"KNOWLEDGE-BASED
INTERNATIONAL AID"
DO WE WANT IT, DO WE
NEED IT?
Rosa-María Torres
Instituto
Fronesis
Buenos
Aires, Argentina
www.fronesis.org
Paper prepared for the International
Seminar on
"Development Knowledge, National
Research and International Cooperation", CAS/DSE/NORRAG, Bonn, 3-5 April
2001.
Included in: Gmelin, W.;
King, K.; McGrath, S. (editors), Knowledge, Research and International
Cooperation, University of Edinburgh, 2001.
"KNOWLEDGE-BASED INTERNATIONAL
AID"
DO WE WANT IT, DO WE
NEED IT?
Rosa-María
Torres
PRESENTATION
This paper approaches "knowledge-based
aid" in vogue today within the international aid community from
some specific perspectives: a) a view "from the South"1,
that is, from countries traditionally considered repositories and beneficiaries
of such aid, which in turn is typically facilitated by "the North" through
International Assistance Agencies 2; b) a critical perspective,
thus acknowledging that there is an uncritical South -- and a critical
North; c) a regional focus on Latin America, with which the author
is more familiar with; d) a focus on education (reform) as a specific
field to analyze some of the assumptions and practical consequences of
such "knowledge-based aid", particularly over the last decade; and e) a
focus on the World Bank (WB) as a paradigmatic Agency, given its
contemporary leading role in shaping the North/South cooperation mode and
in promoting "knowledge-based aid", specifically for (school) education
reform. The "WE" used in the title of this article refers to the South
in general, and to the Latin American region in particular.
The increased global concentration
of economic and symbolic power (information and knowledge) and of the means
and resources to access, synthesize and disseminate such information and
knowledge is supported by an instrumental ideology about all these issues
(development, knowledge, information, education, learning). In this context,
and without fundamental changes in North-South relationships and cooperation
patterns, as well as in knowledge and learning paradigms, there is little
hope that the announced "knowledge society" and "lifelong learning" will
bring the expected "learning revolution" and a more equitable distribution
of knowledge.
On the contrary, we are experiencing
a major epochal paradox: never before have there been so much information
and knowledge available, so varied and powerful means to democratize them,
and so much emphasis on the importance of knowledge, education and learning,
but never before has the banking education model been so alive and
widespread at a global scale: education understood as a one-way
transfer of information and knowledge, and learning understood as
the passive digestion of such transfer. Many enthusiastic global promoters
of "knowledge societies", "new networking" and "lifelong learning" dream
today with a world converted into a giant classroom with a few powerful
global teachers, and millions of passive assimilators of information and
knowledge packages via telecenters, computers and the Internet.
In an era characterized by
change, uncertainty and unpredictability, knowledge-disseminators and technology-promoters
appear to have just too many certainties about the present and about the
future. Recommendations and solutions are at hand and become global - "global
development knowledge", "global education reform". "Global" here means
in fact [for] "the South", "the developing world", "the low- and middle-income
countries", "client countries," "the poor." "What works" and "what doesn't
work" are offered as clear-cut black and white alternatives, without the
obvious questions that should follow: what works --- where, when, for what,
with whom, for whom, under what circumstances? Knowledge-based aid rhetoric
insists on avoiding the discussion of issues such as power and vested interests,
not only within governments but also within civil society and within and
among Agencies themselves.
"KNOWLEDGE-BASED AID"
FOR "DEVELOPING COUNTRIES"
What development?
What knowledge? What kind of aid? Who is "countries"?
There is nothing new about
"knowledge-based aid". Knowing, and transferring knowledge to "developing
countries" under the form of technical assistance has been the raison
d' être of Agencies. It may be new, however, from a bank perspective,
since banks are supposed to provide money, not ideas.
