Keywords

Introduction: How We Got Here: Learning from 40 Years of Faltering Effort to Eliminate World Poverty

The international development aid challenge – to reduce world poverty and to ensure food and water security and dignity of all – is at once both simple and complex to grasp. A simple stark reality is that over the past 25 years, global food production has grown more rapidly than global population, but yet more people than ever before now live in hunger and poverty. According to the World Food Programme (www.wfp.org/1billion):

  • One person in six goes hungry each day.

  • One child dies every 6 seconds from hunger and the diseases it causes – that is, five ­million children each year.

  • Every year throughout the world, almost ten million children die before their fifth birthday.

  • Based on current trends, child deaths in Africa alone are set to grow by an additional 700,000 a year.

Where development becomes complex is the fact that where development is concerned, everything is connected to everything else. Water, trade, infrastructure, land, access to capital, debt, nutrition, health, education and respect for human rights are all linked inextricably within a web of interrelated but often independently variable factors, all of which impinge in some way on the quality of life of a given community. In order to gradually enable people to build up their fractured self-esteem, restore some hope and confidence and help to develop their capacity, it is necessary to:

  • Generate income in a self-reliant manner.

  • Conserve soil from erosion.

  • Purify water.

  • Offer protection from infection.

  • Make the most of whatever nutrition is available.

  • Assert their rights as citizens to services from their government.

  • Give their children a chance to go to school.

The development process thus comprises many facets and factors. When these are moving forward in concert, a mutually reinforcing virtuous circle will be generated. But if – as so often happens – progress on one front becomes negated and undermined by slippage on others, the spiral instead becomes a downward and often a very vicious one. Although the repercussions of particular development projects cannot always be foreseen, the risks of unwelcome surprises arising during and post-implementation can be significantly reduced by systematic and participative consultation beforehand among stakeholders, and this is the essence of the ‘negotiated development’ concept which we are advocating in this chapter. The negotiated model can be encapsulated in adherence to the three Ps: participation, partnership and pro-poor priority setting; all are necessary preconditions to achieving the necessary sense of buy-in and ownership by beneficiaries which in turn makes for longer-term project sustainability.

The Quest for Good Development Practice

Though the basic interconnectedness between key development factors may appear self-evident and straightforward to grasp, it has tended to elude policymakers for decades past, whether at the level of national governments in the global south or within the institutional donor agencies responsible for disbursing ­development aid. More recently, a more holistic approach to understanding development practice has been gaining ground and has found expression in internationally agreed frameworks for development involving all the key official development partners, in the form of the Paris Declaration 2005 and the Accra Agenda for Action 2008 (OECD 2008). Key components of this framework are (a) harmonisation of aid effort across the traditional sectoral demarcations, (b) alignment of development partner programmes with national policy frameworks and (c) managing for development results. Tangible results are about positive improvements in the lives of poor people.

But looking back over the past 40 years, it is surely surprising that it has taken so long to institutionalise this axiom of development as a holistic process. A stylised characterisation of the evolving development discourse and practice over the past four decades would reveal that we have taken a circuitous route to reach where we now are, lurching from one fixation to another, eventually forging the general consensus about ‘integrated development’ encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml.

In the post-colonial 1960s, the ‘holy grail’ in development terms was thought to reside in economic growth reaching a ‘take-off’ point: economic growth was defined by Simon Kuznets, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971, as ‘a long-term rise in capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to the [country’s] population, this growing capacity based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments it demands’ (Todaro 1989); what emerges here is a technocratic, fairly unidimensional definition of the perceived key to progress, devoid of any real recognition of distributional equity, social cohesion, the nurturing of a participative and active ‘civil society’ and the ‘common good’. This was also the era of massive infrastructural projects (Upper Volta, Kariba and Cabora Bassa dams) and of efforts towards rapid industrialisation (relying heavily on parastatals as the key engines).

During the early 1970s, significant themes embraced in development thinking were (a) the ‘green revolution’, epitomised by ‘miracle’ high-yielding rice and other crop varieties which were supposed to revolutionise agricultural yields and thereby eliminate hunger, and (b) a focus on disease prevention and eradication through mass vaccination (smallpox, yellow fever, typhoid, etc.).

During the 1980s, the development policy became pervaded by neoliberal ­macroeconomic strictures and ‘structural adjustment’ programmes, resulting in an aggravated debt crisis which continued into the successive decades.

The 1990s saw the spotlight being put on interrelated issues such as gender equity, population control, reproductive health and combating the prevalence of HIV and AIDS, along with a significant focus on universal basic education (e.g. the seminal ‘Education for All’ 1990 conference in Jomtien, Thailand). More recently, gender roles have been explored in the context of water politics and the dynamics of how activists fought their battles in ‘water wars’ in Bolivia (Laurie 2011).

The development landscape of the past decade has been dominated by the MDGs with their implied recognition that the fight for poverty reduction had to embrace all sectors of development interventions, plus climate change and debt relief. There was a growing appetite in the international community for more joined-up thinking and concerted action. Although the MDGs were backed up by commitments on donor cooperation towards aid effectiveness in Paris in 2005 and Accra in 2008, translating these protocols into operational effect has proved to be challenging.

What May Go Wrong If Development Is Not Negotiated?

At the heart of our concept of negotiated development lies the maxim that the development process should be primarily people centred. Technical and logistical issues of programme design should therefore be approached first and ­foremost from the starting point of clarity about which needs – and perhaps more importantly, whose needs – are to be addressed. What also needs to be assessed carefully is the potential ‘collateral damage’ to livelihoods and social conditions of people having to live with the consequences of misguided project ­planning. A case study is presented in this section of the chapter of a major infrastructural project that went wrong. Some salutary lessons about the importance of ‘negotiated development’ can be drawn from this instance where the converse happened.

The Tana River project is not unfortunately an isolated example. The World Bank’s report, ‘Resettlement and Development – The Bank-wide ‘Review of Projects Involving Involuntary Resettlement 1986–1993’, concludes that violations of its own resettlement policy were common in many of its projects involving forced relocation. The World Commission on Dams (WCD) undertook a wide-ranging meta-study of the impact of major schemes for construction of dams and associated hydroelectric schemes, with particular reference to developing countries (WCD 2000). Their finding was that the initial assessments of such projects consistently underestimated the number of people who were either displaced from their ­domicile or whose livelihoods were adversely affected in the long term by, for example, irreversible changes in the water table levels, soil conditions or access to markets. Examples of major dam projects in Africa where such difficulties were ­experienced included the tri-national Ruzizi hydroelectric project (serving DRC, Rwanda and Burundi), the Funtua dam in Nigeria and the Kiambere reservoir scheme on the Tana River in eastern Kenya. According to the comprehensive survey of all major dam projects carried out by WCD, it was found that 35% more people were displaced and had to be resettled than originally planned. This tendency towards underestimation of negative impact was even more pronounced in the case of schemes funded by the World Bank, where the actual number of involuntarily resettled people turned out to be 47% higher than the estimate made at the time of initial project appraisal.

Kenya’s Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority (TARDA): A Case Study

The 300-mile long Tana River – the longest in Kenya – was harnessed in the 1980s by two major projects: the Kiambere hydroelectric dam scheme and (some 240 miles downstream from it) the Bura irrigation project. Both were co-funded by the World Bank. The text that follows is adapted from ‘Troubled Waters: World Bank Disasters Along Kenya’s Tana River’ (Horta 1994).

The Kiambere Dam

This major infrastructural scheme was designed to create 140 MW of electric power. But little attention was paid at the planning stage to the fate of the people who once farmed the fertile valley and were forced to leave when the reservoir was filled. A social survey of the affected area was carried out only when construction was nearly complete, by which time some 6,000 people were already displaced (six times the original estimate). In the absence of a resettlement plan, people lost their land, access to water and pasture for their cattle. Threatened by hunger, many found refuge in surrounding villages, thereby increasing pressure on the livelihoods of communities that absorbed the displaced population.

