Vision Lent 2020

LENT 2020
PRACTISING DEVELOPMENT: WHAT CAN WE DO?
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

DEAR READERS
Lent term has seen us explore the topic of ‘Practicing Development: What Can We Do?’, with the aim of
understanding how we can make an impact ourselves both during our time at Cambridge and in the future.
Events have ranged from the impacts of voluntourism schemes that students may undertake during
their studies, to the story of a Cambridge technology start-up attempting to tackle water poverty at
the grassroots level. In addition, we were extremely lucky to have Baroness Brown of Cambridge and
Daniel Zeichner MP debate tackling the climate crisis from a UK political viewpoint, following on from
last term’s theme of ‘The Climate of Development’’.
I would like to thank all our guest speakers for taking their time to tell their stories, and for the events
team for organising such a great set of events. Similarly, I would like to thank the Vision team for once
again producing such an amazing magazine in such a short space of time, and the rest of the committee
for making all of this possible.
Whilst unfortunately CUiD’s events for this academic year now draw to a close, this brings the great opportunity
for you to become more involved with the society. Applications for the 2020/21 Committee will
open at the start of Easter term, and I couldn’t encourage you more to apply!
I hope you enjoy reading this copy of Vision, and if you have any questions about CUiD then please do get
in touch via email at president@cuid.org.
William Green
CUiD President, 2019 –20
As university students, we are often faced with the frustrating reality that although inequality and other
developmental problems are rife, there is little we are able to do to work against these issues. In this
edition of Vision, we hope to explore some of the ways by which we can help, at present and in the future.
Our writers draw on experiences of academics and students working in development as well as
on theoretical debates and current events.
It is bittersweet to announce the final edition of Vision this year. I want to thank the commendable editorial
team, who have provided comprehensive feedback on a very tight schedule – all while balancing a
Cambridge workload. Our artistic director, Katherine, has brought the work of our writers to life through
her incredible designs. Throughout the year, the CUID committee has worked hard to organize events
and a magazine tackling the question – ‘what can we do?’. While we don’t claim to have answers, we do
hope that we have been able to engage with this question and encourage you to consider contributing to
development efforts around the world. If you are interested in our work, do consider applying for a committee
position in the coming academic year.
With love,
Munira Rajkotwalla

CONTENTS
3. AID ON THE EDGE OF CHAOS: RETHINKING INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT IN A COMPLEX WORLD (BEN RAMALINGAM)
REVIEWED BY ELLA DUFFYY
5. CALAIS: INTERNATIONAL AID WHEN THE CAMERA STOPS
LUKE CAVANAUGH
7. TECHNOLOGY X DEVELOPMENT: HOW 3D PRINTING CAN SOLVE THE
WORLD’S WATER CRISIS. IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANCESCA
O’HANLON, CEO & FOUNDER OF BLUE TAP
KATHERINE WHITFIELD
11. PUT DOWN THE PITCH: WHY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
MORE THAN JUST YOUR GOOD IDEAS
ROSIE WRIGHT
14. BEYOND ’POVERTY PORN’: THE IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVE
NARRATIVES IN PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT
JACOB ARBEID
19. AFRINSPIRE: TACKLING THE ROOT CAUSES OF POVERTY
LIN BOWKER-LONNECKER
23. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FROM THE INSIDE: TO WHAT EXTENT
IS THE CYNICISM JUSTIFIED?
CAMILLE BARRAS
2

Other articles in this issue themed ‘Practicing
Development’ may focus on what individuals
can do in development in terms of campaigning,
petitioning and volunteering. However,
international development is mainly practiced
through aid agencies, government departments
and large funding bodies. So, while it is
useful to foster conversation around how we
can work at the community level within the
current international development system we
must also talk about transformation of the way
things work at a global level.
Aid on the Edge of Chaos picks apart the current
system of international aid and lays out a
deeper intellectual foundation for the promotion
of innovative projects happening within
contemporary development. Ramalingam argues
for a major overhaul in the way that aid
agencies work, criticising the system for being
too concerned with discrete problems and
‘simple’ solutions, completed within a budget
cycle, than it is for contextual, networked aid
projects. He posits that, more often than not,
development practitioners are asking the
wrong questions, in the wrong way. This focus
not on what needs doing, but on how things
need to be done is what sets this book apart
from others. Ramalingam uses insights from
complex adaptive systems science to argue
that we should be viewing the societal systems
that aid intervenes in more like ecosystems
than machines. This lens allows us to see that
the problems aid agencies are facing are interconnected
and dynamic; changing one thing
can have a huge emergent effect on other
things within the system.
REVIEWED BY ELLA DUFFY
Ramalingam begins with a hefty description of
the aid landscape as it currently is, which is
arguably unnecessary as his critique is a wellversed
one in both development studies and
in popular literature. However, he goes on to
attest that development projects usually fail
essentially because they do not account for
the relationships between many different, dynamic
variables and instead focus on an isolated
issue and an isolated solution. Parts two
and three of the book firstly describe how insights
from complexity science can help

illuminate a more effective way of practising aid
and secondly go on to show how these insights
are already promoting change through innovative
projects in development
right now. Complexity
science is already
being applied
in finance, business,
ecology and other
social sciences, and
Ramalingam comprehensively
demonstrates
its relevance
to the design of development
projects.
From mobile money
interventions in Kenya
to civil service reform
in Timor Leste,
he shows the importance
of understanding
development
as intervening
in non-linear systems.
In the third section of
the book, Ramalingam
discusses a
number of methods
from complexity science
and their application
in development
interventions in
recent years. Examples
he uses span
from projects involving
agent-based modelling and participatory roleplaying
to network analysis and identifying positive
deviance in a system. One of the earliest examples
he uses is that of Lansing & Kremer’s (1993)
agent-based model of rice farming in Indonesia.
Farmers in Bali are collectively organised around
temples enshrined to water gods and have been
for many centuries. The temples emerged as a
form of governing water use, and therefore cropping
cycles. The model was developed in response
to a controversial project from the Asian
Development Bank, called ‘Massive Guidance’,
which set out to increase yields through mandating
double and triple cropping and use of fertilizer
through a top-down system of control. The project
was an attempt to bring ‘sustainable development’
to rural populations but caused a drastic decline in
rice yields over a
decade. Lansing
& Kremer’s
(1993) computational
agentbased
model
demonstrated
that the temple
system of governance
already in
place, where water
use is organised
through the
temple network,
was already the
most efficient
form of system
organisation. The
temple system
emerged from
the bottom-up in
response to the
specific ecological
and social
conditions of the
Balinese ricefarming
landscape,
and Lansing
& Kremer
played a large
part in showing
those involved in
the Massive
Guidance project
that their intervention was intervening in the
wrong way.
There are no quick fixes for ¨wicked¨ problems.
The worlds’ complexity means that genuine development
must be seen as an iterative process,
changing for new contexts and new people. If we
understand the world that development intervenes
in a series of interlinked complex systems, we may
begin to start asking the right questions rather
than assuming the right answers. Aid on the Edge
of Chaos paints this picture and should be on the
reading lists of both scholars and practitioners of
development.
4