WB's decision -- in 1996
-- to become a "Knowledge Bank" made explicit the evolution of its role
over the past few years into an institution that provides both expert advice
and loans - in that order of importance, as the WB explicitly states. This
new role includes lending no longer as the most important role, but technical
assistance, knowledge production and knowledge sharing; expanding clients
and partners beyond governments, also incorporating organizations of civil
society (OCS); and aggressive support to, and use of, modern information
and communication technologies (ICTs) as a critical tool for putting such
strategies in place.
In WB's terms: there is something
called "development knowledge", which is available at the WB/Knowledge
Bank, has been (and continues to be) compiled and synthesized by the WB,
and needs to be "disseminated" (with the assistance of ICTs) or transferred
through "capacity building" not only to "developing countries" - from government
officials and decision-makers all the way down to OCS and school agents
- but also to other Agencies. The Global Education Reform Website and the
Global Education Reform course offered by the WB to a wide range of learners
(Ministries, OCS, Agencies, etc) are some of the recent tools put in place
for the global transfer of education reform knowledge to education reformers
at various levels in the whole planet.
"Knowledge-based aid" is
fundamentally "North/ South asymmetry-based aid": donor/ recipient, developed/
non-developed, knowledge/ ignorance (or wisdom), teach/ learn, think/
act, recommend/ follow, design/ implement. The North views itself essentially
as a knowledge provider, and views the South as a knowledge consumer. The
North thinks, knows, disseminates, diagnoses, plans, strategizes, does
and validates research (including that done in, or referred to, the South),
provides advice, models, lessons learned, and even lists of desired profiles
(i.e. effective schools, effective teachers); the South does not know,
learns, receives, applies, implements. The North produces, synthesizes
and disseminates knowledge; the South produces data and information.
The North produces global policy recommendations to be translated, by the
South, into National Plans of Action. "Global knowledge" versus "local
wisdom." "Think globally, act locally."
For international cooperation
purposes, "countries" have typically been thought of as governments.
Cooperating with governments has been assumed as equivalent to cooperating
with countries and with the people in those countries, thus
avoiding critical questions related to the representativeness of concrete
governments in terms of public and national interest. Also, Agencies' widened
perception of "countries", incorporating the notion of "civil society",
has remained narrow, simplistic and NGO-centered, ignoring the various
actors interacting in real civil societies: political parties, social movements,
the academic community, workers' unions, grassroots organizations, mass
media, private enterprise, the churches, etc. It is only in recent times
that the term Organizations of Civil Society (OCS) has been incorporated.
As a result, many key political, social and economic sectors and actors
in the South - especially those unrelated to government and NGO circuits-
have remained alienated from the resources, mechanisms, information and
discussion surrounding international cooperation in their own countries.
We will briefly discuss here
some of the assumptions and consequences of the "knowledge-based aid" concept
in action, as per WB's and other Agencies' involvement in (school) education
reform in the South, and in Latin America in particular.
Are we (the South) striving for and heading towards "development"?
"Development" (in the sense
of progress) seemed achievable in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s
and early 2000s, the very term development has virtually disappeared
from political and academic discourse, from social debate and from social
expectations in the South -- very much so in the case of Latin America.
Development discourse and goals have been substituted by "poverty alleviation",
"debt relief", "combating unemployment", "improving the quality of education",
etc. The overall spirit is that of "reversing decline" rather than that
of "ensuring development". In the education field this is reflected in
minimalist goals that do not go beyond augmenting (enrolment, instruction
time) or reducing (illiteracy, drop-out, repetition) rates, aiming at "preventing
school failure" or "improving academic achievement" (among the poor) rather
than at "ensuring school success" or "ensuring lifelong and meaningful
learning" for all.
Realities and analyses show
that globalization is not moving in the direction of a more equitable world
and that economic growth is no guarantee for human (even for economic)
development. "Alleviating poverty" has become a condition for, much more
than a result of, the very possibility of getting access to education and
learning by the majority of the world population. And yet, Agencies continue
to speak of "development" and "developing countries", of basic education
as a strategy to alleviate poverty, and of economic growth as inevitably
leading to economic and social development.
