maasai

I learned my first lesson in global development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya over a decade ago.  It was a simple enough lesson in “needs assessment”, which is essentially an activity that attempts to identify so-called “actual needs” from “perceived needs” within a given community. 

For example, a Kenyan villager once said to me that his community needs a water catchment system and water tanks on each house to capture rainwater.  But when I asked why he feels this is so vital when there is a clean water source less than a kilometer away, he said to me, “because the volunteer before you helped the next village over to get water tanks.  We want them to!”

A water tank attached to a corrogated metal roof to catch rain water

This fascinated me.  Not WHAT he saw as a need so much as WHY he saw it as a need.  The other village that got water tanks was his only exposure to any kind of development.  He didn’t realize that there were options – other projects that could be successfully undertaken and benefit his village in far greater ways than water tanks.  His choice was limited to what he knew was available, and his knowledge of what was available clearly did not extend far beyond the next village.

Since the end of World War II, Nongovernmental Organizations (or NGO’s) and multi-lateral aid agencies have been the sole assessor of what poor people need.  So they imposed their idea of development with a mentality of “if we build it, they will develop,” So what we saw was heavy investment in easily quantifiable construction projects for health clinics, boreholes, wells, toilets and schools.  At the time, the successful installation of these projects pleased the donors who had paid for them.  But what we found decades later, in Africa specifically, is that these projects were failing and poverty continued to rise.  Students couldn’t afford to attend the schools that were built. Clinics couldn’t stock up with drugs unless they were free.  Communities didn’t maintain water pumps when the parts broke….  The capacity of the populations to sustain development projects was too low due to the lack of education.  And the incentive of NGOs to sustain those projects for them was even lower.  After all, “sustainability” is the mantra by which all NGOs justify their projects.  Donors don’t like funding the same projects in perpetuity.

What we are seeing now is a shift away from project-centric development.  Instead, NGOs, especially those that have sprung up in the past 5-10 years, are focusing on developing human capacity through education.  This is significant because education allows beneficiaries to better assess their own ACTUAL needs.  And when the beneficiaries’ SUBJECTIVE assessment of what a need is, is in agreement with an NGO’s OBJECTIVE assessment of what the need is, this indicates a level of human capacity among beneficiaries in which projects have a chance of succeeding.  The idea behind a development project can only grow in fertile minds.  In my experience, a high school-level education is the bare minimum required by a community for a development project to succeed on the whole.  Whether the area of focus is on health, peace building, democracy building, boreholes or water tanks; if the capacity to understand what one’s own needs are is absent, we are likely investing in a project that is destined for failure. 

Agnes, a Maasai girl, on graduation day from college

For this reason, NGOs like mine are increasingly investing in PEOPLE rather than PROJECTS by offering workshops in entrepreneurship and leadership, as well as scholarships to higher education and other learning opportunities.

My organization, Kenya Education Fund, offers high school and university scholarships, as well as mentoring, for poor Kenyans, and was partly inspired by the man I just told you about, unaware of what his own “actual” needs were.  A recent report issued by UNESCO shows that 2 out of 3 children in Africa are left out of secondary schools, and states that, “there is no escape from poverty without the vast expansion of secondary education worldwide.”

I end with this. Improving quality of life – whether it’s alleviating poverty or curing AIDS – is the underlying mission of every international development agency.  We are also results-driven.  Even in the changing landscape of human development – this much, at least, has not changed.  But as we shift from building projects to building human capacity, there is also a need to educate our donors that results from education will take longer to materialize than the sinking of a bore hole – perhaps as long as a generation or two – but those results will have a lasting effect and an even greater return on our investment in human beings.