I wrote about the consultant who shows up on these shores to do the same baseline survey and same analysis over and over again and their reports are recycled, jostling for donor funds to implement the same project over and over again.
There's another creature I've also met over the years: Western university student who has come to Liberia for PhD or master's level field research. (At one time I thought it would be a good business idea to start a guesthouse just for this type of traveler. )
Many of these students go on to have careers in international development, think tanks, academia, various industries and sectors.
Global and country - specific policies are the end product.
For example, a student from an American university studying Global or Public Health has a career with international NGOs working in public health, maternal health, etc in the Global South. Inevitably, their work and their work in the international development industry will influence policies in the Global South.
Can this ever be reversed? Will we see a Kenyan doing field research in the United States and then going on to influence public health policy in the United States ? No. Policies will be made by the US state, not influenced by international NGOs or donors.
This thought process can help us to see how much policies for poor countries are made by global institutions, organisations, and donors who are not part of states in the Global South. This shows us how much the state has been hollowed out.
No comments:
Post a Comment