The very meaning of development,
as well as the means and strategies to get there, are by no means consensual
and remain an issue of debate and controversy not only in the North and
in the South but also among and within Agencies themselves.3
Is there is something called "development knowledge"?
How much does "development"
depend on knowledge? What is the knowledge required to make "development"
happen in "non-developed" contexts? Is there such a thing as "development
knowledge" in general? Is it available, waiting to be "disseminated" or
transferred through "capacity building"? Who possesses and who should possess
such knowledge in order for development to occur? Is it a problem of dissemination
and capacity building?
Most of these questions are
already answers, or unraised questions, within the international cooperation
community. Agencies, just as schoolteachers, must know -- or act
as if they knew -- because this is their role and their business. And just
like bad teachers who have poor expectations of their students and think
for them, Agencies have in mind clients that are avid for ready-made diagnoses,
recipes, transportable and easily replicable success stories.4
Conventional international
aid has operated under one central assumption: the South has the problems,
and the North has the solutions (for such problems in the South). If the
solution proposed does not work, a new solution will be proposed, and countries
will be held accountable for the failure. And again, just like the conventional
school system that homogenizes students to facilitate its role and to ensure
the prescription of universal curricula and rules, Agencies prefer to think
of "developing countries" as a distinctive but uniform world, homogenized
by poverty and by a number of problems that are well-known (by Agencies
and countries in the North) and that differ at most in their magnitudes.5
Paradoxically, the very concept
of ownership is framed within an accepted asymmetrical relationship
(nobody thinks of ownership as an issue associated to the North). Thus,
ownership
- "having countries in the driver's seat" - appears as a promise,
as a donation, conceded and monitored by Agencies.6 Or, even
more bluntly, as a matter of "countries having a sense of ownership
for the initiative." (UNESCO, 2000)
No wonder donor-driven, top-down,
one-size-fits-all policies have resulted in repeated and costly failures.
If we are to judge the direction and quality of future changes in international
aid by the lessons Education for All (EFA) partners say they learned during
the 1990s, we should not expect meaningful changes in the 15-year EFA extension
agreed upon at the Dakar World Education Forum.7 Changes acknowledged
by Agencies, in the context of increasing pressure by the South for Agency
responsibility and accountability, are not visible yet. On the contrary,
many such problems - i.e. lack of coordination and enhanced competitiveness
among Agencies and specifically among EFA partners - may have worsened.
On the other hand, as many have started to alert, the new solutions aimed
at amending previous problems (i.e. the "sector-wide approach", which attempts
to correct the damage done by the extensive Agency-promoted "project" culture)
may initiate a new wave of improvised solutions, without really affecting
the core of the problems, including those of conventional aid culture.
Just as ineffective teacher training results in teachers incorporating
new terms but not necessarily embracing new concepts and changing their
practices, Agencies have fully incorporated politically correct jargon
such as participation, consultation, transparency,
accountability,
empowerment and ownership and haven given them their own
meaning and functional use.
Is ["good"] knowledge only to be found in the North?
Both related assumptions
must be put into question: that the North produces good quality and universally
accepted knowledge -- in general, about itself and about the South - and
that the South does not. In fact, both the North and the South have good
and bad schools and universities, produce good and bad quality research
and knowledge, and have competent and incompetent professionals in all
fields. The difference is that the North has far better conditions than
the South to develop research and to enhance professional competencies
and work conditions, and that the North socializes its professionals with
a "run the world" mentality where "knowing" what is best for the South
may appear as an in-built professional competency.8 However,
when one looks at the tremendous North/ South asymmetry, one wonders whether
the North is making the best use possible of its comparative advantages.
One also wonders how much more and better the South could do if we would
have similar national and international conditions in place.
