"KNOWLEDGE-BASED INTERNATIONAL AID"

"KNOWLEDGE-BASED INTERNATIONAL AID"
DO WE WANT IT, DO WE NEED IT?[1]

Rosa-Mar�a Torres, Instituto Fronesis, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 4/2001

PRESENTATION

This paper approaches "knowledge-based aid" from some specific perspectives: a) a view "from the South"; b) a critical perspective; c) a regional focus on Latin America; d) a focus on education .

There is little hope that the announced "knowledge society" and "lifelong learning" will bring the expected "learning revolution" and a more equitable distribution of knowledge without fundamental changes in North-South relationships and cooperation patterns, as well as in knowledge and learning paradigms. Never before have there been so much information and knowledge available, so varied and powerful means to democratize them, and so much emphasis on the importance of knowledge, education and learning. But never before has the banking education model been so alive and widespread at a global scale: education understood as a one-way transfer of information and knowledge, and learning understood as the passive digestion of such transfer. Many enthusiastic global promoters of "knowledge societies", "new networking" and "lifelong learning" dream today with a world converted into a giant classroom with a few powerful global teachers, and millions of passive assimilators of information and knowledge packages via telecenters, computers and the Internet. In an era characterized by change, uncertainty and unpredictability, knowledge-disseminators and technology-promoters appear to have just too many certainties about the present and about the future.� "What works" and "what doesn't work" are offered as clear-cut black and white alternatives, without the obvious questions that should follow: where, when, for what, with whom, for whom, under what circumstances? Knowledge-based aid rhetoric insists on avoiding the discussion of issues such as power and vested interests, not only within governments but also within civil society and within and among Agencies themselves.

"KNOWLEDGE-BASED AID" FOR "DEVELOPING COUNTRIES"

What development? What knowledge? What kind of aid? Who is "countries"?

There is nothing new about "knowledge-based aid". Transferring knowledge to "developing countries" under the form of technical assistance has been the raison d' �tre of Agencies.

"Knowledge-based aid" is fundamentally "North/ South asymmetry-based aid": donor/ recipient, developed/ non-developed, knowledge/ ignorance, teach/ learn, think/ act, recommend/ follow, design/ implement. The North views itself essentially as a knowledge provider, and views the South as a knowledge consumer. The North thinks, knows, disseminates, diagnoses, plans, strategizes, does and validates research, provides advice, models, lessons learned, and even lists of desired profiles. The South does not know, learns, receives, applies, implements. The North produces, synthesizes and disseminates knowledge; the South produces data and information. The North produces global policy recommendations to be translated, by the South, into National Plans of Action.

For international cooperation purposes, "countries" have typically been thought of as governments. Cooperating with governments has been assumed as equivalent to cooperating with countries and with the people in those countries, thus avoiding critical questions related to the representativeness of concrete governments in terms of public and national interest. Also, Agencies' widened perception of "countries", incorporating the notion of "civil society", has remained narrow, simplistic and NGO-centered, ignoring the various actors interacting in real civil societies: political parties, social movements, the academic community, workers' unions, grassroots organizations, mass media, private enterprise, the churches, etc.

Are we (the South) striving for and heading towards "development"?

"Development" (in the sense of progress) seemed achievable in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the very term development has virtually disappeared from political and academic discourse, from social debate and from social expectations in the South. Development discourse and goals have been substituted by "poverty alleviation", "debt relief", "combating unemployment", "improving the quality of education", etc. The overall spirit is that of "reversing decline" rather than that of "ensuring development".� The very meaning of development, as well as the means and strategies to get there, are by no means consensual and remain an issue of debate and controversy not only in the North and in the South but also among and within Agencies themselves.

Is there is something called "development knowledge"?

How much does "development" depend on knowledge? What is the knowledge required to make "development" happen in "non-developed" contexts? Is there such a thing as "development knowledge" in general? Is it available, waiting to be "disseminated" or transferred through "capacity building"? Who possesses and who should possess such knowledge in order for development to occur? Is it a problem of dissemination and capacity building? Most of these questions are already answers, or unraised questions, within the international cooperation community. Agencies, just as schoolteachers, must know -or act as if they knew- because this is their role and their business. And just like bad teachers who have poor expectations of their students and think for them, Agencies have in mind clients that are avid for ready-made diagnoses, recipes, transportable and easily replicable success stories. Conventional international aid has operated under one central assumption: the South has the problems, and the North has the solutions. If the solution proposed does not work, a new solution will be proposed, and countries will be held accountable for the failure. Just as ineffective teacher training results in teachers incorporating new terms but not necessarily embracing new concepts and changing their practices, Agencies have fully incorporated politically correct jargon such as participation, consultation, transparency, accountability, empowerment and ownership and haven given them their own meaning and functional use.

Is ["good"] knowledge only to be found in the North?

Knowledge produced in the South is disqualified or ignored altogether. Those reading about education only in publications produced in the North� probably come to the conclusion that there is no research, no intellectual life and no debate on education going on outside North America and Europe, and that most of it happens to be written in English.� And yet, the South has a vast research and intellectual production, much of it of similar or better quality standards than that produced in the North, but much of it is invisible to the North. Arrogance and prejudice are important explicative factors as well as linguistic limitations. While researchers and intellectuals in the South are often multilingual or at least bilingual readers, many researchers in the North are monolingual (specially native English-speakers) and thus have limited access to the intellectual production available worldwide. However, this does not prevent them from speaking for the entire world and for "developing world" in particular, even when they access only to North-produced syntheses of South-produced research. Being professional and aiming at serious professional roles at international level today requires not only multidisciplinary but multilingual teams.

