TOWARDSTOWARDS LOCALLOCAL PARTNERSHIPSPARTNERSHIPS The Social Interfaces of Aid in Rural Tanzania PEKKAPEKKA SEPPÄLÄ TOWARDS LOCAL ....................PARTNERSHIPS The Social Interfaces of Aid in Rural Tanzania PEKKA SEPPÄLÄ Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland Department for International Development Cooperation Helsinki 2000 TOWARDS LOCAL ....................PARTNERSHIPS The Social Interfaces of Aid in Rural Tanzania 4 TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I THE THEORY OF PROJECT-LEVEL INTERFACES 1. INTRODUCTION . .9 2. PROJECT-LEVEL AID INTERFACES IN SOCIAL THEORY . .21 PART II PROJECT-LEVEL INTERFACES IN SOUTH-EASTERN TANZANIA 3. THE SCENE: DEVELOPMENT AND AID IN SOUTH-EASTERN TANZANIA . .45 4. THE IMPACT OF AID ON LOCAL POLITICS . 63 5. ENCOUNTERS IN THE OFFICE . .104 6. ENCOUNTERS IN THE VILLAGE . .125 7. NEGOTIATING PROJECT INTERFACES: REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE-STUDIES . .152 PART III CHANGING AID POLICIES AND PRACTICES 8. THE IMPACT OF SECTORAL PROGRAMMES ON LOCAL DEVELOPMENT . .169 9. THE SENSITIVITY OF AID TOWARDS LOCAL POLITICS . .190 TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS 5 LITERATURE . .198 LIST OF TABLES 3.1 Central government funding for the Mtwara region from 1994/95 to 1997/98 . .54 3.2 The budget of Mtwara (rural) district for 1997/98 . .55 3.3 District councils' income in the Mtwara region . .56 4.1 The impact of the enclave orientation on local politics . .82 4.2 The impact of a partnership orientation on local politics . .99 LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Encounter analysis . .25 2.2 Conflict patterns at organisational interfaces . .28 2.3 Interface between discursive domains . .31 2.4 Aid interface as a contact point of institutional practices . .36 3.1 Local-level administrative structures in Tanzania . .53 8.1 The administrative setting of a sectoral programme . .175 MAPS 3.1. Districts in the Mtwara and Lindi Regions . .46 6 TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is based on studies conducted within a research programme titled Finnish Aid in Development. The members of the research team, particularly Juhani Kopo- nen, Timo Voipio, Ulla Vuorela, Seithy Chachage and Nestor Luanda have provided inspiration and criticism. Juhani Koponen and Marja-Liisa Swantz have kindly read and commented the manuscript. During the field studies, the RIPS programme has provided valuable logistical assis- tance. Marjaana Jauhola has transcribed tapes of interviews. Sheryl Hinkkanen has corrected the language while Marianna Holm and Auli Seppälä have edited the text. My sincere thanks to all of you. TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS 7 PART I THE THEORY OF PROJECT-LEVEL INTERFACES We need to resolve the serious theoretical gap in the analysis of social change and rural development that results from the tendency to formulate problems either from the point of view of how peasants react to development inter- ventions without really analysing the nature of the wider encapsulating sys- tem, or from the point of view of how external forces determine patterns of change without taking into account how the action of peasants themselves or of other local groups may shape these processes. Norman Long 8 TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS 9 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Towards a discursive mode in aid practices Recent years have seen a wealth of interesting attempts to reformulate the central problems of aid. More and more attention is being placed upon the way in which the aid relationship is construed. The recent reformulations are increasingly open in their political agenda, yet sensitive towards the complexity of the political scene. The openness in revealing assumptions and agendas has also meant that the previously separated discussants—from right and left, from north and south, representing acad- emic circles and practitioners—have much to share. Today, aid discussion accommodates various attempts to establish sincere co-oper- ation and to construct bridges over cultural and sectoral divisions. If one were asked to explain the historically founded reasons why such attempts are gaining momen- tum right now, it would be necessary to resort to a number of explanations. One fre- quently mentioned explanation is that the end of the Cold War has created room for more straightforward aid policies. Another related reason is the spread of multi-party politics and the associated demands for the further democratisation of society. Democratisation is a culturally loaded and highly controversial concept, and inter- pretations of it have generated a wealth of open dialogue. A third, somewhat indi- rect, explanation relates to globalisation and the liberalisation of economies which, although they have a dubious impact on economic indicators, have triumphed in that they have fostered political and economic entrepreneurship (through business lobbying, NGOs and other civil society ‘voices’) and have thus created new ‘stake- holders’ demanding to enter the dialogue. A fourth explanation is the maturation of a generation of aid experts who have gained enough insights