The Bura Irrigation Project

Downstream from the Kiambere dam, the Bura irrigation project was supposed to irrigate about 35,000 acres to grow cotton and maize, at an estimated cost of $98 million. Although the cost rose to $108 million, only about 6,000 acres were actually irrigated, while social measures (including 20 village health units) were cancelled. Some 20,000 farmers from different parts of Kenya were induced to resettle to Bura by the illusory promise of irrigated agricultural land. Instead for them drought and famine made them dependent on food aid from the United Nations World Food Programme. The Bura project area now resembles a ghost town: housing units built for project staff stand empty, dilapidated and looted; huge water towers stand abandoned in the scrubby landscape; and irrigation canals have become overgrown with thorny vegetation. The project has also had an adverse impact on evergreen floodplain forests, which were rich in plant and animal species.

The Bura project has been a drag on the Kenyan economy, as the debt is repayable in hard currency, adding pressure to increase exports to generate foreign exchange.

The World Bank’s Project Performance Audit Report in 1990 concluded that project managers should have been alert to the problems at an earlier stage and taken remedial action. The Bank now recognises the defects in appraising past infrastructural projects and has put in place policies and guidelines for stricter social and environmental impact assessments at the outset.

Past instances of deficient practice reflect not so much a failure in terms of ­technical appraisal of projects, but an insufficient grasp of what integrated development is, and how it can best be given operational effect; this realization is surely key to good development outcomes, requiring negotiation with the different levels of stakeholders affected. In more recent times, the track record in major dam schemes (e.g. the Lesotho Highlands Water Project), although still controversial, would suggest that some essential lessons have been learned from painful experiences of the past (See WCD 2000). Independent environmental and social impact assessments are essential, as are advance and meaningful consultation with communities affected by such schemes and proper provision for resettlement plans and development packages, designed to enable displaced communities to regain their productivity and to rebuild a viable and conducive social milieu. Implementation of such a resettlement plan has become part of the contractual obligations between the international financial institution concerned (e.g. World Bank or African Development Bank) and the borrower (typically the national government, public utility or regional development body). Consequently, the World Bank now declines to finance projects entailing population displacement without prior guarantees of resettlement policy standards and formal consultation mechanisms being put in place (Cook 1994).

But the pursuit of integrated development in turn requires the capacity to promote good development practice which is properly informed by independent evidence-based research across the diverse multidisciplinary spectrum of specialist knowledge relevant to development. For example, the Tana River case study points up the need for development practice to encompass both the ‘hard’ technical expertise (engineering, health, environment, etc.) with insights from ‘softer’ disciplines key to an effective negotiation process (social sciences, community development, training for transformation, communications, conflict resolution, etc.). Our contention, developed in the next section of this chapter, is that this potential to harness and integrate cross-disciplinary knowledge and research in the service of development can be provided by the higher education (HE) sector and that the two worlds of HE and development therefore need to engage with each other as never before.

Changing Perceptions on Higher Education’s Contribution to (Inter-)national Development: A Historical Overview

Higher education (HE) has a vital role to play – alongside government and wider civil society – in promoting human development, in a way which puts peoples’ needs first and which has poverty alleviation and poverty eradication as its ­overarching goal. This is even more true at the present time. As socio-economic development becomes more knowledge intensive, the role of HE is essential to the promotion of balanced and coherent national development strategies of reduced child mortality; eradicating poverty; ensuring democracy, peace and respect for human rights; and striving for environmental sustainability.

Though this may seem self-evident, there have been significant shifts in attitudes towards HE’s role over the past 40 years, just as the conventional wisdom on development policy overall was seen to have shifted significantly over that period of time. Following independence, African universities enjoyed a period of growth and national prestige and were perceived as engines of nation building and economic modernisation. Regarded as powerhouses of human capital formation, they were expected to lay the basis for economic take-off. HE was also seen as important to the process of Africanisation, producing the graduates to replace the colonial administration. The private sector was still dominated by ex-colonial multinational corporations (MNCs) with very limited requirement for local graduates, and the colonial legacy continued to influence strongly university-state relations. Thus, the early period of independence was mainly positive for the expanding university sector, which enjoyed the support of several international donors. (For more detailed treatment of this expansionary phase, see Ajayi et al. 1996). However, many of the negative aspects of colonial times remained and state dominance continued. National governments of newly independent states increasingly asserted their rights to ‘own’ and exert control over HE institutions, one indication of which was the extent to which ­vice-chancellorships and other senior appointments became politicised.

The development of the concept of human capital in the 1960s led to a literature of detailed analysis of the contribution of education to economic growth and of the costs and benefits of different levels of education. By the mid-1980s, scepticism was growing among international donors about the merits of public investment in HE in less developed countries. For most of two decades, HE institutions were hopelessly overstretched by a combination of dwindling resources and rapidly increasing enrolments. During the economic downturn of the 1980s, the newly independent governments could no longer afford to support universities to a level necessary for standards to be maintained. The situation was exacerbated by Structural Adjustment Programmes and the contraction of the public service, for which many graduates were destined. Large-scale graduate unemployment ensued, causing an exodus of talent (or brain drain). A generation of academic talent was lost, with untold damage done to the human capital base, depleted as it was of specialist skills in key areas such as agronomy, medicine, hydrology, pedagogy, applied statistics, law, public administration, journalism, engineering, business and commerce.

The contribution of HE to economic and social development relative to other ­priorities became sharply contested. In particular, a World Bank report (1986) analysed the contribution of education to economic growth and of the costs and benefits of different levels of education, using earning differentials as a proxy measure for quantifying direct benefits. This study also presented conclusions based on comparative analyses of rates of return to investment in different levels and types of education across different regions of the world. It also compared the returns to individuals (the private rate of return) with the returns to wider society (the social rate of return).

The conclusions were that the private rate of return (the economic benefit to the individual) was greater than the social rate of return (the economic benefit to society as a whole) for all levels of education. But the greatest social rate of return accrued to primary education, followed by secondary, with third level being the least ‘cost effective’. This analysis, which only subsequently turned out to have been oversimplistic, was used to supporting a public policy stance of preferential investment in primary education. The World Bank report asserted that in most developing countries, ‘the present financing arrangements constitute a misallocation of resources devoted to education’ because ‘HE was the relatively less socially efficient investment’ (World Bank 1986, pp. 9–10).

This finding was widely quoted and exerted considerable influence on the ­lending policies of the World Bank itself, on domestic priority setting by governments at country level and on the aid strategies of international donors in the two decades that followed. This position was regarded as supporting a public policy of preferential investment in primary education and was reflected in the World Declaration on Education for All (UNESCO 1996). Although this Declaration emphasised the importance of education broadly, it revealed an almost exclusive focus on primary education, further reinforced in Millennium Development Goal 2 of universal primary education by 2015. The argument was further strengthened by the fact that HE was generally confined to the relatively richer urban middle classes who were effectively being subsidised by the rural poor who did not have access to this education, thus increasing inequality.

Higher Education and Development Effectiveness

The unduly arbitrary segmentation of education implicit in this analysis ran counter to the more integrationist view of HE’s role in development which has re-emerged in more recent years (King 2009). The essential interdependence between the different levels of education can be demonstrated very clearly with reference, for example, to MDG 2 – achieving universal primary education. In the final analysis, how can this goal be realised without high-quality teacher education, accompanied by properly moderated state examination systems, a rigorous school inspectorate, reliable management information and other associated infrastructural frameworks, all of which link directly back to the indispensable role of HE as a repository of expertise and builder of capacity for these very functions? The same rationale holds true of the other key sectors of health, water and sanitation and agriculture and food.

