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Dialogue in Pursuit of Development – NGO Experiences
Annika Lysén 1
In development co-operation thousands of meetings are held every year —
round tables, consultative group meetings, yearly reviews, conferences and
workshops. People gather at conference centres around the world with many
greetings, cheerings and namedroppings. “Hello! How are you? What do
you think about the latest developments?”
We all try to hold our teacups as firmly as possible and, at the same time,
get a picture of what the situation looks like at the moment and catch up on
who has changed position since last year. Suddenly someone claps his hands.
“Please, let us begin. The agenda is very full”.
And indeed it is. Many things need to be deliberated upon in a short
time; a presentation of the state of the nation, reports on programmes and
budget discussions. There are also some financial problems that need to be
solved. Donors express concern and the chairperson tries to get a solution
before the meeting ends. Participants start to get quite tired.
At the end of all these conferences we tend to agree that it was good to
meet, that there were some interesting inputs and that it is important to
meet again. Still, we often leave with an unsatisfactory feeling that problems
were not solved, that the process did not take us forward and that
there was not enough time to really talk to one another.
Why then is it so difficult to move forward with something that we all
agree is important – to communicate constructively with one another in a
dialogue? From my experience working both with civil society organisations
(CSOs), and bilateral aid, I will bring up three areas where I think
reasons can be found for the difficulties experienced in developing a fruitful
dialogue:
Unclear purposes
Lack of time
Complexity of roles: attitudes and relationships.
I will then continue to discuss why dialogue in development is important,
how we deal with competence in communication and what we can learn
from civil society organisations.
1 Annika Lysén (Sweden) holds a University Certificate in Journalism from the University of
Gothenburg and a M. Sc. in Business Administration and Economics from Uppsala University. She
has worked for several Swedish Non-Governmental Organisations and was based in South Africa
between 1991 and 1994 as Field Representative for Diakonia. She joined Sida in 1999 and is
currently with the department for Africa.