial and postcolonial contexts (see Schultz and Sundberg in this volume), as well as the room for manoeuvre they manage to carve out for themselves (v. Beusekom 2002; Green 2014; Kalfelis 2015; McWha 2011). The argument is based on research in German and Tanzanian archives and on oral history interviews with professionals who had been involved with TIRDEP. Fifty-one interviews were conducted with 39 persons (29 Tanzanians, 10 Germans, 1 Swede) who were involved with TIRDEP between 2014 and 2015 in Tanzania and Germany in German, English and Kiswahili.4 In addition to these semi-structured interviews, which usually lasted around two hours, the account draws on archival materials. These include mainly the private archive of correspondence and project reports of a former West German5 GTZ expert and the remnants of the TIRDEP project library, which used to be located at the programme headquarters and was then transferred to Tanga’s public library, where the papers and pamphlets are now held in a special section. The following section sketches the history of the TIRDEP programme in the light of Tanzanian strategies of extraversion, global trends in development and the Western fascination with Tanzanian socialism. Building on this broader overview, the chapter then dissects several dimensions of the relations between German development workers and their Tanzanian counterparts. These relations were influenced by the shift from state to non-state institutions as partners in development interventions, thus signalling the demise of the developmental state alongside the rise of development NGOs, development consultancies and female careers in development in Tanzania.

The Emergence of an Integrated Development Programme Given its humble beginnings, the size and duration of the TIRDEP programme was astonishing, its steady growth reflecting a series of negotiations and Tanzanian strategies to attract more aid. It had started out as a small planning exercise for the district of Korogwe, situated in the region of Tanga, in 1972. The planning exercise was supposed to be finalized after six months. Instead, TIRDEP became one of the largest undertakings involving technical cooperation of the West German technical cooperation agency, the GTZ. It was also the most comprehensive regional programme in the whole of Tanzania, comprising projects in the sectors of health, education, agriculture, small industries, community development and others. It was phased out in 1991/92 after almost two decades

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of reinventions and reconceptualizations. Even after the phase-out, some projects were carried on until the end of the 1990s. Hundreds of expatriate aid workers and thousands of Tanzanian professionals had been involved, in addition to innumerable Tanzanians who contributed labour and resources to the projects without formal employment and often without direct financial remuneration. To a large extent, the emergence and growth of TIRDEP was the result of Tanzanian strategies of extraversion. In the early 1970s, many Western leftists, including West Germans with an interest in development politics, were attracted by the Tanzanian development model of Ujamaa and its main proponent, the Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere (Mazrui 1967). Varieties of socialism in Tanzania and other African and Arab states during the 1960s and 1970s ‘were marked by their leaders’ reluctance to employ Marxist rhetoric, Leninist vanguardism in party organisation, and dirigist economic planning’ (Burton 2017: 9). Facing a dead end of socialist revolution in their own industrial societies, Western socialists and social democrats cherished Ujamaa, which kept its distance from communism as a non-aligned project focused on self-reliance and rural development and aiming to instil the values of egalitarianism, modesty and solidarity. Aiming to support the promising experiment of Tanzanian socialism, Western NGOs such as Oxfam readily acted as ‘surrogates of the state’, as Michael Jennings has argued (Jennings 2008). Foreign donors, international aid agencies, national NGOs, churches and mosques all subscribed, voluntarily or involuntarily, to the implementation of the government’s socialist project and became part of a common ‘development front’ (Jennings 2008: 63). Among the adherents of Ujamaa were also West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Minister of Economic Cooperation Erhard Eppler. Their connections with Nyerere and other influential Tanzanian politicians laid the foundations for Tanzania’s status as the number one recipient of West German aid in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1971, it was agreed that the Federal Republic of Germany should assist in a regional planning venture in Tanga Region, focusing on rural areas. Early TIRDEP documents were filled with references to standards and ideals formulated, however vaguely and open to interpretation, on the Tanzanian side. Lists of the programme’s objectives began with improvements to living conditions, including an equal distribution of incomes, and they always contained pledges to support the construction of Tanzanian socialism.6 The 1971 agreement coincided with two global trends in development, first the reorientation from a trickle-down approach focusing on capital investment in industries to a poverty-oriented basic needs approach, and secondly the rise of regional planning as an instrument of decentral-

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ized and needs-oriented development planning. As a prime example of ‘travelling blueprints’ (Bierschenk 2014), which have been so important in the global history of development, regional planning was adapted in a myriad of forms by donor and recipient countries alike and also promoted and supported by the World Bank. Tanzania’s decision-­makers were experts in the strategy of aid-shopping around the globe and secured assistance from both sides of the Iron Curtain: major donors in the mid-1970s were the World Bank, the Scandinavian countries, West Germany, Canada and China. Tanzania’s political elite also turned the paradigm of regional planning (in conjunction with the national policy of decentralization) into a device to attract donors. The rules Tanzania set for donors’ involvement were simple. Each region was to be allocated to a specific donor country or international organization. While a donor could choose to ‘take’ several regions, it was not possible for a region to ‘have’ two donors – a clear indication that the policy aimed to instil a sense of competition among donor countries, making it possible for them to demonstrate successes in ‘their’ regions. However, there was also criticism within the country. Some Tanzanians jokingly referred to this allocation as the second partition of Africa by the West. Marxist and dependency-school scholars and students at the University of Dar es Salaam scathingly criticized regional planning as a sell-out of Tanzania to capitalist countries, pointing out the state’s lack of control over the planning activities of the donors and the absence of a coherent overall planning strategy (Shivji 1992: 50). Only a few years later, Western donors joined the chorus of criticism regarding regional planning, albeit for largely different reasons. In the context of the global rise of neoliberalism and a renaissance of Cold War rivalries, Ujamaa was increasingly seen as a failed experiment. Efforts to build Ujamaa’s economic base through resettlement campaigns, nationalization and collectivization were as unsuccessful as the uncoordinated attempts at industrialization, failures which were exacerbated through external factors, including falling terms of trade, the oil crises and the costly war against Uganda led by Idi Amin in 1979. A growing number of Western observers were convinced that the Tanzanian government’s efforts to mitigate its economic problems and rising levels of debt were misguided. In 1979, President Nyerere expelled the IMF’s representatives after they had insisted that further loans to the country would depend on macroeconomic policy changes. Nyerere rejected this, arguing that a devaluation of the Tanzanian shilling and other measures demanded by the IMF would lead to extreme social hardship and give rise to new inequalities. By 1983, almost all Western donors had joined the IMF in cutting aid and pressuring Tanzania to change government policies

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f­ undamentally, which was also reflected in the discontinued support for regional development programmes. This outcome was added to the general perception in Western development circles that ‘projects’, understood as targeted and limited interventions, were doomed to fail if the larger context – mainly understood as macroeconomic policies – were misguided in the first place. For most Western donors, regional development was similarly discredited as an approach that was too complex to be managed, too top-down and futile under adverse structural conditions. The German-supported TIRDEP programme, however, had become – to use a stereotypical phrase of the Western development discourse – ‘too big to fail’. As a prestige project and a showcase for the vanguard approaches of West German aid, it survived critical evaluations by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation (BMZ, Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit). TIRDEP even outlasted Ujamaa, Tanzania’s socialist project, which had shown its first cracks in the mid-1970s and was fully dismantled in the course of the late 1980s, following Nyerere’s resignation as president in 1985. Throughout its existence, TIRDEP adapted to and drove trends in development. It served as a pioneering scheme to devise and test the latest concepts of social engineering, with Tanga being the laboratory. With its different and ever-evolving projects, TIRDEP mirrored and drove major trends in development policies such as the (temporary) adoption of financing agreements in the late 1970s, the introduction of participatory planning techniques, and the inclusion of environmental and gender issues in the second half of the 1980s. Given the importance of being ‘up to date’ in the development sector, TIRDEP circumscribed an arena in which actors could take pride in their belonging to the avantgarde of technical cooperation. Counterparts became a crucial part of this situation, and many of them would later use their experience in TIRDEP to establish development NGOs or private development consultancy services.

Asymmetrical Interdependence and the Valorization of Counterparts Counterparts to German project leaders and experts included the heads of regional departments, such as the Regional Community Development Officer, heads of sections within the departments and other officials. Project documents clearly show that there was nothing like a clear-cut definition of who a counterpart was: in a 1988 review of TIRDEP projects, counterparts usually numbered between one and five per project, though

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in one case the number given was as high as 59.7 One way of identifying the typical functions of GTZ project leaders and counterparts is to analyse agreements and formal job descriptions. In formal terms, the expatriate and the counterpart both acted as brokers at the interface between the project and their respective employers, the GTZ and the Tanzanian government. The project leader and the counterpart were to ensure that the parties to the contract contributed resources as stipulated in the aid agreement. This contractual vision of counterpart relations, informed by the ideals of horizontal cooperation and partnership, was just one official version. In other cases, the hierarchies differed more clearly: the expatriate as advisor to a high-level official, or the counterpart as understudy to the expatriate. This was the theory. In practice, two of the most important functions in counterpart relations were gatekeeping and valorization. Gatekeeping was a major function of TIRDEP’s more influential counterparts, largely because of their position at the interface between the ‘local’ and the ‘international’. Frederick Cooper has argued that postcolonial African states were structurally geared towards control of the interface between the national economy and the global economy, this being a heritage of the colonial period (Cooper 2002). While one aim of Ujamaa was to do away with the dependence on external resources through a focus on self-reliance and rural development, extraversion remained a crucial strategy of politicians and officials, including Nyerere. The gatekeeper function was decentralized in the sense that it could be found on several levels, including national ministries, the regional officers of sectors like health and water, district officials and village authorities. Building a harmonious relationship with these gatekeepers was indispensable, given that many West German-supported projects relied on importing vehicles, machinery and equipment, and that expatriate workers needed work permits and access to decision-making and personal resources in public institutions.8 As a former West German programme leader emphasized: The relations were not to be disturbed, because informally, power is distributed differently than one might think. They could do anything to you. A lot is being done, well, not quite legally. Because one can deduce an illegality everywhere, with every consignment that comes in, in every delivery that arrives, as these are subject to import duties, and there is an infinite number of shipments coming in. They were always fairly generous. But for this, one had to behave accordingly.9

The quote illustrates an impression shared by many expatriate experts that they faced constraints and perceived their agency as existing in a relationship of interdependence. They had to gain the trust and goodwill

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of the regional authorities. There are numerous examples of cases in which these gatekeepers were able to exert an influence over expatriate development workers and got access to project resources – mostly, but not exclusively, in material terms. These appropriations were by no means always selfish in nature. Often project resources were used to overcome existing constraints. Widespread and simplistic narratives of corruption and neo-patrimonialism have sidelined the fact that these gatekeepers, including both party functionaries and technocratic bureaucrats, themselves came under considerable pressure from above and below to perform and show results. In a striking example, a Tanzanian official asked for TIRDEP vehicles to take primary school examination papers to schools in remote areas. Tanzanian administrators tried to get access to external funds to build material structures on the ground (as symbols of ‘development’) or to counter foreign exchange imbalances in regional households. Strategies of resource appropriation thus often went beyond private interests. Expatriates and Tanzanians both had an interest in avoiding open conflicts or any souring of relations in order to keep up the flow of resources. This interdependency complicates any argument that would boil down to a simple pattern of ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’ The interdependence was grounded in the concentration of economic capital on the donor’s side and political and institutional capital on the recipient’s side, decisive in the ability to mobilize resources within Tanzania. A major obligation with which expatriate experts saw themselves confronted was the ‘valorization’ (the German equivalent, Inwertsetzung, was used by one of the former German aid workers in the interview)10 of their counterparts and the Tanzanian workforce at large. This term echoed the colonial motto of mise en valeur – that is, investing in physical and social infrastructure in order to exploit colonies more efficiently. This ‘valorization’ was couched in the language of partnership, in which cooperation was imperative. Rather than working on his or her own, the expatriate development worker was supposed to achieve project objectives by continually involving the counterpart in what he or she was doing. This also meant inviting, valuing and making use of the counterpart’s input and knowledge, thus ensuring that the national cadres could fully use their potential for the benefit of development. In that sense, the performance of the expatriate was also measured through the performance of the counterpart. Several German interlocutors described valorization as a cumbersome process and admitted failures, saying that they did not have the patience to include their counterparts (given that they had to produce results according to the project cycle) or that the counterparts did not

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fully emancipate themselves but remained dependent on external inputs. The partnership had eventually turned into a paternalist relationship: ‘I would have liked to lead them [the Tanzanian counterparts] to become self-­reliant’,11 said a former West German technical expert in an interview, with a sense of resignation and failure. The paradox inherent in this phrase aptly captures a sense of partnership gone wrong. Yet it is exactly the aspect of valorization that Tanzanian interlocutors appreciated the most about working within a donor-supported project. From their point of view, educational opportunities and the availability of material resources were what mattered most. Counterparts and other seconded staff, as well as employees, were able to access the ample training opportunities that were increasingly offered in the late 1970s and 1980s as an integral part of technical cooperation projects. As a rule of thumb, the higher the position of a counterpart or employee, the more prestigious the training that she/he would obtain access to. Top-level counterparts might pursue a postgraduate degree in England or a doctorate at West Berlin’s Free University and benefit from a close working relationship with the counterpart, while lower-level technicians might, at best, be sent to a seminar in the region of several weeks’ duration. In a project report, this was aptly called the ‘top-heavy pattern of … scholarships’.12 Some of the lower cadres who did not benefit from the project according to their career expectations quit their jobs to avoid ‘getting stuck’ with a heavy workload and dim perspectives for educational upgrades, which many saw as a prerequisite for upward social mobility. They thus left the donor-supported project to pursue higher education and to re-enter salaried positions on a higher level in the government sector. This was especially common up to the mid-1980s: only later did the NGO sector become a more attractive alternative for advancement without having to go to university. While some counterparts thus profited from ‘valorization’, the ‘trickle-down effect’ of projects was rather weak, as complaints and career choices by lower level staff testify.

Extraversion and the Rise of the ‘Per Diem Culture’ Due to fringe benefits associated with development projects, one might expect that those civil servants who were seconded to TIRDEP projects were happy about their new place of work. However, the interview narratives show that there were other variables that made relocation desirable, or not. Some professionals wanted to live close to family members in other regions, while others preferred to live far away from relatives and other

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would-be dependants in order to forestall their demands for assistance. A couple of interlocutors had already started building their own brick houses  – an investment priority for many Tanzanians and also a useful strategy to safeguard material values against the inflation of the Tanzanian ­shilling – and were thus unwilling to move to a new place. Eventually, however, they also followed the state’s call for duty. Most counterparts and seconded technical personnel were civil servants and usually expected to remain civil servants for the rest of their lives, also because of the longterm security in comparison to temporary employment. When TIRDEP was set up in the mid-1970s, however, the golden age of the civil service in Tanzania was coming to an end due to the unfolding economic crisis. Funding for state institutions was significantly reduced, which forced even the most committed employees to remain idle and unable to put their skills to use. Due to the crumbling of the state’s material base, most development interventions depended, even more than before, on injections of external resources. The state did not have cars, motorbikes or the foreign exchange to buy spare parts, though Western aid agencies did. In some years, resources from TIRDEP accounted for over 50 per cent of the region’s development budget. These resources could indeed translate into efficiency. As a Tanzanian expert put it, ‘You don’t have any excuse anymore, because you have got everything that you need to work. All resources are available to you.’13 For those who worked for state authorities without the support of a donor, the experience was very different. In an application letter to a TIRDEP project in 1989, a government employee wanted to leave the paralysing state of salaried waithood and join a new employer with the resources to enable him to work and gain experience:14 [H]ere at Municipal Council I have become so much bored with the endless hours of nothing to do, meaning that there is no building projects which are to be keeping me experienced and busy – and without taking this measure, I would be diminishing my technology.

It is important to note that this was an application for temporary employment with a West German aid project, not a permanent position in the civil service. Leaving a civil service career had its disadvantages, as one risked losing not only the salary once the project ended but one also bade good goodbye to job security and could expect significant cuts in pensions. Many officials were not prepared to take these risks and thus formally remained in government service but pursued alternative income-generating strategies to eke out a living. Ventures into the NGO sector and consultancy were still rare at this point among TIRDEP associates, but other ways of economic straddling became common: all kinds

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of small businesses, from chicken farms to bars and informal stalls, were established as side projects to make ends meet. Usually these strategies also depended on the labour of family members. Men often remained in their salaried posts, while their wives shifted from positions of salaried employment into the informal sector (where the effects of inflation, which ate away the purchasing power of regular salaries, could be negotiated more flexibly), thus diversifying the sources of family income. Fringe benefits, including per diems, means of transport, housing allowances or credit schemes, also gained in importance. Status differences between expatriates and national professionals, as well as status differences among Tanzanians, translated into very different priorities and rhythms in daily life. While Tanzanians, especially those who had no personal connections with parastatal companies or retailers, had to queue for hours to be able to buy a bar of soap or a kilo of sugar, German development workers, with their access to foreign currency, could import whatever they needed, including luxury goods. Expatriates also received special rations channelled by the Tanzanian state to officials, diplomats and expatriates to ensure that they did not have to waste their time hunting down rice or flour. Tanzanian officials and employees in aid projects were entitled to basic handouts as well, but, in the words of one Tanzanian development planner, ‘[e]xpatriates were getting each and everything because of them being expatriates’, while nationals received considerably less, particularly those at the lower end of the status hierarchy.15 West German project leaders had to come to terms with the effects of these inequalities both in private contacts and at work. They often felt that signs of indiscipline, such as absenteeism, could not be sanctioned, nor could small instances of theft or private detours with office cars, because the economic roots of indiscipline – a ‘status of having or not-having’, as one West German project leader put it – ruled out harsh punitive measures.16 Nevertheless, subordinates were closely supervised through micromanagement and planning techniques. Many Tanzanians involved in TIRDEP projects even ‘felt that the Germans were behaving like colonial masters’, as a Tanzanian agricultural expert and former official project counterpart leader recalled in an interview.17 Still, on their own these measures were inefficient without economic incentives: these were necessary to ‘capture’ both the consent of bureaucrats and the labour of employees and temporary workers when it came to implementation. The readiness of Western aid agencies to use fringe benefits led to the rise of the ‘per diem culture’, which has remained a defining feature of development work and participatory approaches until today (Smith

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2003). Although the rise of the ‘per diem culture’ in TIRDEP reflected a broader international trend, it was also a response to Tanzanians’ claims to material benefits. However, the strategy of using economic incentives to increase the reliability and motivation of staff was limited by three substantial constraints. First, the ‘leadership code’ of the ruling party’s Arusha Declaration of 1967 stipulated that government officers could not draw second salaries. Second, donors argued that ‘sustainability’ could only be achieved if salaries in aid projects resembled those in the bureaucracy, as otherwise activities would stop once the donor handed the project over to cash-strapped state authorities. Third, the economic crisis was so pervasive that it was difficult and potentially socially divisive to draw a line between counterparts and other employees who were entitled to access to additional benefits or privileges and those who were not. Changes could upset the moral economy. Eventually, the material transfers in development work came to resemble those in the economic sector: fringe benefits were offered to complement salaries so that nationals would not have to invest valuable time and energy into generating additional income privately. Engaging in the ‘per diem culture’ was, in fact, a balancing act between political constraints and the pressure of project cycles to produce results. The unequal distribution of resources, including access to means of transport (cars, motorbikes, bicycles) and other fringe benefits, bred resentment at the lower levels of TIRDEP’s hierarchies. Two sociologists from the University of Dar es Salaam were commissioned to investigate the attitudes of farmers and extension workers towards the West German development programme in Tanga region. In their final report, they stated (Ngware and Nindi 1982: 49) that agricultural extension workers working on the village level shocked the survey team by openly complaining that the TIRDEP expatriate staff were very strict with the agreed work schedules and closely followed what the village extension workers were doing daily and weekly. This was done through filling in a form which was handed over to the TIRDEP staff during their weekly vis[i]ts to the villages. Such extension workers boasted they used to do very little when they were working directly under DDD [District Development Director] and had more time for leisure but with the same pay. One of them said he would be happier to be ‘returned’ to the DDD. They suggested that if TIRDEP projects were to be implemented properly, then they should employ ‘their own people’ as they did with their administrative staff at Lushoto or agree to ‘topping up’ their salaries with fringe benefits.

This quote gives a rare insight into the boundaries of the development intervention, where its disciplinary effects became weaker and its

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presence was reduced to patchy supervision. It also shows how the distribution of resources was constantly negotiated and fought for. Unlike top-level counterparts and mid-level employees, these rural extension workers did not have access to project cars, nor could they profit from the credit schemes through which other project associates were able to afford motorbikes. Accordingly, the extension workers tried to change the rules of the game and used the conversation with the sociologists to voice their demands. High-level counterparts sometimes delegitimized such complaints of mid- and lower level staff as mere ‘jealousy’, thus rendering the claims illegitimate. In other instances, however, they carried the demands further and convinced West German representatives to spread resources more widely; for instance, through the provision of motorbikes and bicycles, or by including new groups as the beneficiaries of allowances. Closely connected to discussions about the allocation of material resources were debates regarding the right approach to development.

Competing Concepts Critics have rendered expatriate experts as proponents of capital-­ intensive, import-dependent concepts who sabotaged Tanzania’s project of self-reliance (Aminzade 2013: 175). While TIRDEP’s early history was marked by a preference for large-scale projects on both sides, by the 1980s it was usually Tanzanian counterparts in key positions (e.g. the heads of regional departments) who pushed for capital-intensive schemes, seeing large-scale infrastructure as both a symbol and a driver of modernity. An increasing number of West German expatriates, in ­contrast, ­advocated labour-intensive, small-scale solutions based on local resources  – ­particularly in the 1980s – which often relied on mobilizing resident populations. Most Tanzanian administrators and politicians, however, avoided solutions that relied on the mobilization of voluntary labour in order to prevent popular resentment and resistance. This was informed by negative experiences with coercive measures in the wake of the resettlement campaigns in the early 1970s, as well as memories of colonial interventions in agriculture in the Tanga region (on coercive development in previous decades, see Büschel 2014). Expatriates did not simply come with ‘superior’ knowledge and apply it. Just like other migrants, albeit more privileged, development workers had to produce and actively validate their knowledge in arenas on the ground to justify their presence (Erel 2010). A GTZ expert remembered that he had to make sure to be ‘always one step ahead’ (‘immer die Nase

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vorn haben’) in terms of knowledge, as otherwise his counterpart might have challenged the legitimacy of his presence. This self-perception of expatriate experts as knowledge brokers differed from Tanzanians’ understanding of the role Germans played. In the interviews, Tanzanian professionals described GTZ experts first and foremost as administrators and controllers of funds, and only rarely as representatives of a superior, advanced knowledge. There was, in fact, no agreement on what the ‘best’ concept was. Repeatedly, there were discussions between, on the one hand, expatriate development workers who were enthusiastic for labour-intensive solutions cherishing ‘appropriate technology’ and E.F. Schumacher’s ‘small is beautiful’ approach, and on the other hand their Tanzanian counterparts, who demanded the latest and biggest technology available despite its reliance on extensive capital inputs (Macekura 2015; Schumacher 1973). Such discussions about choices of technology could rock the foundations of any project, thus endangering future aid agreements and resource flows. A Tanzanian engineer and leader of an irrigation project, describing himself in the interview as part of the ‘cream of Tanzanian engineers’, remembered this to be the main bone of contention in his relations with his West German counterpart:18 My discussions were, ‘We need to do more.’ More financing, to do more projects, and at times I wanted bigger projects. But we were more on smallholder farmers, so those were my big discussions. Because I had experience visiting some other places where they were undertaking very big projects, large-scale, so I thought maybe we really need to look into having one or two large-scale schemes. So that’s where my strong discussions were.