LUKE CAVANAUGH
SOMEWHERE AMONGST THE FLASHY VOL-
UNTEERING ADVERTS PROMISING ‘THE
SUMMER OF YOUR LIFE’, ENTICING UNIVER-
SITY STUDENTS IN WITH THE PROMISE THAT
‘THIS WILL LOOK GOOD ON YOUR CV’, LIES
THE CALAIS MIGRANT CRISIS: GREY, DULL,
DREARY, AND MOSTLY FORGOTTEN.
A few summers ago, refugees fleeing to Europe
were very much flavour of the month, covered
for weeks on end by news organisations from
around the world. But then, in 2016, the ‘Jungle’
was demolished. And that was it. The news
crews packed up and went home, and the
French and British governments presumably
thought that the migrants would simply return
home. Except that was not it, and they didn’t.
Since the camp was demolished, I have spent
three weekends volunteering in Calais with the
local Cambridge Charity CamCRAG. Recently I
met a long-term volunteer who was volunteering
in Calais when HelpRefugees was founded in
September 2015. Her tales of driving fire-trucks
through the camp without a license as the de
facto fire warden, being on-call quite literally
24//7 from her caravan in the ‘Jungle’, and eventually
being forced to leave after contracting tuberculosis,
are nightmarish. But at least the

eyes,
them.
and donations, of the world were on
The first time that I travelled to Calais, I was
greeted by the sight of young men being forced
to sleep under motorway bridges for protection
from the elements, and the buzz of the few local
pubs and bars did little to detract from the
plight of those huddled
outside them.
The second time I
went, I was struck by
just how many fences
had been put up in
the two months between
my visits.
There would be no
more refugees huddling
under bridges,
where the crawl
spaces had now been
fenced off, and the
visible presence of
riot police around the town suggested that
there was more than the mouvement des gilets
jaunes keeping the French justice system occupied.
Then, just a few months ago, we were
sorting through donations in the warehouse
when a call came in. French riot police had just
raided a refugee camp early in the morning,
confiscated their tents, spare clothes, and presumably
any other worldly possessions, and we
desperately needed to get some new donations
out to them.
Of course, with a well-established and efficiently
run warehouse, volunteering in Calais is not
dangerous like it used to be, nor is it particularly
physically demanding. But as the conditions for
volunteers has gotten better, those for refugees
have got far worse. The work that the volunteers
do is kept a secret from the locals, such is
the anger against the migrant population, and
the gate to the warehouse kept securely fastened
to keep the police out. The world’s sympathy
to the situation has long-since faded, but
the problems nevertheless remain.
During my visits to the Calais warehouse, I have
always been struck by the levels of organisation.
Spending my Saturdays chopping wood,
or pitching tents, I notice both the long-term
and short-term volunteers moving like clockwork:
chopping, bagging, packing, delivering
wood to the approximately 1,000 refugees currently
in Calais, or cooking 1,200 meals a day in
the kitchen. Convening at lunch for tales of garlic
peeling sessions that left the hands smelling
for days, and bright pink puffer jackets that had
been donated provide us with enough laughs to
fill the hour, and
there is an overwhelming
feeling
that despite the situation,
we are really
getting things done.
But in amongst the
brownies for volunteers,
the laughs
and the music, are
stark reminders of
why we were there.
Running down a
Calais beach, I
couldn’t help but realise how uninviting the water
was, and how bleak and desolate the shore.
Launching a dinghy into the sea was unimaginable,
and yet people are forced to do it every
day.
IN AMONGST THE GLITZ AND GLAMOUR OF
‘VOLUNTOURISM’, WHERE THOUSANDS OF POUNDS
ARE RAISED A YEAR BY STUDENTS LOOKING TO
WORK ON A SUMMER CAMP, TO BUILD A SCHOOL,
OR TO COLLECT BUTTERFLIES IN THE AMAZON,
WHERE VOLUNTEERING AND INTERNATIONAL DE-
VELOPMENT HAS BECOME A BUSINESS, THERE
ARE STILL REAL PROBLEMS CLOSE TO HOME.
And closer still than Calais. One only needs to
look outside their college gates to see the rampant
inequality and homelessness in Cambridge,
or to the news story over Christmas of
the homeless lady giving birth outside of St.
John’s, to realise that volunteering goes beyond
those schools and summer camps. There is no
doubt that International development should
have a place in every student’s experience, but
one can’t help but wonder if this place is, for as
long as businesses seek to profit from volunteering,
in grey and gritty Calais.
6

TECHNOLOGY X DEVELOPMENT:
HOW 3D PRINTING CAN SOLVE THE
WORLD’S WATER CRISIS
IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANCESCA O’HANLON, CEO & FOUNDER OF BLUE TAP
KATHERINE WHITFIELD
FRANCESCA O’HANLON FOUNDED BLUE TAP IN 2016: A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY CREATING
PRODUCTS THAT IMPROVE ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY DRINKING WATER IN LOW RESOURCE
SETTINGS. BLUE TAP’S CORE PRODUCT IS THE CHLORINE INJECTOR, THAT AUTOMATICALLY
INJECTS DOSED CHLORINE INTO HOUSEHOLD LEVEL WATER SYSTEMS. HERE, WE TALK TO
FRANCESCA AFTER HER TALK: ‘TECHNOLOGY X DEVELOPMENT: HOW 3D PRINTING CAN SOLVE
THE WORLD’S WATER CRISIS’, ABOUT THE GENDERED NATURE OF HOUSEHOLD WATER MAN-
AGEMENT, SOCIAL ENTERPRISE AND CLIMATE PRECARITY.

Earlier you mentioned that women are disproportionately
responsible for household water
management. However, I noticed that that capacity
building and training workshops run
by BlueTap seemed to be with plumbers who
are mostly men. How does the gendered nature
of water management and maintenance
work when implementing use of the product?
‘That’s really interesting, and it’s something that I
really want to change. Basically, most of the interaction
with water and the management of the
water in the house is by women. But for some
reason, all of the technology is controlled by
men.
With our technology, ideally you would have
someone checking on it once a month, just to
make sure it is dosing right. And that kind of job
always comes down to the men. It’s the same
here, the thought that ‘because it is knowledge,
that must be difficult, and therefore the men
must take charge of it’. But it actually makes so
much more sense for the women to be trained in
things like checking the system, because they
are the ones who have this intuition about the
water because they are the ones working closely
with it on a daily basis.
One NGO that we went to visit in Uganda do this
really cool thing with rainwater harvesting. Rather
than just building the tanks for the households,
what they do is train women in engineering
and construction and then the women can
build other tanks for other people and earn an
income, and its just so effective. It’s especially
effective for women’s confidence because they
suddenly have these skills and are valued as
these people that could be the ones who take
control of their water supply. So, it’s a model I
would really like to simulate. The issue is, like I
say, that we don’t have that many women who
are plumbers.
Where I would like to get to with our technology
is that it is so simple that you don’t actually need
to be a plumber to install it, so you can just be a
local vendor associated with BlueTap. We can
train them so that they have certification. In that
way the product would become way more accessible
to women.
SOMETHING I AM REALLY INTERESTED IN IS
THE DEMOCRATISATION OF TECHNOLOGY.
This would be done by making it affordable and
making sure people aren’t intimidated by it and
that they understand it. Because most technology,
if it is designed well, shouldn’t be intimidating.
So that’s really a place I would like to be.
Right now we have got to work with what we
have got, and it is that the plumbers are men.
We work with some plumbing students who are
19-20 and 35% of those students are women, so
it is shifting a lot, but… these fields are often
very male-dominated’.
It’s interesting what you say about the democratisation
of technology, in regard to access,
as it’s like the accessibility of the product
physically, as well as the accessibility of
the knowledge available to actually use the
product.
It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy right, like ‘I
am not technical, I don’t know how to use this’
and so people don’t even feel worthy of learning
how to manage the technology. It becomes
closed off and its completely wrong’.
You mentioned that you founded BlueTap as
a social enterprise. Could you explain a little
about how a social enterprise works regarding
selling a product rather than charitable
giving? Were the reasons you decided to run
BlueTap as a social enterprise rather than an
NGO charity?
‘I think if you speak to most NGOs these days,
and there are a few that are exempt, they spend
so much of their money and activities monitoring
and evaluating their projects because they need
to create metrics to assess how successful they
are, how they are perceived by the community,
and you can kind of overcome all of that by saying
‘people are paying for this, so they want it’.
And there is also the other thing that if your
technology is actually wanted
And because, until we can get to the point where
we can employ Ugandans – which hopefully will
be towards the end of the year), whilst we are
still foreigners working in a country, it’s the best
way to know that the technology is actually wanted.
That’s part of the reason for the model.
But also, the second element is that we do want
to boost the local economy and for the profit
from this to stay with the plumbers.
8

As we said before, this works really well on a
small scale. I am not sure how this would work
upscaled, I have no idea. If we are working in 26
different countries, I don’t know how possible it
would be to work directly with the plumbers. But
on a small scale, it’s a really good interactive
model’.
[question asked by audience member during
talk]: Is there something to be said for being a
small start-up organisation rather that a largescale
NGO in terms of working closely and effectively
with communities, establishing relationship
of trust and open communication?
Yeah I really do. I feel really strongly about this. A
lot of people I work with feel very patronised by
big NGOs – not to discredit the incredible work
many of them do, but more to state that there is a
difference between aid work and collaborative
working. The difference between Tom and I, as
two engineers from Cambridge, and two engineers
from Uganda, is that where we are from
differs in economic terms. There is no difference
in our knowledge or skills.
SO WORKING ON A SMALL COMMUNITY
SCALE SEEMS TO BE A MODEL THAT IS MUCH
MORE EMPOWERING … COLLABORATING,
SHARING IDEAS, SELLING TECHNOLOGY,
ADAPTING TO AND LEARNING NEW WAYS OF
USING THE TECHNOLOGY.
[question asked by audience member during
talk]: Any advice for students who have an
idea and want to be an entrepreneur?
The best way to be an entrepreneur is just to do
it. The best thing about it is that you can just do it
tomorrow… You can just wake up with an idea,
make a website, and go. One thing that deters
people is the risk. It’s always going to feel terrifying
because you are running away from this security.
That’s why being a student is prime time to
become an entrepreneur and at least trying it out,
because there’s less risk. If it doesn’t work out,
you tried, and you’ve still got the security of higher
education. And if it does work… it’s a win-win
scenario.
Could you explain a little bit more about who
the main target audience of BlueTap is?
WHO THE AUDIENCE IS ENTIRELY
DICTATED BY THE TECHNOLOGY
Its kind of dictated by the fact that the original
problem came from working in Mexico City, with
Mexico being an emerging market, so its not at all
the poorest billion living in rural areas. So the way
that the technology works is that it kind of has to
work alongside a rainwater harvesting system or
flowing water. And to have flowing water, you’re
probably not in the poorest 700million people. I
think the right kind of solutions for the poorest
people is, in lots of ways, government or aid provided
water or large particle filtration rather than
chlorination. So, I guess the reason we are focused
on the ‘middle market’ is because that is
right for the technology. Ideally, if we could sell in
loads of different markets, we could grow our revenue.
And because we are a social enterprise, we
could put that money back into projects. We
could then start developing new technologies that
are right for the poorest billion. But yes, it is really
just dictated by the parameters of how the technology
works.
Finally, in relation to what you mentioned
about access to flowing water… what challenges
do you foresee in the future in regard
to climate-related threats and the increased
severity of droughts? How do you see this impacting
water security and safety? And what
do you feel may be possible solutions?
For me it is super interesting, because the whole
inequality of climate change is most represented
by sub-Saharan Africa. You know, it is interesting,
because I started my PhD – which is in climate
change and water security – in 2016. And when I
start it, there was a lull in interest in climate
change especially in the UK, because Brexit was
happening, Trump was happening… people kind
of got distracted by sort-term political events. And
once those calmed down, in the last three years,
compounded by the fact that we have seen a series
of extreme events in more notable countries
that have more press coverage (like the forest
and bush fires in the US and Australia), people

are now taking climate change really seriously.
But, you can see the impact of climate change
really clearly five years ago in sub-Saharan Africa.
Firstly, sub-Saharan African is warming at a
faster rate than anywhere else in the world.
Secondly, it is more obvious in places in where
people are so reliant on the weather patterns to
create agriculture and food. And when people
are very well connected to the weather, the
changes and shifts are incredibly noticeable.
THE WAY THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING
TO IMPACT THE WORLD IS THROUGH WA-
TER. THROUGH FLOODS, THROUGH
DROUGHTS. ADAPTING IS KEY.
Personally, rainwater harvesting is one of the
best technologies to help people adapt to climate
change and become more resilient. Because
its good in the way that people are managing
their own water with autonomy and ownership
which is empowering. My view is that
the BlueTap technology partners really well with
rainwater harvesting.
Also, rainwater harvesting along with water filtration
basically provides a buffer for climate
unpredictability. 80% of the population in
Uganda works in agriculture. You have had for
100 years these weather systems – rains – that
will come in May and last until October. And
now they will come, you know, for two weeks at
the end of August, which really throws people
off. And for 100s of years, people have planted
exactly the same crops and every year they
have grown. So, adaptation involved using different
crops that can grow in the changing climate.
And also, rainwater harvesting to provide
a buffer as a storage of water. My view is, again,
at a very community-level scale: community
projects are really going to help people in
adapting to climate change. It works on a scaleout
kind of system, where if you work at a community-level,
it moves out to have an impact on
a global scale.
One of the global consequences of that, is that I
think we have seen nothing with the refugee
crisis of 2015. Once parts of sub-Saharan Africa
become uninhabitable, the geopolitical consequences
will be overwhelming. you will see the
worlds biggest refugee crisis. The way to mitigate
that would be to help people adapt.
I THINK ALL THE RESOURCES IN THE
WORLD SHOULD GO INTO HELPING PEOPLE
10

