After a much longer stint in Nairobi than planned, I am finally on my way back to Arusha. It’s a relatively short 6 hour trip, the scenery is beautiful, but the road is pretty rough. As if I’m riding like this:
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- November 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm
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msafiri mzungu
%d
November 18, 2009 at 4:04 pm
At Jackie’s request, I am redirecting my question from email to blogosphere. The question is, why is it “acceptable” or “understood” for African nations/societies to be technologically backward?
November 18, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I think you meant to post this under the previous post, Project survival guide: Will your project last when you leave?, but we can discuss here anyway.
I think it’s a very interesting question, indeed. I’m not sure it’s necessarily “acceptable” because there are a lot of companies trying to import fancy, new, high-tech solutions to many African nations. So clearly there are people trying to make Africa “technologically advanced.”
The problem is that most of these imported solutions are not culturally acceptable, nor are they suitable for the given environmental conditions, and when they break there’s no way to fix them. So, the imported solutions often fail. Additionally, they are way too expensive for most.
So, maybe you get the sense that it is “acceptable” for many nations to be technologically backward because many of our modern and “advanced” solutions fail here. We write off this technological failure as the failure of people to use our advanced technology. And we give up because we have nothing in Western society that seems to be working. But really, we’re pushing the wrong solutions, and all it takes is a little bit of re-designing…
I’d be interested to hear more thoughts on this.
November 19, 2009 at 2:36 am
I had meant to say something about the “project” posting as well but will keep the thread here…
What you say in your post is actually one of my arguments for approaching international development at a macro level. In my opinion, building institutional capacity has a much greater impact than one-off projects. Not to criticize anyone reading this (but here I go) I think an outsider starting an NGO in a developing country can be extremely well intentioned, but their presence often reaffirms the feeling of dependency on outsiders and the NGO rarely lasts after the founder leaves, dies, whatever. I already have counter-examples in mind so this is not quite as much of a blanket statement as it seems. But it is a big part of why I work on macro stuff, despite the fact that I’d feel more directly linked to the community if I was working at an NGO in country.
As for acceptibility, as Jackie said it is all about what technologies people find useful – lots of examples from mobile phone developments. I don’t think Africa’s technically backward (in mobile phone innovation they are quite a bit ahead of the US), but there are a lot of market constraints that have made technology dissemination difficult.
November 19, 2009 at 3:28 am
The feeling of dependency is definitely one to watch out for. I always tell people that I bring labor and networking but never, ever money or free products. If they want money, they have to find a way to earn it themselves. And if they want products, they need to invest in them. Aid is unsustainable.
One of the problems I am seeing with many NGOs is that they are often too married to the ideals of their founder, which makes it difficult to adapt to changing conditions and contributes to their disintegration after the founder leaves, dies, etc. Companies, on the other hand, do not have this tie. (Like Kate, I have counter-examples for both of these…) I’ve been meaning to post on this, but would be interested to get more thoughts now.
Regarding the macro level, I can definitely see the benefit in building institutional capacity and getting long term impact, but does it really trickle down to the people we want to reach? And how difficult is it to control some of the finer details that make all the difference? Take the “presentation” aspect, for example. I can imagine it is hard to know how one’s final product is presented and thus actually received by the people when you’re working at such a large scale.
Both the macro and micro levels have their advantages and disadvantages, and we need both both levels working together to get the complete picture.
Regarding the acceptability part, “dissemination” was definitely the word I was looking for in my last comment and just couldn’t find. Well put.