Message-ID: <3.0.4.32.20000106202529.00697e04@mail.francomedia.qc.ca> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 20:25:29 -0500 From: Hubert Duvieusart <mailto:duvieush@FRANCOMEDIA.QC.CA> Subject: wider road To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Rose,Thank you for your comments on Douglas'Hinds post and mine.
If you allow me to be very direct, I take them as a mark of a deep goodwill, but, as mentioned by Conrad, little "hands-on" knowledge of the development process, both in its historic context and in the present approach followed by Douglas, myself and a few thousand others (The world of international development is very small indeed). I would like to clarify two points, in a discussion centered on two people : your Great-aunt and you servant (otherwise me, and myself and I!)
First, your Great-aunt, who taught in Portuguese. What language should have she have used: Ovimbundu, Kimbundu, Kongo, Luimbi, Nyaneka or any other of the dozen or so major languages spoken at the time in what is now Angola ? Where would her pupils or their children be by now ? What High School, what University would they be able to attend, speaking only that language? From your message, I gather that, although her students were adults, she was teaching at some basic level of schooling (The three Rs). Do you realize that most, if not all, of the languages just mentioned had no written form ? That the mathematics used by some of these people were restricted to one, two and several? Languages in Africa still have a very limited territorial extension. To my knowledge, only the Central African Republic has something of a native national language. Sangho is spoken by many nationals, but as a second language for most of them, while French is also an official language. Even within North Africa, Arabic-speaking Moroccans often do not understand Arabic-speaking Egyptians. Nigeria has over 250 different dialects.
People have had to devise "synthetic" languages to allow traders to move from place to place: Lingala, for example, is used all along the Congo (Zaire) River by boat people and shore residents but is used strictly as a business language while it is native to nobody. Swahili, widely spoken in some parts of East Africa, is a mixture of Arabic and local languages, similarly evolved to promote commercial activities, including the slave trade. Your Great-aunt had only one alternative: she would teach in Portuguese or she would not teach.
Your Great-aunt, moreover, was among the first western people to get involved in human development in the Third-World (Remember the distinction I made between economic expansion and development?) Missionaries and their lay assistants usually followed newly implanted "factories" and agricultural "estates" (oil palm or rubber tree plantations for example) to provide native workers with religious but also social and human support. Estate foremen would supervise the natives in the work done for the Company, while missionaries would show them how to improve their subsistence practices (improving the yields or alleviating the hardness of some jobs). Most of the staple foods of modern Africa (Cassava, beans, corn...) have been brought this way from America. Some missionaries may have been zealots, but do not forget that there were always a school and a hospital, or at least a dispensary, built next to the church. And thus we come back to what we said in the last post: once different cultures get to know each other, there is no return (would that be the one-way traffic you were mentioning?)
years: what are we doing now in the field of international development? It is fundamental first to spell what we are not doing: we do not tell people how to live or what to do. We work with people in various countries exactly as we are working in our own place, putting our knowledge and experience to use in helping them solve problems similar to the ones we have mastered elsewhere. Even the most advanced economies need engineers to build roads and run plants, doctors and nurses to maintain health services, agronomists (or agrologists or agriculturists or whatever you want to call them) to expand food production, etc. I am an agricultural consultant, and I have developed some valid experience in development planning both at home and abroad. I feel I have something to offer wherever it can be put to use.
Developing countries have very few of these specialists, and even less really experienced ones (some African countries had less than a few dozen university graduates when I started working). I do abroad the work I do in Canada, with two differences: When in Canada, my fees are paid by my client, whether private entrepreneur, industry or government, while abroad they are paid by aid agencies (bilateral, multilateral or NGOs); I work in Canada with Canadians, in collaboration with foreign experts whenever justified, while in Africa (my main region of intervention) I work with teams of Africans as well as other expatriates according to technical requirements.
I started working in Canada as a junior member of a team of consultants, and gradually took charge of more and more responsibilities. Ten years later I started again as a junior member of a team of international workers, and progressively built up some experience. After working on the design of agricultural policies in half a dozen countries (this is my idea of what I can do best), I can certainly help my teammates, new at the job in their own country, to avoid some pitfalls and arrive faster at an efficient proposal. I have seen, for example, about ten different systems of agricultural and rural credit in Africa. There is no reason for everybody to go through this to realize that some work and some don't, and this is where my experience can be of help. I do not design the policy; I help the national team to gather the information, to analyse the problems and find solutions, to weigh the pros and cons of various alternatives, to synthesize the propositions, to present them to the government and donors in accepted formats and so on.
As a consultant, I have nothing to either gain or loose from the content of my propositions (except the respect of my clients, and the possibility of more work with them). In every job I undertake, I have to defend my clients' interests. I do this wherever in the world I happen to work. I advise, I do not decide. If my Canadian clients are satisfied with that relationship, why would others consider it some kind of political aggression?
Some people (Douglas apparently is one of them), instead of acting as consultants, work as long term experts in various projects or organizations. Our purpose is the same. All of the people I have met in this field of work, with one sad exception, share the same dedication.
Greetings from Montreal!
Hubert
Hubert Duvieusart, agr. Montreal, QC, CANADA mailto:duvieush@francomedia.qc.ca agro-economiste - agronome conseil Agro-economist - agricultural consultant Conseiller en developpement rural Rural Development Adviser