International Crisis on Aid Projects

Chapter 18 - Using the Web for Enhancing Decision-Making: UN Project Failures in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA)
Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
by Gerry Gingrich (ed)
Idea Group Publishing 2003

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Aid project crisis has crept up gradually over a number of years; therefore, its full extent is not appreciated. There is presently much more confusion about the basic purposes and aims of international aid than ever before in the past half century. This is reflected in UNDP (1996, 1999) that official aid on projects is now under attack from an extraordinary number of directions.

From political perspectives and some academic economists comes the argument that aid simply does not work, meaning that it does not increase economic growth. Rose-Ackerman and Stone (1996) and Riley (1998) indeed argue that aid must be positively harmful to poor countries because it conflicts with sound economics, causing distortions and misuse of resources and creating inefficiency through dependence on subsidy.

However, there is an increase of attack on official aid programmes for supporting corrupt governments on projects, proclaims Shihata (1996), and allowing aid itself to be used for corrupt purposes. SSA governments spend massive amount on armaments and their undemocratic governments are fulfilling neither the urgent nor long-term public needs. This appears sometimes as a general condemnation of "Third World" aid and sometimes as an argument for using aid to coerce recipient countries into more democratic behaviour. The tendency to think of "development" as consisting of promoting the political and social beliefs of donors (including, amongst other things, equality for women) has increased greatly in recent years. These beliefs must be encouraged to allow for project development resulting in socio-economic benefits in the SSA countries.

The implications of these far-reaching changes should be a central issue in the current debate about aid, but they are not. The international aid movement has only begun to address project failures and the issues that they raise for the priorities and methods of aid. Dingle (1997) and Knights and Willmott (1999) describe the ongoing and confused debate, most of which takes place in the First World rather than the Third reflecting a general disillusionment about official aid. The confusion about objectives, and the consequent difficulty of assessing performance, must be one underlying reason for this disillusionment. Amongst the public in First World countries, attitudes range from outright hostility on to a passive indifference that simply accepts aid as part of the given order of things an attitude that is more common in Europe. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) (1995) says neither attitude reflects any conviction that official aid projects achieve worthwhile results.

Ironically, however, in the First World, the aid business thrives and grows and Third World aid projects on socio-economic development have become a profession. The number of people engaged in socio-economic development in SSA, as mentioned in the UNDP (1996) Aid Accountability Initiative, is now very large and continues to grow. These are found in regional governments and a large number of international development agencies of all kinds, including many in the UN family; in institutes and research organisations devoted to analysing the problems of poor countries in extraordinary detail; and in colleges and universities where the popularity of "development studies" seems still to be on the increase. The volume of literature produced annually on the subject in its many aspects is far beyond the ability of one individual researcher.

The author is convinced that a new effort must be made to deal with this confusion and to bring more coherence and rationality to the whole subject. The author starts from a personal conviction that the effort to improve the quality of life for the majority of people in poor countries certainly deserves support in principle, but that it must be very clear about what the international community is trying to achieve and honest in assessing success and failure. This community must also beware of the insidious dangers that lie in the self satisfaction to be derived from doing good to the poor, and of the danger that the institutional interests of long-established development organisations and the career interests of those who work in them may override the essential aims of aid.

World Bank Report (1994) recommends that the International Aid Organisations (IAO) promote effective management procedures within projects by emphasizing the importance of monitoring as an integral part of day-to-day project operations. Communication is important in project works and the criteria that characterize project works indicate that communication among stakeholders (UN, IMF, local government, and the public) must be effective and efficient if project works in SSA are to be well directed and managed. How effective can this be?

In the SSA, Ghana for instance, the culture influences the way of thinking and doing things. Individual behaviour and organisational learning impacts on project culture, which in turn impacts on the outcome on the decision making process (Agyris, 1996; Argyris and Schon, 1996; Checkland, 1988). Most projects in SSA seek to improve the lives of their people and therefore the main users of the project outcome are those who must be responsible for development planning and design. Projects are run, created, designed, built, and operated by and for people. The Internet technology is the main open source of information and the appropriate tool that can effectively allow the public to voice and reach international settings. The author suggests that citizens of these nations must be involved in the monitoring process of any international aid projects, to help fight corruption and contribute to effective management.

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