An endorsement of this more rounded view of things is discernible in the influential Report of a Task Force on Higher Education (World Bank 2000), which, though commissioned by the World Bank, distanced itself from – and superseded – the ­earlier orthodoxy of the mid-1980s which this new report said had ‘relegated higher education to a relatively minor place on its development agenda’. The earlier basis of calculating the social rate of return was shown to have been unduly restrictive (­relying largely on relative earnings data) and had therefore underestimated the ­indirect benefits of education to society (‘externalities’). But in the meantime, the damage was done:

for the best part of a generation, university faculty salaries remained flat or declined, research funding dried up, university libraries stopped purchasing books and journals, physical facilities crumbled, new building was terminated, … student scholarships were largely eliminated, … and new faculty hiring was curtailed.

(Szanton and Manyika 2008, p. 2)

The onset of the HIV and AIDS pandemic further depleted the human resource base in HE in sub-Saharan Africa.

Squaring the Circle

Teferra and Altbach (2003) suggest that ‘the problems [facing Africa’s universities] are difficult and may even be getting worse as the pressure for academic and institutional expansion comes into conflict with limited resources’. However, the situation is not considered irretrievable, with the authors pointing to three very positive trends which inspire hope, namely:

  • The emergence of democratic political systems in certain countries of ­sub-Saharan Africa, along with a more vibrant civil society across the continent.

  • A revival of collective self-confidence in African HE and the renewed commit­ment by many to build successful and resilient institutions despite difficult circumstances.

  • Recognition by leading donor agencies that investment in African HE is vital for development.

Other trends underline this momentum for change. Presidents are no longer chancellors, and ­universities are seeing their autonomy strengthened albeit in return for greater transparency, equity of access, economic relevance and accountability. ‘Buffer’ bodies are being introduced in the form of national councils for HE which help mediate relations between the HE sector and the state. In keeping with the neoliberal ethos, the state is being ‘rolled back’ and universities are being encouraged to diversify their funding sources reducing dependence on the state, fees are being introduced and student services are being privatised. Furthermore, a rapidly growing private HE sector is emerging in several countries. The exclusive focus on primary education is being questioned, and recent World Bank reports (World Bank 2000, 2002) have emphasised the role which universities can and should play in poverty reduction. Earlier rate of return calculations based on potential earnings has been challenged (World Bank 2000, p. 39; Bloom et al. 2006). While confirming the earlier view that the private benefits of university education include better employment prospects, higher salaries and a greater ability to save and invest, recent research provides much better evidence of the social or public rates of return. These include at the very least the role of universities in the education of teachers, doctors and other professionals essential to economic development. Externalities and spillovers to society include better health, lower birth rate, improved technology and strengthening of governance and democracy (Bloom et al. 2006). Thus, a much stronger case for investment in universities and HE generally is being established and is being given a further boost by the increasing emphasis on the development of knowledge-based economies to which universities are central.

The role of the state has changed from one of financial neglect to one of renewed interest and even active support. Civil society has found its voice and is contributing to the emerging public debate on the development of HE. With increasing decentralisation of government, local community groups are competing with each other to attract new universities to their area on the basis that they benefit the local community, economically and socially.

However, it is in the private sector where the biggest changes are to be seen. Private universities are an increasingly important feature of the educational landscape ranging from the world class Ivy League universities of the USA to the small for-profit unlicensed – and often unscrupulous – operators. The private sector’s role is no longer confined to that of prospective employer of graduates but increasingly as a provider of educational services which can be traded on international markets. In keeping with the neoliberal agenda, this opens up the educational market to global competition, rolls back the state, eliminates the monopoly traditionally enjoyed by the state-funded national universities and allows the individual student to enter the market and make choices in order to maximise private gain for themselves. In theory, it also offers opportunities for the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) university sector to create strategic partnerships and to gain access to global markets. However, given the current state of the public university sector in SSA, this opening up of markets threatens to undermine them even further especially in the absence of appropriate legislation to control the market, ensure quality and protect citizens from rogue operators selling degrees and qualifications across the internet.

From the analysis presented above, it is apparent that the respective roles of the state, the civil society and the private sector in the development of the university sector in SSA are contested, evolving and negotiated in an increasingly competitive global market. Appropriate public policy and actions do not divide neatly into the threefold categorisation of steering, enabling and contesting development but rather have elements of all three. The question is therefore whether and to what extent there is any convergence in relation to public policy between the neoliberals (associated with enabling immanent development) and the interventionists (associated with steering development) and those who contest development orthodoxy (people-centred development). Where there is consensus around policy and action, it is often for completely different reasons.

Firstly, there is broad agreement that a strong university sector has an important role to play in economic growth and hence in poverty reduction (World Bank 2000, 2002; Bloom et al. 2006). For neoliberals, the sector is primarily valued for its direct contribution to economic development, whereas others would also include its contribution to the development of civil society and democracy.

Secondly, there is fairly general agreement that universities should be given greater autonomy and independence from government, but in return they must be accountable and relevant. Neoliberals seek to empower the HE sector (public and private) to compete in the marketplace, whereas those supporting people-centred development (and many interventionists) are motivated more by the social imperative to protect academic freedom and an education system based on merit.

Thirdly, there is a high degree of consensus in relation to local partnerships and community participation in HE. All agree that the location of a university in a particular area benefits the local economy directly in terms of providing jobs, in supporting local industry and also in potential spin-off activities from university research. Neoliberals see this as an opportunity for both cost sharing and stimulating economic growth. Interventionists and people-centred development proponents also emphasise the social and educational benefits to the local community.

Fourthly, it is accepted that the state must intervene to regulate the educational market especially as the demand for university places greatly exceeds the supply available through the public sector. Unregulated ‘universities’ offering degrees for sale over the internet undermine the university sector as a whole bringing qualifications into disrepute and breeding mistrust among potential employers.

The state has a critical role in developing a comprehensive policy framework that considers both public and private institutions, multiple entry paths and credit transfers or, as the neoliberals would put it, creating an enabling regulatory environment easing entry into the marketplace and offering appropriate financial incentives (World Bank 2002, p. 83).

Fifthly, the imperative to improve both the quality and quantity of third-level education in SSA is widely acknowledged. While most people accept that chronic underfunding is largely to blame for poor quality, many neoliberals also attribute the problem to inefficiency, poor governance and corruption by the universities themselves.

But the issue of where expansion in the sector should take place – in the public or private sector, in specific disciplines or across all areas – is less clear. The state and the private sector have a preference for private sector growth, whereas many sections of civil society would prefer to see the expansion taking place in the less commercially oriented public sector and in the faith-based not-for-profit sector.

Even more controversial is whether increasing student numbers should be spread across all disciplines or confined to specific disciplines. Neoliberals and some interventionists feel that state investment in universities in SSA should be targeted principally at those disciplines which will yield the greatest economic benefit, namely, science, engineering and technology (SET). Given the high cost of teaching these subjects, it is highly improbable that the private sector will address any supply-demand imbalance. Other interventionists and certainly those supporting people-centred development would be more likely to favour increases across all disciplines on the basis that diversity is important to providing a rich and stimulating academic environment – and that students should be free to choose.

The area of greatest divergence not surprisingly is who should pay for university education. Neoliberals demand the (re)introduction of fees, together with a student loan system or graduate tax, on the basis of market principles: but this has proved problematic (Teferra and Altbach 2003). For the universities, the ability to charge fees reduces their financial dependence on the state and is also associated with improved student motivation, attendance and completion rates. However, many elements within civil society oppose the introduction of fees, seeing it as inherently inequitable and as effectively paying twice – once through the public taxation system and a second time through the fees.