Knowledge produced in the
South is disqualified or ignored altogether. The education field is a good
example of this. Those reading about education only in publications produced
in the North, and specifically those produced by Agencies (which is the
case of many education specialists in the North and of millions of students
in universities around the world), probably come to the conclusion that
there is no research, no intellectual life and no debate on education going
on outside North America and Europe, and that most of it - if not all of
it - happens to be written in English. (Torres, 1996) And yet, the South
has a vast research and intellectual production, much of it of similar
or better quality standards than that produced in the North, but much of
it is invisible to the North. Arrogance and prejudice are important explicative
factors as well as linguistic limitations. Here, the asymmetry and the
comparative advantage may operate the other way round: while researchers
and intellectuals in the South are often multilingual or at least bilingual
readers, and can thus have access to a wider variety of literature and
views, many researchers in the North are monolingual (specially native
English-speakers) and thus have limited access to the intellectual production
available worldwide. However, this does not prevent them from speaking
for the entire world and for "developing world" in particular, even when
they access only to North-produced syntheses of South-produced research.
Linguistic limitations should
not be a valid reason if the production of scientific knowledge is at stake
and, moreover, is such intellectual production claims international validity
and aims at interpreting and influencing realities in the South. Minimum
scientific rigor would demand to acknowledge the limitations and scope
of such reviews based on limited sources. Being professional and aiming
at serious professional roles at international level today requires not
only multidisciplinary but multilingual teams.
Is "good" knowledge expert knowledge?
The "knowledge-based rhetoric"
reinforces the expert and the technocratic culture ("the symbolic analyst").
National and international experts have multiplied and the term
has been abused to a point where anybody can be called such or believe
he/she is one. The expansion and costs of the international consultancy
industry have been analyzed and documented by various studies and for the
various regions. The situation is particularly critical in the case of
Africa, as highlighted in one of UNDP's Human Development Reports (UNDP,
1993).
The perverse consequences
of the expert and consultant drive in the South are enormous.9
The expert culture reinforces technocratic and elitist approaches, social
participation
and consultation as mere concessions to democracy rather than as
objective needs for effective policy design and action. It cultivates the
separation between thinkers and doers, reformers and implementers, both
at the national and global scale. It reaffirms the tradition to locate
problems on the implementation side, never on the side of those who diagnose,
plan and formulate policies.
Effective and sustainable
policies and reforms require not only (good, relevant) expert knowledge,
but also the (explicit and implicit, scientific or not) knowledge and will
of all those concerned. Policy in practice - i.e. educational reform
not
resulting in effective educational change- shows the perennial insufficiency
of expert knowledge and the indispensable need for consultation, participation
and ownership - whether it is governments, institutions, groups or individuals-
not only for implementation but as a condition for good policy design.
We have reached a point where,
more than expert knowledge, common sense can make the difference between
good and bad policy making, between good and bad program design.
Is "expert" knowledge good knowledge?
"Experts" make - and have
made many -- expert and costly mistakes. WB experts have been behind the
cyclical mistakes admitted by the WB in WB-assisted education policies
and projects over the past decades, notably: the strong emphasis placed
on infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s; the priority given to primary
education in the 1990s and the rates of return argument behind such priority;
the abandonment of higher education (admitted as a major mistake by J.
Wolfensohn himself during the official launching ceremony of the Higher
Education Report on March 1, 2000, in Washington); and the "project approach"
(now being amended with the SWAP - "sector-wide approach"). All these mistakes,
and their long-term consequences, were based on expert WB knowledge and
paid by countries in the South in both monetary as well as political and
social terms.
The faulty grounds of WB
research in the education field has been highlighted and documented by
many researchers in the South and in the North, and by WB people themselves.
Problems mentioned include overgeneralization, oversimplification, lack
of comparability of many studies that are anyhow compared, poor theoretical
and methodological frameworks, lack of conceptual rigor, mechanical translation
of research results into policy-making, and, more generally, use and abuse
of research (and of comparative international research in particular) and
of evaluation to legitimize recommended policies, funded projects and selected
success stories.
And yet, good or bad, this
is the research that sustains technical advice provided to client countries
in the South (and to other Agencies). And the one that is now attributed
global validity that is made available through a global web portal and
offered to decision makers in face-to-face intensive seminars.