ROSIE WRIGHT
IT’S A BALMY DAY IN SAN JOSE WHERE
ALMOST 100 YOUNG WOMEN, FROM
ACROSS THE GLOBE, HAVE COME TO PITCH
THEIR IDEAS FOR CHANGING THE WORLD.
THEY’RE FINALISTS IN A COMPETITION TO
DESIGN AN APP WHICH TACKLES A SOCIAL
PROBLEM. THEY ARE ALSO A PERFECT IL-
LUSTRATION OF THE GROWING PHENOME-
NON THAT IS SOCIAL INNOVATION.
Popularly understood as using new ideas- and
sometimes technologies- to bring about positive
change, social innovation is enjoying increasing
public attention even whilst being debated
in the academic literature. Frequently, as
in the competition above, it’s also linked to entrepreneurship
and an intention to combine
doing good with making a sustainable profit.
This enables it to offer promises of new directions,
which have obvious appeal in a world
which still seems to be reeling from the global
financial crisis whilst the challenges of climate
change and growing inequality loom ever larger.
That appeal is forging a new movement: nearly
19,000 girls originally entered the app competition
and it’s just one of hundreds of hackathons,
crowdfunding contests and enterprise
incubators I’ve seen appear in the last few
years. Naturally a number of those are emerging
here in Cambridge, hoping to make the
most of the potent combination of professional
expertise and a passionate student population.
Typically they favour short-term approaches,
designed to help generate new ideas, develop
innovators’ business acumen or enable funding
provision.
Much of this activity is important and exciting,
especially when it’s integrated with international
development. To date many development
challenges don’t appear to be responding to
traditional NGO approaches nor conventional
capitalism, creating opportunities for these new
ways of working. It also offers a way for individuals
to use their expertise in developing solutions
in contrast with other forms of involvement,
such as voluntourism, which have been
criticised for encouraging enthusiastic but unskilled
interventions. And with the spread of
new technology, particularly smartphones, in
areas where other forms of infrastructure (and
often state intervention and regulation) are
lacking, innovation invites hopes of being able
to ‘leapfrog’ to new solutions. For example, M-
Pesa, the mobile phone money transfer which
has supported business growth where there
are few physical banking services, or microfinancing,
which aims to encourage enterprise
through small, affordable seed loans, are frequently
held up as hopeful examples.
Yet, despite all the potential I’ve seen in my
years working in this area, I’m still often uneasy,
reminded of the old aphorism about the

bad results of good intentions. Part of this is
due to the focus on speed and quick fixes, as
the “fail fast” mantra of innovation meets short
Cambridge terms and busy
schedules. It’s an approach
that lends itself to
assumptions and heuristics
which are problematic in
development. The Gapminder
foundation has
painstakingly demonstrated
how even highlyeducated
individuals frequently
hold incorrect or
outdated views. As its cofounder,
Hans Rosling,
summarises in his book,
Factfulness: “Every group
of people I ask thinks the
world is more frightening,
more violent, and more
hopeless—in short, more
dramatic—than it really
is” (2018, p11). It’s a mindset
that doesn’t lend itself
to Balanced accurate solutions
yet one that isn’t always sufficiently challenged
when working in short timeframes.
Similarly Daniela Papi-Thornton, former Deputy
Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship,
notes that many schemes are
designed to supplement existing skills with
better business acumen rather than improved
problem knowledge. She recommends instead
a ‘problem apprenticeship’, which involves
a full appreciation of how social issues
develop and the realities of tackling them. She
also notes the rise of “heropreneurs”, frequently
wealthy, white graduates, and a focus
on celebrating their individual achievements,
rather than on understanding systems and cocreating,
which risks continuing old narratives
about external interventions by elites.
The emphasis on novelty and looking forward
can also be problematic. It makes it easy to
overlook the actual success of activities that
innovation proposes replacing and obscure
the possibilities in reintroducing or transposing
older, and especially, non-technological,
ideas. However successful interventions can
take many years and low-maintenance ideas
often work better, as many NGO workers- witnessing
piles of obsolete
equipment abandoned
after donors
failed to provide any
ongoing upkeep support-
can testify. The
growing intertwinement
of innovation and enterprise
also concerns me;
whilst ventures with a
profit-making element
could offer a more sustainable
alternative to
perceived aiddependency
they are
also vulnerable to the
darker side of marketization,
for example
some micro-credit
schemes have incentivized
repayment by encouraging
the social
ostracization of those
who default on their loans.
None of this is intended to discourage anyone,
but rather as a preface to a conversation
about how we can make best use of the dedication
and cutting edge knowledge of those
who would like to make a difference, which
may involve challenging the habits the social
innovation sector has fallen into. In that spirit
here are four key considerations for anyone
interested in starting a social venture or running
events and societies encouraging others:
CONTEXTUALISING YOUR IDEA
There are many tools to support the visualisation
and organisation of social enterprises with
one of the most popular being the business
model canvas. However, whilst invaluable for
articulating a concept, they often aren’t designed
to place ideas within a wider ecosystem-
even though it’s often not the nature of
an idea, but the specifics of its environment,
which allows its success or failure. M-Pesa, for
example, has been very successful in Kenya
12