This former counterpart told me that he became convinced of these large-scale schemes during his studies and educational visits abroad. He thus pitted his international experience and the desire to bring modern technology to Tanzania against the particularizing approach of the GTZ. Apart from that, he was, in fact, downplaying the magnitude of the conflict as we may understand it after examining the files: the German project manager, who had been present for several years and was unwilling to agree to large-scale schemes, was withdrawn following several charges from the Tanzanian side. His cultural capital was (rather suddenly) judged to be irrelevant, as he did not hold a degree in engineering, was allegedly refusing to cooperate with the Tanzanian authorities and was accused of having committed grave management mistakes. The GTZ tried to elucidate this event – seemingly based on a controversy about knowledge – by referring to material interests: the German expert had been supposed to act as advisor only. As the Tanzanian side

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failed to second a counterpart to be advised, the advisor was more or less pushed into an executive function, running the department.19 For other Tanzanian officials, this had the welcome side effect that Tanzanian government funds were now transferred from the recurrent budget to the development budget, which meant that allowances and reimbursements were much easier to withdraw than under usual procedures. When the German development worker became fed up with his predominantly administrative tasks after half a year, he stepped down from this position, thereby complicating budgetary procedures once again. Some of his Tanzanians colleagues were not amused. The call to replace him was thus apparently based not only on disagreements over the right approach to follow. This incident – which, lacking more perspectives, cannot be fully reconstructed – tells us that a narrow materialist or culturalist reading would decontextualize and oversimplify counterpart relations. The tensions were the result of a complex arrangement of actors and interests. More often than not, the arrangement succeeded in maintaining a surface of shared interests. In this instance, several factors contributed to an open conflict: differing visions of what constituted ‘modern’ and ‘appropriate’ technology, a devalued academic degree, the question of access to economic capital and the expatriate aid worker’s temptation to assume responsibility (thus going against the ideal of partnership) and his getting caught up in the web of on-site strategies of resource appropriation. In general, however, the donor had the last word on what was to be funded. The West German expatriates exerted a growing influence over the formulation of policies on the regional and project levels. There were numerous experiments and ‘innovations’, some of which, such as the introduction of ox-drawn carts in agriculture, had a history extending back to German colonial times and had long since become a staple of development interventions in numerous postcolonial countries. With regard to programmatic decisions, the leverage of the Tanzanian side was minimal. Judging from interviews conducted in 2014, Tanzanians widely accepted that decision-making power lay with ‘the Germans’, since it was ‘their’ money. There were almost no traces of the radical critiques of the 1970s, which had regarded the presence of expatriates as the continuation of relations of dominance. Largely uncontested, the GTZ pushed for the utilization of its newly developed trademark variety of participatory, ‘target-oriented’ planning (Zielorientierte Projektplanung, ZOPP) across all projects in the late 1980s. This went along with an emphasis on training Tanzanian staff to master the techniques of participatory planning, such as the moderation of ZOPP sessions carried out with ­different ‘­stakeholders’. For the careers of some Tanzanians – both men

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and women – this was a crucial step for their future trajectory in state or, increasingly, non-state development.

Male and Female Post-TIRDEP Careers between State and Non-state Development The turn to participation was a turn away from the state, a symptom of the end of the ‘development front’ in Tanzania and a sign for the crumbling belief in the state’s role as a trustee of development. While Western donors pushed for macroeconomic reforms, development workers on the ground made efforts to ensure the inclusion and participation of ‘target groups’ on the micro level. IMF representatives wearing suits and ties resembled development workers wearing shorts and shirts in their distrust of state institutions and party functionaries. Many Tanzanian citizens had distrusted state institutions for much longer. The new trend of participatory development under neoliberal reforms provided some with the opportunity to use the momentum and secure a favourable position in the race to establish new relations of extraversions. What was new was that these new relations involved direct cooperation between donors and Tanzanian ‘communities’ without the interference of bureaucratic intermediaries. The new emphasis on participatory planning was accompanied by challenges to the long unacknowledged male bias in the sector of development expertise. This brought about, first, a new visibility of ‘women’ as a specifically vulnerable ‘target group’ to be empowered and generated, and second, a new type of career trajectory for female professionals. In the case of TIRDEP, consultants, initially mostly Western expatriates, were hired to assess the gendered impact of development projects from the early 1980s onwards, with many reports indicating that village-based projects often favoured the interests of male elites over those of most women.20 West German aid workers began to attend seminars such as the course on the ‘Role of Women as Benefiters and Implementers of Rural Development’ organized by the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) in the Bavarian community of Feldafing.21 A number of new projects initiated in the mid-1980s explicitly targeted women not only as beneficiaries but also as a group exerting agency (Johansson 2001: 73–75). Female GTZ experts, themselves a small minority, pushed for the adoption of gender-sensitive approaches by TIRDEP (e.g. field visits always to be conducted by both a male and a female extension worker) and the hiring of women as counterparts on the project staff. Tanzanian female graduates of community development courses also began to use a confidently gendered language in applications. One applicant, for instance,

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wrote that ‘mostly I prefer to deal with women in their development’.22 A number of TIRDEP projects began recruiting female experts (rather than just experts) in the late 1980s. Profiting from the boost provided by GTZ experts, a few female Tanzanian professionals eventually rose to influential positions in the state administration, or established their own NGOs. Even on lower levels, women seized the moment of disillusionment with state institutions and made the case for their own involvement. Bi Mwangu from the village of Soni, for instance, encouraged donors to work directly with and through ‘women’s groups’ so that they might take charge of resource allocation and decision-making: ‘Do not give any funds destined for women to village heads or District Offices. We want to work directly with private donors and manage our own projects.’23 This was a call that donors often heard and increasingly responded to, both in Tanga and beyond. While contact with women could theoretically also be established through state authorities or the respective chapters of the party’s women’s wing, Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania (UWT), small associations that successfully presented themselves as genuinely local seemed more attractive given the suspicions of state- and party-related bodies. However, as Claire Mercer (2002) pointed out in a study of village-based women’s groups in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region, donors’ expectations of democratic decision-making, empowerment and equitable access to resources allocated through women’s groups were rarely fulfilled. Most of the projects that were initiated in the late 1980s and early 1990s turned out to be highly hierarchical. As such, they boosted the social and financial statuses of its most influential members, who understood how to tap into global discourses of participation and gender to make claims for resources. Regular members, in turn, accrued few benefits. These women were not the only ‘new’ group of development entrepreneurs. While there was an enormous divergence of individual trajectories, it is useful to differentiate four generic career paths of Tanzanian professionals during, or after, the end of TIRDEP. First, counterparts who were public servants often remained in the state bureaucracy. Building on their social and cultural capital accumulated in their previous years with TIRDEP, many expanded and formalized private businesses (not directly connected to the field of international development) they had set up in the 1980s or came up with new commercial side projects. Second, the careers of other officials straddled the boundaries between the dwindling state sector on the one hand and the growing private and civil society sector in development on the other. They began to complement their incomes by offering consultancy services or establishing a development NGO, using the experience they had gathered in dealing with Western aid agencies. This double or triple strategy was especially prevalent

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among counterparts who had some education – though not university degrees – who had been employed in mid-level posts, had a lower level of education and were thus stuck at certain levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Trying to balance job security and additional income-earning strategies, they remained in their posts in the administration while also seeking new opportunities by offering consultancies, often struggling to keep these additional ventures viable. Experiencing resource constraints in their daily work for the government, they were also particularly nostalgic about their time with TIRDEP when external resources introduced into government offices enabled outreach activities and personal mobility through allowances, motorbikes and the availability of fuel.24 A third group transferred from government to non-government positions. Leaving the civil service still held its own risks, as mentioned above. Concrete prospects very much depended on one’s educational level and previous activities within TIRDEP. While lower-level counterparts without university degrees sought employment in regional and national NGOs, those with more experience and higher educational ­achievements  – sometimes enabled through TIRDEP scholarships, as mentioned above – had chances to continue their careers at international institutions from smaller aid agencies to the World Bank. In general, however, TIRDEP veterans had a distinct advantage over many competitors: the three letters ‘GTZ’ were a strong symbolic asset in any CV. A fourth group were those professionals who had been directly employed in TIRDEP projects (that is, they had not held positions in the Tanzanian government service). As TIRDEP projects were phased out, they were rarely given the chance to continue working with the state, which was forced to cut costs due to structural adjustment policies. Not all former employees were even in need of these posts. The participatory turn had led to a new emphasis on training counterparts in ways of moderating meetings with ‘villagers’ and ‘communities’ and coming up with operational plans based on these consultations. GTZ representatives highly valued those employees who mastered the communicative and planning techniques, which were, according to GTZ standards, the most advanced and effective ones. When a couple of Tanzanian counterparts had been trained in this latest fashion for planning techniques, German aid organizations came to depend upon them for training workshops and for conducting monitoring and evaluation exercises in other African countries, including South Africa, which was just entering its post-­apartheid period and provided a new field of operations for aid organizations. Western aid agencies such as the GTZ preferred consultants who were familiar with its regulations, procedures and terminologies. The high demand for African facilitators was translated into a degree of negotiat-

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ing power for the Tanzanian side; for example, regarding decisions about where to hold training sessions.25 As a result, some Tanzanians were able to pursue successful careers as planners and workshop facilitators based on the training and experience they had acquired through TIRDEP. Many others, however, remained on the lower rungs of the state bureaucracy.

Conclusion This chapter has investigated development work through a focus on counterpart relations, showing how these were marked by global inequalities but also provided substantial room for manoeuvre for different actors in concrete settings. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the relationship between West German expatriate development experts and their Tanzanian counterparts, as well as colleagues and other employees, was marked by an asymmetrical interdependence. Expatriate experts were crucial in running and administering the projects in a way that ensured the continued flow of material resources and educational opportunities. Yet, in producing the results deemed necessary in plans, they were highly dependent on their Tanzanian counterparts, employees and subordinates. Resources were thus exchanged both ways. These relations were shaped by the economic malaise of late Tanzanian socialism and new trends in Western development discourses. Many West German development workers involved in TIRDEP hoped that the shift towards ‘participation’ would be connected to the democratization of development practices and a more just allocation of resources. In a larger historical perspective, one definite effect was the further marginalization of the Tanzanian state in determining development policies: NGOs, depending on external resources, had to follow the trends of Western development discourses to a much larger degree than the Tanzanian government in the 1970s. While sociopolitical visions of overcoming peripherality and fighting inequality loomed large until the mid-1970s, the economic aspects gained in importance in the years that followed. In development work, fringe benefits in particular became a decisive precondition for productive work. This mirrors Tanzania’s increasing dependency on external resources, as well as its re-­marginalization when it comes to setting the agenda for development – quite in contrast to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the regime’s concepts had guided, however incompletely, the activities of a whole range of NGOs and development agencies. In a slightly longer historical perspective, the shift in the 1980s from state-led development to a more diverse development scene in which

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NGOs and companies were supposed to play a central role as ‘developers’ was not altogether new. In fact, the arrangement resembled ‘the situation in the early twentieth century, when most development-related work had been carried out by non-state actors’ (Unger 2018: 154). In the life experiences of the individuals involved, however, this shift was regarded as a fundamental change that affected work environments, livelihood strategies and careers. While some Tanzanians were able to profit from the new opportunities by drawing on their cultural capital and occupying new or growing economic niches such as the development consultancy business, relations in development have remained highly asymmetrical. Eric Burton is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. He has published journal articles on the entangled global histories of socialism, development and decolonization in the Journal of Global History, Cold War History and Journal für Historische Kommunismusforschung and is author of the forthcoming monograph In Diensten des Afrikanischen Sozialismus: Die globale Entwicklungsarbeit der beiden deutschen Staaten in Tansania, 1961–1990 (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021). Volumes edited by him include Socialisms in Development (Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, 2017) and Journeys of Education and Struggle: African Mobility in Times of Decolonization and the Cold War (Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies, 2018).

Notes This chapter is based on research carried out for my Ph.D. dissertation, in which I investigate entanglements in development between Tanzania and the two German states from the 1960s to the 1980s. Research has been funded by the Austrian Fund for Sciences within the framework of the research project ‘Personal Cooperation in “Development Aid” and “Socialist Aid” in the context of system competition’ (FWF project number P-25949-G16) directed by Berthold Unfried. I would like to thank the reviewer, as well as the editors and participants in the workshop, for valuable comments on previous versions of this text.  1. In 2011, the GTZ was integrated into the newly founded German Corporation for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ).  2. On the argument that contemporary relations between German aid workers and Tanzanian professionals can be considered ‘colonial’, see Bendix (2016).  3. Pierre Bourdieu’s (1998) differentiation of different types of capital – economic, social, cultural and political capital – is useful in understanding how this interdependence was negotiated by persons in different roles in the projects.  4. Some interviews in Tanzania were conducted together with Atuswege Burton and Berthold Unfried.  5. I use ‘West German’ instead of ‘German’ because there were also East German experts in Tanzania.

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 6. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (Federal Archive of Foreign Affairs, Berlin), ZW 114 925, BMZ, ‘Vorlage zur Entscheidung‘, Bonn, 19 December 1973, 10.  7. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (Federal Archive Koblenz), B 213/48200, ‘TIRDEP [Overview]’, August 1988. Note: The file was still in the ministry’s repositories and thus accessed directly in the Ministry of Economic Cooperation in Bonn; it will eventually be transferred to the BArch Koblenz.  8. Interview with Pius Msekwa, Dar es Salaam, 24 November 2014.  9. Interview #25, West German project leader (quote translated by the author). 10. Interview #25, West German aid worker. 11. Interview #115, West German aid worker. Originally in German: ‘Ich hätte die gerne dazu geführt, dass sie eigenständig werden.’ 12. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, TIR PAM 0060, VDP Project Manager, ‘Project Progress Report January–June 1982’, Tanga, 30 June 1982, 22. 13. Interview #85, Tanzanian engineer. Originally in Kiswahili: ‘Halafu kingine ilikuwa ni utendaji wa kazi, nafurahi walikuwa wanajaribu kukuweka katika mfumo wa kufanya kazi, yaani nikisema mfumo wa kufanya kazi …, yaani unakuwa commited, yaani huna excuse nyingi kwenye kazi maana vitendea kazi unavyo, kwa hiyo resource zote unavyo.’ 14. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, Personnel Job Applications 1.2.7, Application G.K. to VDP Project Manager, 8 November 1989. 15. Interview #16, Tanzanian development planner. 16. Interview #25, West German project leader. 17. He himself, however, claimed to have been used to this ‘very harsh …, ­straightforward way of Germans doing things’, having spent seven years studying first in East Germany and then in West Germany. Interview #63, Tanzanian agricultural expert, counterpart and GTZ project leader. 18. Interview #90, Tanzanian engineer and counterpart to a West German-supported project. 19. In the short term, the rather small-scale approach, which the GTZ advocated was continued. In the long term, however, the argument for ‘big technology’ prevailed: the interlocutor later cooperated with the World Bank and was, at the time of the interview, principal secretary in the ministry responsible for water and irrigation ­ projects. 20. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, VDP, ‘Project Progress Report No. 8’, Tanga, 20 June 1985, 7. 21. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, VDP, ‘Project Progress Report No. 11’, Tanga, 20 January 1987, 17. 22. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, Personnel: Job Applications 1.2.7., Application letter, M. M. to VDP Project Manager, Arusha, 6 February 1989. 23. Tanga Library, TIRDEP Section, TL 40, E. Grohs, ‘Identification of Assistance to SelfHelp Projects of Rural Women in Tanga Region’, (Eschborn: GTZ, September 1985), 35. 24. An example would be Interview #88, Tanzanian area planner. 25. Private archive S.R., ‘Adult Education DSE-FDC Correspondence’, DSE, Final Report on Programme ‘Erstellung von Lern- und Lehrmaterialien für das NachAlphabetisierungsprogramm in Tansania II’, 18 to 26 March 1986.

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Spitzberg, I.J. 1978. ‘Introduction’, in I.J. Spitzberg (ed.), Exchange of Expertise: The Counterpart System in the New International Order K. Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 1–17. Spitzberg, I.J. (ed.). 1987. Exchange of Expertise: The Counterpart System in the New International Order. Boulder: Westview Press. Unger, C.R. 2018. International Development: A Postwar History. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Zürcher, L. 2014. Die Schweiz in Ruanda: Mission, Entwicklungshilfe und nationale Selbstbestätigung (1900–1975). Zürich: Chronos.

Chapter 11

Civil Society and the Challenge of Consolidating Democracy in Togo Kokou Folly Lolowou Hetcheli

Introduction Since the 1990s, almost all African states south of the Sahara have embarked on a path towards political liberalism against the backdrop of social tensions. New civil society actors that have been excluded from the management of public affairs for a long time emerged on the political scene. Africa thus began an important sociopolitical transformation of its states, with a change of political regimes and systems, as well as a break with old governmental and social practices. This political refoundation has experienced varying degrees of success depending on the state. In Togo, as elsewhere, civil society has played a leading role in the struggle to restore liberal democracy. In the dynamics of this democratization process, one part of this civil society has been transformed into political parties, while another part has sought to acquire its own identity. Thus, the Front of Associations for Renewal (Front des Associations pour le Renouveau, FAR), created to centralize and voice popular grievances, broke up to give rise to other political parties, such as the Action Committee for Renewal (Comité d’Action pour le Renouveau, CAR), the Democratic Convention of African Peoples (Convention Démocratique des Peuples Africains, CDPA), etc. (Millot 2013). Each of the leaders of these political parties, though fighting together for the fall of the current regime, had the ambition to be the next and Notes for this chapter begin on page 267.

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Map 11.1. Administrative regions of Togo. Source: Mapsland.com.

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immediate successor to the President of the Republic. From then on, the opposition and the government followed a strategic logic of conquest or conservation of power, neglecting the bases of democracy. This is the reason for all kinds of political incivilities we are now witnessing and that prevent the consolidation of democracy. Reacting to this situation, civil society has engaged in promoting the values, rules, norms and principles that underpin and guide a democratic state (Hetcheli 2016: 114). What strategies do they deploy? How do they contribute to the rooting of democracy (parts 1–3)? What results have been achieved, and what challenges must be met (parts 4–5)? This chapter analyses the role of civil society in the process of consolidating democracy in Togo through the prism of a deliberative theoretical approach, in particular in its Habermasian assumption, which postulates that civil society contributes to the formation of public opinion through discussions of decisions and actions taken by the administrative and governmental apparatus. Civil society contributes to strengthening the social and political capacities of citizens to participate more effectively in the management of national affairs. The methodology chosen to conduct this research is qualitative in nature, involving analysis of the documentary content cross-referenced with the discourses of the actors, collected through in-depth individual interviews and focus groups. In addition to the documentary data, twenty-five in-depth individual interviews were conducted with leaders of civil society organizations, as well as five in-depth individual interviews with political party leaders, fifteen in-depth individual interviews with opinion-formers (community or religious leaders, media professionals, heads of women’s associations) and five focus groups with youth associations participating in training and awareness sessions. In addition, ten group interviews (five targeting men, five targeting women) were conducted in Togo’s five administrative regions, with two interviews per region, one in rural areas and one in urban areas. The collected data were subjected to content analysis and thematic analysis.

The Place of Civil Society in the Public Arena and Its Contribution to Easing Political Dirigisme in Togo The recent history of civil society in Togo is linked to citizens’ aspirations for greater freedom in the face of the authoritarianism and obscurantism of those in power. According to Otayek et al. (2004), the emergence of the civil society issue in public debates can be linked to a number of political and historical factors. Although civil society has eschewed entry into

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full-time politics in order to devote itself more directly to improvements in material living conditions, the advancement of knowledge and human development in general, it has not completely turned its back on politics and state affairs. This is why Habermas (1997) calls it a politicized public sphere. According to Gnenda (2015: 47), this sphere is composed of polymorphous social forces with disparate, divergent or convergent interests seeking to be alternatives to political professionals in the various fields in which their limitations become apparent. These organizations are places of socialization – that is, of the inculcation and interiorization of knowledge, norms and values, and of participation in the life of the nation. These organizations exist outside the state in the narrow sense of the term but are often in permanent dialogue with it. As Tshiyembe aptly puts it, associative life is a melting pot of fertile mixing, the foundation of a new citizenship. In these organizations, interests will be refined and transformed into clear, motivating and accessible objectives before being submitted to decision-makers (Tshiyembe 1990: 113–15). In the same vein, Otayek regards civil society as the sphere that is responsible for ‘spreading norms and values, i.e. a certain conception of life in society, of the relationship between individuals and social groups, of relations with the state, of representations referring to order, power and legitimacy’ (Otayek et al. 2004: 32). As such, the country’s leaders must remain attentive to civil society in order to identify the collective wills of those they govern. This is therefore the space where new consciences for desired social and political change must be conquered. The concept of civil society experienced a particular boom in Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to the combined effect of new guidelines from international donors and the wave of democratic transitions. In any case, there is a close relationship between the emergence of civil society and the crisis of the authoritarian system in Africa. Thus, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s, we witnessed the efflorescence of associative movements that were increasingly critical of political authoritarianism and the state’s absolute supremacy. In Togo, the monolithic state formed after obtaining independence on 27 April 1960 initially tried to respond to the population’s demands. However, progressively a dictatorial form of political socialization was introduced to ensure control over the social body. In order to establish its authority and acquire a hold over the population, the state not only monopolized all means of mass communication, it also set up a repressive system enabling it to destroy and discourage any attempt at contestation. However, these governmental practices were violently challenged in October 1990 by a ‘spontaneous civil society’ with the goal of making the state free up public space and redefine new principles

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organizing political life that would grant the right of self-fulfilment to each citizen. This process of the delegitimization of power took place in a very violent atmosphere involving two political forces with diametrically opposed visions. The ruling party insisted on controlling the democratization process and directed it according to its interests, using violence to repress protest movements. The opposition, for its part, progressively radicalized to the same extent as the government suppressed it, advocating a brutal break with the old system and with all those who led it (Hetcheli 2012: 42). During this period, the protest movements were relatively successful. Without being wiped out completely, the dictatorial state lost much of its vigour in the face of the dynamics that shook it from within. Grignon and Passeron (1989: 33) speak of the ‘pure and simple inversion of dominant values’; Bayart (1992) of true social democracy or bottom-up politics. Since democracy is an ideal, political and social changes in Togo must grow with and be rooted in individual and collective practice. The social body needs to acquire the values, rules, norms and principles that underpin the democratic government model. This leads to the systematic political socialization of citizens. Civil society has an important role to play in promoting a democratic culture for the purpose of consolidating democracy. As Hyden remarks, civil society constitutes a third force, apart from the state and political parties, and it has a real countervailing power because it does not contribute to the instrumentalization of people for political and electoral purposes or at least is not authorized to bring it about. This civil society, which lacks political ambition, should defend the interests of populations and communities, as well as instruct them in order to inform them better about the obstacles to their development and to serve as a space for proposing the values of citizenship (Hyden, cited by Iwata 2000: 137). However, in order to play this role effectively, civil society must itself dispose of certain skills.

Civil Society in Search of Civic Skills Togolese civil society emerged spontaneously in the 1990s without its members being trained in social action beforehand. Their commitment to the struggle for the democratization of political life was quite improvised. Apart from a small number of association leaders who have had an opportunity to be trained abroad, civil society actors lack the knowledge and technical skills required to intervene in a methodical, effective, efficient and professional manner.

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Based on this observation, which is shared by our interlocutors, the members of civil society integrate further qualifications for their members into their programmes. Through determination and commitment, the members of these organizations have succeeded in developing what can best be described as civic competencies: pedagogical and technical skills, as well as responsibility, self-sacrifice, solidarity and an ability to share. In addition, they join subregional, regional and international organizations, which enable them to participate in international meetings. These meetings create a framework for knowledge-sharing and thereby give them skills in associative life. Always seeking to develop such competencies and, above all, to make their actions efficient and visible, these civil society organizations (CSOs) have created settings that bring them together in confederations, unions, forums and consultations. FONTGO, UONGTO, RESOKA, FODES, CONGREMA, COADEP, RESODERC, CNSC,1 etc. are typical examples that allow Togolese civil society organizations to take joint action. Their approach is thus in line with Bauby’s argument (1996) that the main remedy for the overvaluation of politics lies in the redeployment of civil society as a counter-power, in the promotion of a public space in a social network. Although those in civil society have specific objectives according to their fields of intervention (peace, conflict management, human rights, civic engagement, citizenship, elections, etc.), these organizations combine their skills and know-how when it comes to fighting to defend issues of general interest: according to the executive board director of a CSO network (Lomé, February 2016), ‘We understood very early that our success lies in the strength of unity. We will not gain anything through fragmented responses.’ According to our interlocutors, these associations, most of which are composed of people from different ethnic backgrounds, are trying, in one way or another, to promote the emergence of a national culture and thus a national identity that transcends ethnic peculiarities. In most of these structures, particularistic identities undergo a certain modification. Members acquire a new identity that can easily be described as a civic identity.

