Development Aid to Water Management in Mali Jan L.H

Joint PhD doctoral program in doctoral program in Science, Technology and Humanities Political Sciences cycle XXIV Settore Concorsuale: 14/C2 IWETO Discipline Codes: S195, S211, S220 Settore Scientifico-Disciplinare: SPS/08 IWETO Application Codes: 890, 260, 870 Development Aid to Water Management in Mali The Actors, ‘Global’ Paradigms, and ‘Local’ Translations Jan L.H. Cherlet Supervisor Coordinator Supervisor Università di Bologna Università di Bologna Ghent University Prof. Dr. Roberto Scazzieri Prof. Dr. Giuliano Pancaldi Prof. Dr. Koen Vlassenroot Final Exam 2012 Development Aid to Water Management in Mali The Actors, `Global' Paradigms, and `Local' Translations Contents Preface xi Acknowledgements xv Acronyms and abbreviations xvii I Context and design of the research1 1 Setting the scene3 1.1 The global development aid machinery...................7 1.2 The global water crises............................ 12 1.3 Development aid to the water sector.................... 13 2 Research question and outline 17 2.1 The need to observe development aid per se ................ 18 2.2 Research question............................... 18 2.3 State-of-the-art................................ 20 2.4 Research methodology............................ 22 2.5 Definition of frequently used concepts.................... 25 3 The three sites of observation 27 3.1 First site: headquarters of a development NGO.............. 30 3.2 Second site: the Inner Niger Delta in Mali................. 33 3.3 Third site: headquarters of a multilateral organization.......... 52 4 Interlude 55 II Empirical articles 57 5 Epistemic and technological determinism in aid 63 5.1 Introduction.................................. 63 iii Contents 5.2 From Technological to Epistemic Determinism............... 64 5.3 A genealogy of K&T in development.................... 66 5.4 Discussion................................... 75 5.5 Conclusion................................... 80 6 Implementing Capacity Building: a matter of translations 81 6.1 Introduction.................................. 81 6.2 Theories of the policy process........................ 83 6.3 Capacity Building............................... 85 6.4 The network of translations......................... 89 6.5 Discussion................................... 103 7 Water policy changes in West Africa, between structure and agency 109 7.1 Introduction.................................. 109 7.2 Structure and agency in development processes.............. 111 7.3 Emergence of IWRM in the multi-lateral sphere.............. 113 7.4 IWRM-inspired water policy changes in Burkina Faso and Mali..... 116 7.5 Discussing water policy reforms....................... 123 7.6 Conclusion................................... 126 8 Describing the emergence of IWRM with Actor-Network Theory 129 8.1 Introduction.................................. 129 8.2 Tracing the IWRM network......................... 132 8.3 Some experimentions with ANT vocabulary................ 148 8.4 Conclusions|the meaning of success and failure.............. 155 III Theoretical articles 157 9 Theoretical conditioning of GTM and observational data 161 9.1 Introduction.................................. 161 9.2 Theoretical conditioning of GTM...................... 163 9.3 Theoretical conditioning of observational data............... 166 9.4 Make the implicit explicit.......................... 170 9.5 Case study: multi-sited ethnography of development aid......... 173 9.6 Conclusions.................................. 178 10 Actor-Network Theory and multi-sited ethnography of aid 181 10.1 Introduction.................................. 181 10.2 Ethnographies of development aid...................... 183 10.3 A method/tool package............................ 189 iv Contents 10.4 Tracing the links............................... 197 10.5 Negotiating access and crafting an identity................. 202 IV Conclusions 205 11 Conclusions of the research 207 12 Practical implications of the research 215 Appendices 219 A Summary in English 219 B Summary in Italian 225 C Summary in Dutch 231 D List of observations and interviews 237 E Questions of the 12 focus group discussions in the IND 241 F Translations of key words in French, English, Bambara, Fula 243 G List of publications and presentations 245 Bibliography 249 v List of Figures 1.1 Mali and its neighboring countries in West Africa.............4 1.2 Types of development organizations and the links between them...... 10 1.3 Organizations (international and Malian) involved in water development. 14 3.1 Situation of the three sites of inquiry in the global network of actors... 28 3.2 The average precipitation (in mm/year) and climatic zones (as defined by the Ministry of Environment) in Mali.................... 35 3.3 Annual precipitation anomalies and temperature anomalies in the Sahel (1900-2005) with respect to the average precipitation and temperature of the 20th century................................ 36 3.4 The six selected municipalities and their position in the Inner Niger Delta. 49 5.1 The rise and fall of K&T discourses, and their characteristics....... 78 5.2 The rise and fall of K&T discourses, and their characteristics (continued) 79 6.1 Two theoretical models of capacity..................... 88 6.2 The ideal àrticulation of actors' in Mali, according to WaNGO...... 95 9.1 Some ontological categories that were implicitly assumed at the onset of the observations, and how they changed during the course of grounded theorizing.................................... 175 vii List of Tables 3.1 Selected indicators of economic and human development in Mali, compared to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa...................... 34 3.2 Selected indicators of water-related development in Mali, compared to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.......................... 37 3.3 Snapshot (2005-2006) of multilateral and bilateral aid projects and pro- grams in Mali's water sector......................... 39 3.4 Expenditure to water supply and sanitation in Mali and Sub-Saharan Africa, in $ per capita and by source of financing (2009)......... 39 3.5 Ethnic groups and traditional economic activities in the IND....... 45 3.6 The six selected municipalities and some characteristics.......... 48 3.7 The selected villages in each of the six municipalities........... 49 4.1 Theoretical approaches and main data sources of the four empirical chapters. 60 5.1 Some of the roles allotted to K&T in development, from the Enlightenment until today................................... 76 6.1 Distribution of the Belgian Official Development Aid in 2010....... 90 6.2 Funding sources of WaNGO in 2010..................... 93 6.3 Interests of the actors, and their interpretations of capacity and CB... 104 7.1 Strategies of water policy entrepreneurs and the classic policy change theories that underpin their strategies..................... 113 7.2 Selected steps in the process of water reforms in Burkina Faso and Mali, and at the regional level........................... 119 8.1 Countries with IWRM-inspired laws and management plans, auto-declared in surveys.................................... 131 8.2 Key events in the emergence and implementation of IWRM........ 143 8.3 Characteristics of the PDSEC plans of the six municipalities....... 147 11.1 Theoretical approaches and main data sources of the four empirical chapters.208 ix Preface Development aid has always been a controversial practice as well as a value-laden research subject. Conceived after World War II most probably as a vaccine against the creeping influence of communism, disdained by many for never achieving the objectives, accused of perpetuating the North's colonial-like hegemony, believed to smother any burgeoning self-reliance of the Global South, one time labeled as a bottomless pit, another time as a hopelessly under-financed commitment, development aid seems to elude unbiased analyses. My research will not embroider on these themes, nor judge whether development is `good' or `bad'. My research takes the practices of development aid in themselves as object of research. Indeed, before anything, development aid is realized through a complex ensemble of social interactions that involve actors of extreme diversity|and although these interactions happen to have important impacts in many parts of the world, rigorous empirical descriptions of these interactions remain unduly overshadowed by ideological discussions about the `desirability' or ‘effectiveness' of development. All research stems from a sensation of amazement, and mine is no exception. There is, on the one hand, the observation that development aid brings together extremely hetero- geneous actors, such as multilateral donors, development professionals from the Global North and South, the private sector from the North and from the South, government em- ployees, village chiefs, farmers. These actors are incredibly diverse in terms of financial resources, outreach, interests, cultural background and world view. On the other hand, when it comes to delivering development aid and implementing projects, they all seem to speak the same development jargon and to display congruence and commensurability; this congruence seems to extend from the donor, over the development professional, to the village chief. And although the ideas about what counts as `good' and `bad' aid have constantly changed over time |with new concepts, theories, and policies sprouting every few years| the apparent congruence amongst actors more or less remains. The questions that I posed

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