to make constructive criticism. For many people in academic circles, especially those with a tendency towards Besserwisser arguments, there is nothing new in an old heaven and earth. They argue that the academics have already been talking for a long time about the obstacles to political participation, the problems of a state-centred planning tradition and the negative way in which such conventions affect the capacity of the whole develop- ment apparatus to support development ‘from below’. They also argue that the recent emphasis on partnership, dialogue and ownership is merely sloganism, con- cealing even more direct western domination. They translate partnership as ideolog- ical seminars, dialogue as political conditionalities and ownership as cost-sharing schemes and increased taxation. 10 TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS There is still ample pastureland between the naive apolitical striving towards dia- logue and the cynical wisdom of seasoned experts and academics. I attempt to deal with this field in such a way that the critics are given the opportunity to voice their concerns but the successes of the dialogue are also presented. Since development co-operation is a vast topic, it is necessary to restrict the analy- sis to a part of it. In this book, the emphasis is laid upon project-type bilateral and NGO work in rural areas, with Tanzania as a case-study country. The discussion concentrates on the planning and implementation processes. Policy concerns are dis- cussed to the extent that they relate to the project environments. I analyse the aid relationship in project-type co-operation, emphasising the prac- tical issues of the implementation phase. In order to underline the nature of the approach chosen, I use the term aid relationship to describe the overall (‘bilateral’) relationship between a donor country and a recipient country, the term aid interface to describe the multitude of social links between a variety of actor categories, and aid encounters to describe contacts between individuals representing different categories. The focus of the study is on the level of the aid interfaces. My central research question concerns the capacity of an aid project to be sensi- tive towards the local circumstances. The second issue that I will discuss is the capac- ity of project level work to reflect or, in the best case, to guide national policy debates. The first issue, sensitivity towards the local circumstances, is not a new one. It has been discussed for as long as development work has been conducted. Project manu- als repeatedly state that one should take into account the social and cultural conven- tions of the project site. In the most simple interpretations, this is understood as learning the code of conduct and the language of the local people. A project worker is expected to be able to tackle the local problems in the aid relationship after expending some effort on the ‘cultural dimension’ of the project. There is also a belief that the aid interface that exists between administrative partners tends to be fairly smooth but that the problems are more serious when one tries to reach the ‘targeted people’, who tend to be poor, marginalised and often lacking in the cultural tools that would enable them to communicate easily with the project staff. Thus the efforts of coping with the cultural dimension has concentrated on the culture of these people. In my view, the understanding of what is meant by ‘the cultural dimension’ has changed considerably during the 1990s. It is now more openly acknowledged that the cultural problems of aid interfaces are entangled with political issues. Instead of visualising a direct relationship between the aid worker and a recipient, it is useful to visualise a complex social arena where ‘targeted people’ exhibit various internal groupings in their political and economic dealings with the local elite. This under- standing has penetrated the ways in which projects are planned and implemented. I TOWARDS LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS 11 perceive the shift in attention as a shift from a strict ‘targeting’ orientation towards a ‘stakeholder’ orientation. This shift means increased political realism because aid workers now understand that ‘the targeted people’ do not live in a vacuum but have their own history—memories of political upheavals, to give an example—and their existing social confrontations. Regarding the second issue, namely the capacity of project level work to reflect or, indeed, to guide national policy debates, many views are being expressed. Some peo- ple working at the HQs in New York and Paris firmly believe that the development machinery is built like a pyramid—that policies invented at the centre spread into the peripheries to be implemented. Policy formulations at the headquarters level are thought to be decisive, and many self-respecting experts prefer to be part of the lofty circles addressing policy formulation. At the apex, the centripetal networking of world-level aid leaders has led to new visions of co-operation in which emphasis is laid upon wide national and sectoral programmes implemented by united donor fronts.