Social Proximity and Effectiveness of Action The movements of the 1990s that shook the one-party regime – the work of an embryonic civil society that was very active in the capital and some other large urban centres in the country – had given the impression that

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civil society was an essentially urban and intellectual phenomenon. Today, CSOs are closer to Togolese citizens than in the past. For the people, this gives them a certain legitimacy. Represented throughout the country by relay teams or even on-site offices, CSOs manage to extend their actions to a large part of the national territory through awareness raising tours, campaigns, seminars and other meetings with the population at the grassroots level. Through these structures, which they established within the beneficiary communities, civil society has a good knowledge of the people’s needs, since it shares their daily realities and lifeworlds to a certain extent. This mode of action includes a very important component, namely the participation of communities in the actions put on for them. Indeed, the grassroots structures that serve as relays for civil society organizations on the ground are mainly led by resident actors, allowing the wider involvement of populations and a much better adherence to CSO actions. Moreover, our interlocutors told us that there is a keen interest among CSOs in investing in people’s civic education. These educational activities are most often carried out by CSOs that are considered to be ‘elitist’ – that is, organizations made up of elites and intellectuals who often work in the capital and who regularly rub shoulders with the technical services of the state and the representatives of development partners (CIVICUS 2006: 38). Civic education is provided through workshops, round tables and awareness-raising campaigns on various topics related to politics, the environment, the economy, child-trafficking, national and international legal instruments, etc. Private media often participate in civic education. With the liberalization of the press, several private media have emerged alongside the public media. In Togo, there are several audio-visual bodies based in Lomé, as well as in other cities across the country. Print media disseminate different information from public outlets, enabling citizens to form their own opinions and thereby orient their political behaviour in the intended sense. No true democracy can be built in a top-down manner, as the leader of an association specialized in education for citizenship remarked: ‘Convinced that habits cannot change so quickly at the top, our priority target is the basis’ (February 2016). The needs of communities are addressed at social conferences, as they constitute the basis of the democratic dynamic. This has led to the creation of well-organized and independent village communities: Having sensitized them in their role in development, having raised in them the idea that they are essential to the functioning of the state system, they no longer really need us except for some technical assistance in project

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c­ onceptualization in order for them to solve their own problems. (CSO platform manager, Kpalimé, January 2016)

The role of computerization in political communication that political parties have long played is being taken over by CSOs in the face of its misuse by the former, who are now focusing solely on the conquest of power. Awareness-raising for a democratic culture is now the responsibility of CSOs and NGOs, which thanks to their branches, relay teams and social proximity are cultivating democratic values among Togo’s citizens: At grassroots level, we have members who are young peace promoters (YPPs), eighty of them throughout the country. They educate people and then raise awareness about democratic standards, rules and electoral procedures. Their direct interlocutors are religious and traditional leaders. (Director of a CSO group, Tsévié, March 2016)

In rural areas, where people are far from the sources of political news, private media play an important role in the political socialization of citizens. Community radio broadcasts in local languages and open debates on politics allow people to express their opinions on the nation’s current affairs, thus contributing to the development of a democratic culture. Large in number, the working classes seem to hold the entire nation’s destiny in their hands. According to our interview partners, CSOs intensify their actions with precisely these people, making citizens aware of their and their leaders’ responsibilities. It can even be said that citizens are no longer being informed but seek to keep pace with events themselves, seeking information. CSOs train and sensitize citizens on important issues such as peace, non-violence, tolerance, reconciliation, etc., all of which may have a positive impact on the democratization process in Togo. The various elections, including the 2007 and 2013 legislative elections and the 2010 and 2015 presidential elections, were among the most peaceful that the country has known during its democratic era. The contribution of CSOs and NGOs to a certain political culture being developed among Togo’s citizens and thus to the strengthening of the democratic process is appreciated by participants, as this citizen from a peace-training workshop put it: Nothing will be as it was. I’ll never be twenty again. I envy the young people because they started very early doing what I can only do at forty. After all, they have the opportunity to benefit from special programmes in education and training. (Lomé, February 2016)

CSOs involve citizens from all social classes in the design of development projects and programmes in their communities. For example, the

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Association of Development Education Practitioners (Association des Praticiens de l’Education au Développement, APED-Togo) stands out for its concept of social conferences. Participation in the country’s public life has already become a practice for people who have remained on the margins of the country’s affairs for a long time. In some cities in the interior of the country, such as Tsévié, Kpalimé and Sokodé (cities that currently benefit from the Democracy Support Programme initiated by Germany), there are mechanisms allowing people to participate in municipal governance, if with diverse fortunes. The QUADRILOGUE, for instance, is a tool that brings together four types of actors in the management of essential services to the population, namely the city council, civil society, retailers and the media. Also, through the Municipal Development Plan (MDP), a communication unit has been set up involving various actors, such as civil society representatives, radio stations with a local reach, the city council’s technical services and women. In this area, the municipality of Kpalimé seems to be an example to follow. In addition to the QUADRILOGUE, it has other platforms and puts on occasions for reflection and action that are very active in the governance of municipal affairs. These are basically: – Consultation of the Chieftaincy (Concertation de la Chefferie) – Consultation of the District Development Committee and Village Development Committee (Concertation des CDQ (Comité de Développement de Quartier)) and CVD (Comité Villageois de Développement) – Consultation of Civil Society Organizations (Concertation des Organisation de la Société Civile) – Youth Consultation and Media Platform (Concertation des Jeunes and Plateforme des Médias) The existence of these mechanisms in the municipality of Kpalimé is a great asset for the initiation of inclusive local governance.

Civil Society and the Dynamics of Citizen Participation Civil Society and the Defence of Fundamental Liberties Since 1990, the struggle for the liberalization of the public space has remained the framework that has structured actions for democracy. Despite these struggles, the political environment still reflects the patrimonial management of the state and restrictions on fundamental

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­ emocratic rights. As the process of democratization is unfinished, the d struggle does not seem to be weakening, as indicated by ongoing debates on governance and open criticism of public officials. Today, demonstrations in favour of this struggle are intensifying and considerably reducing state intervention, even though the conflict between civil society and political parties remains open for this purpose. Looking back at sociopolitical life twenty years ago, the political evolution of this topic is very remarkable. The flourishing of advocacy CSOs, heard above all in the domain of resistance to the state, is only an illustration of their efforts to establish a more democratic space. In Togo, from July 1990 to the present day, about 12,200 CSO accreditation files have been received, and nearly 2,500 associations and unions have been authorized (CNSC-CALYPSO 2008). Organizations for the defence and promotion of human and women’s rights have multiplied especially over the past decade. They are constantly acting against leaders in order to force them to abandon projects considered to be obstacles to the fulfilment of human rights. The petitions and pleas of these organizations are sometimes intended to put pressure on the state to issue laws or conventions it has ratified in the field of human rights protection. This is what emerged from the words of a leader of an NGO fighting against impunity in Togo: Nowadays, we can say that the authority listens to us a lot on sensitive issues through the pleas we address to them. We had to refer certain issues of the nation to the head of state himself, and in response he told us that he had given recommendations to this or that minister. We continued to write to the ministers in question and obtained satisfaction. Then, we have done a great deal of work on the abolition of the death penalty, which paid off. The new penal code that is being drafted is also the result of our daily efforts. (Comment gathered in Lomé, March 2016)

All these actions reflect the continuous efforts of non-state actors to promote the rule of law and guarantee individual liberties. Training sessions and awareness-raising workshops organized by the Collective of Associations against Impunity in Togo (Collectif des Associations contre l’Impunité au Togo, CACIT), the Togolese Association for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights (Association Togolaise pour la Défense et la Promotion des Droits Humains, ATDPDH) and their branches in the field of torture contribute to the eradication of this phenomenon. Blatant violations involving beatings or forcing people to look at the sun for several hours are becoming less and less common. In a unique manner, and not only through their pressure groups, these organizations provide legal assistance to victims.

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Not only do we teach them about their rights, but we also provide them with legal assistance against any abuse and violation of their rights. Often not familiar with legal provisions or procedures, they are always forced to remain silent even when wrongly accused. It is our responsibility to act, not on their behalf, but by providing them with our expertise. (Interview with official of a human rights NGO in Sokodé, February 2016)

In principle none of these actions is directed against the state, and they contribute more to its strengthening and legitimacy (see Adesoji and Engels in this volume), promoting a state with which every citizen can identify and in which she/he can flourish. These movements, far from destroying the state, rather aim to shape it and make it more dynamic through a strategy of counter-power and awakening. ‘The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not expressly emanate from it’ (Article 3, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 26 August 1789). But state power is limited by the control that citizens can exercise over it. And, as Locke wrote, the political order exists to protect the person, health and property as attributes that are inherent in humans. Any government that does not respect this mandate is illegitimate, and the people have the right to resist it (Locke 1992). This is why civil society makes use of its rights to encourage the state to ensure the common good as far as possible, and to participate in preserving democratic achievements and the enjoyment of rights legitimately granted to citizens. To this end, civil society uses all legal means at its disposal to divert the state from objectives other than those explicitly defined by law and that contribute to the sociopolitical and economic fulfilment of individuals. The strategies of lobbying, advocacy and petition are transforming civil society into a dynamic actor for a more elaborate and constructive democracy. Civil society is trying to play its role without wanting to destroy the state. Rather, according to one civil society leader, it proceeds through dialogue and sometimes also through pressure: When we talk about human rights, the government often tends to believe that our actions are in favour of the opposition. It is through dialogue, discussion and several exchanges that the government has come to understand that it is in exchanges and contradictions that the truth comes to the fore. Since then, it considers us to be a partner and consults us on many issues related to the development of our country. Many of our claims are now being taken into account; not all of them, however. But I say it’s already better. (Kpalimé, March 2016)

This quote contradicts Thiriot’s (2002) analysis, which showed that violence remains the preferred means for civil society to make its demands.

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Conversely, Togolese civil society is increasingly attracted to a pacifist path, one of dialogue and negotiation.

Civil Society and the Taming of Electoral Violence The proper functioning of democracy in a multiparty system requires competition between political parties. Whereas for Braud (1997), the electoral norm is a mode of symbolic conflict management, in the Togolese political field, elections are very often followed by acts of violence involving contestation and repression. Under the combined effects of the persistent economic crisis and the frustration resulting from political stagnation, electoral results are subject to fierce contestation, resulting in loss of human life and the devastation of public property. To this end, CSOs and NGOs have made a significant contribution to creating a more peaceful post-election climate in Togo. Unlike the electoral competitions of 1998, 2003 and 2005, which were marked by a great deal of violence, the legislative elections of 2007 and 2013 and the subsequent presidential elections of 2010 and 2015 had much more peaceful outcomes, though still contested by a part of the population. Some people hypothesized about a sudden political maturity, while others stressed the psychosis resulting from the 2005 post-election period2 and its subsequent bloodshed (Adjarba 2009). Speaking of early warning mechanisms and education in non-violence, one NGO leader said this: Through the early warning mechanism, we are aware of signals of public dissatisfaction and irregularities that can lead to unrest. Then, we refer the matter to the competent authority for action and make proposals and recommendations to prevent any loss of control. A total of 180 peace volunteers were trained for the 2015 election in order to raise awareness on non-violence. (Lomé, March 2016)

CSOs have done important and diligent work to establish an early warning system and to organize training courses and education workshops on peace and non-violence, thereby predisposing citizens to a culture of peace, to the preservation of life and public goods. ‘Everything is always elaborated at the citizens’ level. They are the nerves of the nation. Once they have sufficiently absorbed the values worthy of a true citizen, everything will be self-evident, and democracy will no longer suffer from any ambiguity’, one civil society official told us. Organizations such as the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), as its name suggests, SOS Civic Engagement (SOS Civisme), the Togolese Civil Society Forum for Development (Forum Togolais de

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la Société Civile pour le Développement), the Group for Reflection and Action Women, Democracy and Development (Groupe de réflexion et d’action Femme, Démocratie et Développement, GF2D), and Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), to name but a few, have played an important role in this regard. The logic of non-violent conflict resolution has become one of the fundamental principles of these organizations, which strive to create a calm sociopolitical environment that is the cornerstone of a peaceful democracy. At the level of political actors (opposition and presidential camp), CSOs have also played an intermediary role through consultation and interviews with key officials. The 2005 electoral tragedy prompted both sides to invest in the peaceful resolution of political disputes rather than violence at all costs. However valuable their contributions may be, CSOs are well aware that the battle has not yet been won. Far from it, as this interlocutor acknowledged: The construction of democracy among a people, which has entered it brutally, must be a long-term task. We have begun a process that is far from complete after such a short period of time. But the effects are more visible if we just make an effort to step back and compare. (Beneficiary of the actions of a CSO, Sokodé)

In the same vein, the person in charge of a CSO platform assured us: Although this is not a mandate, the public will hold us to account. With the political crisis, we carry the hopes of an entire nation. And we have understood that no one can claim democracy in an environment of conflict. In the electoral field, we are working hard to prevent electoral conflicts.

The hardest task in these times is undoubtedly how to get people to accept the results of the elections, as one association leader admitted: ‘Even during decisions concerning the election results, we have often been obliged to share the statement that the decisions of the Constitutional Court are of the last resort and therefore irrevocable.’ Therefore, it can be said, with Gramsci (cited by Berger 1987), that civil society participates in the emergence of ideologies through its mobilizing force and its proximity to its populations. This is why the latter are ready to respond massively to CSO and NGO calls, whether in Lomé or elsewhere in the country.

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The Challenges of Togolese Civil Society Togolese civil society is definitely very active in rooting democracy and strengthening the fundamental freedoms of Togo’s citizens at various levels. This understanding is similar to that of social anthropologists (Awesso 2011; Jacob and Lavigne Delville 1994; Olivier de Sardan 1995), who, in their work, have focused their attention on actors, their strategies and their integration into networks in rural Africa. The main question posed in this research was the following: under what conditions can collective action lead to an outcome that is expected by all stakeholders? In order to protect their interests and defend their objectives, these organizations implement networking strategies and succeed, to a certain extent, in impacting community development. In the same vein, some international organizations emphasize the dynamic aspects of civil society around the world and propose ‘investment’ in civil society and ‘civic engagement’, the facilitation of ‘civic action’ for ‘democratic governance’, and the reinforcement of ‘civic engagement’ for human and multilateral development. This implies a reciprocal ‘commitment’ by both types of partner and, above all, the accountability of civil society in respect of human development and the defence of human rights. This strategy allows the United Nations Development Programme (Programme des Nations Unies pour le Développement, PNUD) to ‘empower’ and ‘collaborate with’ civil society (PNUD 2012: 3). Despite all the progress made, Togolese CSOs sometimes seem to be playing a political game, their outcomes appearing to be mere window dressing (Millot 2013: 65). In its report, the Support Project for Civil Society and National Reconciliation (Projet d’Appui à la Société Civile et à la Réconciliation Nationale, PASCRENA) points to the political influence or risk of politicization of civil society (see Paragi in this volume), which is a serious handicap to its actions. In fact, the report states: Civil society organizations are statutorily apolitical. However, their partnership with the government or political actors, which results in their leaders receiving proposals to participate in government and political parties or facing pressure and threats, is a source of obvious risks that could lead to them becoming clientelistic and turning away from their real mission. (PASCRENA 2013: 84)

The limitations noted by PASCRENA are shared by various segments of the population we interviewed as part of this research. Indeed, rais-

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ing the issue of the politicization of Togolese civil society, one academic employee stated: Is there a civil society in Togo? It is a political or at least politically instrumentalized society. We have a civil society close to power and a civil society close to the opposition, while by definition civil society reaches beyond particularism in order to defend common interests. Take a look at the impression provided by the Let’s Save Togo Collective (Collectif Sauvons le Togo), where political parties and civil society organizations meet. This leads to the discrediting of civil society, it being depicted as a political organization in search of power. Moreover, the person in charge of this collective is a former leader of the political opposition. There is a fuzziness that negatively influences the effectiveness of civil society. (Remarks by an academic employee at Kara University, March 2016)

Awesso showed how society’s organizations were mobilized by political parties, especially the ruling party, during the 2010 presidential election. He explains the reasons why these associations have been solicited in this context: … the candidate Faure Gnassingbé had evident reasons to use associations as instruments to mobilize voters for his re-election. His manifest desire to be re-elected as president, in order to make up for the mistakes and injustices committed during his father’s rule, which collided with the mistrust or with a lack of confidence in his party, are examples of this. The solicited associations showed real capacities to mobilize voters through their numbers, their organizational methods and their strategies on the ground. However, the proximity, not to say the temporal coincidence, of this ‘demonstration of capacities’ with the electoral campaign do not give any real indication of their capacities and ability to play in the field of political and electoral competition, the promotion of democracy, good governance and development. The proof [of this] is that after this period of ‘effervescence’ … many associations remain in lethargy today, waiting to wake up in one or two years for the local and legislative elections. (Awesso 2012: 81–82)

For some, CSOs are also responsible for the crystallization of political differences within the country. CSOs themselves are at the root of political dissent in Togo. Their taking sides, their subjectivity, their diatribes towards political actors who do not belong to their followers, contribute to the crystallization of positions and worsen the already precarious situation. (Student interviewed in Lomé/January 2016)

Others see the activities of civil society as a strategy to gain political power. A motorcycle taxi-driver in Dapaong in the Savanes Region said this in February 2016:

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It is true that some people are willing to do what is expected of civil society – i.e. stand up for the strengthening of the rule of law and contribute to human development. But for most, it’s a strategy to gain access to resources. Once they have acquired the necessary popularity and have been able to show the government in power their capacity to mobilize, they are bought off by the same government to enjoy the fruits related to it.

In this analysis, the relevance of the strategic actor thesis is measured by interpreting the attitudes of some CSO leaders, who, once they have become popular, are willing to convert their celebrity into cash for their own personal benefit or privileges. As this respondent confirms, ‘This is the case for students’ unions, labour unions, and many others whose leaders were subsequently assigned very important positions’ (teacher interviewed in Atakpamé, Plateaux Region). These few testimonies and analyses are proof that despite laborious efforts to construct a state under the rule of law in Togo, Togolese civil society is still being undermined by internal weaknesses and many other problems linked to the political environment. This situation is in line with Quantin’s thesis (2008: 37), which states: High expectations have been placed on African civil societies by development actors, at the risk of disappointing many partners. The devices, which are, after all, only those of associative life, have their limits, even when they work correctly. They can facilitate the proper functioning of the state, as well as the market. But in Africa over the past twenty years, civil society has not established itself as an internal regulatory mechanism, and the effects of ‘bad civil society’ have disrupted the consolidation of new democratic regimes.

Conclusion In the process of democratization, civil society can serve as vehicle for expanding fundamental freedoms, promoting human rights and good governance, and reforming political mores. Following empirical and documentary surveys, we noted that, after the sovereign national conference, Togolese CSOs had continued to do excellent work in the field of democracy through the struggle for the liberation of the public space. They continue to play an important role in electoral monitoring, good governance, fighting corruption, the promotion of human rights, education for peace and citizenship, etc. The present analysis has established a strong correlation between CSOs and the consolidation of the democratization process in Togo. CSOs have become key players in the process and continue to play a significant role in the orientation of the country’s policy. Faced with the reluctance

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of politicians to play the democratic game properly, CSOs are mobilizing for the expansion of and respect for fundamental liberties through advocacy and lobbying, which they have adopted as their preferred modes of operation. The most visible indicators of this contribution to the rooting of democracy in Togo are the strengthening of the political culture of its citizens, anything that contributes to the relaxation of the political climate, the flourishing of a critical private press, and the relatively peaceful electoral periods Togo has experienced since the 2007 legislative elections, to name but a few. However, in many cases, Togolese civil society also shows signs of weakness linked to its dependence on political pressure and to the fact that some actors are prepared to bargain away their pre-eminence for personal comfort. From this perspective, rather than serving the collective interest, Togolese civil society appears to be an instrument in the service of a few selfish interests. This sometimes gives the impression that there is a two-headed civil society in Togo, one head being very close to the opposition, the other being more supportive of the ruling power. Kokou Folly Lolowou Hetcheli holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, Sociology and Educational Sciences from the University of Münster, Germany. He is currently the First Vice Dean of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Scientific Director of the ‘Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Intégration Régionale’ and Director of the ‘Cercle Panafricain de Recherche sur la Sécurité, la Paix et le Développement’. He is author of several articles and the following three books: Konfliktursachen in Afrika im Anschluss an die Dekolonisationsphase – Perspektivansätze für einen dauerhaften Frieden; Recul démocratique et néo-présidentialisme en Afrique centrale et occidentale; and Intégration régionale, paix et développement dans l’espace CEDEAO.

Notes The original version of this chapter is in French and has been translated for the publication of this edited volume. Quotations from French publications were also translated. 1.

FONTGO = Fédération des ONG du Togo (Federation of NGOs of Togo) UONGTO = Union des ONG du Togo (Union of NGOs of Togo) RESOKA = Réseau des ONG de la Kara (Network of NGOs of Kara) FODES = Fédération des Organisations de Développement des Savanes (Federation of Organizations for the Development of the Savanes Region) CONGREMA = Collectif des ONG de la Région Maritime (Collective of NGOs of the Maritime Region)

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COADEP = Conseil des ONG et Associations de la Région des Plateaux (Council of NGOs and Associations of the Plateaux Region) RESODERC = Réseau des Organisation de Développement de la Région Centrale (Network of Organizations for the Development of the Central Region) CNSC = Concertation Nationale de la Société Civile (National Consultation of Civil Society). 2. This election was followed by unusual violence, with reports of hundreds of deaths, as in the Koffigoh report (named after the transitional prime minister), which estimated that more than 500 people had been killed. According to the Togolese League of Human Rights (Ligue Togolaise des Droits de l’Homme, LTDH) 800 were killed and around 40,000 Togolese fled to neighbouring countries as refugees.

References Adjarba, A. 2009. ‘Les facteurs explicatifs des élections sans violence au Togo: cas des législatives d’octobre 2007’, Master’s thesis in Political Sociology, University of Lomé. Awesso, A. 2011. ‘Le phénomène des bases et cities à Sotouboua et Adjengré dans la région du Centre au Togo’, EDUCOM 1(Lomé/December): 113–34. ______. 2012. ‘La mobilisation associative dans la campagne présidentielle de 2010 au Togo: Étude de cas dans le camp du parti RPT’, EDUCOM 2 (Lomé/ December): 61–83. Bauby, P. 1996. ‘Survalorisation du politique, volontarisme étatique et pouvoir technocratique’, in S. Mappa (ed.), Puissance et impuissance de l’État: Les pouvoirs en question au Nord et au Sud. Paris: Karthala, pp. 119–44. Bayart, J-F. 1992. La politique par le bas en Afrique noire. Paris: Karthala. Berger, G. 1987. ‘La société civile et son discours’, Commentaires 12 (46): 271–78. Braud, P. 1997. Science politique, la démocratie. Paris: Seuil. CIVICUS. 2006. Étude diagnostic de la société civile togolaise. Lomé: FONGTO/Plan Togo. CNSC-CALYPSO. 2008. Étude sur les Organisations de la société civile au Togo. Lomé: CNSC-CALYPSO. Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (26 August 1789). Retrieved 17 December 2019 from https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/ declaration_of_the_rights_of_man_1789.pdf. Gnenda, S. 2015. ‘L’implication de la société civile dans la sécurité collective en Afrique de l’Ouest’, Ph.D. thesis. University of Lomé. Grignon, C., and J.C. Passeron. 1989. Le savant et le populaire: misérabilisme et populisme en sociologie et en littérature. Paris: Gallimard. Habermas, J. 1997. Droit et démocratie: Entre faits et normes. Paris: Gallimard. Hetcheli, K.F.L. 2012. ‘Démocratie électorale et violence politique au Togo’, Revue Perspectives & Société 3(2): 31–56. ______. 2016. ‘Démocratie et participation citoyenne: la société civile face aux enjeux de la consolidation de la démocratie au Togo’, Revue du CAMES, Nouvelles Séries, Sciences Humaines 6: 113–28.

