Participatory development and local participation are core concepts gaining much ground during the last few years within international development cooperation and its studies. This is, without a doubt, a positive progression and a needed lens on the policies and practices of and within the sector. However, it is easy to theorise about participatory development and decolonial methods and approaches but harder to implement in practice. The layers are many and all in need of close analysis; the power relations, social hierarchies, opportunities for participation; the structures and productions of knowledge we operate within.
ICT4D is often assumed to support this progression, democratising opportunities for participation with equitable access to online spaces, information, and technology. However, while new initiatives emerge from our big multilateral development organisations in line with this thinking, we can argue that the traditional policy of “efficiency and effectiveness” and seeking “measurable indicators imposed by donor demands and international standards” undoubtedly remain (see for example Tufte, 2017). Meera Sabaratnam writes that international actors’ interventions in low- and middle-income countries fail and keep failing “because they are constituted through structural relations of colonial differences that intimately shape their conception, operation and effects.” (Sabaratnam, 2017:4).
In this blog series, I aim to reflect on these concepts, including my own role as a practitioner within the field. Questions I hope to guide me through my writing are:
- How can we improve participatory development practices given the deep structures of colonial differences of our world, as expressed by Sabaratnam?
- How can ICT4D be a tool for implementing more participatory development and social change processes in low- and middle-income countries (or rather, can it)?
- How can a gender perspective help in establishing more participatory development processes (or help us understand the limitations to reach there)?
I hope to develop my thoughts, or maybe keep asking questions, in future blog posts. Do you reflect on your role in the international development cooperation sector in relation to these questions?
Sources:
Sabaratnam, Meera (2019) Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique. London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Tufte, Thomas (2017) Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity.