Culture Guides

Mini-guide by Suzie Capelli

Before I came to Rwanda I worked in a research institute. The main focus of my laboratory was the integration and application of Information Technology to business goals. We worked in the field of requirements engineering and were a little unorthodox as a group, thinking about business goals from the point of view of the business as an organic entity.

We discussed international aid from this angle and came to the conclusion that there was a fundamental contradiction. The main goal of the International Aid and Development industry (and make no mistake that it is an industry) is to arrive at a point where developing countries no longer need help. In essence what development claims to want is the end of its own existence. No organism can truly work in a dedicated fashion towards such an aim.

In practice I have seen what happened in an NGO concerned with refugee care which came into Rwanda after the genocide. Once the refugee problems subsided, they did not pack up and write it off as a job well done. Instead they morphed into some kind of community development gig. After all there are real people with real jobs on the line. It’s a fight for survival – the survival of the development enterprise.

I recently heard the country director of an international non-government organisation (INGO) say that in his job, it was important to be able to compromise. I wondered if the compromise in question was between the country’s development and the need for the organisation’s survival.

Let’s not forget that for every job in a developing country, there are several support jobs behind it and these are usually located in the developed world. In international aid and development organisation, it is common to have local staff, field officers and national coordinators (in developing countries), regional coordinators (usually based in a more advanced developing country), liaison and policy officers, hordes of support staff, fundraisers, directors and Boards (all in the developed country of the organisation).

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