but transferred less successfully into other
countries, with its critics suggesting this reflects
different regulatory regimes and access levels.
Therefore consider supplementing other tools
with Papi-Thorntons ’impact gap canvas’
(available free at http://tacklingheroprneurship.com/).
Many of the innovators I’ve mentored
have found this immensely useful, as it
helps bring tricky but essential issues such as
underpinning power dynamics and the risk of
unintended consequences into conversation.
UNDERSTANDING WHO YOU NEED TO WORK
WITH
Another benefit to contextualising your work is
being able to map other actors working on your
chosen issue, sometimes prompting the realisation
that your novel idea isn’t quite so new after
all and your efforts may be better spent joining
an existing collaboration. In line with SDG 17’s
focus on creating partnership, it is important to
challenge where new ventures might risk diverting
essential funding or undermining state
legitimacy alongside identifying the real provision
gaps that need to be addressed by new
approaches
IT’S ALSO IMPORTANT TO ENSURE
ACADEMIC EXPERTISE IS COMBINED WITH LIVED
EXPERIENCE OF THE TARGETED PROBLEM OR
LOCATION, BUT CO-CREATION IS OFTEN MORE
COMPLEX THAN IT APPEARS.
Often an implied bargain is struck so that individuals
supply their expertise in return for becoming
beneficiaries of an innovation, However
those benefits frequently fail to materialise,
leaving cynicism in their wake. Instead consider
any such expertise as effectively a consultancy
service and arrange to provide individuals with
progress updates and recompense them as
appropriate. Alternatively consider how you can
volunteer your skills to support grassroots innovation
instead, such as mentoring at competitions
like the one mentioned above.
CHALLENGING YOUR ASSUMPTIONS
As Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo points out
in the 2011 book Poor Economics, you can find
data to justify almost any perspective on poverty,
demonstrating the need to critically assess
what’s available. World Bank and OECD data
can be useful at an introductory level to analyse
trends and see whether an issue sufficiently
entrenched to require an innovation, whilst the
JPAL centre Duflo co-founded has online data
from nearly 1000 randomised impact evaluations
available for more specific analysis (www.
Povertyactionlab.org/evaluations). Furthermore,
if working with students without a development
background it may also be useful to share Gapminder’s
resources on global facts and developing
more accurate general heuristics in this
area ( www.gapminder.org/).
CHOOSING WHICH BEHAVIOURS YOU WANT
TO INCENTIVISE
If you’re running a project or event, review the
incentives you are offering, particularly around
prizes or grant funding. Whilst communicating
solutions is an important skill, it is not the same
as implementing them, so consider whether
you want to evaluate people solely on their abilities
to ‘pitch’ an idea or take a more holistic
approach. How could you instead value practical
approaches to tackling problems, such as
mapping complex systems of actors or identifying
existing initiatives.
Encourage groups to think beyond novelty by
asking them to improve to existing ideas or analyse
why feasible innovations failed and to
consider risks through identifying unintended
consequences or negative incentivization in
proposed innovations.
Social innovation is an evolving field and therefore
there is still plenty to be discussed around
best practices. I remain as excited today as I
was, as a competition judge back in San Jose,
about its potential to inspire action where elsewhere
I had seen mounting compassion fatigue.
However, in order to honour that potential
and prevent a return to disillusionment for
our generation and the next we must go beyond
simply generating ideas and instead be
part of building the systems that incentivise
sustainability, integration, knowledge and humility
to ensure we make the contributions that
really matter.

A wide-eyed, malnourished African child, his
hand outstretched. At the bottom, a tagline:
“He’s starving; only you can help.”
TURN ON A TELEVISION ANYWHERE IN THE
DEVELOPED WORLD AND THIS IS AN IMAGE
YOU’LL SEE AGAIN AND AGAIN: HEART-
BREAKING IMAGES OF DEVELOPING-WORLD
DESPERATION TO WHICH ONLY THE EN-
LIGHTENED, GENEROUS VIEWER CAN
SUPPOSEDLY PUT A STOP.
JACOB ARBEID
Beginning in the 1980s with the Live Aid appeals,
such ‘shock effect’ publicity - intended to
motivate donations out of purely negative emotions
such as guilt, shock or sadness - have become
a mainstay of some of the world’s largest
development NGOs, such as UNICEF (annual
expenditure: £4.5bn) or Oxfam (£400mn). Yet
appeals such as these have become increasingly
controversial: for example, prominent Nigerian
-American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
made headlines last year for her critique of NGO
Aid ads, which she saw as perpetuating the kind
of ‘white saviour’ narratives reminiscent of the
colonial era.
Such a strategy could potentially be justified if it
was at considerably more effective in motivating
greater donations, and the continued use of
such appeals by many development charities
suggests they believe this to be true. Yet a growing
body of literature across economics, psychology
and development studies show an increasingly
mixed picture. This reversal of consensus
centres around two phenomena:
‘compassion fatigue’, and engagement with
global issues. The former is defined as a gradual
lessening of compassion over time, in response
to images of others in stressful situations. Researchers
such as UCL’s David Hudson have
applied the concept to aid advertising, observing
that in some cases, participants who were exposed
to the kind of shocking images used by
many development NGOs were - paradoxically -
less likely to donate. In such cases, the compassionate
part of participants’ psyches was overwhelmed,
and often they simply disengaged altogether.
14

Yet Hudson also sought to study how framing
the developing world in different ways affected
attitudes towards global development. Ultimately,
participants who were exposed to the negative
imagery were less likely to be optimistic
about the ability of development organisations to
deliver on their promises, and less likely to support
their taxes going towards development aid
or peacebuilding efforts. And why would they?
Such images do little to show the huge progress
that has been made on global development: the
billions of people that have escaped poverty, or
the near-doubling of global life expectancy in the
last 60 years, for instance.
Still, the Hudson study offers a way out of this
conundrum, and moreover one that can give direction
to any student struggling to understand
how they can sensitively and effectively ‘practice
development’.
As well as exposing participants to charitable
appeals based on negative emotions, the study
examined participants’ attitudes to aid and development
after exposure to an alternative,
‘positive’ ad: a child holding a sign reading
‘Future Doctor’, with a tagline seeking donations
to “help educate the next teacher, farmer or
doctor”.
THE DIFFERENCE IS A SUBTLE ONE, BUT IN
RECASTING NGO DEVELOPMENT AID AS A POSITIVE,
COOPERATIVE PROJECT WHERE LOCAL PEOPLE
HAVE AGENCY, SUCH AN APPEAL SIDESTEPS THE
DUAL PITFALLS OF COMPASSION FATIGUE AND THE
PROMOTION OF MISLEADING, PESSIMISTIC OR
EVEN OFFENSIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE
DEVELOPING WORLD.
Ultimately, Hudson found that in some cases the
alternative appeal increased the likelihood that
participants would make a donation; more impressively
participants across the board saw
themselves as more likely to engage with global
development - through their voting, volunteering
or future donations - when compared with the
‘negative’ sample.
Such studies provide an important counterweight
to the dominant model of development
charity, yet putting their conclusions into practice
seems more difficult.
FOR STUDENTS, WHO ARE OFTEN WEIGHED DOWN
BY WORK AND DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES OF
MAJOR NGOS, IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE. UNTIL LAST
YEAR, I WOULD HAVE SAID THE SAME; THAT IS UN-
TIL I GOT INVOLVED WITH MAY WEEK ALTERNATIVE
(MWA) .
MWA was founded on the premise that giving
and celebrating need not be opposites; and that
our world-famous May Week offered the perfect
opportunity to bring the two together. Rather
than manipulating people into giving out of guilt
or shock (and the accompanying ‘white saviour’
narrative this promotes), the initiative seeks to
encourage students to make a thoughtful, motivated
and positive donation - informed by transparent
statistics on the often impressive impact
students can have.
Students are invited to join, and then make a donation;
they then come together at a Summer
Party in May Week (funded entirely by sponsors,
so that 100% of donations go to charity), to crystallise
this positive atmosphere around giving
and celebrate their impact. The suggested charity,
the Against Malaria Foundation, provides lifesaving
anti-malaria bednets to some of the
world’s most vulnerable people; in working with
national malaria boards and local health workers,
it also avoids potential ‘white saviour’ dynamics.
Preventing the spread of malaria has also been
found to be an effective way to engender broader
economic development, with the decrease in
missed school and work days ensuring that every
pound spent on malaria prevention has a
multiplier effect in developing-world economies:
this is particularly so for women who often bear
the burden of caring for sick relatives. Ultimately,
this is just one of the reasons why AMF has been
consistently ranked by charity evaluators as one
of the worlds’ most effective charities.
In this way, MWA has built an organisation
around changing our narratives of giving; by
many accounts it has been a successful one. In
the two years since its founding, they have

