This research has contributed to filling knowledge gaps in the study of TDC and has highlighted several conceptual and methodological avenues that merit further exploration. Firstly, it has demonstrated the significance of concepts that originated in postcolonial theory in enabling a deeper understanding of the machinations of power within TDC, its relationship to the production and dissemination of knowledge, and the importance of examining beneficiary agency in development partnerships. Most significant are the theories concerning how power is a form of knowledge that enables actors that are perceived to possess development knowledge significant authority to define and influence the trajectory of those actors that are in the position of receiving their knowledge (see McEwan 2019). Debates have traditionally focused on the power that Northern countries have had to influence development thinking and planning in developing countries. However, this thesis has shown that China is just as, if not now more significant, in influencing the Zambian government’s approach to managing the economy and its foreign policy through its development cooperation.
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Zambian bureaucrats, including participants in the RETT project, are self-censoring or hiding the negative aspects of China-Zambia relations to safeguard the continued flow of development cooperation, trade and investments from China. Zambian bureaucrats involved in the ToH project also avoided opportunities to seek foreign direct investment from Taiwan in order to uphold China’s one country policy. Therefore, future postcolonial studies on development cooperation might help to expand scholarship on the relationship between power and knowledge in development by exploring the ways in which Southern hegemonies are constraining or influencing the space for beneficiary countries to control their policymaking and development processes. However, the concept of anthropophagy (cannibalism) has also enabled this thesis to cast light on how the beneficiary country is not simply passive in response to the considerable economic power and influence its development partners possess in TDC. It has demonstrated that the beneficiary country uses appropriation and hybridization to negotiate the transfer of policy experiences and to maintain some control of the local development landscape.
In his discussion of how hybridity emerged in the colonial context, Homi Bhabha (2004) documented the ways in which the colonial encounter also led the coloniser to embrace some of the cultural practices of those they colonised. This calls attention to how policy diffusion is not only moving in the South-South direction in the changing geographies of power but rather, as discussed in Chapter Five, Northern countries have also begun to absorb elements of SSC. They have adopted practices such as the blending of development finances with trade and investment agendas, as part of a transformation that Emma Mawdsley (2018) refers to as the ‘ Southernisation’ of international development cooperation. Therefore, fresh insight into the exercise of beneficiary agency and debates on the relationship between power and knowledge in development cooperation can be obtained through further research into the role of anthropophagy or hybridization in South-South/trilateral development exchanges. The Zambian case has also demonstrated that postcolonial critiques of the presence of a knower-learner dichotomy in development cooperation are far more complex when examined at the scale of the state or policy elites. The Zambian government has
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historically used technical cooperation to ‘learn’ from others and address the country’s skilled labour shortage and its reliance on foreign technical expertise in the civil service and industrial sector, which are the legacy of colonial governance. The views expressed by stakeholders in ToH and RETT projects indicate that Zambia is also using TDC to learn from the policy experiences of other developing countries and to address persistent capacity gaps in specialist areas. Further reflection on this beneficiary country perspective on learning can enrich debates on the politics of knowledge production and the nature of partnerships in TDC.
The second area in which this research has contributed to filling knowledge gaps concerns methodology. Employing an institutional ethnography (IE) has enabled it to demonstrate that one of the main reasons there are only a few empirically-based TDC studies is because it is difficult for researchers to extract information from the main development institutions and bureaucracies involved in the implementation of TDC projects. Key stakeholders tend to prefer narratives of TDC that focus on: the technical aspects of project implementation and coordination, how it assists beneficiary countries to achieve priorities in their national development plans, and how it builds the project management capacity of Southern cooperation providers. Key stakeholders tend to find narratives that suggest underlying interests in development cooperation as undermining their professionalism and as a threat to potential opportunities to replicate development practice. However, this thesis has unsettled this narrative and revealed that there are geopolitical and geoeconomic interests driving TDC.
IE specifically enabled this research to capture and centre the beneficiary country’s ways of knowing and understanding into the collection and analysis of data of how the politics of partnership affects country ownership. The research was also able to contribute additional insights into beneficiary agency by demonstrating that Zambian stakeholders do not agree with the institutionalised approach and vocabularies Northern academic and policy circles employ in researching South-South relations. However, they engage in these discourses when operating in donor-driven policy spaces in order to secure development cooperation. These findings make a strong case for future studies committed to decolonizing knowledge production to engage with