Seeing donors from both sides

Mushtaq Ahmed has an unusual dual perspective on donor activities, having been at the receiving end of donor activities in his native Bangladesh early in his career, then dispensing advice himself as a hard-pressed British Commonwealth official in Guyana and now as trend-spotter and economic policy advisor for agriculture at CIDA headquarters. There is a holistic flavour to his professional background, as well. Trained to doctoral level in quantitative methods and applied econometrics at Cornell University in the USA, he has long moved on from crunching numbers to research assignments in Peru and Mexico, desk work at the Canadian Department of Agriculture and cross-cultural teamwork in agri-environmental policy, food safety and quality and business-risk management. Now a Canadian citizen, Ahmed reflects much of that nation’s equanimity and inclusiveness in his views, which he shared with Timothy Nater.

Nater: What’s CIDA’s plan for rural development?

Ahmed: CIDA's five priority sectors in development assistance are good governance, health, basic education, private sector development and environmental sustainability. Cutting right across these five is the sixth theme, gender equality. By 2010, we want to be concentrating at least two-thirds of our direct country-to-country assistance on targeted sectors in 25 developing countries¹, 14 of them in Africa. Within this matrix, agriculture and rural development play a growing part. There’s a good summary account in CIDA’s 2003 brochure, Promoting sustainable rural development through agriculture.

We were no exception to the general decline in donor funding for agriculture in the 1990s, but we’ve firmly reversed that trend, along with a majority of donors and growing numbers of partner governments. CIDA is putting US$ 190 million into agriculture alone in the current fiscal year. That’s a 50% increase over 2001/2002, and 6.7% of total Agency budget. Out of that US$ 190 million, over 50% will go to increasing agricultural productivity and over 16% to promoting private sector agriculture. We are very much part of the new, worldwide commitment to restore momentum to agriculture and rural development in the developing countries.

Why the emphasis on private sector development?

Governments can’t do it all themselves. Helped by donors, their ideal role is to prime the pump, to provide the right legal and economic structures and the right inducements to private enterprise. On top of that, PSD is a key functional link between agriculture and the wider economy. It’s already been said in this interview series: farming is a private sector activity. Small farmers in rural areas often comprise the largest single segment of the private sector in developing countries. It’s things like poor policies, bad roads, inadequate markets and generally weak institutions that prevent them from realising their potential. The private sector is a key driver in creating an enabling environment for the smallholder, for instance by investing in well-functioning agricultural markets. These markets strengthen rural economies and in turn help stimulate the creation of other rural businesses, like agri-processing and service companies.

You’ve been involved in promoting PSD yourself, haven’t you?

In the early 1990s, I worked in Guyana for the Britain’s Commonwealth Secretariat as an expert with the Guyanese government’s Ministry of Agriculture. It was an interesting time. A new government had started dismantling an essentially socialist economy, removing price controls, privatising a huge state-owned sector, diversifying agricultural production and encouraging foreign investment. Donors came in and embraced a World Bank privatisation programme. For my part, I was involved in capacity-building and helping to reorganise the rice sector. Along with sugar and bauxite, rice is still one of Guyana’s biggest economic sectors.

Guyana is beautiful but poor. Earlier under the socialistic regime, many people emigrated. So given their brain drain and my past experience, I soon found myself appointed by the ministerial cabinet to the board of directors of the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (NGMC) and under pressure from the government of Guyana to become its deputy chairman. The NGMC had been a central-planning agency for the buying and selling of agricultural produce other than rice and sugarcane, but now was being transformed into a catalyst for market development and an export facilitation service for non-traditional farm produce, like tropical fruits. It was all about promoting rural producer-groups and value chain transformation and how that fits into the rural livelihoods nexus. Of course, the Commonwealth said, “You can’t do that!”. However, the Guyanese insisted, and, in the end, I wound up wearing two hats in Guyana, though the NGMC job was unpaid. I’m glad to have had the experience. It does help to have that dual perspective, to understand the nature and needs of the private sector.

¹ Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia;
Latin America: Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua;
Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam;
Europe: Ukraine

What lessons has CIDA learned in rural development?

