No! Not aircraft pilots, donor pilot projects. The world of development is littered with “pilots.” Demonstration projects that show it can be done. We know that with donor funding, donor expertise, discrete initiatives and clearly defined “results” certain things can work in developing countries. We know that! Doing new pilots do not tell us anything new. The question is: do donor pilot projects lead to “organic diffusion? Does doing demonstration projects lead to systemic changes in institutions. By Institutions, we mean the way that things are done in a society. This is to be distinguished from Organisations (groups of people
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“Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure” [Confucius] Everywhere you go in Africa, you are likely to hear people say “Our problem is not planning, but implementation.” People regale you with various examples of “beautiful plans” that were “technically perfect” but never made it to implementation. Indeed, the refrain “Our problem is not planning but implementation” receives knowing nods of approval from all and sundry and is generally taken as accepted wisdom. It is likely to win you loud ovation at any workshop or seminar in Africa. You could be forgiven for
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Those Useless Civil Servants First of all, I have finaly given in and joined Medium to save my readers the agony of my infamous 100-tweet tweet-storms. This post is my first and it was prompted by a tweet by @ManiPeters that some civil servants are untrainable. As always, I will start by providing some context, and my views will be based both on rigorous academic research and many years of practitioner experience. Of course, it wouldn’t have been authored by me if it was not somewhat controversial. Oh, and it may a bit long. The brilliant Nigerian political scientist, Peter Ekeh, wrote a
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