Is "good" knowledge expert knowledge?

The perverse consequences of the expert and consultant drive in the South are enormous. The expert culture reinforces technocratic and elitist approaches, social participation and consultation as mere concessions to democracy rather than as objective needs for effective policy design and action. It cultivates the separation between thinkers and doers, reformers and implementers, both at the national and global scale. It reaffirms the tradition to locate problems on the implementation side, never on the side of those who diagnose, plan and formulate policies. Effective and sustainable policies and reforms require not only (good, relevant) expert knowledge, but also the (explicit and implicit, scientific or not) knowledge and will of all those concerned. Policy in practice shows the perennial insufficiency of expert knowledge and the indispensable need for consultation, participation and ownership - whether it is governments, institutions, groups or individuals- not only for implementation but as a condition for good policy design.

Is "expert" knowledge good knowledge?

"Experts" make - and have made many -- expert and costly mistakes. The opaque relationship between knowledge validation and (Agency) power is a critical, un-mentioned, factor. Many of the ideas and trends that become dominant do so not necessarily because of their merit or proven efficacy to explain or transform realities, but because of the (ideological, political, financial) power that is behind them.

Are information, communication, knowledge, education and learning the same?

Information, knowledge, education, learning are easily confused and often used indistinctively. Ignoring current scientific knowledge available on these issues, and in the best tradition of the banking school education model, knowledge and learning continue to be trivialized as a matter of access (to school before, to the computer and the Internet today) and/or dissemination (of information, of knowledge, of lessons learned, of models to be replicated). There are reasons to believe such trivialization and confusion are not just the result of ignorance but of deliberate blurring. Unless North and South engage in serious analysis, research and debate on all these issues and their implications for a global "knowledge and learning society", the "learning revolution" may be a new false alarm, an illusion created by the technological revolution, or a revolution only for a few, with many victims and wider gaps, controlled by central powers and benefiting strong economic interests.

Is there a positive relationship between (expert) knowledge and (effective) decision-making?

The experience with the Latin American Statement on Education for All[2] represents an innovative and promising development, that contradicts conventional North/South aid patterns: it is an endogenous initiative, born in Latin America, out of Latin American concerns, and conducted in Spanish and Portuguese (ownership is here a fact, not a concession). It is not an NGO but a social movement, involving a wide spectrum of sectors and groups, including civil society, government and Agencies; information disseminated regularly to the list of signers is both local, regional and global; and it operates on a voluntary basis, with no international funding and thus with total intellectual and financial autonomy.

DO WE WANT AND NEED "KNOWLEDGE-BASED AID"?

Why would we want such aid? It has been ineffective and costly, it has increased our dependency and our foreign debt, it has not allowed us to develop our own human resources (while we have paid external consultants to learn and become experts while working in our countries); it has not allowed us to identify and develop our own ideas, research, thinking, alternatives, models. And it has not allowed us not learn along the way about both our achievements and mistakes.

Do we really need such aid? In most, if not all, countries in the South we have the knowledgeable and competent professionals we need to put in place sound education policies and reforms. Moreover, if qualified and committed nationals (and non-nationals who end up sharing these characteristics and ideals as their own) have two important advantages over non-nationals: they know the national/ local language(s) and share local history and culture, and they love their country. Motivation, empathy, ownership, sense of identity and of pride, sense of being part of a collective- building project, are key ingredients of effective and sustainable policy making and social action. There is an important difference between living in a country, and visiting it on technical missions. External consultants may leave ideas, documents and recommendations, but it is those living in the country, zone, or community who will finally do the job. Separating and differentiating the roles of those who think and recommend, and those who implement and try to follow recommendations, remains the key formula for non-ownership (or for fake ownership) and thus for failure.

A few final conclusions and recommendations

If Agencies really want to assist the South, they must be ready to accept the need for major shifts in their thinking and doing. It is not just a matter of more of the same, or of improving cooperation mechanisms and relationships. What is needed is a different kind of cooperation, operating under different assumptions and rules, to be discussed and devised together with the South, in professional dialogue. Partnership, but not for business as usual.

What can Agencies do to assist the South?

� Work not only addressed to the South but, most importantly, to the North.

� Acknowledge diversity and act accordingly.

� Revise international cooperation assumptions based on asymmetry and unidirectionality.

� Support social watch and enhance professional dialogue with the South.

� Sound understandings and critical approaches to information, knowledge, education and learning.

� More questions and more learning together .

� Assist countries identify and develop their own human resources and capacities.

[1] Shortened version of a paper prepared for the International Seminar on "Development Knowledge, National Research and International Cooperation", CAS/DSE/NORRAG, Bonn, 3-5 April 2001 whichs is� included in: Gmelin, W.; King, K.; McGrath, S. (editors), Knowledge, Research and International Cooperation, University of Edinburgh, 2001.� Go to http://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/participants/docuparti/eng_doc_08/ to read the full text with references.