![]() Date: 2025-04-27 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt20010400 | |||||||||
Turning Development Upside Down | |||||||||
This chapter shows there are ways forward. The proposition is that there are new ways to think of development in terms of the four components: people, resources, process and information. The theme of the chapter is to think of people as being both the beneficiary and the driver of development, to think of resources as being abundant but needing mobilization, to think of process as a way to achieve economic value adding and information as a way to improve development performance, to measure performance and provide a new level of accountability in development. | |||||||||
Is Success Possible ... Absolutely The human spirit is powerful ... but it needs to have opportunity and there needs to be motivation and incentive. To have success, the problems that constrained success in the past must be avoided. New approaches and ways of doing things have to be adopted. Development must be approached as a process that has linkages with many complex interrelated elements. This way of looking at development sets the stage for practical solutions to the global development crisis. This way forward is a coherent whole, and can be the foundation for successful economic and social progress in the SOUTH. The way forward explicitly addresses some issues about the enabling environment for success that people in the NORTH now take for granted. Nothing in the way forward requires difficult reform. Everything in this way forward can be done, and in a modest way is already being done. But there has to be a deep appreciation of the problems, and an understanding and respect for people of different backgrounds and experience and capabilities. The goal or purpose of development What is the goal or purpose of development? It is about socio-economic progress, and improving people's quality of life and standard of living. A big part of this depends on the culture, perceptions and priorities of the community ... a value construct that has a big element of subjectivity. It is rare for the primary goal of development to be to get the maximum economic activity for the benefit of a few ... though it is common for this to be the investment goal for a profit maximizing enterprise. The difference between the goals of society and the goals of a PME, or many PMEs is something that has to be reconciled. For society, the purpose of development includes giving a lot more people an opportunity to live a life that has a lot more dignity and be a lot more secure and further away from death. There are a lot of fancy ways to describe the goals of development, but a simple one is that poor people should have a better chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. At the individual person level, and at the family level, development is easy to understand. I wrote the following more than 20 years ago in South Sudan. The area had its own civil war and was also hosting refugees from neighboring countries. A situation that has been all too common in the past decades all over the world.
If all the possibilities are taken into consideration, it is apparent that success is possible. The key missing element is an organizing framework so that it can be done. The solution that looks most promising is one that has the following characteristics:
There is a huge challenge. But all the possibilities for success are at hand. The way forward to development success must be something different from what we have seen before. It cannot be more of the same. What has been done up to now has failed ... and more of the same will fail some more. I am reminded that technology has become more capable in the past 50 years, and there is no technical reason why all of the material problems of society cannot solved with good management of resources ... the problem is that people do not know how to do this, and some who do, are determined not to let what can be done be done unless they are able to profit from it. |