people from malaria) from hundreds of students; with
over 200% growth a year, theirmodel of positive and
engaged giving appears to be catching on. The ultimate
aim is not merely to raise funds, but to change
attitudes to giving and global development with the
aim of creating lifelong altruists. Anecdotally, at last
year’s Summer Party I found myself surrounded by
people asking me questions about the fight against
malaria; their engagement and positivity, very different
from how so much charity is traditionally done,
was a genuine joy to behold.
THEREFORE IN AN AGE WHERE CONVENTIONAL
MODELS OF NGO DEVELOPMENT ARE
INCREASINGLY COMING UNDER FIRE, WHAT CAN STU-
DENTS DO TO ‘PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT?’
MY (ADMITTEDLY BIASED) ADVICE WOULD BE TO JOIN
HUNDREDS OF OTHER STUDENTS AND GET INVOLVED
WITH MWA. BUT BEYOND THAT,
EMBRACE A ‘PRACTICAL POSITIVITY’. A POSITIVE NARRA-
TIVE CANNOT ALONE HELP ADVANCE GLOBAL DEVELOP-
MENT, BUT WHEN JOINED TO A CONCRETE PROJECT -
WHETHER A STUDENT
INITIATIVE LIKE MWA, AN ACTIVIST CAMPAIGN OR IN
YOUR FUTURE CAREER - IT CAN PROVIDE
CRUCIAL TOOLS FOR A LESS OFFENSIVE, MORE EN-
GAGED AND ULTIMATELY MORE EFFECTIVE
APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT.
16

KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED ON OUR
FACEBOOK PAGE FOR MORE
INFORMATION REGARDING ROLES
AND APPLICATION DEADLINES
18

AFRINSPIRE IS A CHARITY BASED IN CAM-
BRIDGE WHICH WORKS WITH AND SUPPORTS
PARTNER ORGANISATIONS IN UGANDA AND
OTHER COUNTRIES IN EASTERN AFRICA. IT
WORKS AT THE GRASSROOTS LEVEL, TO UN-
DERSTAND AND TACKLE THE ROOT CAUSES OF
POVERTY. FOR THIS, TRUST AND COMMUNICA-
TION WITH THE LOCAL PEOPLE TO UNDER-
STAND WHAT IS NEEDED IS VERY IMPORTANT.
Afrinspire’s founder and CEO, Ian Sanderson, has
been travelling to Uganda for more than 20 years,
and the impact that he has made in that time is truly
inspiring. During the summer, he offers students
the opportunity to join him in Uganda for 3 weeks,
allowing them to see the work he does first-hand
and help facilitate the Afrinspire Young Entrepreneurs
Conference. The different parts of Uganda
we visited encompassed the eastern, northwestern,
western and southern regions of the
country, with our base locations being either Kampala
or Mbarara. I became involved with Afrinspire
myself last year, while attending this trip. Now I am
on the committee of the Afrinspire Cambridge Student
Society, which aims to foster and maintain
links between Afrinspire and the students in Cambridge.
This article describes several of the projects
that we visited, in particular in some of Afrinspire’s
core focus areas of employment and enterprise,
female empowerment, and the education of
children and young people.
LIN BOWKER-LONNECKER
A large role Afrinspire plays is in facilitating teaching
of skills to assist people to lift themselves out of
poverty. The Young Entrepreneurs Conference in
Mbarara is a key part of this. I was able to help facilitate
the conference during my trip; however,
Afrinspire also runs other conferences such as the
Afrinspire Women’s Conference. Approximately
forty peoplefrom all over Uganda, as well as nearby
countries such as Burundi, attended the conference,
with the aim of learning new business skills,
including how to help their ventures succeed.
Youth unemployment is high in Uganda, and required
practical skills are often not taught sufficiently
in school or missed completely by those
unable to attend school. Teaching people business

skills equips them both with a means to create
an income for themselves and also to create
other jobs in their community.
The sessions offered covered a range of topics,
such as understanding markets, recordkeeping,
and designing
a project.
For the project design
exercise,
groups of eight
people worked together
through the
various steps needed
to set up a business
while considering
all the challenges
that this entailed.
My role was
to lead one such
group, ensuring
that everyone was
contributing and
offering up suggestions.
The business
skills I had learned
in my manufacturing engineering degree were
not only useful, but also showed how skills
learned as part of a degree in a theoretical setting
are transferable into the real world in order
to help people.
Some of the people at the conference had already
started their own business, and Afrinspire
offers a Young Entrepreneurs Fund to give financial
support to people who have business
plans that can improve their communities. During
the conference, a visit was made to one of
these successful ventures, a juice production
business, which had received this funding in
2017 and is now a registered company. In total,
28 projects have been supported, creating
more than 100 jobs and helping more than 600
people.
We also visited job creation and training centres
such as MidPro and Uganda Development Services
(UDS). Midpro offers vocational training
courses such as car mechanics, plumbing, hairdressing,
fashion and design, whereas UDS offers
skills training, for example in IT skills.
UDS also ran a specific women-orientated training
course, which helped 20 women. We visited
two of these women, both of whom were previously
unemployed, but were now successfully
working as a fruit seller and on a mobile money
stall respectively. Other women were able to
start their own businesses,
for example in poultry,
soap-making or crafts.
The program overall has
the greatest impact if
women without jobs are
targeted, which was not
always the case. Mathematical
aptitude is vital as
part of this education process,
as the women need
the everyday business
skills of setting a selling
price, or having
knowledge of the expected
overall income.
These factors may be
missed when people are
starting out in their business
ventures.
Helping women gain business skills empowers
them. In Uganda, men are more likely than
women to get an education, and the literacy
rate for men is much higher than women.
THE FUNCTIONAL ADULT LITERACY (FAL) PROGRAMME
IS A UGANDAN PROGRAMME, WHICH IS DELIVERED BY
THE UGANDAN GOVERNMENT AND ASSISTED BY NGOS.
THROUGH EDUCATION, THIS PROGRAMME GIVES WOM-
EN A GREATER VOICE IN THEIR COMMUNITY, ALLOWING
THEM A LARGER INFLUENCE IN DECISION-MAKING AND
HIGHER ECONOMIC ACCUMULATION.
We were able to visit multiple FAL groups in
various stages of advancement across Uganda.
Rose Ekitwi, who is a partner of Afrinspire and a
leader of the FAL program, has trained teachers
for more than 70 groups across Uganda. She
travelled with us for part of the trip to see the
progress some of the FAL groups were making.
By and large they were running well, and we
were able to attend a graduation ceremony in
Namasagali, where several FAL groups and 45
people in total were graduating from the programme.
20