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Iwata, T. 2000. ‘La Conférence Nationale Souveraine et la démocratie au Togo, du point de vue de la société civile’, Africa Development XXV(3&4): 135–60. Jacob, J.-P., and Ph. Lavigne Delville. 1994. Les associations paysannes en Afrique noire: Organisation et dynamiques. Paris: APAD-Karthala-IUED. Locke, J. 1992. Traité du gouvernement civil, trans. D. Mazel. Paris: Flammarion. Millot, A. 2013. ‘Société civile et construction démocratique au Togo’, thesis, Institut des études politiques de Toulouse. University of Toulouse. Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. 1995. Anthropologie et développement. Paris: Karthala. Otayek, R. et al. 2004. Les sociétés civiles du sud: Un état des lieux dans trois pays de la ZSP, Cameroun, Ghana, Maroc. Bordeaux: Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire/ Institut d’études politiques de Bordeaux. Retrieved 8 January 2021 from https://www.issuelab.org/resources/20058/20058.pdf. PASCRENA. 2013. Étude cartographique de la société civile de la région des Plateaux. Lomé: Cahier N°4 Cartographie-Plateaux. PNUD. 2012. ‘Stratégie du PNUD pour la société civile et l’engagement civique’. Retrieved 17 December 2019 from https://www.undp.org/content/undp/fr/ home/librarypage/operations/UNDP-Strategy-on-Civil-Society-and-CivicEngagement-2012.html. Quantin, P. 2008. ‘Le rôle politique des sociétés civiles en Afrique: vers un rééquilibrage’, Revue internationale et stratégique 4(72): 29–38. DOI: 10.3917/ ris.072.0029. Thiriot, C. 2002. ‘Rôle de la société civile dans la transition et la consolidation de la démocratie en Afrique: Élément de réflexion à partir du cas de Mali’, Revue internationale de politique comparée 2(9): 277–95. Tshiyembe, M. 1990. L’État postcolonial facteur d’insécurité en Afrique. Paris: Présence Africaine.

Chapter 12

The Custodians of Development Memory in Morocco

When Development Projects Create New Forms of Leadership for Policymaking Matthieu Brun

Introduction Development aid is a recurring phenomenon in African landscapes. In the wake of Moroccan independence in 1956, major bilateral or multilateral donors and later non-governmental organizations (NGOs) intervened in multiple sectors in ways that changed with shifts in international relations and major aid paradigms. Over time, these interventions, which occur at many levels and in a variety of sectors, created new configurations of actors, institutions, negotiations and power struggles (Eboko 2015). The aim of this chapter1 is to discuss the transformation of the ‘developmentalist configuration’ and its effects2 (Olivier de Sardan 1995) on the spaces that produce public policies at several levels by identifying and examining those who have a memory of development in three communes of the former Souss Massa Drâa region in Morocco (see Figure 12.1.). While development work and especially NGO work is part of people’s lifeworlds in Southern Morocco, those carrying development memory have accumulated experiences, know-how and knowledge during their lifetime, whether they have been founders or members of different NGOs. Using their memory of development interventions, practices and codes, they have gained broad knowledge and expertise capable of use in the formulation and implementation of public policies beyond the ‘developmentalist configuration’ (Soriat 2014). Notes for this chapter begin on page 291.

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Map 12.1. Map of the three communes in Morocco. Source: OpenStreetMaps Contributors.

The perspective developed in this chapter is threefold. First, it will contribute to reflections and the literature on development actors beyond the formal development architecture in focusing on what I call the custodians of development memory and their lifeworlds. Secondly, by situating these individuals in and characterizing them from their own perspective, this chapter asks questions about authority and power over policymaking processes. It does so by focusing on the biographies and sociopolitical trajectories of these people, who have long been involved in NGOs in the years before, some of them even taking elected positions. Finally, the chapter introduces methodological orientations and highlights the use of mixed methods to identify those who have development memory and to analyse how they use it as a resource in policymaking processes. To achieve this, I will introduce theoretical approaches and research methods in the first part of this chapter. Then, in the second part, I will briefly present a historical perspective on the history of aid in Morocco and the specificities of development interventions and public policies in the kingdom. The third part of the chapter offers a discursive analysis of the custodians of development memory based on their biographical narratives and lifeworlds, drawing on some profiles based on this information. The fourth section will describe the different sorts of resources possessed by

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these actors in drawing on their experiences regarding the developmental configuration and on their memory of development interventions before exploring in the last section the consequences and issues raised for policymaking processes in Morocco.

Theoretical Background and Methodological Input: Identifying the Elite That Has Memories of Development One characteristic of memory in the development context is that, with respect to time and temporality, development approaches focus on the present and the future, very rarely on the past (Ahearne 2010; Davidov and Nelson 2016). Although some actors in the field of development consider that development memory does not exist,3 in fact it does seem to live on among the beneficiaries of these projects (Olivier de Sardan 1995: 57). In succeeding one another, projects and programmes leave multiple imprints and marks on people and territories, evolving and overlapping over time. Thus on multiple scales, from the village to national public policies, through a myriad of actors (NGOs, donors, etc.), groups and places, development aid marks African lifeworlds with its codes, its language and its resources. A question then arises for researchers and the professionals: how to apprehend this multitude of traces and remnants of projects and programmes that are added and superimposed but also fade over time? From this angle, development memory must be differentiated from development history because equating the two will lead to the first characteristic of memory, which is a constructed representation of the past, not the past itself, being ignored (Fouéré 2010). ‘Development memory’ here refers to a form of knowledge of development interventions and of the context and actors involved in their implementation (Brun and Fortuné 2015).4 At the same time, however, it remains a constructed representation of these memories in the light of a given context. Thus, in order to approximate the lifeworlds of people, the biography and experience of a person with development can be as insightful as culture, political institutions and the social relations of that person. As will be discussed later on, a territory’s development memory is a considerable material and symbolic resource that can be mobilized into action, both within and outside the ‘developmentalist configuration’ (Olivier de Sardan 1995) with the different actors of development projects and more broadly with the administration or between members of a community. Although the theoretical and empirical understanding of development memory can be broader (see Hahn in this volume), this chapter tackles

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one aspect of my research, which is the knowledge dimension of development memory.5 In studying the superimposition and the tangible and intangible traces of development interventions, I have been faced with a major methodological and empirical difficulty, namely to account for a historical outlook over several decades, as well as a wide variety of sectors and development interventions. I chose to work on the memory of development that exists within communities themselves, and part of my work led me to search for the holders of such memory, those to whom people look. I noted in my interviews that a limited number of actors were identified as ‘those I should talk to’, those who were the custodians of development memory, who have accumulated experiences and may be able to adapt to different situations. I opted to identify these individuals from the perspective of their memory of development – that is, with regard to the symbolic aspect of their positions as domestic development elites. The literature on the concept of elites has been enriched throughout history, and I will not elaborate on the debates on this concept.6 A broad definition of elite was provided by Lasswell in 1936, who called them those in any situation ‘who get the most of what there is to get’, the rest being the ‘mass’ (Lasswell 1936). Based on this broad definition, and applied to power relations and influence, an elite could thus be made up of men and women, ‘individuals, regardless of time, place or regime, who make decisions in the name of the great majority of their fellows’ (Genieys and Smyrl 2008: 27). Adopting this perspective on development actors, one might think of the ‘development brokers’ or ‘development mediators’ that feature in the political science literature on Africa (Daloz 2008; Diallo 2012; Niane 2011) and the socio-anthropology of development (Bierschenk, Chauveau and Olivier de Sardan 2000; Mosse 2006; Neubert and Lavigne-Delville 1996). This literature contains a wealth of profiles of ‘development mediators’ or ‘development brokers’, who form networks of national intermediaries located in different territorial arenas, drain off external resources and control the development aid discourse. However, most previous studies on development brokers have focused on specific projects, NGOs or sectors. My aim, conversely, is to explore a way to embrace or grasp the different layers of development interventions. I use the term ‘layers of development intervention’ to express the superimposition of several interventions over time in different administrative and operational forms (projects, programmes, structural adjustment, etc.) in several sectors such as education, agriculture, environment, governance, etc. These interventions involve a range of different stakeholders and organizations (donors, international, NGOs, multilateral organizations, private companies, local authorities, public ­administrations, etc.)

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­ perating with little or no consultation with each other, in different seco tors, and interacting with the actors and the environment in which they implement development operations. Analysis of the data from the questionnaire survey (see below) shows that in Moroccan communes, people have had different experiences of being the subjects of development aid. Indeed, they embody these layers of development intervention, which are part of their lifeworlds. In their lifeworlds, moreover, there is no such thing as a separation into sectors or types of programme or even actors. Sectors and programmes become entangled and disentangled with each other, thus producing a global experience of development that lastingly impinges on their lifeworlds and on their understanding of the environment. The perspective developed in this chapter differs from the literature in both development anthropology and public policy analysis in that it focuses more on these lifeworlds. In particular, I focus on how to identify those individuals who others see as having significant memories of development and how to measure use of their expertise or knowledge when it comes to designing and implementing public policies beyond the aid architecture. I build on the work of Clément Soriat (2014), who worked on the contribution of members of Beninese NGOs to the drawing up of public policies designed to fight AIDS. While Soriat focused on a sector of aid and public policy (health), however, I deal with multiple sectors and types of intervention (intervention layers) using the concept of memory. The custodians of development memory must be understood as multipositioned actors with a ‘de-sectorized’ vision of development. My objective is also to determine whether, on the microscale, the number of these individuals is limited and to describe the group they formed; in particular, how they are structured (through schools and universities, traditional legitimacies, social capital, etc.) and how they exercise power over public action over time, using their biographies collected in the field. These elements form the definition of the concept of an elite (Genieys and Hassenteufel 2012). The literature on public policies7 will then also be examined in light of the emergence and dominant position of these custodians of development memory in the interplay between actors and power relations at different levels, since the actors I am attempting to characterize do not occupy the roles of mediator and negotiator alone, like the intermediaries described by Nay and Smith (2002). They have decision-making positions, as will be discussed in greater detail later on. This chapter illustrates the methodology that was used to identify this development elite and to describe the positions of these individuals as the custodians of cross-sector memory mobilized in public policy processes. To identify these actors, the methodological perspective adopted is an ‘ascending’ one – that is, it starts out by analysing representations of

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the beneficiaries of development aid projects in three Moroccan communes (Mezguita, Tassousfi and Arbaa Sahel) in the former administrative region of Souss Massa Drâa. They were identified based on their reputations as custodians of memory. To draw up a reliable list of people based on scientific criteria, it was not enough to rely solely on cascading interviews, because it would have been impossible to weigh the reputational influence of these individuals. Of the methodological innovations in the sociology of elites, I drew inspiration from the ‘reputational method’ developed by Floyd Hunter (1953) to identify leaders and development elites. Given the goals of my research, there is no pre-existing biographical data in the survey areas such as local newspapers or a Who’s Who of development, making it impossible to adopt the positional method developed by Mills (1956). As noted above, the study does not focus on a single sector of public policy, as is the case in many studies of expertise or elites. Therefore, I cannot analyse the process that leads to decision-making or even determine accurately which actors are involved in this process, as R. Dahl did in the study of local government in the city of New Haven (1961). Like F. Hunter, who sought to illustrate the power of the economic elite’s influence on political life by seeking out its leaders, I compiled a parent population, a panel of individuals who could indicate who has a reputation as an expert in development interventions. To ensure that the results did not reflect the structure and make-up of the panel, a questionnaire survey was administered to a statistically representative sample of the population in the three communes surveyed, asking the question: ‘In your opinion, who in your commune can give the most information about development interventions?’ Respondents were also asked to indicate the function they believed this person had. Following the interview and exploratory research phase, three communes in Morocco were selected using several criteria (administrative division, economic activities and types of agricultural production, population density, density of development interventions, security and accessibility). In order to obtain standardized information for the entire survey population, the survey was conducted for one week (6–12 March 2017), thereby limiting the risk and effects of unforeseeable events and making it possible to balance out enumerators’ travel during the week (for example, because of weekly markets). The survey was administrated by university graduates to individuals over eighteen years of age, who were surveyed in their homes using a random sampling method. A total of 1,943 questionnaires were issued to create a database.8 From the questionnaire surveys, three or four names stood out in each commune for the number of responses in which they were referred to. For this chapter, several names were selected based on the number of

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times they were referenced. The number of names ranged from one to three depending on the commune, indicating the degree of monopoly or oligopoly enjoyed by these actors. A list of individuals was set up who were considered a priori to be those who ‘know the most’ about development interventions, with the main occupation mentioned by the survey respondents in each of the three communes: Commune of Mezguita: – Reda,9 cited 47 times as vice president of the commune, president of a NGO with local reach,10 teacher, school principal, community volunteer. – Nabil, cited 45 times as president of the commune, teacher, president of the NGO with local reach, community volunteer. – Omar, cited 33 times as a farmer, former commune president, member and president of the NGO with local reach, Tamnougalt. Commune of Arbaa Sahel: – Youssef, cited 56 times as president of the commune (his biography will show us that he has been occupying many positions in the commune). Commune of Tassousfi: – Bachir, cited 46 times as sheikh – that is, local authority auxiliary.

I conducted semi-structured individual and group interviews11 to analyse the extent to which the individuals mentioned possess development memory and how they use this memory as a resource to exert programmebased influence over policymaking. I interviewed each individual listed above, the interviews being in French, Moroccan Arabic or Amazigh, necessitating the use of an interpreter at times. The interviews aimed at gathering biographical data, life trajectory information, experiences of the ‘developmentalist configuration’, etc. Reda, Nabil and Youssef were interviewed at least twice. Other members of the community were also interviewed, such as members of local authorities, members of NGOs, donors, international actors, technical service agents in the communes and provinces (teachers, farmers, etc.). Most of the interviews were semi-­ structured, but I was able to organize four focus-group interviews (two with only women and two with only men). The objective of these interviews was to examine three aspects: (1) how the individuals mentioned in the questionnaire survey are perceived by the residents of the communes; (2) trajectories for understanding the accumulation of resources; and (3) the degree of their intervention in policymaking processes. In operational terms, this meant collecting sociographic data on socio­ professional trajectories, education, social networks, political affiliation, migration, etc.; measuring the interactions among these actors; collecting legitimizing discourses and describing the symbolic aspect of this elite; identifying concrete influence over ‘developmentalist configurations’ and

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beyond, as well as on policymaking processes – that is, at what level and through what means are they involved in the construction of problems; and finally, highlighting their role in local power arrangements.

Development Intervention and Public Policies: A History of Aid in Morocco Morocco is characterized by very wide regional disparities in terms of access to basic services such as education, water and electricity. The former Souss Massa Drâa region, located in the south of the kingdom, is an area particularly marked by these disparities. Regional differences are related to the contrasting nature of the territory’s physical geography and to multiple dysfunctions inherited from the past (Adidi 2013). This created a territorial and political dichotomy on which French colonization (1912–1956) was built. The kingdom was then divided into socalled ‘useful Morocco’ (Maroc utile), located in a triangle formed by Fez, Casablanca and Marrakech, and a ‘useless Morocco’ (Maroc inutile) characterized by non-capitalist modes of production (Pennell 2000: 186). This dichotomy continued after the independence of the country in 1956. Economic problems (a drop in capital inflows, declining investment, a fiscal crisis) and the difficulties of moving from a colonial economy to a national economy led the kingdom to cooperate with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and to sign an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1964. Supported by international organizations, the kingdom set a direction for its economic development focused on agriculture and tourism. The former Souss Massa Drâa region, where the communes described in the research are located, is an emblematic example of the deployment of development interventions and their concentration in limited areas. The western part around the Bay of Agadir with its tourism potential and both the Souss and the Massa Valley with their export-oriented agriculture attracted a lot of public investment in the form of credits from the World Bank and other donors. Due to geopolitical events (the Green March and the Western Sahara War in 1975), climate variability (repeated droughts) and economic difficulties (falling phosphate prices, rising oil prices, the debt crisis), this uneven spatial development continued during the 1970s and 1980s. Among other things, it deprived the rural areas in the Souss and Massa Valley of access to water, electricity and essential needs or services. Despite the intentions of both the Moroccan monarchy and international donors to launch integrated rural development projects, the

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i­ mplementation of a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) from 1983 onwards led to a significant reduction in public investment. The SAP has thus directly impacted social and economic sectors, further marginalizing rural areas. Although the Moroccan administration is far from being absent from these territories, in particular through the administration of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defence,12 entire social sectors have gradually become largely autonomous, having grown apart from the control of the state (Pennell 2000). It is with the support of Moroccan migrants – who have gone to Europe or big cities in Morocco for work – that development communities started to organize themselves at the end of the 1980s in order to bring water and electricity to the villages. Their actions radiated over the whole of south-eastern Morocco. Although the effects of SAPs on social sectors in Morocco have been mitigated, it should be noted that they contributed to the political openness of the country in the early 1990s.13 This political openness has resulted in the expansion and restructuring of Moroccan civil society. Major programmes were also introduced to catch up with territorial imbalances between urban and rural areas in terms of access to water and electricity and rural roads.14 The operationalization of development interventions (roads, access to electricity and drinking water) were formally entrusted to NGOs with local reach after having been handled for a long time by tribal structures (jmâa). Following the accession to the throne of King Mohamed VI in July 1999, the emphasis of development policies and programmes has been placed more substantially on human development, as international paradigms on aid have shifted to this dimension. A flagship programme called the National Human Development Initiative (INDH) was set up in 2005, supported by international donors such as the World Bank. INDH, from 2005 to the present, has been a major financing window for both l’association locale de développement (ALD, local NGOs of development) and communes. From the mid-1990s onwards, numerous international governmental and non-governmental organizations directly intervened in rural areas, reinforcing the actions put in place by ALDs. From this rapid review of Moroccan aid and public policies since independence, four elements of understanding emerge as key, namely (1) the unbalanced territorial development, combined with (2) the Moroccan monarchy’s weak developmentalist capacity, (3) the empowerment of social sectors outside the control of the administration, and (4) the operationalization of development actions transferred to ALDs or other NGOs, with a very important role for foreign donors and the Moroccan diaspora.

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The Homogenization and Differentiation of the Development Elite Before going more deeply into the profiles of the development custodians listed above, I wish to emphasize four aspects that are both differentiating and homogenizing in relation to this group of individuals. These are criteria that either unite or differentiate the paths and careers of the individuals discussed here, which they can accumulate. The first of these criteria differentiates those whose status is ascribed – that is to say, assigned by birth and inheritance – from those whose status is acquired through merit or the use of natural dispositions. The second distinguishing criterion is that of their relationship to authority.15 Although these individuals were identified through the representations of the wider population, they may or may not be recognized by the authorities. Although the degree of such recognition may have changed over time, none of the persons identified sees his social role as being delegitimized by the authorities. The third criterion is the command of development knowledge – that is, its codes, language and tools. Fourth, as LefermeFalguières and Van Renterghem have argued, the social changes that result in a shift from a closed society to an open one bring to light two basic distinguishing criteria: fortune and culture (2001). In the literature, these two criteria first differentiate the members of an elite from those who do not belong. In our case, however, these two criteria make it possible to analyse separately those who have economic capital and land, often inherited by birth, and those who have acquired knowledge and education at a time when literacy in Morocco is declining and when knowledge is considered a fundamental value. During an interview, Omar described himself as ‘illiterate and uneducated compared to the teachers’. These four criteria of differentiation and homogenization, as well as a population’s representation of its elites – including its development elite – reflect the state of Moroccan society today and the ongoing changes between what is regarded as an ‘unequal and closed’ society based on birth to an open society based on merit and success. Using the results, I was able to establish a definition of the three profiles.

The Rural Figure – a Notable – with an Ascribed Status (Omar) The notable has an ascribed status (El Maoula El Iraki 2003) resting on his genealogy and land holdings, though he is also supported by the population and the authorities. Omar was born in 1948 in the Kasbah

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of Tamnougalt, today the commune of Mezguita. His family, which is socially conservative and noble, is described as a ‘big family’ in the region. His father fought in the resistance against France and after fighting alongside King Mohamed V was appointed delegate of the chorfa of Mezguita. This status was conferred on a man who, through a lineage of glorious ancestors, can expect a dominant position. After serving for four years in the army (1967–1971), Omar returned to help his father with the tasks of local representation and conflict resolution, as well as in maintaining the family’s land. He entered politics in 1976 during the first elections held in his commune and was elected first vice president of the commune of Agdz, which until 1992 included the commune known today as Mezguita. Omar made several attempts to win the Independence Party’s nomination for the National Assembly in the legislative elections but was ultimately unsuccessful. Elected president of the commune of Mezguita following the reform of administrative divisions in 1992, he remained in that position until the 2015 elections.16 In development matters, he was the president of an ALD that was founded, according to the interlocutors, to compete with the other ALD in his native village. In terms of action programmes and the cognitive representation of development, he belongs to a generation for whom the answer to development-related problems is infrastructure (fences around schools, concrete irrigation canals, a health centre, etc.).

The Agent of Authority (Sheikh) with Civil Society Involvement (Bachir) The sheikh, an auxiliary to authority, is not a civil servant but receives a service allowance. Sheikhs are usually farmers or ranchers and are chosen by the caïd (the upper level of commune groups that liaises between the Moroccan political-administrative system and its peripheries). Bachir was born in 1948 in the village of Timqit. He is a farmer who went to school for five years, until the age of twelve. His work, selling agricultural produce, took him to Casablanca and Tangiers. When he came back, he worked as a cook in the village group’s school. Since 2001, he has been an agent of authority, serving first as village chief (moqaddem) appointed by the caïd, and after seven years of service he was chosen by the people and the council of elders to be the sheikh. While holding positions representing authority, he became involved in civil society organizations:17 first in the school’s parents’ organization, and then in 2004 as vice president of the ALD of Aoudoust, the local group of villages. In the various ALDs of which he was a member, he dealt with road infrastructure, access to drinking water, construction, health-centre equipment and files for irrigation canal repairs.

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The Teachers and Members of Civil Society Organizations (Reda, Nabil and Youssef) Three people in the communes of Mezguita and Arbaa Sahel fit this profile. These are Youssef in Arbaa Sahel, and Reda and Nabil in Mezguita. Reda and Youssef are from the same generation, both having been born in the early 1960s. Reda was born in a small village in the Drâa Valley and was the first person in his village to earn a high-school diploma and baccalaureate. After two years at the University of Rabat, he left the capital to return to the village of Tafergalt to become a teacher. Youssef’s path was similar, as wasNabil’s, although he was born in 1971. All three had educational experiences that drove them to become involved in politics or trade union activism. Reda and Youssef were members of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), a party that embodied the opposition to the reign of Hassan II, and as a youth Nabil was active in far-left movements on university campuses before joining the Socialist Party. In their native communities, they constituted a form of opposition to the social hierarchy inherited from the precolonial period, the protectorate and independence. Omar, the rural figure and notable, is a good example of the type of member of such groups. In this relative fragmentation of the elite, new profiles of civil servants, members of civil society and, in some cases, activists participated in their village’s development while reducing the rural component of domestic elites. Reda and Youssef report that in 1985 they established an illegal organization with a group of civil servants and teachers to implement development interventions in their native communities. Such interventions included academic support, buying power generators and developing water sources. They formed development committees in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a time when the establishment of NGOs with local reach, while legal, was not tolerated by local authorities. In Arbaa Sahel, Tamount Sahel (Tamount means ‘together’ in Amazigh), chaired by Youssef, was legally established as an ALD in 1992 in agreement with local representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and the commune, at least initially. The ALD represented all the villages in Arbaa Sahel. In Mezguita, Reda created an ALD for his village, Tafergalt, alone in quasi-opposition to the commune presided over by Omar. The ALD Tafergalt pour le développement et la cooperation was established in March 1997. These NGOs are different from the NGOs that were created in Morocco in the 1990s, which were either linked to the public sector, administrative or bureaucratic organizations, or to the private sector with a commercial objective. They operate a priori autonomously from the state, the principles of general interest and the common good being at the heart of their discourse.

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Memory and Expertise: Resources Used by This New Form of Leadership According to the interlocutors, the three persons with this profile (the teachers and members of civil society organizations – Reda, Nabil and Youssef) are recognized and perceived as the bearers of development memory and knowledge of development and as having power over the definition and implementation of public policies locally. They constitute a form of elite with varying degrees of power and resources over the political and development scenes. However, this raises questions about the origins and longevity of this recognition and power. Based on the discursive level of society (interlocutors) and the biographical narratives of those profiled and their actions, I drew up and described a list of resources (Hassenteufel 2011) that form the basis of their positions, determining both their agency and the type of legitimacy and authority they have. These resources are only partially separate, as they overlap.