The opaque relationship between
knowledge validation and (Agency) power is a critical, un-mentioned, factor.
Many of the ideas and trends that become dominant do so not necessarily
because of their merit or proven efficacy to explain or transform realities,
but because of the (ideological, political, financial) power that is behind
them.
Are information, communication, knowledge, education
and learning the same?
In the age of "knowledge"
and "learning", scientific research on learning -- from the most varied
fields: Biology, Psychology, Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology, Pedagogy,
History, etc. -- has begun to show its highly complex nature, mechanisms
and processes. And yet, we assist to a tremendous canalization of these
notions, particularly by Agencies and by many international and national
advocates of the "learning revolution".
Information, knowledge,
education, learning are easily confused and often used indistinctively
(see Box below). Ignoring current scientific knowledge available on these
issues, and in the best tradition of the banking school education model,
knowledge
and learning continue to be trivialized as a matter of access
(to school before, to the computer and the Internet today) and/or dissemination
(of information, of knowledge, of lessons learned, of models to be replicated).
INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE,
EDUCATION, LEARNING
Is
different from
|
INFORMATION
Information society
|
@
|
LEARNING
Learning society
|
INFORMATION
Information society
|
@
|
KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge society
|
INFORMATION
Use of ICTs
|
@
|
EDUCATION
Distance education
|
INFORMATION
Information technologies
|
@
|
COMMUNICATION
Communication technologies
|
EDUCATION
Lifelong education
|
@
|
LEARNING
Lifelong learning
|
ACCESS
Access to school, to ICTs,
etc.
|
@
|
LEARNING
Access to learning
|
DISSEMINATION
Disseminating information
|
@
|
LEARNING
Democratizing learning
|
CAPACITY
BUILDING
Teaching
|
@
|
LEARNING
Learning
|
There are reason s to believe
such trivialization and confusion are not just the result of ignorance
but of deliberate blurring. Anyone aware of such distinctions might conclude
that the " knowledge bank" may be more appropriately called a "data bank
" or an "information ban k" , and would reflect on many assertions that
tend to be taken for granted. Consider the following:
-
Information can be disseminated
but knowledge must be built.
-
Information dissemination does
not necessarily result in knowledge or in learning.
-
Education (and schooling) does
not necessarily result in learning.
-
Learning exceeds education and
education exceeds school education.
-
Information dissemination does
not imply or include learning.
-
Having access to the Internet
is no guarantee of being informed, much less of learning.
-
While lifelong education is
something that no society or person could afford, lifelong learning is
a fact of life and can be enhanced by various means.
-
ICTs and distance education
are much more effective for information than for knowledge and learning
purposes.
-
Good distance education requires
face-to-face interaction.
The "knowledge society" many
people have in mind is closer to an "information society". The "lifelong
learning" many are advocating is "e-learning" and big business, with everyone
buying computers and connected to the Internet. For others, "lifelong learning"
entails the burial of the school system and of formal education, and the
multiplication of non-formal and/or informal learning opportunities and
arrangements.
Unless North and South engage
in serious analysis, research and debate on all these issues and their
implications for a global "knowledge and learning society", the
"learning revolution" may be a new false alarm, an illusion created by
the technological revolution, or a revolution only for a few, with many
victims and wider gaps, controlled by central powers and benefiting strong
economic interests.
Is there a positive relationship between (expert) knowledge and (effective)
decision-making?
The weak linkages between
information/ knowledge and public policy design/ decision-making are an
old and well-known problem in both the North and the South. However, the
"knowledge-based aid" rhetoric appears to take such relationship between
(expert) knowledge and (effective) decision-making for granted, as well
as between their respective assumed agents - Agencies, on one hand, and
countries (now governments and civil societies) on the other. The
whos,
whats, what fors, wheres and hows of such knowledge
and knowledge transfer are not put into question.