The FAL programme is primarily built around
teaching reading, writing, numeracy and English
skills. While Uganda has only two official languages,
English and Swahili, there are approximately
40 different languages spoken in the
country because of the many different ethnic
populations. The two core books used to implement
the programme have been translated into
22 local Ugandan languages, and lessons are
taught in a practical context which can be readily
applied to daily life. Often, the leaders of the
FAL groups are already community leaders,
and existing groups such as church or savings
groups may turn into FAL groups. One of the
first lessons involves learning how to write their
own name, which led to a beautiful moment
when we visited a FAL group and the members
of the group presented what they had learned.
The members of the group proudly wrote their
own names onto the blackboard, which they
had not been able to do before starting the program.
Other lessons in the program incorporate skills
such as hygiene, healthy living, and farming.
For example, there is sometimes the perception
that having more children means that there are
more children to take care of you when you are
old, whereas the FAL program teaches that you
should only have as many children as you are
financially able to take care of. FAL teaching
resources are also geared towards gaining
skills which are useful for starting businesses.
In a village called Gabusan near Tororo mountain,
we visited three new FAL groups which
had just been formed, consisting of roughly between
20 and 30 people. From the first group
alone more than 70 people would be helped,
due to the sizes of the households of those involve;
someone gaining literacy and numeracy
skills does not just solely benefit them, but also
their entire family. The second group of 25 people
was asked about their education, with 10
never having been to school, whereas some
had managed to get a primary school education.
Overall Afrinspire works with 105 FAL
groups in 10 districts in Uganda. Groups typically
contain 15-20 people, primarily women,
with each person having a family size of 7-10
people.
The longer-term impact of FAL was also shown
when we visited Rise and Shine Nursery, which
had initially started as a FAL group. However, it
was extended into the nursery as the parents in
the group also wanted their children to get an
education. The education of children and young
people is also a major focus of Afrinspire, as
despite Uganda offering free education in theory,
this is often inaccessible due to the distance
and terrain the students would have to traverse.
Afrinspire has supported a number of schools,
either through paying school fees for specific
pupils, or by providing money for stationery and
facilities. During the trip, Afrinspire supplied
funds to a school to pay for food for the teachers
and students, as the region had been heavily
affected by the late rainfall and start of the
wet season. This is an example of how Afrinspire
listens to the community and takes into
account their specific requirements at a certain
time.
I have described just some of the ways in which
Afrinspire is making a massive impact. We also
visited a water jar project which stores water for
use in households, as well as a farm trying different
crops and growing methods where the
obtained knowledge can then be used in other
farms. Afrinspire also works with people who
are frequently discriminated against, such as
the disabled community. For example, in Kabale
a disabled singing and dancing group has been
formed, which is a way for the disabled community
to become empowered. The group welcomed
us with a performance, initially showing
us how badly they had been treated in the past,
whereas the following act presented the abuser
repenting and being welcomed back into the
community.
The best part of the trip was visiting and interacting
with a variety of extremely inspiring people,
who are attempting to make real positive changes
in their communities and who have achieved
a great deal already. Uganda is very different to
the UK, and a major challenge for me was seeing
the level of poverty that people experienced
in many of the regions we went to. The key part
of Afrinspire’s success is the collaboration with
the local partners, working towards the common
goal of achieving the most positive impact on
Uganda’s communities.

20

This is an autoethnographic attempt to
sketch some answers to these questions,
based on my work experience in various
countries and across different ID organizations,
including IOs, NGOs, government
cooperation agencies and consulting
institutes. Drawing on subjective insights,
this piece provides reflections
regarding ID’s effectiveness, projects’
relevance, matters of organization and
efficiency, the role of politics and the
state, as well as ongoing reforms. A
word of caution: the focus here is on implementation-related
issues, leaving
aside the question of the very existence
of ID and more fundamental criticisms of
the "development apparatus” from
scholars like Arturo Escobar.
(1) EVIDENCE.
The trillion-dollar question of whether aid
“works” has been a matter of protracted
debate. There is no simple answer to it,
and researchers such as those from J-
PAL (whose founders Banerjee and
Duflo were among the winners of the
2019 Nobel prize in Economics) have
proposed to approach it through rigorous
impact evaluations of specific interventions,
rather than venturing overgeneralizing
statements.
CAMILLE BARRAS
A FEW MONTHS AGO, I WAS FACING A YOUNGER RELATIVE OF
MINE WHO WAS ABOUT TO COMPLETE HIS MASTER’S DEGREE,
AND INTERROGATED ME ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE WORKING IN
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (ID). HIS QUESTIONS WERE
TINGED WITH THE SCEPTICISM THAT OFTEN COMES WITH GOOD
ACADEMIC TRAINING ON THAT SUBJECT. THIS BROUGHT ME
SOME TEN YEARS BACK, WHEN I WAS ASKING MYSELF SIMILAR
QUESTIONS. WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK IN INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT? HOW DO ID ORGANIZATIONS OPERATE IN
PRACTICE? ALSO, IS THE CRITICISM FREQUENTLY DISPLAYED IN
THE MEDIA JUSTIFIED? CAN ONE SEE A CHANGE HAPPENING?
OR ARE PRACTITIONERS POISED TO GIVE IN TO CYNICISM AFTER
SOME TIME?
Rising financial constraints and public
pressure, coupled with international instruments
such as the Paris Declaration
on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and subsequent
Accra Agenda for Action (2008),
have contributed to a general shift towards
evidence-based and outcomeoriented
programs. As a result, ID agencies
are increasingly relying on tools
such as a theory of change or logical
framework, and embedding monitoring
and evaluation (M&E) and impact evaluations
into programs.
WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS, HOWEVER, A
WIDE GAP REMAINS BETWEEN THEORY
AND PRACTICE.
Evaluation requirements are oftentimes
frowned at on the grounds that ‘we know