Social and Temporal Resources First and foremost, these individuals have social and temporal resources. Since they were selected as ‘those who know the most about development projects’ during the questionnaire survey, they are the subject of social and collective recognition. They also represent general interests and speak for the community because of their symbolic status. Youssef, Reda, Omar and Bachir are all prominent members of the community and are highly respected due to their role in NGOs and/or the fact that they have been elected or represent the village to the local authorities. They thus have resources in the sense of representing their community in events, festivals and meetings with officials (donor representatives, government officials, etc.). During the interviews, they were described by village residents as ‘knowing what’s best for the village and the commune’ on several occasions.

Positional and Political Resources The paths of these three teachers/community activists have led them to hold elected positions in the commune or the provinces (provincial councillor), or administrative positions in the provincial education delegations. Politically speaking, Reda was first elected to the commune from the opposition in 1993, when the commune was established, and then again in 1997 and 2009. After a redistribution of the constituencies and an alliance

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with other villages, Reda, Nabil and other elected officials managed to win a majority of the seats in the commune in 2015. Today, he is the vice president of Mezguita, and Nabil is the president. Youssef has been president of the commune of Arbaa Sahel since the September 2003 elections. They all belong to parties to the left of the government, namely the USFP and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS). These positions have enabled them to build working and political networks with other community activists participating in the formation of this development elite, as well as to build a solid network of technicians, bureaucrats and senior civil servants to then take on positions in central government, and not just in the education sector. Owing to their position as ALD presidents and the main contacts for donors, these actors have access to the processes that produce projects, programmes and public policy in provincial departments, donor forums, and among members of the Moroccan parliament and the ministries. They have access to a group of stakeholders who occupy important positions in the political, economic and social spheres. Youssef told us that due to his role in the USFP he was able to reach the minister for water and sanitation and access funding for a sanitation project for the commune of Arbaa Sahel. Such resources reinforced their legitimacy in implementing programmes and, at the same time, their authority. The ALDs in Arbaa Sahel, Tassousfi and Mezguita have taken on general interest missions by negotiating directly with decentralized technical services, or the national water or power company, and also with the relevant ministries in the capital. In one village in the commune of Mezguita, the ALD chaired by Reda is in charge of drinking water management, and residents pay the ALD for its consumption.18 The ALD then pays the water bill for the entire village.

Material Resources Although they are collective, these resources are key to implementing projects and public policy locally. They are also a crucial element in building a reputation for the donors. Reda, Nabil and Youssef have access to operational and human resources, and they control ALD offices and key documents. They also have access to budgetary means, allowing them to allocate funding both locally and provincially, since some of them were or have been elected to the provincial council. Being elected to the commune gives them access to material resources that can be used to reinforce their social, political and temporal resources.

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Knowledge Resources Development memory is analysed at different territorial levels, and this interplay among levels and the connections between decision-making about and the implementation of development interventions is known to the actors I have listed as custodians. They are aware of the complexities of the development arena at its many levels of action and play with the associated constraints. These actors have a wealth of information and knowledge about development interventions – that is, about the processes, language and norms of donors. They have their own mapping of aid stakeholders, including Moroccan institutions, international organizations and bilateral donors, as well as the state and its major programmes, which are funded by donors but managed by the administration. They also have detailed knowledge and understanding of the calls for projects from bilateral and multilateral aid donors, foreign NGO programmes, etc. The participants in the focus groups in the villages and the interlocutors described Reda, Nabil and Youssef as ‘having the ideas for development’ and ‘knowing what is best for the village’. Notably, such statements were not offered as often with reference to Omar and Bachir. Reda, Nabil and Youssef were described as possessing a practical policy programme for the development of the community and knowing the channels through which to fund such development, whereas Omar and Bachir did not. Their recognition by the population as development experts gives these individuals dominant decision-making positions in their communities. They are simultaneously in the public and private spheres and are not institutional community actors (administration, government) or organized interest groups. Subject to the multiple constraints that restrict their behaviour yet able to multiply opportunities for the interventions required to develop their communities, they manage to overcome those constraints, at least partially, and enjoy a form of autonomy that is based on their capacity to mine resources. Hence, using local political clientelism,19 they can prevent certain development interventions from being implemented in a given village or, conversely, use the weight of their influence to get a sanitation project or health centre construction off the ground in their own field of action. This gives them a dominant role in the policymaking process, although they are less organized and less visible than interest groups or internal or non-government community actors. Their main characteristic is indeed being able to overcome constraints and master the rules of the game of ‘developmentalist configuration’ thereby stepping outside of it into the spaces that produce public policies and becoming mediators of public action in vastly different institutional universes, whether with bilateral foreign donors, international

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NGOs or government agencies (Soriat 2014). The blurring of Morocco’s borders between political clientelism, private interests and the presence of transnational actors benefits them directly, since they intervene and understand the codes of these spaces for reflecting on, producing and implementing public policies. They cultivate the pre-eminence of informal logic, which is always negotiable when using a lexicon and a facade likely to please the donors. If we take the example of Youssef, an external observer, a donor, for example, may come to the conclusion that democratic life in the commune is full and complete and that Tamount Sahel is not run by the commune president, who directs the city’s projects in apparent consultation with the various ALDs. However, under the guise of efficiency of action in the commune and ALD, this division of labour is merely an illusion, ‘on paper’ only. In actual fact, the Arbaa Sahel president plays his multiple positions of power off against one another, even though he is not the real president of the NGO, nor the president of the student home organization (in charge of the dormitories, public transport for students, etc.). This allows him to mobilize funding, circumvent certain administrative procedures and increase the number of project partners. On paper there might be three or four partners from the commune, but they are all under the supervision of Youssef, who is, according to our interviews, a major and vital interlocutor for development partners. According to most of the interlocutors, this democratic and participatory facade is an effective instrument for the commune’s development. Let us take another example that shows the use and interdependence of these resources, namely Reda’s fight against trachoma. This serious disease, which causes blindness, affects the Drâa Valley. Reda, along with other members of civil society, managed to implement a large-scale programme, and the disease was eradicated. This created a level of trust and respect towards Reda in his village, the commune and on other levels of the administration. The ALD he chaired was a pioneer in the fight against this disease, and Reda acquired solid skills in this area thanks to his contacts with a medical student who came to do an internship in his village in 1998. This student was the daughter of the representative in Morocco of an American NGO, Helen Keller International (HKI), which specializes in fighting trachoma. It reinforced his social, temporal and knowledge resources. Since he had been working for the provincial education delegation in 1998, he counted on his contacts there to push for the implementation of programmes to fight trachoma. He also based his advocacy and practical action on a network of activists who had formed a federation. To help fight the disease, Reda participated in the creation of kits that were eventually distributed throughout the province with the support of the administration and HKI. Reda also represented the ALD at the World

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Health Organization’s Third World Congress in 1998 in Ouarzazate. Immediately thereafter, accompanied by professors and doctors, Reda went all the way to the Ministry of Health in Rabat to present the ALD’s work and the procedures that had been put in place to eradicate the disease. During this meeting, he met with bilateral, multilateral and nongovernmental aid donors. The action taken to fight this disease required profound changes (drinking water treatment, construction of community bath and shower houses prioritizing women and children, the separation of areas for animals from living quarters in traditional homes and burying animal waste to limit the proliferation of flies, which carry the disease etc.), as well as a lot of funding and participation by the community. These changes were made possible through the advocation of changes in daily habits at the local, provincial, national and international levels (acquiring support and funding to implement projects and programmes). The fight against trachoma is one of many examples of positive change thanks to the involvement and strategies of the actors presented above. When we focus on memory of development – that is, on the layers of interventions – and not only on individual projects or programmes, we note that these actors have knowledge and expertise and were able to implement changes in various sectors – education (introduction of preschool classes managed locally by ALDs)20 and health (construction and maintenance of health centres) – and provide access to water or electricity. The trans-sectoral and cross-cutting dimension of their expertise and participation in policymaking processes will be the subject of the last section of this chapter.

An Elite ‘Between Sectors and Territories’ In this last section,21 I discuss the literature on public policies designed for use in Europe or North America from a Moroccan perspective in light of this investigation. On reading the accounts of individual or collective careers, biographies and modes of action, one might indeed question the literature not only on the sociology of elites but also on the sociology of public action. Three aspects will be discussed in turn to determine the cross-sectional nature of this expertise, the leading position it occupies in the territorialization of public policies, and finally the structure of this elite group. The actors presented previously exercise a ‘representation monopoly’ in the dual sense of cognitive representations and acting as spokespersons, as Halpern and Jacquot suggest (2015). In other words, it is they who represent the community through their various positions as NGO

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president, commune president, provincial council representative or local authority representative, and the population gives them a key role in territorial development. An analysis of the interviews conducted with these actors confirms that they have frameworks for interpreting the world, a shared world view, a vision du monde of what changes in their territory must be introduced, and how development partners and projects contribute to such changes in different sectors. They are also described as having expertise in multiple fields of public policies such as health (Reda), education (Reda and Youssef) and irrigation and agriculture (Omar, Bachir, Reda and Youssef). They have gained knowledge in various sectors of public policies through their participation in training at the provincial, national and international levels, as well as in implementing programmes and projects over time.22 These experiences are a part of their lifeworld. In echoing Pierre Muller’s analysis (2013) of sectors and public policies, one might then question the effects these actors have on the structuring of public action (that is, on the determination of the borders of sectors and on problems’ identification and resolution and on the legitimization of actors who handle them). These development elites are, as already emphasized, active in many fields (installation and management of drinking water systems, electricity, public health, access to education, economic governance of local production structures through the creation of cooperatives, etc.). It seems that these fields of action or sectors are made governable thanks to these actors for the fact that they can draw on different resources in order to attract development interventions and funding from the administration or international partners. The European and Northern American literature presents the notion of a sector as ‘a vertical organization of social roles that defines the rules of functioning, selection of elites, development of specific norms and values, establishment of borders, etc.’ (Muller 2013). It is a crucial notion in research on public policies that seeks to understand the features and functioning of policymaking processes. In such literature, public policies are organized around these sectors with reference to the presence of elites, their norms and values. In Morocco, the existence of these multipositioned individuals, custodians of development memory who alternately claim political, administrative or professional legitimacy in various contexts, leads us to question how public action works in such contexts, including, more generally, in ‘countries under an aid regime’ (Lavigne Delville 2017). In a context of multilevel governance and a monopoly of cross-sector expertise, how to analyse the modes of coordination and governance from a cross-sectional perspective might have to be rethought. In other words, my argument is that the existence of this elite seems to confirm the ‘de-sectorized’ view of state action.

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Morocco has been through a long period during which collective issues and the methods of dealing with them have been defined at the central level. These programmes defined at different political levels in conjunction with donors – such as the Rural Drinking Water Supply Program (PAGER) of 1995 and the 1996 Comprehensive Rural Electrification Program (PERG) – were then taken over and translated locally by the decentralized administrations. The late 1990s and particularly the early 2000s saw a change in the limits of the vertical consideration of problems. This change was reflected in the appearance of new modes of coordination between local, regional and national actors, and not only in introducing a top-down approach. Morocco is witnessing a movement to localize the identification of public problems and their solutions. The custodians of development memory, and more precisely the teacher-activists who occupy elective positions in the communes, are dominant actors in the territorialization of public policymaking. They have a firm grasp of the territorial scales of development memory, and they are familiar with past projects and programmes, including how they failed or succeeded in achieving their goals. Youssef, the current president of the commune of Arbaa Sahel, is acutely aware of the complexities of the development arena, from the village level up to the offices of the large NGOs in Paris, Marseilles or Brussels. Reda, Nabil and Youssef are at the centre of the territorialization of public policies to the extent that, being the sole spokespersons, they are the key intermediaries with donors and the Moroccan administration (ministries and decentralized administration). Therefore, they have not only learned how to be flexible in the governance and management of local problems; they are also key actors in this process of territorialization, which requires local representatives. I have emphasized the effect of these actors on the structuring of public action and the policymaking process. I would now like to discuss the notion of ‘elite’ based on my work in Morocco, and more specifically the elements of how this elite is structured based on the Genieys and Hassenteufel definition: ‘only the establishment of a highly structured group exercising power over public action in the long term legitimates the use of the notion of elite’ (2012: 95). There are therefore two elements that define a group of people as an elite: (1) the power of the group, and (2) the consistency of that power based on structuring elements. The existence of recurring elements such as political engagement in government parties to the left of the political spectrum, similar professional careers and shared developmentalist values have been emphasized. However, some profiles are different, such as that of the former president of the commune of Mezguita, Omar, a rural figure who claims to be uneducated, or even that of Bachir, the local representative of authority

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in Tassousfi. During my interviews with these individuals, I tried to find out whether they knew each other and frequented the same places of socialization. The custodians of Mezguita and Arbaa Sahel, all teachers and left-leaning activists, reported that they had never met but that they knew of each other’s work. This could, of course, be due to the fact that they are separated by several hundred kilometres and are located in different provinces (Zagora and Tiznit in this case). Up until the reform of administrative divisions in 2015, the two communes belonged to the same region, but regional jurisdictions and resources remain weak, and there is no regional forum or meeting space for ALDs or commune presidents. Another reason could be the shaping of this group. As I have shown above, this is a transversal elite, and whereas the distinction of public policies in European or North American countries generates new groups of elites (around one sector, such as agriculture, airspace, social security, etc.), in the context of this research this could very well be hindered by the cross-sectional knowledge and experience of these development experts. In the province of Zagora, where Mezguita is located, it can nonetheless be suggested that there has been a somewhat broader structuring in the case of this development elite. Although the research was only conducted in one commune in this province, during the interviews I conducted I observed that the group of ‘teacher–community activists’ born before the 1980s was relatively well structured throughout the province and was very active in multiple public-policy areas and forums. Although no surveys were conducted to determine for certain the names of the development elites in other communes, cross-referenced information revealed profiles identical to those of Nabil and Reda. This group of people share similar social origins and professional and activist careers. Moreover, they attended the same educational training in the provincial delegation and had the same human rights training with the European Union development and cooperation services. Throughout the province, I met six different people who shared these criteria. They know each other personally, meet often and have organized their group around networks of ALDs and federations (e.g. Union des Associations de Développement du Drâa, founded in 2004 in Agdz near Mezguita by a group of teachers and activists, including Reda and Nabil). These networks and federations were united in a network of NGOs for purposes of development and introducing democracy in Zagora (RAZDED), created in 2007. The group was therefore formed out of a desire to include human rights and push the notion of community reparations following years of police repression during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in Moroccan national public policy.

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Conclusion This chapter has illustrated the use of a research methodology based on a questionnaire survey, interviews and fieldwork (memory and narrative analysis) in the study of local forms of expertise in development processes. In analysing the lifeworlds of the custodians of development memory, I have shown that they comprise a development elite that influences the fabric of the political agenda and decision-making from the positions they occupy within the political-administrative system, especially due to their memories of development interventions. Using the tools and concepts of the sociology of elites in the development context in Morocco, I emphasized the world of NGOs as one in which career opportunities can lead to upward social mobility and professional advancement (see Sundberg in this volume). This elite has remained an elite despite the passage of time, the introduction of political and administrative reforms and other political changes. Although they are on the fringes of Morocco’s politicaladministrative institutions and the development arena, they understand the latter’s codes, customs and complexities and have the ability to move from one cognitive universe to another while creating acceptable representations of development at the local level. Memory is then mainly a personal resource that is very complex and formed of various streams of knowledge: the way donors function and reason but also their knowledge of a region, its people and needs. It is also very useful to understand how NGOs and development work shape power relations and lives. I have highlighted the fact that social divisions may emerge from the accumulation of development projects over time (see Engels in this volume). A limited number of names were identified through the questionnaire survey as custodians of development memory, showing that only a few seem to profit from NGO activities and development work. Relatively heterogeneous profiles were highlighted, from the rural figure to the agent of authority, including the teacher-community activists; the latter, in particular, appear to have taken similar paths and share the same values ​​and political opinions. In particular, they have created consolidated associative networks and regularly deal with the administration and with donors, working to implement social services in the communes featured in this research. This study shows how the local production of elites in Morocco is marked by the dynamics of the hybridization of two streams that characterize the kingdom: the technobureaucratic and the political. It also shows how development participates in the creation of new forms of elitism at different territorial levels. It is an elite that is more embedded within and focused on their lifeworlds as a whole, and

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not, as the literature in Europe or North America emphasizes, an elite organized around sectors. These actors do not have sector-specific knowledge but a more deep and entangled knowledge of development. The very existence of such actors encourages us to discuss the sectoral and territorial aspects of policymaking processes in Morocco. Several hypotheses have been put forward as emerging from this Moroccan study that merit further exploration. The existence of this political elite seems to confirm the non-sectorized nature of public action in Morocco. It could be useful to rethink the analysis of coordination and governance mechanisms from a cross-cutting perspective. These actors leverage their multiple positions in technical and administrative spheres ranging from NGOs and the commune to the provincial council or networks of local authorities. The hypothesis is therefore that they are key actors in the movement to territorialize policymaking processes, a process of territorialization necessitated by a new vision of territory and by the crisis in the vertical approach to resolving collective problems and issues.

Matthieu Brun has a Ph.D. in political science and is associate researcher at the laboratory ‘Les Afriques dans le monde’. His work focuses on the analysis of ‘memories of development’ in both Madagascar and Morocco. This refers to the many marks left by development operations over the years that are intertwine with the landscape. Based on mixed methods, including both quantitative and qualitative data analyses, his research sets out to understand the narratives, evocation and recollection of material and intangible imprints left through carrying out development projects and programmes.

Notes  1. This chapter is based on Ph.D. research in political science at SciencesPo Bordeaux conducted within the framework of the DeMeTer research project (Development, Memory, Territories) funded by the Conseil Régional de Nouvelle Aquitaine.  2. The ‘developmentalist configuration’ is described by Olivier de Sardan (1995: 14) as a ‘largely cosmopolitan universe of experts, bureaucrats, NGO leaders, researchers, project managers etc. who make a living in some way out of the development of others and mobilize or manage for this purpose considerable material and symbolic resources’.  3. The reasons for this absence of memory must be sought especially in the implementation of development aid and its associated procedures.  4. See also the Special issue of Afrique Contemporaine and the paper by Brun and Galibert on the paradox of the memory of development (to be published in 2022).  5. In my Ph.D. research, I also analyse the lifeworlds, narratives and popular memory of development interventions.

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 6. For a more comprehensive discussion, see Genieys and Smyrl (2008).  7. We refer here to the French perspective on public policies ‘sociologie de l’action publique’ (Boussaguet, Jacquot and Ravinet 2015; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007)  8. Of the forty questions in the survey, only two were used to draw up a list of custodians. The other questions were related to individuals’ own memories of development.  9. The names given to the five individuals described in this chapter have been changed to respect their privacy. 10. With regard to the introduction of this edited volume, I refer to the organizations of the actors as NGOs with local reach. In their legal sense, they were registered as associations. 11. These interviews were conducted in the three communes surveyed in Morocco between March and May 2017. 12. In the city of Agdz, located in the Drâa Valley a couple of kilometres from Mezguita, there was a secret prison used especially during the Years of Lead (Années de plomb). 13. This political openness culminated in the constitution of the first government of alternance in Morocco in 1998, headed by the socialist Abderrahmane Youssoufi. 14. The National Rural Roads Program (PNR) in 1995, the Rural Drinking Water Supply Program (PAGER) in 1995 and the Comprehensive Rural Electrification Program (PERG) in 1996. 15. The term ‘authorities’ is used here deliberately in that it is a term used by both the average Moroccan and by the respondents for speaking about the makhzen, an overriding authority imposing allegiance on communities. 16. He was unable to run because of a new legislative provision prohibiting individuals in charge of traditional land management from running in elections. He pushed his son to run, who is now in the opposition party in the commune. 17. There is nothing that a priori seems to prohibit an agent of authority from holding decision-making positions in development NGOs with local reach. 18. This price is not the same as the price paid to the Office national de l’eau potable (ONEP); it is higher, as it includes system management and maintenance fees, as well as a contribution to the NGO’s other projects, such as the cultural centre, support courses and donations of staple foods during the holy month of Ramadan. 19. See Benidir (2015) for a similar approach, but in a different part of Morocco. 20. Preschool in Morocco corresponds to kindergarten classes, but it is not instituted or managed by the Ministry of Education. In medium and large centres, this is a private service, but in rural areas organization of this essential service is generally handled by the communal authorities, most often the ALDs. The latter provide this service because the communes do not have the material resources to open preschool structures in every village or group of villages. 21. Reference is made here to the work of Pierre Muller and his 1990 article published in Politique et management public, in which he discusses the French political-administrative system and the production of public policies by local French communities (Muller 1990). 22. During my field research, they showed me several diplomas and certificates of their participation in training programmes organized by ministries and development partners like the Belgium, American and German cooperation agencies on education, sustainable development, water and sanitation, etc.

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Halpern, C., and S. Jacquot. 2015. ‘Quelle actualité de la notion de secteur? Aux frontières de l’action publique: l’instrumentation comme logique de (dé)sectorisation’, in Une French Touch dans l’analyse des politiques publiques? Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques (P.F.N.S.P.), pp. 57–84. Hassenteufel, P. 2011. Sociologie politique: l’action publique. Collection U. Sociologie. 2e édition. Paris: Armand Colin. Hunter, F. 1953. Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lascoumes, P., and P. Le Galès. 2007. Sociologie de l’action publique. coll. 128. Paris: Armand Colin. Lasswell, H.D. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. Whitefish: Literary Licensing, LLC. Lavigne Delville, P. 2017. ‘Pour une socio-anthropologie de l’action publique dans les pays sous régime d’aide’, Anthropologie and développement (45): 33–64. Leferme-Falguières, F., and V.V. Renterghem. 2001. ‘Le concept d’élites: approaches historiographiques et méthodologiques’, Hypothèses 2000 57–67. Mills, C.W. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Mosse, D. 2006. Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Kumarian Press. Bloomfield, IL: David Lewis. Muller, P. 1990. ‘Les politiques publiques entre secteurs et territoires’, Politiques et management public 8(3): 19–33. ______. 2013. Les politiques publiques. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Nay, O., and A. Smith (eds). 2002. Le gouvernement du compromis: courtiers et généralistes dans l’action politique. Paris: Economica. Neubert, D., and P. Lavigne-Delville. 1996. ‘The Role of Local Brokers in the Development System: Experiences with ‘Self-Help Projects’ in East Africa’, Bulletin de l’APAD (11). Niane, B. 2011. Elites par procuration: handicaps et ruses des dirigeants politicoadministratifs sénégalais (Etudes africaines). Paris: L’Harmattan. Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. 1995. Anthropologie et développement, essai en socioanthropologie du changement social. Hommes et Sociétés. Paris: Karthala. Pennell, C.R. 2000. Morocco since 1830: A History. New York: New York University Press. Soriat, C. 2014. ‘Les acteurs associatifs et la lutte contre le sida au Bénin: de la professionnalisation au gouvernement des corps’, Ph.D. thesis. Lille: Lille 2.

on institutions

Chapter 13

On the Advantages of ‘Intentional Amnesia’

Some Preliminary Notes on a Cultural History of NGOs in Burkina Faso Hans P. Hahn

Introduction What is the role of development for the self-conception of a society? Considering culture and society as dynamic entities that place people in a shared space for negotiations and social change, there can be no doubt about the massive influence of development innovations. Changes caused by development go far beyond the fields of technology and economics. Referring to the phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas, Konersmann (2003: 120) insists that flexibility is part of the notion of culture: culture does not exist in its own right but is rather a reflex of its capacity to address and evaluate innovations.1 In an anthropological sense, ‘culture as a whole’ is influenced by and inevitably changes simultaneously with ongoing development activities.2 Thus, it is not enough to understand the relationship between culture and development in the framework of a functional dimension alone, whatever that may contain. Certainly, culture can contribute to development, and, conversely, one priority of development activities may be to promote cultural actors and institutions (Marana 2010). However, in this chapter, I do not intend to deal with such well-established approaches to ‘culture and development’. Accepting the idea of the flexibility of culture, the question will rather be how societies and cultures in West Africa have been tacitly influenced by development activities since the Notes for this chapter begin on page 307.

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1970s. It is assumed that collective memory, social identity and the history of everyday life have had a special relationship to development activities since their very beginning. The embedding of social and political phenomena in culture means that the two have mutually influenced each other for more than half a century – that is, since the first appearance of international development activities in the region.3 As this relationship is largely implicit and, as will be shown, while some activities have been undertaken to hinder direct access to the ‘history of development’, the term ‘amnesia’ appears to be quite appropriate. But what is the more thorough meaning of this quite provocative term on the level of culture and identity? Can we nowadays gauge the impact of the collective memory about development projects from the past? Contra the presumed ‘amnesia’, can we identify something that merits to be called the ‘social history’ of developmental activities? Such are the questions this chapter aims to deal with. Regarding the conceptual framework of this contribution, the idea is not so much to measure and compare the impact of culture on development, but rather to highlight the implicit but meaningful influences of the latter on the culturally defined aspects of self-evaluation. This needs to be framed primarily as a historical experience, one that influences self-­perceptions as well as expectations of future changes in society. Juxtaposing the expectations of international agents, on-site professionals and those who are regarded as the ‘targets’ of specific activities will enable the historian to write an ‘entangled history’, or, combining the two perspectives, a histoire croisée (Werner and Zimmermann 2006). This chapter is therefore not so much an anthropology of development but rather an attempt to identify some provisional aspects of a ‘social history of development’, although the contours of such a body of knowledge have to remain opaque.4 The empirical basis of this contribution is a personal experience (see Lauterbach in this volume) involving an incidental encounter with several individuals who articulated their personal engagement in and recollection of different development activities (see Brun in this volume) during my long-term fieldwork from 1993–2003. ‘Development’ as such was not a topic of my research, but it did surface on several occasions. Unexpected debates, complaints and repeated requests to re-establish contact with development agencies surfaced during these years. As happens quite often during the process of ethnographic research, relevant perspectives only become clear during the research. Although such encounters did not have sufficient impact to change the agenda, in this contribution I intend to make explicit a problem that I consider to be of great relevance to many people in the area of my fieldwork.

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My information comes from reflections about these events, not from systematic research in this field. As such, this contribution should be perceived as a plea for more and more detailed research rather than the presentation of a completed research project and its outcome.

Encounter with Ideologies Before presenting some interpretations dealing with complex notions such as history, culture, development and identity, it is necessary to refer to the background of my research in southern Burkina Faso. From 1993 to 2003, I had an opportunity to spend several periods of some months each in a remote village close to the Ghanaian border. As already noted, the starting point of this contribution is a personal experience I had at that time in Burkina Faso in the context of my ethnographic study. In order to provide a concrete example of how the experience of development activities influences an individual’s mind, I shall dwell a little on the reaction of people in Burkina Faso to, and their concerns about, the possible long-term outcomes of development projects. By juxtaposing Burkinabe perspectives with the ‘official’ positions of international institutions, I aim to highlight the plurality of considerations and evaluations. I claim that every project implicitly transmits a kind of ‘development ideology’ that may be condensed into a specific ‘development identity’ (Erikson Baaz 1995). Any such identity that is influenced by activism is not only situated in the context of a successful or failing project; it necessarily encompasses a long-term perspective – realising important effects only after several years have passed since the end of a particular project. While carrying out my long-term research into the economic life of a rural area of southern Burkina Faso, I also had mostly unexpected encounters with development activities. During my visits to the different villages, and in the context of my questionnaires on income-generating activities, I gradually became more and more acquainted with the history of the region. What struck me especially was that its inhabitants all knew a lot about German engineering, German expatriates and, most important of all, the pros and cons of German development initiatives. In fact, in 1998, I encountered certain individuals who could look back on at least two decades of experiences with development. They were living in a rural village that had been founded in 1975 as part of a resettlement programme. During the twenty years of the project (1974–1994), selected families from different parts of the country were brought to this village because fertile and underexploited land had been identified in the

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immediate vicinity. At the centre of this project was the concept of ‘integrated village development’, which gave the project numerous different but coordinated measures. In addition to the parcelling out and establishment of an infrastructure in the form of a network of gravel roads, a school and a dispensaire were also built there. In addition, each household was provided with a plough, several oxen and, over a period of several years, a basic supply of seeds and mineral fertilizer. When I encountered the inhabitants of this village, the project had already been finished for several years. I discovered that since then the teachers had refused to work. Furthermore, for several households the oxen had died, so the ploughs had become useless. On the one hand, the farmers took pride in the fact that they could look back on two decades of successful agriculture. On the other hand, they realized that, in the years before our interaction, their living conditions had massively deteriorated. There was no more formal education for their children, and there was a lack of workers to cultivate the fields to replace the missing ploughs. A third complaint concerned the high transport costs, as this village was more than fifteen kilometres from the nearest major road. Although the road infrastructure was still intact, the problem was getting taxi drivers to go there. The small number of inhabitants and the lack of a market made regular trips there hardly profitable. At a time of increasing difficulties, it is easy to understand why the farmers seized the opportunity to talk to me and to express their dissatisfaction and concern. They revealed their problems to me as if I were part of the development infrastructure. They informed me that the project managers were still in the country: the Ouagadougou office was well known to them. However, the international experts refused to visit their former place of work in order to see with their own eyes how everything had deteriorated. There has been no reaction to their petitions so far. Behind the three concrete accusations already mentioned was implicitly the complaint about a lack of loyalty and unfulfilled promises. The fact that these problems are simply due to the established timeline of the associated project – that is, that the project was ended in 1994, completely eluded the farmers’ perception. During our meeting, it turned out that the farmers had been watching me very closely as I approached the village and stopped the car at its centre. It had not escaped their notice that I was driving an all-terrain vehicle of a German make, one they were familiar with from the visits of development experts several years ago. That the logo of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ)5 was missing on the vehicle I was using had little effect on being recognized as an individual with a link to develop-

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Figure 13.1. The surroundings of the villages in southern Burkina Faso are mainly being utilized for agriculture. However, soil degradation and land conflict contribute to persistent difficulties with field cultivation, 2003. © Hans P. Hahn.

ment activities. Of course, I was first asked whether I was of German nationality, and my interlocutors did not fail to immediately utter some compliments regarding Germans in general and to refer to their working experience of Germans. Their careful observation of my person was seamlessly linked to references to the farmers’ own competence with regard to the development initiatives of the GTZ. The farmers presented themselves as pioneers in a cooperative project that demanded a high degree of trust in the foreign experts’ abilities and plans. The special role of the farmers in the village was also emphasized, as they were prepared to accept the parcelling out of the land and had relied on the assurance of the Germans that the fields would be permanently at their disposition, although they had been continually classified as ‘immigrants’ by the surrounding population. They also told me in vivid detail about the machinery that was stationed on-site to construct the road infrastructure and build a school and infirmary, especially in the early stages of the project. They also recalled their tough negotiations with the German experts regarding important details of the project, including the location of the school and the question of whether a market could be installed in the area. The last aspect belongs on a list of failed

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negotiations: no such market was ever established. Other details were willingly shared with me as well, such as the ambivalent role of the warehouse administrator. This person, chosen by the Germans and paid by them during the project, was suspected of selling some of the fertilizer supplies on his own account immediately after it ended. I had the impression that my status as a researcher was being fundamentally questioned because I was no longer regarded as a partner dealing with open questions about the economy and culture but rather as a representative of a powerful social and economic actor who had disappeared suddenly some years before I arrived on the scene. Possibly, in looking back to the abrupt end of the projects, lack of cooperation was perceived as a disappointment or, even worse, as a source of frustration due to a considerable number of unresolved problems. It is quite natural for project cycles to be linked to the evolution of different evaluations of the outcome. The phenomenon of diverging notions about development, depending on the particular moment in time, becomes even more complex by looking at different perceptions of specific social groups within the ‘receiving community’. Those who implement a project consider the outcome differently to those who are its ‘target’ (Koster and Nuijten 2012; Schler and Gez 2018). Such variations in evaluations over time indicate the importance of a deeper historical perspective. Therefore, a sufficient period of time must pass in order to obtain a clearer picture of the questions raised in the first section of this chapter. The temporality of development activities provides one important framework, as Veronica Davidov and Ingrid L. Nelson have explained in more detail (Davidov and Nelson 2016).6 After my return to Germany, I rushed to the head office of the GTZ to ask for any available documentation about projects in Burkina Faso in the 1970s in the organization’s archives. I was keen to learn about the initial goals and work of this project. However, hardly any of the relevant documents had been preserved because, as a rule, ten years after the end of any project all the related materials are removed from the shelves and destroyed. In particular, the documents reporting on the earlier phases of the project, with their references to the conditions under which the farmers had been resettled on-site, were no longer available. Thus, it was not possible for me to find out whether the farmers’ claims of ‘permanent cooperation’ were true or if the experts had explained the limited duration of the project from the very beginning. One can legitimately conclude from this experience that knowledge of past activities was intentionally eliminated. The internal guidelines of the GTZ on this issue refer primarily to legal issues. Thus, the archive served to address possible claims by materials

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suppliers or contractors: no one considered the potential relevance of the cultural and social ‘afterlives’ of development projects, especially regarding the possibility of reconstructing the dominant ideology that had led to their implementation. Not knowing about the sources and presumptions of a particular project is nothing more than a side effect of the archival regulations. However, the effect of this practice is what I call ‘intentional amnesia’, a by-product of an institutionally established and well-justified practice. Undeniably, as a development agency, the GTZ does not acknowledge any responsibility with regard to its own knowledge about projects that were executed in the past. In the context of the ongoing debate in Burkina Faso about the effects of such particular long-term projects, the initial intentions and agreements concerning the strategies adopted and the project’s implementation would be quite relevant. However, it is also entirely possible that such documents may reveal contradictions and incoherence in respect of the agency’s activities. Against this background, it is entirely understandable if ‘intentional amnesia’ is adopted as a strategy.

Figurations of Thinking about Development Although my disappointment over documents that no longer existed and the finding that there are different evaluations of knowledge in Burkina Faso and in Germany are relevant aspects of my experience in Burkina Faso, these are not the point of this contribution. My interest is rather in finding an appropriate answer to the following question: How do people with personal experience of development projects think about development beyond issues of importance to the organization itself? Although any answer must inevitably be a matter of speculation, I suggest that it is worth the effort to deal with issues of identity, biography and the sometimes very pragmatic ways of legitimizing one’s own activities within the context of being a development partner. This holds true for both individuals and institutions. The basic answer involves the following argument: development institutions, including of course NGOs, stage themselves in specific ways and thereby gain relative advantages compared to nation states or enterprises. The specificity of public perceptions of development institutions is linked not so much to the objectives of their work and its implementation, but rather to how they define themselves and position their interests in a heterogeneous environment of national and international players. The most important goal of any development institution is to convince the people they collaborate with and who might be the future ‘targets’ of their project

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activities that accepting the implementation of a project is a contribution to ensuring a better future. The agreement of the population concerned is a precondition for development activities and is of the utmost importance during the execution of a project. Development projects require affirmative self-positioning on the part of partners on the spot. It is important that people at the development site perceive the project as a contribution to a better future, whatever it might look like. Some years ago, Richard Rottenburg used the term ‘mirror façade’ in order to describe the complementary character of the requirements of international donors (Rottenburg 1994: 269). Rottenburg’s thoughtful article metaphorically related the properties of economic partners on the ground to a mirror (Rottenburg 1994). Although this article deals with international economic partners, its main findings – especially the necessity of anticipating and adapting to the requirements of the ‘other’ in such partnerships – apply fully to the collaboration between international donors and agencies on the ground. Thus, it should be considered a requirement of development that the objectives of the (international) donor institution are in harmony with the articulated interests of the respective population and its representatives.7 I find this model highly convincing, and it inspired me to do further research in this field (Hahn 1997, 2003). However, distinguishing my approach from Rottenburg’s, I would insist on the ascription of agency specifically to the development actors, who are not simply mirroring the donor’s expectations but rather acting tactically. I would also insist on the historicity of development, as NGO actors make decisions on the basis of prior experiences and with regard to the priorities defined in their own lifeworlds. Funding for development activities is the principal source permitting the survival of NGOs and, more specifically, allowing NGO agents to act professionally. Accordingly, NGOs sometimes desperately seek new funding. However, international funding as a resource is highly regulated and controlled. The rules for the availability of development money are changed constantly by strong actors, mainly international aid-­ generating institutions. These strong actors set out their priorities and define them with reference to ‘public interest’, making receivers of development funding modify their publicly stated range of activities (Oliviera and Wiesenberg 2016; Paragi 2017). In light of the unequal relationship between donor and receiver, another, more appropriate metaphor might be the process called ‘mould and cast’. Whereas the strong actor provides the mould – that is, a specific form that serves as a paragon of standards – the collaborators on-site cast the shape using the mould. This metaphor inserts a processual dimension into the picture: a mould is provided, the formal requirements are

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defined, and the casting gives form to a substance that is a liquid, at least temporarily. Here the metaphor reaches its limit because some important phenomena cannot by addressed using this framework. The question asked at the beginning of this section cannot be answered only by highlighting the power of international institutions and the corresponding flexibility of on-site development actors. It is also relevant to ask how it is possible to adapt again and again to the ever-changing requirements of international donors. Thus, it is remarkable that development actors again and again have the sensibility and the power to redefine their potentials, their motivations and their professional engagements (see Ouédraogo in this volume). This ability to survive, this specific capacity to keep the development process alive in spite of changing requirements, suggests three possible approaches to a better understanding of development professionals. The first and probably most difficult aspect will be the question of the identity of the (e.g. Burkinabe) NGO professional, the second is about emotions and the last and possibly most obvious is development.

Identity, Emotion and Development: Aspects of NGO Professionals’ Lifeworlds What is the identity of an NGO worker? Of course, there is no such thing as one unique and uniform identity. However, drawing on my own ethnographic experience, it is worthwhile considering the position of a development professional from his or her own perspective. What does it mean to work either for an international foundation or, alternatively, as a government representative? During my fieldwork in Burkina Faso, I had the opportunity to speak to many NGO professionals. At least in some cases it was possible to ask the two questions just mentioned. It is obvious that being an NGO professional is clearly a matter of having a weak social, economic and institutional position. Although some NGO professionals manage to earn quite a lot of money from their activities (much more than, for example, a teacher in a primary school), there is a high level of awareness about the future risks to any NGO, about its potential decline and, above all, about the danger of project funding becoming unobtainable at any moment. Related to this basic assumption about not being able to predict the future, the identity of the NGO worker is marked by a particular insecurity. He might consider working for an NGO as the most important engagement available to him, but he is also well advised to see a quite different career as an option in order to secure his economic future. In any

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Figure 13.2. The market of Guelwongo is a popular trading centre on the border of Burkina Faso and Ghana, where daily encounters of small-scale economies (stalls with thatched roofs) and the international cereal market (trucks cart away the purchased cereals) can be observed, 2003. © Hans P. Hahn.

case, he will regard his choice as a personal sacrifice. As Thomas Yarrow (2008) emphasizes, the links between national history and the associated development goals and one’s personal situation are quite important for development workers. A second attitude that is widespread among development workers has to do with the range of partners that have to be confronted in the frequent negotiations. These are mostly also professionals in their field who have to be convinced of the specific advantages of a particular development initiative. All NGO professionals have a particular capacity for self-presentation and for explaining the specific advantages of the projects they are currently working on. In this context, there is a bandwagon logic at work: that is, once a responsible person sets the standards for how to speak about a project, this needs to be matched by all the other development professionals in the area. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between collective attempts and more subjective and individual experiences. A third aspect of the identity outlined here is a specific form of flexibility. As the economic basis is unstable and given the fears of activities changing at short notice, development workers have to adapt without

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hesitation. Loyalty is not the highest priority for development workers: if there is an opportunity to secure a future elsewhere, perhaps in another field of activity or another professional context entirely, he or she may change their agenda. In sum, identity is marked by three aspects: the ability to cope with insecurity, the capacity to present one’s activities persuasively, and flexibility. The question about the emotional side can be answered in what follows from this: although development professionals mostly have a genuine commitment to the realization of their projects, they must also consider failure as a very real outcome. As a consequence, a kind of emotional distancing in the context of development cooperation appears to be quite appropriate. For development experts, it is an important capacity to show a certain robustness with regard to failure and success. On several occasions, I have been able to observe the emergence of NGOs with a local reach in Tiébélé and Kampala (both in the Province of Nahouri, Burkina Faso). I was always surprised how little the organizers were affected by their lack of success in the application process. One example of this is an NGO that was founded with the aim of building a school. An application for this purpose was submitted to the American Embassy. When this application proved unsuccessful, the organizers switched to pig-breeding in order to make at least an initial profit. A few years later, the organizer used the money thus raised to make a trip to France and Germany, during which he presented his project ideas to potential donors in church circles, partly through my mediation. These trips led to those he addressed becoming interested in the NGO and promising a return visit to Burkina Faso. Whether this then finally came to a sponsorship I have no knowledge. Undeniably, moments of frustration do occur, but NGO professionals seem to recognize that moments of disappointment do not teach anything and have to be put aside. Beata Paragi in her case study of Palestinian NGO workers mentions that they rejected the idea that ‘gratitude’ is the key attitude one should adopt towards one’s donors. Indeed, success in an application and/or receiving financial aid is a burden: it is not a reason for joy but instead the beginning of a responsibility because it brings with it new obligations (Paragi 2017, and in this volume). What do these interpretations tell us about perceptions of the term ‘development’? It is important to understand that this is a huge, allencompassing term that characterizes the lifeworlds of my partners from the former development villages in southern Burkina Faso, as well as of many people in West Africa. However, in the minds of development professionals, ‘development’ continues to be a black box. Development is important, it is massive, and it is a cornerstone of the professional

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­ iographies of many people in Burkina Faso, but it remains totally unclear b what is inside it. Of course, development professionals have ‘development tools’ that can be deployed in order to make the black box labelled ‘development’ work. Examples of such tools are ‘primary education’, ‘health’, ‘poverty reduction’ and ‘gender equality’. These are reli­able proxies when it comes to demanding development money. However, they are put to use according to the paragon mentioned above – the rules and structures that are drawn up in order to channel international aid money to agencies on the ground. Given the acts of the professionals in this sector and their lifeworlds, development has a permanent place. It does not have a beginning, it does not end, and it exists like a challenge that never ceases to define future activities (Lewis 2016). Development combines a moral setting (the improvement of living conditions) with a series of tactical activities (the aforementioned proxies). Polemically speaking, rejecting development would be like becoming a heretic in the Middle Ages. Living without development goals means abandoning one of the basic tenets of how to act successfully in the society described.

Conclusion Possibly this polemical statement is inspired by identity, while the emotions of development professionals are a provocation in themselves. Others have already focused on the problematic relationships between identity and development (Többe Gonçalves 2005), but their interpretations should be reconsidered in the light of more dogmatic definitions of development. After all, development claims to change society by improving the living conditions of its members. From an anthropological point of view, development in its most general form is a process that affects societies and redefines the relationship of the individual to society (Strathern 1995: 161). Development is affirmative to change, starting from a particular point and ending up somewhere different. In sharp contrast to such models, development as perceived among NGO professionals has no definite starting point, and there is no vision about the ‘end of development’ any more than there is about visions of affluence in Burkina Faso. This appears to me to be a second meaning of ‘intentional amnesia’: the population concerned lives in a strong current of ongoing changes, including strict moral obligations, but the model of development has become incomplete, as there is no beginning and no end. ‘Amnesia’ means forgetting about all past achievements and failures.

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Half a century ago, the sociologist René König problematized the confrontation between identity and modernity. Based on his experiences in an American Indian reservation, he shows how those who have not accepted development are devalued (König 1973: 60ff). The category of the ‘non-developed individual’ seems something distant, difficult to imagine. He found that becoming a ‘New Indian’ – that is, someone who has accepted all the gifts of progress – was the standard. Reflections on self-evaluations are only possible after achieving this standard. Development as it is perceived among development workers has become a giant black box, without any historical dimension. The professionals must make the black box work, but they cannot control it entirely. ‘Auto-amnesia’ does not appear particularly far-fetched when we consider the specific structure of the life of NGOs in Burkina Faso. A social and economic field that denies or at least neglects its own history has particular shortcomings. Therefore, the plea to historicize development activities in Burkina Faso, made at the beginning of this chapter, is firmly situated in the context of hope that this may contribute to sustainable development in the future. Hans P. Hahn is Professor for Anthropology with a special focus on Africa at Goethe University of Frankfurt. His research interests are oriented towards material culture, consumption and the impact of globalization on non-Western societies. He edited the book Ethnologie und Weltkulturenmuseum (2017), focusing on the history of museums with ethnographic collections. He directed a research project on the history of NGOs in Burkina Faso (2016–2019) and was principal investigator of a research programme on virtual interfaces in museum collections (2017– 2020). His recent publications include an edited volume entitled Things as a Challenge (2018).

Notes 1. See also Hubertus Büschel (2000). 2. One of the foundational theories of anthropology in the Boasian tradition, cultural holism has been the focus of criticism (Thornton 1988) but continues to be a distinctive methodological feature of ethnography. More recently, the holistic approach in anthropology has been defended (Otto and Bubandt 2010). 3. To the author’s knowledge, international development cooperation began somewhat earlier, before independence. However, especially in Burkina Faso, the 1970s was the period when specific legislation for development was passed. 4. The history of development has been written with a special focus on its origins (Arndt 1981; Lepenies 2008; Rist 1997) and within a framework of the history of ideas (Preston

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1996; Sahlins 1988). Development has also been historicized with regard to changes in specific economic subfields of West African societies, like agriculture and motor transport (Drummond-Thompson 1992; Koenig, Diarra and Sow 1998; Saha 1990). These studies form part of the political history, the institutional history and the economic history of the subregion, but they cannot count as a social history. 5. In 2011, the GTZ was integrated into the newly founded German Corporation for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ). 6. Davidov and Nelson (2016) highlight the multiplicity of temporalities in ongoing development projects. This is not only a matter of applying for funding for, starting, executing and finishing a project but also about creating NGOs, becoming an experienced partner and, last but not least, developing one’s own perspectives for the future. One might even consider activists’ biographies (Yarrow 2008) as part of such temporalities. 7. Rottenburg’s thesis is in line with Frederic Jameson’s model of postmodernism. Jameson (1984) uses the ‘mirror façade’ as a metaphor for the postmodern condition, where opposition and conflict are eliminated with the argument that they might thwart the economic development in the respective sector. Whereas in classic modernity the antagonism between employers and employees is a rule, Jameson characterizes ‘postmodernity’ by the enforced harmonization of different actors.

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Koster, M., and M. Nuijten. 2012. ‘From Preamble to Post-project Frustrations: The Shaping of a Slum Upgrading Project in Recife, Brazil’, Antipode 44(1): 175–96. Lepenies, P.H. 2008. ‘An Inquiry into the Roots of the Modern Concept of Development’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 4: 202–25. Lewis, D. 2016. ‘Abandoned Pasts, Disappearing Futures: Further Reflections on Multiple Temporalities in Studying Non-governmental Organisation Worlds’, Critique of Anthropology 36(1): 83–92. Marana, M. 2010. Culture and Development: Evolution and Prospects. Bilbao: UNESCO Etxea. Oliviera, E., and M. Wiesenberg. 2016. ‘Von Innen heraus: vier Dynamiken der Legitimation von NGOs und Kirchen’, in S. Huck-Sandhu (ed.), Interne Kommunikation im Wandel: theoretische Konzepte und empirische Befunde. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 105–22. Otto, T., and N. Bubandt. 2010. Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology. Malden: Wiley. Paragi, B. 2017. ‘Contemporary Gifts: Solidarity, Compassion, Equality, Sacrifice, and Reciprocity from an NGO Perspective’, Current Anthropology 58(3): 317–39. Preston, P.W. 1996. Development Theory: An Introduction to the Analysis of Complex Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Rist, G. 1997. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. Rottenburg, R. 1994. ‘“We Have to do Business as Business is Done!” Zur Aneignung formaler Organisation in einem westafrikanischen Unternehmen’, Historische Anthropologie 2: 265–86. Saha, S.C. 1990. A History of Agriculture in West Africa: A Guide to Information Sources. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Sahlins, M.D. 1988. ‘Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of “The World System” – Develop-Man Economics’, Proceedings of the British Academy 74: 1–51. Schler, L., and Y.Y. Gez. 2018. ‘Development Shadows: The Afterlife of Collapsed Development Projects in the Zambian Copperbelt’, Africa Spectrum 53(3): 3–31. Strathern, M. 1995. ‘The Nice Thing About Culture Is That Everyone Has It’, in M. Strathern (ed.), Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge. New York: Routledge, pp. 153–76. Thornton, R.J. 1988. ‘The Rhetoric of Ethnographic Holism’, Cultural Anthropology 3(3): 285–303. Többe Gonçalves, B. 2005. Entwicklungstheorie: von der Modernisierung zum Antimodernismus. Münster: Lit Verlag. Werner, M., and B. Zimmermann. 2006. ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory 45(1): 30–50. Yarrow, T. 2008. ‘Life/History: Personal Narratives of Development Amongst NGO Workers and Activists in Ghana’, Africa 78(3): 334–58.

Afterword

Ad Hoc NGOs, Structural Failure and the Politics of Silence Stories about Development from a Village in Togo Hubertus Büschel

From Glorification to the Crash: Agou-Nyongbo, 1962–1969 In 1967, Otto Schnellbach, a German agricultural engineer, development expert and former delegate of the West German development institution, the Garantie-Abwicklungs-Gesellschaft (GAWI), published an extremely angry and racist article about his problems with human resources management in Africa. In this article, in a typical colonial and racist manner, he accused Africans of being ‘by their nature not able to think about their future and to work voluntarily’. As a result, they ‘cannot understand what development means’. Africans, he charged, lacked any capacity to help themselves or to participate fruitfully in development projects. Their ‘minds’ lacked ‘any ambition to improve their living conditions’. The ‘typical African’ was not familiar with the ‘entrepreneurial spirit, austerity or gratitude for development aid’. Altogether, development would prove impossible in Africa whenever ordinary Africans were allowed to participate in it because they simply could not see or feel their needs and lacked the sense of obligation that would allow them to work together in developing their communities (Schnellbach 1967: 91–92; for a more detailed analysis of this case, see Büschel 2014: 401–36). Schnellbach had been a technical advisor to the Togolese government, working in the Bureau de Développement and the presidential office. In this position, he had developed the so-called ‘Schnellbach Plan’ for the Notes for this chapter begin on page 318.

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‘Trois Village Pilotes’ project, the goal of which was to establish ‘help for self-help’ in the village of Nyongbo at the foot of Togo’s highest mountain, Agou, and two other villages as examples for future development projects. Between 1962 and 1974, the ‘Trois Village Pilotes’ received logistical, financial and human resources support from the German Federal Republic.1 The declared aim of the ‘plan’ was to encourage villagers to undertake their own development activities for the ‘improvement’ of their living conditions. As a first step, the villagers were supposed to select a committee to organize discussions in order to encourage insights and perceptions of ‘needs’ in the community, meetings at which the villagers should find solutions and ways for the community to work together (Zillich 1965: 160). Foreign experts and development workers were merely intended to act as ‘friends and mentors’, not as ‘leaders and decision-makers’. The African villagers should not simply ‘imitate given examples of work techniques and discipline’ but instead ‘understand the deeper sense of the project’.2 The usual asymmetries between donor representatives and development recipients were to be eliminated.3 Villagers should be encouraged to construct a school, a dispensary, water pipes, handicraft businesses and community fields for planting wheat and corn in order to feed people in need. The idea was that what they built with their own hands would be kept in good order in the future and be representative of ‘sustainable development’ (Decken 1969: 71–72). Therefore, participation was not just ‘dogma’ (Spies 2006); it was the core concept of the project and its functionality. The Togolese government had an obligation to provide ‘partnership services’, like financial support for the German experts’ living costs. The villagers pledged to provide land and housing, as well as to work on the project voluntarily without payment.4 The ‘cooperative partners’ were to be the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, BMZ), the GAWI, the German Development Service (Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst, DED), the Togolese government and the villagers.5 In the first years, the project seemed to be producing effective and sustainable methods of local development. The German experts reported an initial success in encouraging the community’s ‘feelings and engagement’ (Zillich 1965: 162). Staff from the German embassy in Lomé visited the villages several times and praised the ‘outstandingly good cooperation between the Germans and the Togolese’.6 The villages were seen as exemplary models for the future of aid and development in the whole of Africa and other ‘underdeveloped regions’ of the world.7 Sociologists undertook field studies in the villages and concluded: ‘Help for self-help is often

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just a flowery phrase and theoretical concept.’ Instead, the three ‘model villages’ in Togo were emerging as ‘brilliant examples’ of collaborative work on the basis of local initiatives (Wülker 1966: 144). Many experts from all over the world visited the villages in order to find inspiration for their own projects and initiatives.8 In the first years of the project, the government of Togo shared this general enthusiasm as well and declared that the ‘three model villages’ would demonstrate in exemplary fashion ‘suitable ways to respect the mentality of the local people’.9 President Sylvanus Olympio even praised the activities in the villages as ‘exemplary [and] excellent’.10 The Togo Press wrote about the ‘honest engagement of the German experts’, foreigners who would always ‘pay attention to and respect the African peasants’. ‘Indeed’, the Germans were no longer ‘colonizers’ but now ‘real friends and mentors’.11 At first, the villagers also seemed quite positive: the German experts reported being given welcome receptions12 and mentioned the willingness of many inhabitants of Agou-Nyongbo to work a lot on the project, thus providing a good example to others and the whole country.13 However, by the mid-1960s more negative voices were already beginning to be heard. The German experts admitted in their internal reports that frictions and conflicts had developed between themselves and the villagers, as well as among the latter.14 An external referee, who was hired by the GAWI and visited the villages in 1967 described the project as a ‘complete disaster and a nightmare’. Nobody would show up for voluntary work, the agricultural zones were covered with weeds and the craft shops were closed and run down. The community’s development committee and the chiefs would blame the Germans, accusing them of being ‘lazy’ and of blaming the villagers.15 The German Minister for Foreign Development, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, who visited AgouNyongbo in 1969, had to admit that ‘one should stop talking about model villages’.16 The DED’s development workers condemned the villagers’ ‘unwillingness’ to participate in the public work. In their view, the latter did not ‘understand’ the principle of ‘self-help’ and had simply forgotten any moral and traditional obligations of solidarity (Crush 1995: 9), whether to each other or to the community as a whole.17 Finally, the Germans became annoyed and aggressive, making racist remarks verbally and even entering into fights with the inhabitants of AgouNyongbo (Dassio 1971: 170). The villagers, for their part, were angry at never having been paid for their work. They felt ‘exploited like in colonial times’18 and asked for a monthly income.19 Further, they said that their priority was to take care of their own families; if they were to work on the community projects, they

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would not be able to take sufficient care of their own farming,20 and as a result their families would suffer from privation and hunger.21 In 1966, the government of Togo started reducing its support for the project and finally abandoned it entirely, cancelling its human resources and financial support by remarking that ‘living conditions in none of the villages have improved’. Future support from the government in Lomé would just mean ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’. Moreover, it stated, the Germans should pay back all the money that had been taken from the ‘people of Togo’ and wasted thus far.22 Togo could have become a ‘paradise’, but the Germans had not done enough to achieve this.23 In August 1966, conflict erupted in Agou-Nyongbu itself. An angry crowd gathered in front of the German experts’ house. Furious, those who had gathered cried out that their homeland ‘has not become a model village. Instead it has become a mockery for the whole country’.24 Some days earlier, the chief of the village, Pebi, had written to the former project leader, Schnellbach, that with the ‘title model village, the hopes of the people were raised that the Germans would help with water pipes, electricity and telephone mainlines’. Now everybody would be ‘disappointed that the German experts and development workers have not tarred the streets or built new, modern houses. Germans generally should know what duty means’.25 In front of the Germans’ house, Pepi held a speech: ultimately the Germans had just ‘stolen land, money and labor’ from the Togolese people as in the ‘darkest colonial times’. 26 In 1969, the Germans closed down the project in Agou-Nyongbo, giving the following final evaluation: ‘In spite of immense financial and humanitarian investment, ultimately the project just provoked bad will on the African side, with no sense of engagement or sustainable development.’27 This case study of three Togolese model villages is just one example of the progress, appraisal and efforts but also failure of development projects with strong and clear participation by the ‘locals’, no matter whether they are called ‘help for self-help’, ‘community development’, ‘animation rurale’ or ‘grassroots development’ (see also Büschel 2014: 163– 72; Cowen and Shenton 1995). There are many similar examples full of hope, good will and psycho- and biopolitical reflections and technologies, with investments of time, money and manpower, as well as conflicts and anger. They all show that collaboration and progress on the one hand and conflicts and failure on the other were and maybe still are closely intertwined in many cases. There seems to be a structural failure embedded in participatory development initiatives in societies that are suffering from economic need, poverty and famine.

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Structural Failure: Typologies of ‘Ad Hoc NGOs’ Many of those involved in development projects were organized or even forced into some form of community organization. In the meetings of these organizations, plans and decisions were made about communal work and its distribution. The work was supposed to be done by all those who might ultimately benefit from the related development initiatives. In this chapter, I would like to sketch out two aspects that seem to be central to the analysis of the dynamics in participatory development work on the local level: first, the structural ambivalences and failures being involved in the organization of community work; and secondly, the difficulties in learning more about this from actors and protagonists who were engaged in earlier examples of such projects. The history of communal work and participatory social organization in Africa is quite old and may even date back to precolonial times. In line with Jean and John Comaroff’s inspiring doubts about the existence of something like ‘civil society’ in Africa (1999: 22–23), we can state that even under colonial rule there were no clear differences between ‘civil society’ and ‘governmental societies’ in Africa. The whole ‘political imagination of Africa’ builds on ideas of communal life; it propagates politics of the inclusion of all the members of a community who are capable of contributing to the work. In the central social institutions of communal work, leaders like village chiefs, pastors and teachers take part in civil society activities while simultaneously acting as government bodies in their communities (Büschel 2014: 101–15). Indeed, ‘civil society’ is a Western concept that cannot be translated easily into the political, social or cultural contexts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Nonetheless, it entails a quite usual categorization, as well as ambivalence, when it comes to analyses of participatory development: the quasi-freedom of choice (Fisher 1995: 40) that is undermined in practical life by social pressures and social forces. NGOs in the strict sense of the word are a quite recent phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa, starting in the mid-1980s as an aspect of the booming global development business and market. But the similarities between older forms of community organization and development, as between informal NGOs and formal NGOs, are very clear: low or unpaid work is guided by elites on-site with at least a sufficiently privileged status to be able to decide how work will be distributed (see, for NGOs, Kalfelis and Knodel in this volume). As Akhil Gupta (1998) has stated, the extent of social and political co-optation of those who take part in local development projects should not be underestimated.

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Because of these similarities and the fact that committees created for purposes of community development were often set up for just one project and later abolished, the term ‘ad hoc NGOs’ might be useful. Unlike formal NGOs, ‘ad hoc NGOs’ usually do not have a clear constitution with written rules and statutes, and their members usually do not act officially as counterparts. But very similar to NGO members, the leaders, organizers and speakers of ‘ad hoc NGOs’ take over the role of representatives and coordinators for the recipients of foreign aid and usually act as cultural intermediaries or ‘brokers’ between the so-called ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, between the donors and recipients of foreign aid, or just between the ‘worlds of development and community’ (Altbach 1978; Eckert 2007: 168; Herzfeld 2006: 157; Hüsken 2006). Collaborative forms of community development in postcolonial SubSaharan Africa are sometimes built on quasi-mythical imaginations of a golden precolonial past when everybody was seen as a friend or supporter of his or her neighbours. What had to be accepted under colonial rule became a moral obligation in postcolonial times: community development was to be conducted by all members of society provided they were not too ill or weak, nor too young or old. The work had to be done ‘voluntarily’, without payment, with joy and pleasure, this being seen as an ethical, moral and legal obligation deeply embedded in the norms of communities (Büschel 2014; Oppen 2015). By definition, community development was crucial for villages in need, whose inhabitants had to fight an everyday struggle just to stay alive. In this situation, they had to invest some of their manpower and time in working for the future development of their community. The decisions made by ‘ad hoc NGOs’ always created both winners and losers. The structural failure of this construction was entangled with the social asymmetries that existed between those who decided on the distribution of work on the one hand and those who had to do this work on the other. People often complained that they were not able to invest enough time and energy even in their everyday struggles to feed their families and stated that they already felt overwhelmed by their need to provide for their everyday lives (Büschel 2014: 530–33). Regularly, those who had not been able to work voluntarily on a project were later excluded from making use of the hospitals or schools that had been built as part of community development projects. Community development therefore often created an upper class of powerful workers who could later enjoy what they had built and a second class of weaker individuals who had not been able to contribute to the projects and were therefore excluded from the results of development initiatives (for perspectives on social division as a consequence of development see Brun, Burton,

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Schultz and Sundberg in this volume). Thus, a central structural failure of participatory development based on the locally organized distribution of work was that social gaps and structural differences were deepened, not eliminated, despite the latter being a declared goal of many development initiatives. There are strong indications that voluntary, unpaid work on top of one’s regular tasks cannot function in societies where people have to fight an everyday struggle simply to stay alive. Communal work is not possible for those who have to work every day so that their family does not die from privation and hunger. This structural failure is visible in many projects based on participatory ‘ad hoc NGOs’, traceable in the archives or visible in the field. What is remarkable is that this structural failure is not discussed very much by populations on-site, even when they are confronted in interviews with archival evidence of the failed projects they had been involved in. In Hans P. Hahn’s contribution (this volume), he writes about the ‘intentional amnesia’ of international development donor agencies and organizations and analyses the structural institutional memory and processes of ‘forgetting’ in the development business. Taking this approach further, in what follows I will sketch the ‘amnesia’ and silence I was confronted with whenever I tried to interview protagonists involved in former development projects that had proved problematic (for case studies, see Büschel 2014: 373–507).

The Dynamics of Agnotology and Silence: Agou-Nyongbo, 2007 In 2007, my colleague Kokou Azamede and I had an opportunity to travel to Mount Agou. Kokou helped me as a guide, translator and friend. I wanted to see the village of Nyongbo because I hoped to meet some of the former counterparts who had been involved in the project regarding the three model villages. The plan was to conduct some interviews on experiences and perceptions of this development project in the 1960s, especially about its collapse and the conflicts it engendered (for memory politics and development projects, see also Schler and Ges 2018). Accordingly, we met a man in his seventies who claimed to be a former assistant of chief Pebi. It was a tropical rainy day when he invited us to his house. I cannot say if it was ‘intentional amnesia’ (see Hahn in this book), social political prudence and caution, kindness to a German foreigner or something else, but we got no word about the numerous stories of disappointment, misunderstanding, frustration and aggression that can and should be told

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about the three model villages in the Agou-Nyongbo project. On the contrary, the man praised everything the Germans did in his village. He raised his hands and pointed in all directions to show the results of development projects: the road to the villages on the other side of the valley, where the market is, the water pipe, the school, the small hospital (see, for a different perspective on the memory politics of development workers, Brun, this volume, who analyses memory in terms of strategies for the social rise of individuals). The man we met in Agou-Nyongbo was neither the first nor the last counterpart who reacted to my questions about problems and conflicts in development projects by praising them with a smile and kindliness. At the end, I made the decision to eliminate all interviews from my study because of the ‘amnesia’ or ‘ignorance’ of my interview partners. But there is still the question of how we as researchers can deal with and conceptualize this fundamental problem in the production of evidence in studying former development projects. Londa Schiebinger has pointed out that ‘ignorance’ might not be a sign of the lack or ‘absence of knowledge’ but an ‘outcome of cultural and political struggle’ (Schiebinger 2004). Schiebinger refers to Robert Proctor, who called ‘agnotology’ a heuristical tool for answering the question ‘How we or they know’ (Proctor 1995; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). Might the smiling ignorance of the friendly man in Agou-Nyongbo be ‘a tool to his way of experience and knowing’? We do not know if it is an outcome of political struggles, pride, shame, tactics or a kindly attitude to a foreigner. What we can see is that ‘agnotology’ is a deep structure of ‘how’ former participants talk about the development projects they were involved with. Might this ‘how’ even be an indication of the traumatic level of frustration and disappointment from which development workers in SubSaharan Africa might suffer? The cultural theorist Michael Betancourt has written that the ‘systemic unknowns’ of victims of financial crashes in the real-estate bubble economy may function as a tool for survival (Betancourt 2010). Can silence, agnotology and amnesia in the narratives of development workers, villagers and victims also be seen as a tool of survival? I suggest they can. People in Sub-Saharan Africa were and are not just victims of slavery, exploitation, colonialism and neocolonialism: they are actors and promotors of development but can also be victims of the arrogance, social forces and psychological or even physical pressures embedded in development practices. This is also true of their own collaborative projects because the structures of societies in need easily create quarrels and struggles over privileges and benefits.

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What we can and should do is to endure this silence and agnotology as a central aspect of the ‘intellectual heritage of development’ (Crewe and Harrison 1998: 25–30). Experiences and memories of participation in development projects might be traumatic or at least ambivalent, but in any case they are very difficult to understand. Imagine that foreign experts come to your remote village with an offer of development aid and that this initiative finally ends in a complete disaster: this might provide explanations for the tendency of those involved in such failures not to want to talk about them any more. However, there is still room for a lot of anthropological, social, historical and maybe also psychological research on what should be done to analyse the conditions and circumstances surrounding this silence and the reasons for it. To know more about these strategies of agnotology would undoubtedly enrich our ‘Western intellectual tradition’ (Karim 1996: 120), helping us to understand in much greater detail the structural problems of development and to stop reasoning about the education of the ‘locals’. Hubertus Büschel has been full professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Kassel since April 2019. From September 2015 until March 2019, he was Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. In the year 2015, Büschel received a Heisenberg grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG). His publications include studies about Global and Cultural History with a special expertise in the histories of development practices in Africa. Currently, he is working on a project about the history of psychiatry in Africa and on the futures of Global History as a concept.

Notes I would like to thank Melina C. Kalfelis and Kathrin Knodel for their important comments and proposal as well as Robert Parkin for proofreading and editing.  1. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BA Koblenz) B 213 BMZ 4112, Report, Otto Schnellbach to the GAWI, from December 1965: 2–3. Ibid. 4111, Reports to the GAWI from 14 November 1964: 9. For recent discussions of NGOs in Togo, see Kokou F.L. Hetcheli, this volume.  2. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PA AA) Berlin B 58 Ref. III B 2 615 Wolfgang B., Reports about German Development Initiatives in Togo, Village Kambolé, June 1968: 14.  3. See PA AA Berlin Embassy Lomé 6910 DED 1969–1975, contract with the Togolese government about German volunteers from 29 August 1968, list of the volunteers from 12 February 1969, Ibid. B 58 Ref. II B 2 698, German Embassy to the DED about development workers from 21 July 1964, list of the volunteers from 10 August 1964;

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 6.  7.  8.  9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

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BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 3977, Evaluation of different development projects in Senegal, Togo, Dahomé and Upper-Volta from 29 March 1968. Ibid., 4112, Final Report of Otto Schnellbach December 1965: 31–35. Ibid., Report of the German Embassy Lomé from 15 July 1969, Ibid. 4111, Report from 1 November 1963, PA AA Berlin B 58 Ref. III B 2 615, Report of the German Embassy Lomé to the Foreign Office (AA) from 25 March 1965, Ibid. B 92 447, Application of the Norddeutsche Mission for financial help at the BMZ from 27 July 1965. PA AA Berlin Embassy Lomé 6909 vol. I: 1963–1966, reports to the AA from 21 September 1964. Ibid., Report to the GAWI from 1 November 1963. See also: Togolese Ministère des Affaires Extériere, Lomé, Accord Commercial RFA-Togo from 20 July 1960. BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 4112, Musterdörfer, Final Report Otto Schnellbach December 1965: 28–29. Ibid., La direction du plan de developpement: memoire sur le project de Developpement des communautes villagecises ayant por objectiv d’aider les populations et s’aider elles-memes from 16 April 1964, ‘Présentation par le président Sylvanus Olympio du Plan de développement économique du Togo’, in T.G. Tété-Adjalogo (2002: 171–75, here 173). President Olympio to the German Embassador, citation in: BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 4111, Final report Report to the GAWI December 1965: 9f. ‘La Cooperation agricole et artisanale d’Agou-Nyongbo a tenu sa séance constitutive’, in Togo Presse (27 November 1964): no pages. See Zillich (1965: 160). BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 4111, Report to the GAWI from 14 November 1964: 10. See also, PA AA Berlin Embassy Lomé 6909 volume I: 1963–1966, Report of the Lomé Embassy to the AA from 21 July 1964: 2. See, for example, BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 4112, Final Report Otto Schnellbach from Decembre 1965: 1, 66, 92–122. Ibid. 4112, Report of Fritz S. from a field trip 1–6 June 1967 to the GAWI: 2, 4, 13. Ibid. 3931 Report of the Minister’s field trip 4 May 1968: 5, 22. BA Koblenz BMZ 213 4111, Reports about Agou-Nyongbo and Nuatja-Agbalebemé, December 1963 from 1 November 1963: 8. PA AA Berlin B 58 Ref. III B 2 615 Report Wolfgang Busch from June 1968: 4. Ibid.: 10. Ibid.: 7. See, for example, Ibid. Final Report Otto Schnellbach from December 1964: 35. Chief Pebi to Otto Schnellbach from 4 January 1966. Ibid., Report about project FE 344 from July 1966: 1–2. Ibid.: 1. Ibid B 213 BMZ Togo 4112, Report von der Decken to the GAWI from 8 August 1966: 1–4. See also: Vgl. PA AA Berlin B 58 Ref. III B 2 615 Report about a field trip to German development projects in Togo from 12 September 1967: 2–3. BA Koblenz B 213 BMZ 4112, Copy of Pebi’s letter to Schnellbach from July 1966. Ibid., Report von der Decken to the GAWI from 8 August 1966: 2–3. Ibid.: 1. See also, Report of the German Embassy from 15 July 1969: 14.

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Proctor, R., and L. Schiebinger (eds). 2008. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Schiebinger, L. 2004. ‘Feminist History of Colonial Science’, Hypatia 19(1): 233–54. Schler, L., and Y.N. Ges. 2018. ‘Development Shadows the Afterlife of Collapsed Development Projects in the Zambian Copperbelt’, Africa Spectrum 3: 3–31. Schnellbach, O. 1967. ‘Probleme der Menschenführung in Afrika: Kritische Betrachtung eines Landmaschineningenieurs in Entwicklungsdiensten’, Landtechnische Forschung 17(4): 89–96. Spies, E. 2006. Das Dogma der Partizipation: Interkulturelle Kontakte im Kontext der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit in Niger. Cologne: Köppe. Tété-Adjalogo, T.G. 2002. Histoire du Togo: Le Régime et l’Assasinat de Sylvanus Olympio (1960–1963). Michigan: University of Michigan. Wülker, G. 1966. Togo: Tradition und Entwicklung. Ernst Klett: Stuttgart. Zillich, E. 1965. ‘Die drei Musterdörfer in Togo’, Afrika Heute 160–62.