First and most obviously, rural development’s not just about farming. You have to look at rural communities as a whole, including the non-farm economy, financial and social services, gender, the environment, rural-urban interaction, population issues – the list is long and the work is complex. Second, I guess, is that one size does not fit all. An approach that worked well in one country or even one community doesn’t necessarily work in another. Project staff really need to have good knowledge of the local context. Third, you won’t have sustainability unless you get local beneficiaries – including men, women and children at village level – to buy into planning and implementation at the early stages. That’s not always easy, because you’re dealing with a multitude of different sectors. And fourth, CIDA believes in getting farmers organised into community or producer groups. There are all kinds of benefits here, from improving output, gaining market access and bargaining power to preserving local culture and traditional know-how.

CIDA was among the first to recognise the importance of women’s rights, as well.

Absolutely. We figure that women contribute up to 80% of the expertise, time and labour that goes into agricultural production alone, and that’s not even counting the work they do fetching fuel, carrying water, and raising and feeding their kids. There is massive potential here that you can unlock with equal rights and proper schooling. My fellow Bangladeshi Dr. Mohammad Yunus won this year’s Nobel Prize for Peace because he recognised that microfinance in the hands of women would be hugely empowering. Educated, self-respecting women are the bedrock of a stable society and of future generations. If you don’t recognise that fact, your development is just not going to be sustainable. Rural development policies and institutions must have an effective gender equality component.

And agricultural research?

That’s another CIDA priority. Improved research – better crop, fish and tree varieties, pest and disease control, protecting and conserving water, land and biodiversity – is vital for progress on the MDGs. And it has to be done in a collective, concerted way. Collaboration and knowledge-sharing should combine modern, scientific research with on-site knowledge. You need international high-tech research and computer modeling as well as time-honoured farming traditions. That way, you can build research and policy capacities at the local level, where it matters most. Canada contributed US$ 36.4 million to CGIAR in 2005 – that’s the third-largest country contribution after the USA and the UK. We provided US$ 3.8 million for the design and planning phase of NEPAD’s new Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa (BECA) in Nairobi, which offers state-of-the-art biosciences laboratories and training to local scientists. And we’re also working with FARA in Accra, which is the umbrella group for the three main sub-regional research organisations² and the African Union’s technical arm on agricultural research for development.

²
ASARECA, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa;
WECARD – West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development; and
SADC/FANR – Southern African Development Community / Food Agriculture and Natural Resource Department.

So local conditions are the point of departure?

All donors know by now that you don’t get anywhere by just throwing equipment and instruction manuals at a rural development problem. We were doing that 30 years ago with the result that lots of expensive machinery soon broke down and stood rusting for lack of spare parts and training. A basic lesson has been that products, techniques and machinery from developed countries are only useful when they’re properly adapted to local, social, economic and environmental conditions.

On that subject, quite a few developing countries say that the environment is all very well, but development takes precedence.

Well, CIDA won’t dispute that. It’s true, the overarching goal is poverty reduction. But within this framework, you won’t get improved agricultural production and stable rural development without environmental sustainability, so it remains a key objective. Sustainable development of agriculture, and therefore achievement of the MDGs, needs proper understanding and careful balancing of the potential tradeoffs between economic, social and environmental objectives.

What’s Canada doing here, for example?

CIDA’s priorities are to reverse current trends of land degradation, promote integrated natural resource management at farm, community as well as watershed levels, and improve the efficient, effective use of water in farming. We’re doing a lot of work here under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Developing countries are also coming to understand that there’s a mass of complex environmental information out there that needs proper processing and efficient management information systems. Institutional strengthening and improving governance help partner organisations gather, share and analyse the information. This aids in a better understanding of the environment and in better planning.

How big a factor is good planning?

It’s crucial, and I’ve seen that first-hand. The 1987 National Master Plan for Water Sector in Bangladesh was a mostly a theoretical exercise. A huge amount of money was spent, but after five years, the plan had produced mostly paper. The water-sector models were not tested against available data, there was no clear-cut implementation plan and little political commitment to realise things on the ground. It tried to accomplish a lot but achieved little for the country.

Another bitter failure was our intensive jute cultivation scheme. Jute is the ‘golden fibre of Bangladesh’, a natural, biodegradable, truly multi-use product. Even in the early 1970s, it still accounted for 70% of Bangladesh’s export earnings. But by the 1980s, much of the export market had switched to cheaper polythene and other synthetic materials, so the aim was to downsize, restructure and privatise our jute sector to keep it competitive and sustainable. Under a multilateral donor agreement, the government in the early 1990s promised to close nine mills, privatise nine others and retrench 20,000 workers. But several years later, there were still 30 state-owned jute mills employing nearly 100,000 workers and losing about US$ 90 million a year, so donor funding was halted. Both sides were guilty of unrealistic expectations, poor strategy and weak follow-through. Now, Bangladeshi jute is a declining industry.

Any bright spots?

Sure, plenty of them. For example, my first contact with CIDA was in the 1980s through its Bangladesh Crop Diversification programme. Up to then, many Bangladeshis thought that food security was just rice, rice, rice. But that programme helped us diversify into potatos, pulses, oilseeds, maize and wheat. It wound up directly benefiting one million small and marginal farm families, made a real contribution to the population’s diet and nutrition and won the 1994 Canadian Award for International Development. Two main ingredients for success were real donor harmonisation and strong research support, especially from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Potato Research Centre (CIP) ³.

To be fair, the food security and diversification that Bangladesh has achieved today wouldn’t have been possible without the commitment of successive governments to agriculture. They have ploughed in huge investments in developing agricultural infrastructure, education, research and extension and in crucial manpower development, initially with a lot of support from USAID.

³ The acronyms derive from the Spanish names for these organisation: Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maîz y Trigo, based in Mexico, and Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP), in Peru. Both CYMMIT and CIP are members of the CGIAR network.

You’ve cited CIDA’s crop diversification scheme for Bangladesh as an example of successful donor planning. But donors are now pushing developing countries to develop their own plans.

I think countries themselves now realise that they are partners in development and that they must shoulder this process. But one problem with national planning processes is that, despite much consultation with donors, there are too many PRSPs that still read like wish-lists. Where is the realistic assessment of fundamental needs? Where is the applicability? Another problem is the insistence on PRSPs is robbing many countries of what few planning resources they have. Lots of multilateral agreements with donors now need their attention. The capacity for planning has been eroded and diffused because of the new focus on PRSPs and mid-term budgetary reporting requirements. All this impinges on the ability of some countries to demonstrate coherent direction. They simply lack the manpower to do all these jobs.

At the same time, many bureaucracies are overstaffed.

Yes, but not always with the right people. Capacity is a major issue. Some of the best brains are lost to emigration or private industry. Elsewhere, poor manpower management is vitiating proper identification of talent and implementation of policy. The value of trained and capable civil servants in many developing-country ministries is not sufficiently recognised and their expertise is not properly extracted. They are just shuffled around and often wind up doing clerical, routine tasks. At the same time, the incentives are often lacking, as well. For example, promotion to a higher administrative cadre is often much more rewarding, career-wise, than remaining a specialist. As a result, some of the best and the brightest wind up in senior-level offices approving budgets. Their training, very often, is lost.

So the blame is pretty equally shared?

We’re seeing steady improvement on both sides. As for the donors, I think we’ve largely stopped expecting always to have our own way, plant our own flags and develop our own separate development philosophies. We’re becoming more predictable for our partners, as well. Donors did a lot of flip-flopping in the past: “Do it this way! No, do it that way!” Now, on the whole, we’re determined to be more consistent. As a group, we’re realising that our task is strengthen national capacities, join efforts with other donors to promote country-led development, and stay the course. That, in essence, is harmonisation and alignment.

And all along the way, we need to take stock and evaluate. We’ve learned that there are no signed-and-sealed ways of doing things in rural development. We have to continually share knowledge on what works and what doesn’t, both with other donors, with partner-governments in developing countries and all development actors. The Global Donor Platform is doing its part to help this process along. It’s plugging away at in-country H&A facilitation, it’s doing some important research on PRSPs and SWAps, it’s worked out its top ten Hot Topics, it’s developed the Joint Donor Concept for Rural Development, it’s playing an important role in the production of World Development Report 2008 and it’s working hard to support agricultural development policy in Africa through NEPAD. I think this is the right way to go.