While tertiary enrolments expressed as the percentage of the age cohort enrolling in postsecondary education vary dramatically from country to country, virtually all the countries with enrolments of less than 5% are in SSA (compared to over 50% in North America) (World Bank 2000, p. 12). If the countries of SSA are to be able to reduce poverty, improve health and participate in the global knowledge economy, then the current enrolment rates must increase significantly – and quickly. This will require a hitherto unprecedented partnership and consensus between the state, the civil society and the private sector, together with the universities themselves and the major international agencies. As this chapter has shown, even though their motivation may be quite different, there is a growing consensus among the key players. The challenge will be to develop a university system that is ‘of Africa for Africa’ which take its place in the global university sector while at the same time supporting economic growth and poverty reduction locally.

Some Key Challenges

To be effective, pro-poor policies need to operate across multiple sectors and to do so in an integrated way which promotes alignment, harmonisation and coherence, (c.f. the Paris Declaration 2005 and the Accra Agenda for Action 2008). Coherence between external donor initiatives and those of host government, combined with mutual alignment and complementarities between donor agencies themselves, can help ensure that policies across a range of issues support, or at the very least do not undermine, the attainment of development objectives. ‘Put simply, policy coherence is about ensuring that time and effort is not wasted by actions in one sphere, undermining actions in another’ (House of Commons 2004).

Historically, it has proved difficult for policymakers and other stakeholders to identify which policies are most suitable when dealing with national priority issues and to ascertain how best policies can be implemented in situations which differ widely. The most obvious difficulty is that of precisely attributing cause-and-effect. Despite these inherent problems, the ethical imperative of ensuring a better quality of life for the poor, as well as sustaining the planet beyond the crux of ‘peak oil’, calls for a better understanding of how research in the areas of education and poverty can contribute to pro-poor policies and help improve development outcomes. The sheer scale of global need is such that we cannot afford the luxury of efforts and resources being fragmented. For maximum benefit, more research needs to be focused on the poor. For example, ‘at present, only 10% of the global spend on health research examines issues affecting the poorest (90%) of the world’s population’ (Department for International Development 2009, p.13).

There is increasing interest among both researchers and policymakers in applying this new thinking to the link between development research and development policy. Donors are keenly interested in tracking the longer-term outcomes and impact of development interventions. Both parties are interested in knowing what works and herein lies an opportunity for HE institutions to provide rigorous, evidence-based independent analysis. Many research findings could be more readily available to inform policymakers on poverty prevalence, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, better quality health and education and service delivery, but more often than not, a gap exists between research results and policy development and the desired outcome of converting research results into practical benefits for quality of life. This is of particular concern in terms of the challenge of meeting the MDGs.

We wish to conclude this section by positing some key challenges to be considered in forging a more negotiated approach to development policy and practice.

Awareness Raising: At long last, the penny has begun to drop at high level policy thinking that integrated national development strategies and sector-wide approaches to education must necessarily include the revitalisation of the HE sector. Nevertheless, there remain significant pockets of scepticism about HE’s essential role in national development, not least in many Ministries of Finance around Africa. It is known, for example, that the African Development Institute now strongly favours providing funding for strategic development in HE precisely because of its multiplier effect throughout the economy, but this is being thwarted by most national Ministries of Finance. Some echelons of the donor community also remain to be convinced.

Language: Sometimes, the HE sector fails to do justice to its own indispensible contribution to human development, partly because the language of discourse which it tends to use is not fully shared with those who are more directly engaged in policy and practice. Perhaps the description of a research question or hypothesis tends too often to be couched in terms which are accessible to the academic or specialist peer audience, to the exclusion of a more generalist audience who might well be enthused by the potential of a research application to transform livelihoods or to be a catalyst for social change. Perhaps also the mechanisms for disseminating research findings which are of potential importance to development policy and practice need to be broadened beyond the traditional peer-reviewed journals, to include web-based resources and broadcast material.

Promoting Quality Assurance. Enrolments in African HE are rising exponentially, but quality assurance mechanisms are only in their infancy.

Insularity Arising from Economic Uncertainty in the Global North. It is not suggested that HE institutions should somehow reinvent themselves as development agencies or advocacy interest groups. But what is being suggested here is that such is the urgency and scale of the twin challenges of poverty reduction and sustainability of the environment that these:

  1. 1.

    Must become central points of orientation for our institutions.

  2. 2.

    Are mainstreamed into the day-to-day work of teaching, research and civic engagement in country.

  3. 3.

    Act as the ‘glue’ for strong long-term north-south collaborative partnerships which reflect our growing interdependence – such as the Irish African Partnership (http://www.irishafricanpartnership.ie/).

Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Research. A study on factors promoting and inhibiting development-related research, undertaken by the Irish African Partnership for Research Capacity Building (Healy and Nakabugo 2010), provided a springboard for subsequent dialogue with development practitioners. Some interesting suggestions for ‘action points’ emerged from this process:

  • To help overcome the perception that academic research is removed from the daily reality of most ‘ordinary’ people, researchers need to ensure that their research connects with real and defined needs in the wider community and that the potential contribution (or ‘the big idea’) is conveyed in plain language.

  • Maximising the interface with the policy environment, researchers need to know how government works, as policy is political rather than academic.

  • Researchers benefit from nurturing structured dialogue with user-communities, via nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), faith-based organisations, etc. and building in community consultation processes into research methodologies.

  • Institutions should be more prepared to accord recognition to staff who demonstrably practise sustained civic engagement.

  • Researchers must look for new and effective channels of dissemination, in order to ‘get heard’, opening up communication to policymakers and partnering with civil society groups.

Conclusion

Negotiated development where it can be said to occur does not happen in a formal space, rather it emerges in a variety of informal and often unstructured ways and at different phases of any proposed development project. While this chapter has focussed to a large extent on sub-Saharan Africa, the lessons learned are not unique to that region. The story of the Misicuni big-dam project in Bolivia illustrated the point where globalisation, neoliberalism and regional interests interacted in sometimes surprising ways to reach a ‘settlement’ (Laurie and Marvin 1999). The debates around the project centred on a number of issues including cultural understandings of the central nature of the project which involved the reduction and use of water courses. Like many such projects, it was the local inhabitants who were most affected and were essentially, at least initially, the marginalised party.

This chapter underlines the importance of education in a development context. Taking education as an essential prerequisite, it is clear that negotiated development needs local advocates who have been trained to understand the complex interaction between those funding or promoting a development and the many parties involved. Very simply, the most marginalised need a voice if an ethical development is to materialise. And that voice needs to be well rehearsed in all the ‘ingredients’ that come together when significant development projects are initiated. Equally well others need to be sensitised and trained and be prepared to listen to that voice.

So, two things are required. First, that a cadre of development specialists are educated and trained, ideally in the broad region where they will operate. This is becoming a feature of education in less developed countries. The National University of Rwanda has a Master’s programme that ‘aims at developing a systematic understanding of the policy process and its application to sustained economic and social development in transitional economies’. And with respect to water (still the single most important challenge in much of the world), the university has initiated a Master’s in Water Resources and Environmental Management and that involves in its initial stage a ‘training of trainers’ programmes by which guest lecturers, supported by UNESCO-IHE, train local staff to subsequently deliver the programme (National University of Rwanda: http://www.nur.ac.rw/spip.php?article30).

Second, trust needs to be to the fore if negotiations leading to development are to be satisfactory. Baroness Onora O’Neill in the Reith 2002 BBC lecture remarked that Confucius told Tsze-Kung that three things are needed for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler cannot hold on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end. Without trust, we cannot stand (O’Neill 2002). It follows then that the second and broad requirement is that donors and donor countries, agencies and local governments have to operate in a manner that leads to and engenders trust. Without question, this means that again education or re-education is the critical factor but this time for the rich nations who wish to support the development.

It should not go unremarked that the profession best placed to being at the centre of negotiated development is engineering. The first reason is that it is engineering that is at the core of so many developments. The second reason is that by virtue of their training and professional obligations engineers must take not only technical matters into consideration but also ethical and societal ones. If engineering has sometimes fallen short of the standards it aspires to, it remains the case that as a profession, through its multiple interactions with all the parties involved, it is one that can lead the way to ethically negotiated development.