Index

Abacha, Sani, 215, 218 accountability, xiv, 12, 148, 160, 205–9, 214, 216, 219–22 Accra, 213 Accra Agenda for Action, 19 adjustment, structural, 88, 117–18, 278 Adventist Accreditation Agency, 85 advisors, poverty, 121 results, 121 advocacy, 142, 160, 167, 219, 267, 285, 286 Africa, 1–32, 57–72, 191, 193, 203, 214, 216, 251, 254, 273, 311, 314, 315, 317 Africa, South. See South Africa Africa, West, 295–96, 305 African Development Bank, 156 African Solidarity Association, 139, 141 Agadir, Bay of, 277 Agdz, 280, 289, 291 Agence Nationale d’Encadrement des Exploitations Minières Artisanales et Semi Mécanisée (ANEEMAS), 165–67 agency, 59, 70, 228, 233, 242, 302 agnotology, 31, 316–18 Agou, Mt., 311, 312, 313, 316, 317

agriculture, 43, 53, 124, 149, 153, 229, 239, 241, 273, 277, 287, 289, 298, 299 aid, 10, 58, 97, 115–33, 150, 172–73, 176–79, 181, 184, 190–91, 226, 227, 270–71, 274, 284, 287, 315 humanitarian, 82 shopping, 231 ‘aid and pain, pain and aid’, 18, 179–80, 191 AIDINMENA (Foreign Aid and Stability in the Middle East), 176, 194 aidnography, 58 AIDS. See HIV/AIDS Aid Watch Palestine, 194 Aladura movement, 210 Albert Schweizer Catholic Foundation for Development and Solidarity, 151 Albert Schweizer Ecological Center, 151. See also Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer du Burkina Faso Amazigh, 276 Amin, Idi, 231 amnesia, 296, 301, 306, 307, 316 Amnesty International Burkina Faso, 138–39

324

amoeba, xvi, 211 Années de plomb (Years of Lead), 292 anthropology, 3ff., 17, 58, 94–114, 116, 227–28, 295, 306 cyborg, 110 of development, 4, 82, 97, 98, 273, 274, 296 digital, 102, 110 economic, 173–74 social, 264 anti-intellectualism, 98 Arab Spring, 176 Arabia, Saudi, 144 Arabic, 276 Arato, A., 206 Arbasa Sahel, 270–92 Arusha Declaration, 237 Ashanti, 15 Ashoka, 43 association, freedom of, 56 Association des Praticiens de l’Education au Développement (APED-Togo), 259 Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), 218–19 Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD), 98, 110 Association Locale de Développement (ALD), 270–92 Association pour le Renforcement des Capacités de Développement Durable des Communautés (ARCAD), 139 Association Togolaise pour la Défense et la Promotion des Droits Humains (ATDPDH), 260 associationalism, 207 audit culture, 60 Austria, 6, 144 autoethnography, 70–71 autonomy, 59, 62, 71, 130 Awesso, A., 265 Baaz, Maria Eriksson, 227 Babangida, Ibrahim, 215, 218 Balai Citoyen, 109

Index

Baldwin, D.A., 173 Bamako, 99, 110 Bambara, 106 Bangladesh, 86 Bauby, Pierre, 256 Bauman, Zygmunt, 189, 190 Belgium, 144 Benin, 86, 209, 235 Berlin, 77 Free University of, 235 Wall, 254 Berne Declaration, 157 Betancourt, Michael, 317 Bethlehem, 177 Bissa Gold, 162 Blyden, E. 209 Boko Haram, 102 Bonn, 75 Bourdieu, Pierre, 246 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), 187 Brandt, Willy, 230 Brass, J.N. 218 Brazil, 86 brokers, 13, 29, 107, 233, 240, 273, 274, 315 Brot für die Welt, 11 Brussels, 288 Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ), 232 Burkina Faso, 1–32, 41–56, 57–71, 94–110, 136–51, 153–68, 295–308 Burma. See Myanmar Burundi, 6, 86 Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, 19 Cameroon, 15, 102 Campaign for Democracy (CD), 218 Canada, 76, 84, 144, 194, 231 capacity-building, 140–42, 149, 189, 220 capital, political, 228, 243, 246 social, 75, 240, 243, 246, 274 capitalism, 207 CARITAS Burkina, 140 CARITAS Voltaic, 140

Index

Casablanca, 277, 280 Cascades, 146 case studies, extended, 95 Central Region (Burkina Faso), 146 Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer du Burkina Faso (CEAS Burkina), 139, 141. See also Albert Schweizer Ecological Center Centre for AntiCorruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), 219 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST), 110 China, 231 Christianity, 29, 205, 209ff. Christians, 212 Church Mission Society, 209 Church of England, 210 churches, 230 indigenous, 204, 206, 209ff. mission, 204, 206, 209ff, 213 citizenship, 84, 86, 126 Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), 218 climate change, 74, 153 Club UNESCO, 44 co-publication, 104, 106 Code Minier, 159 Cohen, J.L., 206 Cold War, 16, 214, 228, 231 Collectif des Associations Contre l’Impunité au Togo (CACIT), 260 Collectif des ONG de la Région Maritime (Collective of NGOs of the Maritime Region, CONGREMA), 256, 267 collectivization, 231 colonialism, 29, 89, 182, 203–22, 317 colonization, 156, 183–84, 186, 203–22 Comaroff, Jean, 314 Comaroff, John, 314 Comité d’Action pour le Renouveau (CAR), 251 Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), 218 communism, 230 Compaoré, Blaise, 99, 109

325

Comprehensive Rural Electrification Program (PERG), 288, 292 Concertation Nationale de la Société Civile (National Council of Civil Society, CNSC), 256, 268 Confederation of Bishops, 140 Conference of the Parties (COP 21), 142 conflict, political, 95, 96, 107, 180, 181, 193 Conseil des ONG et Associations de la Région des Plateaux (Council of NGOs and Associations of the Plateaux Region, COADEP), 256, 268 Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), 218 consultancy, 95, 108, 116, 117, 122, 128–33, 236, 246 Convention Démocratique des Peuples Africains (CDPA), 251 Cooper, Frederick, 233 cooperation, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68ff., 82, 93, 115, 116, 149, 154, 174–76, 181, 190, 213, 227, 234–35, 300 Coordination des Associations Socioprofessionelles et de la Jeunesse de Tuy (Youth of Tuy Province), 164 corporate social responsibility (CSR), 160 corruption, 219–20, 234 counterparts, 11–13, 16, 29, 226–47, 315–17 Country Gateway, 43 culture, 295–97, 300 per diem, 235, 238 cyanide, 163, 166 dance, 69 Dapaong, 265 Dar es Salaam, 116, 231 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 32, 207 decentralization, 160, 230 decolonization, 228 democracy, 30, 95, 98–100, 106, 107, 147–48, 160, 203, 206, 208, 215–17, 251–68, 289 social, 255

326

Denmark, 6, 144 Department for International Development (DfID, UK), 122 desertification, 142 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), 30, 133, 246, 308 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), 82, 227, 229, 233, 239–44, 246, 298–301, 308 Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), 89 Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED), 311, 312 development, 1–32, 41, 52, 57–60, 64, 67, 69, 73–91, 94–110, 115–33, 136–51, 153, 154, 161–63, 165, 167, 178, 182, 190, 191, 214, 217, 226–47, 270–92, 295–308, 310–20 discourse, 78, 80–1 ‘identity’, 297 ‘ideology’, 297 participatory, 314 studies, 73–91, 183 sustainable, 311 ‘developmentalist configuration’, 270, 272, 276, 284 Development Gateway Foundation, 43 Directorate for the Promotion and Monitoring of Partnerships with NGOs, 140 disaster management, 82 ‘do no harm’ principle, 13 Dogara, Yakubu, 220 donors, 1–32, 41, 48–51, 58, 62, 64, 66–68, 115–33, 148–50, 160, 172–95, 215–18, 221, 222, 231, 234, 235, 237, 241–43, 273, 276, 283–85, 290, 302, 303, 315 drought, 61 Eau Vive, 144 economies, social and solidarity, 41–56 economists, 121, 124 economy, 206 digital, 43 moral, 237

Index

education, 22, 24, 43, 76, 78, 80, 83–86, 88, 119, 120, 136, 140–42, 149, 166, 205, 217, 228–29, 235, 244, 261, 266, 270–92, 298, 306 civic, 257 Egypt, 176 Eigenwelt, 8 elections, 100–1, 142 elites, 270–92, 314 energy, renewable, 141 engineering, social, 232 environment, 136, 139, 140–42, 149, 165, 167, 217, 232, 273, 274 epistemology, 104–7 Eppler, Erhard, 230 Escobar, Arturo, 78, 80, 83, 90 Ethiopia, 86 ethnicity, 164 ethnography, 97, 99, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 307 Europe, Eastern, 88–89 European Commission, 133 European Union, 144, 194, 289 excision, 146 experts, monitoring and evaluation, 121 extractives, 153, 162 extraversion, 71, 228–30, 233, 235ff., 242 Facebook, 102 Fafo, 177 family, 206 Fanon, Franz, 79 Fassin, Didier, 103 Fatah, al-, 185, 186 Fédération des ONG du Togo (Federation of NGOs of Togo, FONTGO), 256, 267 Fédération des Organisations de Développement des Savanes (Federation of Organisations for the Development of Savannah, FODES), 256, 267 Feldafing, 242 Feldman, I., 184 Fez, 277

Index

fieldwork, 83, 97, 100, 103–4, 105, 107, 290, 296 multi-sited, 99 First World War, 204 flexibility, 51, 85, 101–2, 125, 295, 303–5 Fonds pour l’Alphabétisation et l’Éducation non Formelle (FONAEF), 145 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 144 for-profit organizations, 122–23, 129, 130 force, magical, 192 forest management, 99 forgetting, 316 France, 6, 144, 182 Frankfurt am Main, 75, 110, 193 French, language, 156 Friedensau, University of, 25, 73–91 Front des Associations pour le Renouveau (FAR), 251 Fund for Literacy and Non-Formal Education, 151 funding, 143ff., 208, 221, 285, 286, 302, 303 Ganzourgou, 1 Garantie-Abwicklungs-Gesellschaft (GAWI), 310, 311 Gary, I., 215, 217, 219 gatekeeping, 233–4 Gaza, 173, 177, 185–86, 190, 193–95 gender, 7, 73–75, 80, 86, 107, 117–18, 133, 136, 139, 142, 160, 162, 164, 217, 232, 242–43, 306 Genieys, W., 288 German Foundation for International Development (DSE), 242 Germans, 298–99, 310–20 Germany, 6, 73–91, 133, 144, 226–47, 259, 299, 301 Ghana, 84, 86, 87, 89, 154, 159 gift exchange, 172–95 Global North, Global South, 6, 79, 84, 86, 91, 315 Gnenda, S., 254

327

Goethe University (Frankfurt am Main), 75, 110, 193 gold, 154ff., 164 governance, 142, 149–50, 159, 183, 205, 208, 214, 216, 266, 273, 287, 288 government, military, 205, 207, 214, 215, 218 Gramsci, Antonio, 32, 263 grassroots, 100, 257–58, 313 Green Earth, 144 Green March, 277 Gregory, Chris, 175–76 Groupe de Réflexion et d’Action Femme, Démocratie et Développement (GF2D), 263 Guelwongo, 304 Gulmanceba, 139 Gulmancema, 139 Gulmu, 139 Habermas, Jürgen, 32, 253, 254 Haiti, 86 hakili la figé, 105 Hamas, 185, 186 Handicap International, 144 Hani al-Hasan, 173, 193 Hassan II, King, 281 Hassenteufel, P., 288 health, 80, 136, 141–42, 149, 165, 167, 217, 229, 286, 287, 306 Hegel, Georg W.F., 32 hegemony, 9 Helen Keller International, 285 Hénaff, Marcel, 192 hierarchy, 75, 83–85, 88, 211, 226, 227, 237, 238, 243, 244, 281 Hindman, H., 131 history, social, 296, 297, 307, 308 HIV/AIDS, 139, 141, 146, 219, 274 holism, cultural, 307 Houndé, 164 human resources management, 119 Hungary, 6 hunger, 10 Hunter, Floyd, 275 hunting, 16

328

Hüsken, Thomas, 228 hybridization, 290–91 identity, 296, 301, 303ff., 306, 307 Ikelegbe, A., 208 illiteracy, 73 immobility, 126 impact, environmental, 118 industrialization, 231 information and communication technologies (ICT), 41–56 Institut des Sciences des Sociétés (INSS), 99, 110 ‘integrated village development’, 298 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), 277 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 231, 242, 277 International Office of Migration, 83 International Relations (IR), 173 interviews, 26, 29, 137, 177–78, 229, 253, 276, 290 intifada, 178, 193 irrigation, 240, 280, 287 Islam, 210 Israel, 100, 172–95 Italy, 32 Itsekiri, 209 Jameson, Frederick, 308 Janeway, E. 181 jihadism, 27, 146 jmâa, 278 Jordan, 176 Jula, 106 just in time working, 122 ka politiki ke, 106 Kalaban-Coro, 103 Kaldor, M., 206–7, 208 Kampala, 305 Kanu, Daniel, 219 karma, 163–64 Keane, J., 206 Kenya, xiii, 18, 73, 80, 82, 86, 87 Keohane, R., 173 Khalidi, R., 182–83

Index

Khartoum, 87 Kikuyu, 79 Kilimanjaro, Mt., 243 Kindernothilfe, 11 kinship, 205 Kiswahili, 119, 229 knowledge, 273, 284, 286, 290 contextual, 115 decolonizing, 77ff. development, 279, 281 fiction as, 60 local, 20, 30, 127–28 professional, 59 situated, 14 Koffa, Amadou, 103 Konersmann, R., 295 König, René, 307 Kordofan, 92 Korogwe, 229 Kothari, Uma, 73–74, 75–76, 79, 117 Kpalimé, 259 Kraftfeld, 8 Lagos Standard, 210 Lagos Weekly Record, 210 lakana, 105 Langdon, J., 76, 87 language, 154 Lasswell, H.D., 273 Latin America, 153, 207, 214 ‘layers of development intervention’, 273, 274 League of Nations, 182 legitimacy, 254, 261 Levinas, Emmanuel, 295 levirate, 146 liberalism, 251 liberalization, 41 Liberia, 86 Ligue Togolaise des Droits de l’Homme (LTDH, Togolese League of Human Rights), 268 literacy, 139, 140, 142, 145, 146, 150, 279 Locke, John, 261 Lomé, 257, 263, 311, 313 London, 213

Index

Lutheran World Relief, 144 Luxembourg, 144 Maasai, 79 Magufuli, John, 123 Mali, 42, 94–110, 154 Mamdani, Mahmood, 79, 80, 203 Mande, 16 Maroc inutile, 277 Maroc utile, 277 Marrakesh, 277 Marseilles, 288 Marxism, 32, 230–31 masks, 68, 69 Mauss, Marcel, 28, 175, 181, 189–90, 192 media, 220 memory, 17, 27, 30–31, 59, 316, 317 development, 270–92 institutional, 120, 126 Mercer, Claire, 243 mercury, 163, 166, 167 methodology, research, 97, 98, 100, 271, 273, 275 Mezguita, 270–92 Michelutti, Lucia, 99 microcredit, 141 microfinance, 82 Middle Ages, xiv, 306 migration, 84, 85, 89, 276, 278 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 162, 217 mining, 10, 27–28 artisanal (ASM), 153–68 boom, 156, 162 large-scale (LSM), 153–68 Ministère de l’Economie, des Finances et du Développement (MINEFID, Ministry of Economy, Finance and Development), 151 Ministry of Territorial Administration (MTA), 151 ‘mirror façade’, 302, 308 Mitwelt, 8 mobility, 126 modernity, 238 modernization, 217

329

Mohamed V, King, 280 Mohamed VI, King, 278 Mooré, 16, 42, 156 Morocco, 30, 270–92 Mosse, David, 59 Mossi, 59, 62 ‘mould and cast’, 302–3 Mouvement Burkinabé de Droits de l’Homme et des Peuples (MBDHP, Burkinabé Movement for Human and People’s Rights), 164 Movement Against Corruption and Injustice in Nigeria (MACIN), 219 music, 69 Muslims, 212 Mussolini, Benito, 32 Myanmar (Burma), 86, 87, 89, 90 Nafa, 141 Nahouri, 305 narrative, 154ff., 160ff., 167 National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADL), 218 National Congress for British West Africa (NCBWA), 212–13, 220 National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), 216–17 National Human Development Initiative, 278 National Rural Roads Program (PNR), 292 nationalization, 231 necropower, 182 neo-Marxism, 227 neoliberalism, 186, 190, 206–7, 231, 242 nepotism, 59 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 190 Netherlands, 144 New Public Management, xiv Niger, 42 Nigeria, 6, 15, 203–22 Nigerian Progress Union, 213 Niono, 103 ‘non-developed individual’, 307 Non-Governmental Organizations, passim ad-hoc, 31, 310–20

Index

330

Non-Governmental Organizations, passim (cont.) bank-organized (BONGOS), 221 boom, 3 churches as, 203–22 e-mail (E-NGOs), 221 government-organized, 218, 221 individual-organized (IONGOs), 221 international, 5 Lagos-based organized (LABONGOs), 221 post office box (PONGOs), 221 proto-, 29, 31, 203ff. non-profit organizations, 139, 217 Nordgold, 162 Nyerere, Julius, 230–33 Nyongbo, 311–13, 316, 317 Nzeribe, Arthur, 218–19 Obadare, E., 203, 211–12 Office National de l’Eau Potable (ONEP), 292 Official Development Assistance, 19 Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre, 291 Olympio, Sylvano, 312 Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim, 209 Organisation Catholique pour le Développement et la Solidarité (OCADES CARITAS), 139–40 Organisation Démocratique de la Jeunesse du Burkina Faso (ODJ), 164 Organisation pour le Renforcement des Capacités de Développement (ORCADE), 160 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 187, 194 Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC), 116 organizations, parastatal, 23 orpaillage, 153–68 Oslo Peace Process, 173, 182, 184, 186 Otayek, R., 254 Ouagadougou, 44, 47, 62, 64, 99, 139, 155, 160, 298

Ouahigouya, 164 Ouarzazate, 286 ownership, local, 118, 132 Oxfam, 144, 230 Palestine, 28, 100, 172–95 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 173 Palestinian National Authority (PNA), 183, 187, 195 Paris, 288 Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, 19, 23, 133 participant observation, 26, 29 partnerships, public-association, 53 public-civil society, 53 public-private (PPP), 53 Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS), 283 pastoralism, 139 peace dividend, 192 Pentecostalism, 211, 212 Peru, 86 phenomenology, 8 photographs, 59, 60, 63, 67–68 Plan Burkina, 144 Point Sud, 99, 110 policy-making, 275–77, 284, 286–88, 291 politics, 99, 174, 176, 179, 181ff., 187, 191 polygyny, 210 populism, 98 methodological, 100 positionality, 75ff. postcolonialism, 315 postmodernism, 206–7, 308 poverty, 10, 20, 73, 75, 99, 115–19, 136, 139, 141, 149, 150, 180, 181, 191, 193, 216, 230, 306, 313 power, 9, 20, 64, 65, 74, 76, 90, 128, 181, 183, 184, 211, 270–71, 282, 285, 288 practice, 81ff. privatization, 117 Proctor, Robert, 317 Programme d’Appui au Développement Sanitaire (PADS), 145 protest, 255

Index

Quadrilogue, 259 Quantin, P., 265 questionnaires, 26, 97, 156, 177, 274–76, 282, 290, 297 Rabat, 281, 286 racism, 89, 310, 312 Ramallah, 177 Rapid Collective Inquiry of the Identification of Conflicts and Strategic Groups (ECRIS), 96, 98 reciprocity, 28, 64–67, 70 recycling, 48 Red Cross, 51 reforestation, 141 relativism, cultural, 4 religion, 7, 86 repatriation, voluntary, 82–83 Réseau de Communication sur le Pastoralisme (RECOPA), 139 Réseau des ONG de la Kara (Network of NGOs of Kara, RESOKA), 256, 267 Réseau des Organisations de Développement de la Région Centrale (Network of Organizations for the Development of the Central Region, RESODERC), 256, 268 resource boom, 153 rights, human, 138–39, 142–43, 214, 215, 218, 260, 261, 266 Rights of the Child, Convention on, 136 rigour, scientific, 102–3 ritual, 67–68, 69 Rodriguez, Encarnación Gutiérrez, 78 Rottenberg, Richard, 302, 308 Routley, L., 208 rural appraisal, participatory, 97, 98 rapid, 97 Rural Drinking Water Supply Program (PAGER), 288, 292 Rwanda, 73, 191 Sahel, 23, 26, 27, 61, 100 Said, Edward, 80, 216

331

Samaritans, The, xiii, xiv Samour, S., 182–83 sampling, random, 275 Sampson, Steve, 5 Sandvik, K., 193 sanitation, 137, 139, 140 Saraki, Bukola, 220 Saudi Arabia. See Arabia, Saudi Saxony-Anhalt, 87, 89 Schiebinger, Londa, 317 Schnellbach, Otto, 310–11, 313 Plan, 310–11 Schumacher, E.F., 240 secession, 210ff. security, 95, 96, 100, 105–7 self-reliance, 62 Senegal, 18 Seventh Day Adventists, 74, 85–87 Shivji, I.G., 217–18 Sierra Leone, 159 silence, 316 Simmel, Georg, 175 slavery, 317 socialism, 29 Tanzanian, 229–30, 245 Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), 281, 283 society, civil, 4, 14–17, 27, 30, 32, 42, 75, 85, 136, 145, 147–48, 177, 180, 183, 194, 205ff., 219, 220, 251–68, 278, 280, 314 Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), 219–20 sociology, 227–28, 275, 286, 311–12 Sokodé, 259 Solanke, Ladipo, 213 Solidarité Suisse, 137 Soriat, Clément, 274 SOS Civisme, 262 Souss Massa Drâa, 270, 277 South Africa, 119, 154, 244 South Sudan, 83 Southeast Asia, 153 state, the, 7, 8, 17, 19, 23, 26, 27, 42, 49, 52ff., 85, 145, 149, 154, 156, 162, 165–67, 175, 178, 182, 184, 193,

332

state, the (cont.) 206–8, 211, 212, 214ff., 220–21, 227, 236, 242–44, 251, 255, 260, 261, 278, 301 state, the (cont.) African, 215 colonial, 213, 215, 220 Nigerian, 215, 216 postcolonial, 213, 214, 233 Stirrat, R.L., 64 Stockholm Peace Research Institute, 99, 103 subcontractors, 122 Sudan, 83, 86–88, 154 Support Program for Health Development, 151 surveys, quantitative, 97 sustainability, 150, 162, 165, 227, 237 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 162 Sweden, 6, 144 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 98, 108, 133 Switzerland, 2, 18, 47, 144, 157 symbols, 154 Syria, 186 Tafergalt, 281 Taiwan, 144, 151 talibé, 13, 32 Tamount Sahel, 281, 285 Tanga, 226–27, 229, 230, 232, 238, 239, 243 Integrated Rural Development Programme (TIRDEP), 226–47 Tangiers, 280 Tanzania, 15, 16, 21, 26–27, 29, 86, 115–33, 159, 226–47 Tassousti, 270–92 teams, research, 94–110 Terre des Hommes, 137, 144 theory development, xiv gift exchange, 172–95 grounded, 178, 179

Index

modernization, 22, 154, 162–63, 166 post-development, 77ff. postcolonial, 77ff. thinking, critical, 77, 81–2 third sector, 22, 203–4, 207, 215 Third World, 79 Thiriot, C., 261 Tiébelé, 305 Timqit, 280 Tin Tua Association, 139, 142 Tisserin Foundation, 139 Tiznit, 289 Togo, 6, 15, 23, 30, 31, 157, 251–68, 310–20 tourism, 277 trachoma, 285, 286 transparency, 208, 209, 217, 219, 220, 222 ‘travelling blueprints’, 231 Truman, Harold, 79 Tsévié, 259 Tshiyembe, M., 254 two-state solution, 173, 182, 184, 187 Ubuntu, 14, 32 Uganda, 84, 231 Ujamaa, 29, 230–3 Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania (UWT), 243 under-development, xiv Union des ONG du Togo (Union of NGOs of Togo, UONGTO), 256, 267 United Kingdom, 122, 182 United Nations, 133 Development Programme, 164 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 142 High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 83, 144 International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 144 Population Fund (UNFPA), 144 Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 178

Index

United Native African Church, 209 United States of America (USA), 86, 122, 144, 194, 207, 214 Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD), 218 Uppsala University, 110 valorization, 234, 235 vernacularization, 99 Vienna, 75 violence, structural, 227 Warri, 209 Washington Consensus, 217 Water Aid, 144 welfare, social, 15 Wesleyan Mission Society, 209 West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), 262 West African Student Union, 212, 213, 220 ‘west and the rest’, the, 6 West Bank, 173, 177, 184, 185, 187, 193, 194 Western Sahara, war in, 277 Wischnewski, Hans-Jürgen, 312

333

Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), 263 World Bank, 43, 133, 156, 158, 227, 231, 246, 277 World Food Program, 144 Yam Pukri, 41–56 Yatenga, 15, 164 Years of Lead. See Années de plomb Yoruba, 205, 213 Young Sciences Club, 44 Youssoufi, A., 292 youth, 139 Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), 219 Zaabre Vênem, 1, 2, 3, 18 Zagora, 289 Zambia, 98 zazaigo, 59, 62 Zielorientierte Projektplanung (ZOPP), 241 Zimbabwe, 84 zinc, 155, 157 Zionists, 183 Zorgho, 1, 13