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PBS Documentary Raises Tough Questions about Top-Down Development
July 12, 2010
POV, the PBS web portal for discussion of documentaries, invited me to write a comment on Good Fortune, a film about problems with top-down development efforts in Kenya, which is to be broadcast on PBS affiliates tomorrow evening (Tuesday). Below is my comment, which is also available on POV along with a variety of other interesting responses. At noon (Eastern) Wednesday a live online chat about the film will be available at POV and syndicated here.
My POV Comment on Good Fortune
Director Landon Van Soest and producer Jeremy Levine have made a provocative documentary that raises tough questions about top-down approaches to development. The questions this film poses are not new to development types: The filmmakers’ views (top-down development efforts are misguided at best and sometimes downright destructive) fall squarely at the Easterly extreme of the Easterly-Sachs debate. Still, even development policy wonks who are tired of this debate will find plenty to chew on in Good Fortune’s moving depiction of the struggles of two Kenyans — a midwife in an urban shantytown slated for demolition and a livestock herder whose land is flooded out by a foreign-backed rice farm.
The film will nicely discomfort two groups who are normally at odds. Supporters of increased development assistance will squirm at the seemingly tone-deaf U.N. bureaucrat, who announces that Kibera, Africa’s largest slum and home to 1 million people, “should not exist.” Those who rail against aid and see private sector investment as a pro-poor alternative, such as African economist and media darling Dambisa Moyo, will wince at Calvin Burgess, the callous representative of Oklahoma-based Dominion Farms Limited. Burgess’s supreme confidence that he knows what is best for others — including people who are about to lose their land and homes to the rising water behind a Dominion dam — makes him seem like a cardboard cutout of a Hollywood villain.
Documentary filmmakers are not obliged to come up with alternative approaches to the problems they describe. Indeed, after watching the film one of my stronger emotions was a sense of gratitude to the filmmakers for capturing these moving stories.
But many who watch the film will want to know whether most efforts to foster development are similarly ill-starred. Is there nothing that works? Is a sort of benign neglect the best that the rich world can offer people in developing countries? Below I offer a few tentative answers.
First, helping people is hard. Many actions have unintended consequences. This is perhaps especially true of outside support for development that at its core involves extremely complex processes — in other words, not only economic growth, but social transformation. Still, many projects do work. My colleague David Roodman, an expert on (and sometimes critic of) microfinance, recently returned from Nairobi, where he visited projects run by Jamii Bora, a donor-supported microfinance organization that performs a variety of services, including slum resettlement. Roodman didn’t do an in-depth study of Jamii Bora, but he is an astute observer, so when he tells me he believes Jamii Bora is helping people — and that it helped to calm the waters during Kenya’s post-election violence — I’m inclined to believe him. As part of a broader initiative, my former colleague Ruth Levine (now in a senior policy job at the United States Agency for International Development) led a study group to discover what has worked in global health. The resulting book, Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health, documents 17 cases in which large-scale, long-lasting programs, many of them top-down, improved the health of millions of people, often literally saving their lives.
But projects — and foreign aid to support them — aren’t the only way to help. Rich world policies in many areas — think trade, migration and climate, to name just three — have a profound impact on poor people in developing countries. The Center for Global Development’s annual commitment to development index measures the level of development friendliness in 22 high-income countries, adjusted by the sizes of their respective economies. In 2009, the United States ranked number 17.
Good Fortune offers a valuable and moving critique of two efforts to help gone badly awry. It deserves to be seen and discussed widely, especially within the development community. Some who see it may be tempted to use it as a stick to beat foreign assistance, or even to justify inaction in the face of extreme global poverty and inequality. I think that would be a mistake. This film poses a simple question to all of us: Is this the best we can do? Surely not.
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2 Responses to “PBS Documentary Raises Tough Questions about Top-Down Development”
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July 13th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Dear Lawrence
I’ve not seen the film, but would like to give a quick comment on what you have written.
I am the Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development Specialist for ICRW and based in Naiorbi Kenya. I have close to 20 years expereince in research, consultancy and rural development in Eastern Africa.
Development paradigms in developing countries cannot exist exclusively of each other. There are many examples of top down and bottoms up that have failed, yet an equal number of those that have worked are quite evident.
Several factors are important in instituting development:
1. Needs of the beneficiiaries as tempered by national, regional and global developmental trends taking into account issues like environmental sustinability, gender equality and employment opportunities.
2. Education and awareness levels of the commuinities
3. Available resources -
of course there are many other factors, and an indepth analysis is often required to determine what is needed. There are many instances where influentialpersons in sciety have vetoed projects to suit their slefish ends, while some have forced projects down the throats of their communities in order to benefit individually
In many cases, communiites are not even aware they have negative situations, and would rather the status quo for the fear of the unknown
I look forward to the film to be able to make a more objective comment. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that many countries need aid, need support, although it would be better to have the support not as aid but as partnerships! For instance, Kenya spends millions of dollars in wildlife conservation, yet there is a gaping hole in the annual budget. How can it invest adequately in programmes that benefit women, children, the youth and key drivers of the economy like infrastructure? Granted, our levels of corruption are deplorable – but well structured, focused aid, targeting the right sectors of the economy coupled with enabling global macronomic environment and policies (trade, climate etc) are needed. Tokenism, where drops of aid money are scatteed all over the place is what has given birth to the competing philosophies of aid.
July 21st, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I believe much is being lost in the abstraction and over-technicalization of international development work. Most of the time, the needs of institutions and donors overshadow needs of local groups and individuals, thereby retarding or even preventing real change for real people.
My blog, how-matters.org, explores the skills and knowledge needed by all international “do-gooders” (professional and amateur alike) to raise the level of human dignity within international assistance and to put real resources behind local means of overcoming obstacles. Like the filmmakers, I expect to raise more questions than answers but postings will include good practices, reflection & rumination, guest bloggers, links and resources, and will (hopefully) inspire dialogue among the community of those involved in foreign aid and international assistance around the world.
The most recent post, “The Real Experts,” highlights the cost to all of us when so many of the best minds and perspectives from the community-level are left out of navigating the paradox of development.
Please visit how-matters.org to share your own experiences and insights!