Development is developmental

My current working hypothesis is that much international development doesn’t create positive impact because projects are seen as providing solutions to problems. This might not be an obvious flaw, but its consequences are easy to spot.

No water in a community? Drill a borehole. Farmers aren’t growing enough food? Provide subsidized fertilizer. A local market for sorghum flour is going unfulfilled? Set up a local mill for a cooperative to run.

These actions might sound like what’s needed, but they all bypass a crucial concept—development is developmental. Actual development is a progression, a process of changing behaviours, of developing skills, and of growing all the underpinning systems that support business, governance, and society in general.

Which is why when I read a story about truly developmental development, I just had to share it. The story comes from a friend and co-Engineers Without Borders (EWB) overseas volunteer, Hans Hesse.

Hans works in Lusaka, Zambia with a really unique non-governmental organization (NGO) called PROFIT. Together they focus on providing market facilitation in value-chains that have direct benefits for smallholding farmers. (A value-chain is simply a term to describe the entire set of economic activities of one enterprise, for instance, from planting wheat to baking bread.) One focus is fertilizer distribution agent networks working with agricultural input companies. The agents interact with farmers, booking their orders and relaying these orders to the input companies for them to deliver. It’s one particular private enterprise approach of getting fertilizer to farmers.

While out in the field interviewing farmers, Hans wrote the following little blurb:

“One of the big successes so far has been one agent sending a very well-written letter (he was a former teacher) to one of the input companies complaining about how the firm hadn’t done enough training, wasn’t delivering on time, and generally wasn’t supporting the agents well, as per a contract. In response the firm had the agents come to Lusaka for training. Awesome.”

Hans called this single event one of the “big successes” of the project. You might think that’s curious since it’s far from a report of huge volumes of fertilizer being distributed, or of a bumper maize crop.

In my mind though, it’s huge. An agent, instead of feeling powerless to change the situation of neglect by the input company, put his thoughts in writing, outlined the problems he was facing, and referenced a contractual agreement as proof that the company wasn’t holding up it’s end of the bargain. Even better, the input company responded, not with harsh words, but with specific, helpful action.

To a Canadian, this all might seem insignificant, perhaps because it’s a process that regularly occurs in Canada: a contract isn’t upheld, a complaint is made, and the matter is resolved. But here in both Malawi and Zambia this seemingly simple process can never be taken for granted. Imagine trying to secure fertilizer for next year’s crop, trying to transport your crop to market, or trying to bill a client through the mail without any of these simple support systems. It’s not unimaginable—it happens every day here in southern Africa.

This is why I think that actual development is developmental. Development takes time, and it takes changes in behaviour, and it takes step-by-step improvements to supporting systems. Which is why when there’s a story of a Zambian fertilizer agent taking matters into his own hands, I’ve just gotta tell it.