Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

Evaluating Country Programmes
236
assistance funded a thousand or so remarkably diverse activities, ranging from
small technical assistance projects – that, for example, provided experts on such
mundane subjects as sharpening sawmill blades or constructing water systems – to
massive macro-economic policy efforts. Perhaps 300 USAID employees had tours in
Costa Rica, and the Agency brought thousands of US consultants for short- and longterm
work in the country. More than 5 000 Costa Ricans were sent abroad (usually to
the United States) for training, and far larger numbers were trained in Costa Rica in
courses financed or designed by USAID.
Costa Rican development 1945-95
Costa Rica before 1945
In 1719, the Governor of Costa Rica wrote to the King of Spain: "One hundred and
eighty years after the first Spanish settlement, Costa Rica’s central plateau was home
to about 3 000 Spanish settlers, for whom land was plentiful. Costa Rican settlers
differed from those elsewhere in Central America in that there was no significant
indigenous population that could be subjugated and forced to do the physical labour
necessary to support the settlements. The governor’s letter continued, “Each inhabitant
has to plant and raise that which he spends and consumes in his home every
year, and this is also done by the Governor, since otherwise he would perish".
A century later, newly independent Costa Rica was still the poorest and most
isolated Central American State. The first coffee exports around 1830 signalled the
beginning of a new era. Even with the country’s isolation and consequent high transport
costs, coffee could be exported profitably. Exports put silver coins in some
pockets, introducing greater differences in wealth than in the pre-coffee days when
there was an “equal distribution of poverty” (Rottenberg, 1993). Later, building railroads
from the central valley to the coasts reduced the country’s isolation. The
search for products to transport on the railroad led to development of the second
major export crop, bananas.
Support for mass education in Costa Rica dates to the latter part of the
19th century. Illiteracy was estimated at 89% in 1864 (Dirección General de Estadística
y Censos, 1953). Soon after, the government made education a national priority,
making primary education free and compulsory. Illiteracy gradually declined: to
69% by 1892, 32% by 1927, and to 21% by 1950.
At the end of World War II, Costa Rica was still a relatively poor agricultural country.
Isolation still limited prospects for economic growth. There were no all-weather
roads to link the central valley, where most of the population was concentrated
either at the coast or at the border with Panama and Nicaragua. Coffee and bananas
continued to account for nearly all export earnings. Economic growth was circumscribed.
Available data suggest that per capita incomes stagnated between 1920
and 1945 (Bulmer – Thomas, 1987).
OECD 1999