The dominant model of economic development, raising incomes and alleviating poverty, is predicated on a technocratic, formulaic fantasy.
The illusion of the so-called economic development experts is that low levels of human development are solely a technical problem that is amenable to technical solutions. According to Prof William Easterly, the inherent paradigm of development is that of well-intentioned autocrats who are beholden to technical experts.
One year after I joined the World Agroforestry Centre in 1997 as a rookie ecologist, I learnt that low farm productivity was a more complex problem than the aggregate of low levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and soil organic matter in the soil. Organic fertilisers and quality seeds alone are insufficient to deliver food, nutritional and income security.
I quickly learnt that land productivity was linked, through complex and non-linear pathways, to health, access to water and sanitation, access to markets, information and knowledge networks, financial services, roads and a vibrant private sector. Equally important is the capacity of the state to provide enabling and responsive public policy.
I also learnt that forest degradation in the Mau is linked, through complex nonlinear pathways, to the proliferation of the water hyacinth, the collapse of Lake Victoria fish stocks and the economic decline of towns and urban centres around Lake Victoria, and the rapid spread of HIV-Aids.
HIV-Aids is singularly responsible for what I think is a vicious and enduring poverty trap owing to morbidity and mortality of productive adults and loss of fungible assets.
Through my experience I am persuaded that singular theories of development derived from linear technocratic approaches are inherently flawed. They are invariably founded on evidence from narrow disciplinary expertise.
Such evidence flies in the face of a world that is defined by vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Hence, the complex and uncertain context of development practice undermines neat and simple evidence-based policy prescriptions we so often resort to.
Do not get me wrong. Deep in their hearts, the so-called experts mean no harm. The suffering their policy prescriptions cause is involuntary. Thanks to the narrow disciplinary way most experts are trained. Tragically, subject matter and not a problem-focus in education inevitably produces narrow experts. So often, the so-called experts cannot see the forest for the trees.
Expert-led development approaches are often, top-down. Hence, they are neither deliberative nor participatory. Implicit in the top-down approach is that indigenous technical knowledge is subservient to technocratic, modernist development. There is no room for social and cultural innovation.
Technocratic economic development priorities that are conceptualised and designed by the World Bank or the African Development Bank or development agencies of foreign government such as USAID, are doomed to fail. These are in every sense autocratic, even authoritarian.
We must transition to pluralistic perspectives because development problems are inherently wicked problems that demand complexity thinking, transdisciplinary and participatory approaches. When we involve direct beneficiaries in development, we ask different questions and inevitably, program design and solution options will be better aligned to local priorities.