The WB claims that the gap
between knowledge and decision-making is getting smaller in client countries
- where we would be seeing "more effective policy making". However, the
EFA decade assessment showed very clearly that education policies conducted
in the 1990s did not accomplish the goals. In the case of Latin America,
"quality improvement" in school education is not visible, at least not
in the domain that matters and that was supposedly targeted: learning.
It is accepted that these reform processes did not "reach the school",
did not improve teacher performance and morale, and did not modify conventional
pedagogical practices in the classroom. Even some of our publicized "success
stories" have deteriorated -- such as Escuela Nueva in Colombia
-- or show persistent problems -- such as the 900 Schools Program
in Chile -- when looked closer at the school level. (Carlson, 2000; Torres,
2000a; Avalos, 2001) A closer, more analytical look at the micro levels
and dynamics might reveal the same of many other "success stories" and
"best practices" hastily labeled as such and enthusiastically disseminated
by Agencies all over the world.
On the other hand, the "Cuban
success story" has been hard-to-digest and little publicised. The evaluation
of learning achievement (in language and mathematics among third and fourth
graders in both public and private schools) conducted in 1997 by UNESCO
Regional Office (OREALC) in 13 Latin American countries, showed Cuba's
absolute superiority over all other countries studied - which include among
others Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. (UNESCO-OREALC, 1998) Cuba
is facing a very difficult economic situation, and it is the only country
in the region that has no loans for its education system and reform, and
that did not follow WB education reform recommendations over the 1990s.
While some attribute the
failure of reform processes conducted in Latin America to lack of attention
to research results and policy recommendations, many others - included
the author of this piece - believe that part of the problem was too much
attention to such recommendations (the educational reform recipe of the
1990s) and too much reliance on national and international "expert knowledge"
for policy design and decision-making, too little social and teacher participation
and consultation, and too little value given to domestic research, indigenous
knowledge, and common sense.
The fact is that many countries
in this region are today "reforming the reforms", reviewing previous approaches,
acknowledging the limitations of top-down reforms and the importance of
involving teachers and teacher unions in more meaningful ways as well as
the need to put pedagogy and the school at the center. Growing disillusionment
and loss of credibility in reform efforts has come together with a growing
regional movement demanding responsibility, transparency and accountability
both from governments and from Agencies. The 2001 regional meeting
of Ministers of Education (Cochabamba, Bolivia, 5-7 March 2001), and the
Cochabamba Declaration and Recommendation, put for the first time aid-related
problems and issues high on the agenda.10
In this respect, the experience
with the Latin American Statement on Education for All (a 6-page document
prepared on the occasion of the Dakar Forum, circulated widely by e-mail
and the web, and signed to date by over 2000 people in the region) represents
an innovative and promising development, that contradicts conventional
North/South aid patterns: it is an endogenous initiative, born in Latin
America, out of Latin American concerns, and conducted in Spanish and Portuguese
(ownership is here a fact, not a concession); it is critical of
the role of governments and Agencies vis a vis education development
and reform in the region, and proposes the need for a new aid framework;
it is not an NGO but a social movement, involving a wide spectrum of sectors
and groups, including civil society, government and Agencies; information
disseminated regularly to the list of signers is both local, regional and
global; and it operates on a voluntary basis, with no international funding
and thus with total intellectual and financial autonomy.11 (Torres,
2000d)
DO WE WANT AND NEED "KNOWLEDGE-BASED
AID"?
Why would we want such
aid? It has been ineffective and costly, it has increased our dependency
and our foreign debt, it has not allowed us to develop our own human resources
(while we have paid external consultants to learn and become experts while
working in our countries); it has not allowed us to identify and develop
our own ideas, research, thinking, alternatives, models. And it has not
allowed us not learn along the way about both our achievements and mistakes.
Do we really need
such aid? In most, if not all, countries in the South we have the knowledgeable
and competent professionals we need to put in place sound education policies
and reforms. Moreover, if qualified and committed, nationals (and non-nationals
who end up sharing these characteristics and ideals as their own) have
two important advantages over non-nationals: they know the national/ local
language(s) and share local history and culture, and they love their country.
Motivation, empathy, ownership, sense of identity and of pride, sense of
being part of a collective- building project, are key ingredients of effective
and sustainable policy making and social action. There is an important
difference between living in a country, and visiting it on technical missions.
External consultants may leave ideas, documents and recommendations, but
it is those living in the country, zone, or community who will finally
do the job. Separating and differentiating the roles of those who think
and recommend, and those who implement and try to follow recommendations,
remains the key formula for non-ownership (or for fake ownership) and thus
for failure.
A
few final conclusions and recommendations
If
Agencies really want to assist the South, they must be ready to accept
the need for major shifts in their thinking and doing. It is not just a
matter of more of the same, or of improving cooperation mechanisms and
relationships. What is needed is a different kind of cooperation,
operating under different assumptions and rules, to be discussed and devised
together with the South, in professional dialogue. Partnership,
but not for business as usual.
What can Agencies do to assist
the South?
-
Work not only addressed to
the South but, most importantly, to the North Development and non-
or under-development are intertwined. Development can only occur
in the South if major changes are introduced in the North and in North/
South relationships. Awareness raising, critical positions and pressure
within the North, with both governments and societies, for the building
of a more equitable world, is the single most important contribution international
Agencies and critical intellectuals and activists in the North can make
to the South. In this, they are not substitutable.
-
Acknowledge diversity and
act accordingly Homogeneous understandings and approaches to the South
are not admissible. Just as we, in the South, learn about the North, and
are aware of the diversity that characterizes the various countries and
regions in the world, we expect the North to get better acquainted with
the realities and the diversity that characterize the so-called South.
Universal recipes, formulas and ready-to be transplanted models offend
intelligence, deny scientific knowledge and learning as a possibility,
and have proven ineffective as strategies for development.
-
Revise international cooperation
assumptions based on asymmetry and unidirectionality. Deficit approaches
to the South must belong to the past, once diversity is acknowledged. Knowledge
production, synthesizing, sharing and dissemination have and continue to
take place both in the North and in the South, and must thus be viewed
as two-way avenues. There is no reason why the North, international Agencies
and the WB in particular should monopolize the function of global catalysts,
synthesizers and disseminators of knowledge. There is much Agencies can
do to collaborate with the South in disseminating (to the North and within
the South) what the South produces and does.
-
Support social watch and
enhance professional dialogue with the South Social watch and participation
of civil society are critical requirements of national development and
of effective international cooperation for such development. This has been
emphasized by Agencies themselves, so here is a common platform for partnership
and alliances with "the critical South". This implies from Agencies a coherent
institutional behavior (democratic, transparent, accountable, open to learn),
a wider and more complex understanding of "civil society" that goes beyond
the traditional NGO-centered approach, and enhanced professional dialogue
and exchange with the intellectual community in the South including universities,
higher education and research institutions, as well as teacher and other
professional associations.
-
Sound understandings and
critical approaches to information, knowledge, education and learning
Critical thinking and critical approaches to information, knowledge, education
and learning are today more important than ever. Ensuring that all information
and knowledge transactions -- including of course those between countries
and Agencies -- incorporate such "critical" component should be part of
any modern international development cooperation model and of any modern
knowledge management system.
-
More questions and more learning
together Agencies have too many answers and too few questions, while
we in the South - and everyone else in the world - have more questions
than answers. Admitting ignorance and the need to learn, and to learn how
to learn, is at the very heart of a new international cooperation model.
Only honesty builds confidence, and mutual confidence is fundamental for
a healthy and collaborative relationship. North and South, Agencies and
countries, must learn to learn together and from each other.
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Assist countries identify
and develop their own human resources and capacities If ownership is
essential for development, it is time that it is considered seriously by
both countries and the international development community. The most effective
way to assist the South is by making sure that such assistance is sustainable,
non-directive, empathetic, invisible: assistance to help countries in the
South do our own thinking, our own research and experimentation, our own
networking and sharing, our own search for alternative models, our own
learning by doing, in our own terms and at our own pace.
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