What we do and what the effects of the project
are’. Some agencies still use (budget) delivery
rates i.e., input indicators rather than output /
outcome indicators, as a benchmark of performance.
Understanding of M&E is sometimes
shallow among key project staff, not only concerning
cutting-edge experimental designs or
complex data analysis, but also more basic elements
of questionnaire building for example.
ON THE ONE HAND, A CERTAIN DEGREE OF
INERTIA IS UNAVOIDABLE, BECAUSE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND CAPACITY-
BUILDING TAKE TIME.
Yet, one can hardly deny that there is little fluidity,
and a mutual mistrust between academia
and practitioners, resulting in silo thinking and
behaviour. That said, there is of course legitimate
wariness towards “over-evaluitis” at the
other extreme.
(2) RELEVANCE.
Beyond the issue of whether a project achieves
its intended outcomes lie the essential question
of whether it does address pressing problems,
and with the right approach. If a needs assessment
is usually an essential component of any
proper planning process, carrying it out thoroughly
in practice is a tricky task.
PROJECTS CAN FAIL TO MEET A DEMAND,
PERHAPS MORE EASILY THAN ONE MAY THINK. A
NUMBER OF REASONS - POLITICAL, STRATEGIC,
PERSONAL - CAN SPUR THE LAUNCH OF A
PROJECT, RATHER THAN REAL NEEDS.
Contrary to common belief, ID programs are not
necessarily (or at least not always) imposed
from the outside - that is, shaped by international
actors based on external, strategic considerations.
International and national stakeholders
are often intertwined in project planning and
implementation, as also argued by Leininger in
her paper ‘Bringing the outside in’ (2010). But
even when national actors including governments
and NGO staff are involved in decisionmaking
regarding programs, there can nevertheless
be a substantial gap between the urban
upper middle class elite that they usually represent
and beneficiaries from deprived communities,
thereby complicating needs assessments.
A further hurdle is a certain tendency toward
copy-pasting of programmes and its corollary of
little out-of-the-box thinking, exacerbated by
scarce time and financial resources.
(3) EFFICIENCY.
Slow processes, an absence of streamlined procedures,
and palpable hierarchy lines are frequently
part of the daily frustrations of ID practitioners.
Especially in large organisations, one
might have (on bad days) the impression of
working for a bureaucratic monster or a “selfmaintaining”
machine. Half of the acronyms
used by the IO I worked for were still an unfathomable
mystery to me after more than a year –
my efforts to learn them were countered at each
Monday morning meeting, when a new bundle
of fresh acronyms appeared. This inevitably induces
organizational inefficiencies, as well as
practices such as bunching of large-scale conferences
at the end-of-year period to prevent
underspends.
ANOTHER PERHAPS SURPRISING AND
DISAPPOINTING ASPECT OF ID IS THE RELATIVELY
LOW LEVEL OF COORDINATION BETWEEN
ORGANIZATIONS.
At times, the reality of the ID “business” looks
more like coopetition, if not overt competition –
for funds, for ownership of results, for personal
prestige – resulting in duplication, wasted resources,
and loss of knowledge.
In spite of many shortcomings, there are silver
linings. Moreover, not all is always what it looks
like. One should avoid too much shortsightedness.
Take for example study tours. A
common practice in ID, they consist in organizing
visits of a few days, usually abroad, for a delegation
of officials or stakeholders to gain exposure
to “best practices”. Some would say that
they typically involve considerable expenditure
and little tangible return on investment.
YET I PERSONALLY WENT FROM COMPLETE
SCEPTICISM TO A SOMEWHAT MORE OPTIMISTIC
VIEW. IF WELL-PREPARED AND WITH THE RIGHT
PEOPLE SELECTED, STUDY VISITS CAN YIELD
BOUNTIFUL FRUITS.
24

I witnessed these visits contribute to building a
much-needed direct communications channel
between policy-makers and the project staff who
accompanied the visit. Similarly, policies of a foreign
country were then mentioned as an example
to follow by an MP during a parliamentary
session.
(4) POLITICS.
Politics has sometimes been considered as
“standing in the way” of ID, and development at
large. Carothers and de Gramont (“Aiding Governance
in Developing Countries”, 2011) have
shed light on how the acknowledgment that
states have a central, unavoidable position within
ID led to the emergence of governance support
as a standalone programme area of ID in the
1990s.
POLITICAL ECONOMY ANALYSES,
WELL-DESIGNED INCENTIVES AND EFFECTIVE
GOVERNMENT LIAISON ARE CRUCIAL TO THE
SUCCESS OF GOVERNANCE ASSISTANCE – AND ANY
ID PROGRAMME.
But besides strategic rationales, involving the
government is also essential in terms of democratic
legitimacy. If elementary education becomes
primarily delivered by NGOs, corporate
money can “buy social change”. Regardless of
donors’ intentions and the program’s outcomes
(whether children learn better or not), this nevertheless
grants a great deal of decision-making
power to non-elected stakeholders, as shown in
a recent documentary by The Economist
(“Charity: how effective is giving?”). Furthermore,
do not long-term, sustainable solutions imply
state capacitation? Nonetheless, state involvement
raises a set of thorny questions. How
do we avoid ID projects overloading public servants
with new tasks, and instead ensure projects
are aligned to state priorities, capacities, and job
descriptions? How do we build effective longterm
partnerships in spite of the turnover of public
servants that coincides With elections? How
can we curb politicization, or better draw the
line? How do we prevent corruption and rentseeking
behaviour in general?
These observations are drawn from mere subjective
snapshots of a very complex and vast reality,
and certainly fail to mirror its diversity. They may
also stress too much the negative, problematic
aspects and not do justice to the dynamism and
innovation taking place. ID is also undergoing
reforms. The progressive change towards highstandards
impact assessments is an example.
New financing
mechanisms – result-based financing (RBF), impact
bonds and pay by results schemes – have
come into being. ID increasingly talks about, and
integrates, design thinking, agility, digitalization,
and big data. South-South cooperation is happening,
shifting away from old-fashioned North-
South financing and knowledge transfer, bringing
with it rich potential.
TO RETURN TO THE INITIAL QUESTION:
WHEREAS MALPRACTICES AND INEFFICIEN-
CIES MIGHT BE COMMON, THE FULL PICTURE
IS
DEFINITELY LESS CLEAR-CUT. THE INSIDE
REALITY OF ID HAS NOT TURNED ME, NOR
FORMER COLLEAGUES MORE GENERALLY,
INTO CYNICAL PERSONS. BUT I HAVE BE-
COME
MORE REALISTIC AND
PRAGMATIC.
The ID sector is filled with highly capable and
genuinely committed people. Looking at all the
initiatives and projects I have worked for, the impact
was always noticeable. Going to the “field”
and meeting with children, farmers, local politicians
across different countries meant hearing
stories of change and empowerment.
HOWEVER, AT RISK OF SWEEPING GENERAL-
IZATIONS, I WOULD SAY THAT A LOT COULD
BE DONE DIFFERENTLY AND BETTER.
Programming could without a doubt benefit from
more novel, creative, outcome-oriented approaches
from a project’s main objectives to the
fine-tuning of its annual plan. There is space for
more thinking on interventions’ impact, sustainability
and relevance – as well as for more critical

CREDITS
EDITOR MUNIRA RAJKOTWALLA
SUB-EDITORS IONA STEWART, ELLIE FOX, KIARA VAN HOUT
AND ERDEM DORJKHAND
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR KATHERINE WHITFIELD
A SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:
26

VISION
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT