The concept of participation is presented in the policy orientation for the RNE- DRDPs as a process approach, which is a methodology for planning and implement- ation of development projects in the districts under the RNE-DRDPs. According to the Policy Document (RNE 1998: 4),
The process approach enables the identification of bottlenecks in the different fields of develop- ment, experimentation with solutions on a manageable scale and internal evaluations to check whether objectives are being attained. Subsequently, a decision on further action can be taken.
So as to have a better understanding of this concept of process approach, the
DRDP ‘End-of-Phase III’ Report (TAT 2004: 3) points out that the process ap-
proach allowed for:
… a participatory planning process to determine the activities to be funded, as well as to ensure flexibility and the inclusion, over time, of new insights or identified priorities. … The consequence is that the scope of the programme in operational terms has remained broad, varying from district to district and over time. It also means that programme focus has shifted over time in response to changing needs and priorities while not losing sight of the overall programme purpose.
This implied that observations and lessons that were pointed out by different officials and local beneficiaries were to be taken and incorporated in the decisions pertaining to RNE-DRDPs. With the process approach, it was important that the people themselves planned for what they thought was best for their own develop- ment according to their perceived needs. This implied that the DRDP funds were to aid what came from people and not what the donors wished to fund. According to the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986: 1),
The hey-days of the “blue print” approach in rural development planning are definitely over, because it is now realised that not even the immediate future can be controlled properly. The other extreme in planning, the programmatic approach, quickly has shown weaknesses related to lack of coordination and the impossibility to budget the financial flows.
Thus, the process approach was rather an open approach that was a result of the failure of blue-print and programmatic approaches in development planning and implementation of projects. The approach needed a lot of flexibility and deep under- standing of the socio-political and economic dynamics of the local beneficiaries for whom it was being applied. It, therefore, went beyond the strict regulatory schemes of how development plans and programmes should be done and implemented because the definition of what problems were was left in the hands of the local beneficiaries themselves and the donor had to participate at the level of responding to demands from the perceived needs of the people. According to the Evaluation report (DGIS/URT 2004: 11), the intention of the process approach was to allow
a participatory planning process to determine the activities to be funded, as well as to ensure flexibility and the inclusion, over time, of new insights or identified priorities. The process approach is also intended to allow the programme to adapt the speed of implementation to the local development process as well as to the implementation capacity of the councils and other partners.
Therefore, the process approach was a move to improve the involvement of the development projects’ beneficiaries. According to the Evaluation Report (DGIS/- URT 2004: xi), however, “a process approach can be too open-ended and can lend
itself to the criticism of being un-focused and without clear exit strategy”. This was its risk and that is what happened in the guiding the RNE-DRDPs.
Much as the process approach was innovative and revolutionary because the “responsibility for defining programme content rests at the district level and results from a negotiated process involving the district administration, the rural population and the donor” (DGIS/URT 2004: 11), the findings of the evaluation of the DRDPs (IOB 2004: 3) still show the strong hand of the Dutch donors:
The changes in DRDP focus were largely inspired by Dutch development cooperation policy, and received a positive response from politicians and bureaucracy in Tanzania. The emphasis in DRDP shifted from strengthening the economic base and agricultural production towards improving social services and, subsequently, towards enhancing the capabilities of local governance. These changes were largely inspired by Dutch development co-operation policy.
This implies that the evolution of the changes in the DRDP focus were basically Dutch-centred because the “inspirations” were derived from the Dutch Development policy. The Tanzanian counterpart “responded positively”: the politicians and the bureaucrats thought the changes were ok and gave them a go-ahead.
The missing thousands
Much as from the beginning of the RNE-DRDPs the blue-print and programmatic approaches were to be avoided (URT/RNE1986: 1), the conceptualisation of partici- pation is limited to some categories of actors. In actual fact, the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986) can be described as an activity incorporating three key actors, as clearly expressed in the preface to the study (URT/RNE 1986: no page):
This report, the Identification of a Netherlands – Tanzania Rural Development Programme, has been a joint effort of the regional and district authorities of eight regions of Tanzania, a team of Netherlands experts resident in Tanzania, and the Netherlands Embassy in Dar es Salaam.
In this statement, it is clear that the study has as central actors the authorities, the experts, and the embassy. The authorities are the government officials. These are necessary as people who should see to it that agreements are made and implement- ations are taken care of. The Netherlands experts who reside in Tanzania are people experienced in different development activities such as baseline surveys, project planning, designing, implementations, and evaluations, and experience in develop- ment work. The experts are needed because the Identification Study is a technocratic adventure. The Embassy is necessary as a diplomatic agent by nature of the RNE- DRDPs being a realization in bilateral cooperation; it is representative of the Dutch government.
Such a grouping is necessary for any modernising adventure. There is always need for government officials: they represent the interest of the state in terms of
government development policy perspectives; they channel the voice of the govern- ment; they facilitate government policy and development orientations. There is always also need for technocrats: they know development because they are experts; it is out of such activities that they earn a living, as well. Finally, there is always need for diplomatic relations through embassies: they act as representatives of the donors, enforcers, and carriers of policies of the mother countries.
Among these three categories of actors, however, there are thousands of people who necessitated the intervention, but who were left out as key actors in the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986). These were the major stakeholders on what the other actors dealt with; it was the promotion of their livelihoods that was targeted, the central element of the RNE-DRDPs; these were the real target of the intervention. They were left out as they were considered to be represented by their authorities. Thus, much as the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986) tries to put together different actors, the missing thousands call for attention of the missed ideas and perspectives of the targeted beneficiaries, who, at the end of the day, are to be the subjects of intervention. However, generally speaking, the three categories of actors, that is, the regional and district authorities, the team of Netherlands experts resident in Tanzania, and the RNE belong to the state engendered order; their basic task is to perpetuate the stock of ideas of the modernising development discourse and enforce it to the missing thousands who are the subjects of development.
Bukoba district development problem
RNE-DRDPs in Kagera Region include Bukoba which started in 1987, Karagwe and Biharamulo started five years later in 1993, Ngara in 1994, and Muleba in 1996. According to the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986: 28), involution was found to be a problem in Bukoba District:
Due to population pressure and the gradual loss of soil fertility, competition between cash (tree) crops and food crops becomes more and more acute. With further declining soil fertility more and more land will be used for cassava production. Income per head and the nutritional status of the population will decline. … A rural development programme for Bukoba will first and foremost have to develop a strategy to transform the involution process. This task is difficult and might even prove to be impossible.
Thus, development problems to be dealt with in Bukoba District were population pressure, gradual loss of soil fertility, and competition between cash crops and food crops. With further declining of soil fertility, more land was to be used for cassava cultivation, and this would result in the decline of income per head and the nutritional status of the Haya. While on the one hand, this is a rationalisation of the competition between population and land as resource, on the other hand, it is a
manifestation of the centrality of income in people’s livelihoods. This is another typical way of replicating the modernising development discourse by repeating the Malthusian population trap and theories on economic returns. Thus, from the be- ginning, BDRDP had to strategise for the transformation of this involution process. That is why BDRDP had to give highest priority to agricultural packages in order to increase arable land area, plant tree nurseries on a large scale, rehabilitate feeder roads, and to rehabilitate existing village go-downs (URT/RNE 1986: 28-29). This kind of development problematising is nothing else other than the typical alarmist characterisation of the modernising development discourse whereby problem-defin- ing is done from the off-the-shelf narratives for eventual justification of solutions.
In this section, I presented a discussion on the concept of participation. I outlined its understanding as embedded in the process approach in the planning and implementation of development projects. I demonstrated that notwithstanding the centrality of participation of all the actors in development, the Identification Study (URT/RNE 1986) misses the key actor category: the development beneficiaries. At end of this section, I showed how the development problem of Bukoba district to be addressed by the RNE/DRDP was characterised by the off-the-shelf narratives for eventual justification of the solutions.
Conclusion
The main aim of this chapter was to demonstrate how the bilateral development cooperation between Tanzania and the Netherlands is a manifestation of the modern- ising development discourse. I demonstrated this through the use of the RNE- DRDPs conceptualisation of the concepts of development, rural development, sustainable development, and participation. I began the chapter with the presentation of the key documents that facilitated the analysis of these concepts. The presentation of these documents aimed at knowing the general contents of the sources of con- cepts in discussion. In the subsequent section, I discussed the concept of develop- ment, ascertaining that development was conceived as progress. In the section on rural development, I presented the argument that rural development was about inter- ventions to smallholder men and women farmers living in villages and town centres on activities that rotate around agriculture. The section on sustainable development demonstrated how the understanding of the concept was based on partnership, gene- ration of financial resources, and attention to the environment. Due to the powerful position of the donor, and therefore the aspect of unequal relationship between the donor and the aid recipient, the donor imposed a tough conditionality of catering for
the recurrent costs of development projects to the beneficiaries. On the attention to the environment, I discussed how the ecological rehabilitation was based on the Brundtland Commission, and there was no exploration, encouragement, and promo- tion of other localised ecological perspectives, an aspect that highlighted the other- ising nature of the RNE-DRDPs. In the section about participation, I underscored the centrality of the notion of process approach as a methodological approach in the planning and implementation of development projects in the RNE-DRDPs. I, how- ever, pointed out that the local beneficiaries were not involved in the Identification Study. The problem diagnosis, therefore, was based on the perspective of the three categories of actors: the district and regional authorities, the Netherlands experts resident in Tanzania, and the RNE because these were the actors who are perpe- tuators of the modernising development discourse.
From the discussion about the concepts of development, rural development, sustainable development, and participation, I argue that the bilateral development cooperation between Tanzania and the Netherlands has been a perfect example of the concretisation of the modernising development discourse. It is the belief in the role of modernisation as the transformation force involved in the processes of capital investment (aid money), the application of science (technology), and the urbanisa- tion that would lead to the development of the aid recipients. However, with the contradictions that have emerged in the concept of participation, the unequal rela- tionship between the donors and the aid recipients demonstrates how the donor still controls the development machinery.
What is crucial with the RNE-DRDPs is the fact that such conceptualisations have led to the enhancement of the power asymmetry in the relationship between the different actors in the aid machinery. The Dutch donors being the protagonists of the modernising development discourse, have assumed powers as globalisers, Other- isers, shaper of the subjects of development, and problem definers; as I demonstrate in chapters six and seven, the different actor categories of the aid recipients relate in terms of power, with the modernising development discourse being a defining factor.
When presenting the RNE-DRDPs, I am aware of the IOB report (2004) which was very critical about the RNE-DRDPs. The report is fundamental with respect to the challenge to the modernising development discourse. However, in this chapter, I have not presented a discussion of the report with respect to the modernising development discourse because I find there is still need to present issues about organising practices. The report is discussed in the final chapter of this study. Having discussed the bilateral development cooperation as manifestation of the
modernising development discourse through the examination of the RNE-DRDPs, I discuss issues related to the organising practices of the district officials in the area of operation of one of the RNE-DRDPs, the Bukoba District Rural Development Pro- gramme (BDRDP).