Reinventing the wheel – Pablo Yanguas

Planning must be viewed as an incremental process that tests propositions about the most effective means of coping with social problems, reassessing and redefining both the problems and the components of development projects as more is learned about their complexities and about the economic, social, and political factors affecting the outcome of proposed courses of action. Complex social experiments can be partially guided but never fully controlled; thus, analysis and management procedures must be flexible and incremental, facilitating social interaction so that those groups most directly affected by a problem can search for and pursue mutually acceptable objectives. Rather than providing a blueprint for action, planning should facilitate continuous learning and interaction, allowing policy-makers and managers to readjust and modify programs and projects as they learn more about the conditions with which they are trying to cope.

Dennis A. Rondinelli (1993), Development Projects as Policy Experiments (New York: Routledge). Continue reading The hard truth about development practice is -at least- 20 years old

In appearance, Kwame Nkrumah is a slender man in his early forties, of middle height, with a mop of frizzy hair, big soulful eyes, a sultry, sensual expression and a trace of petulance, of prima donna touchiness, in his manner. He is, I am sure, a born actor, with all the magnetism, emotional sensitivity and panache of a good players. To say this is not to suggest insincerity. A true actor believes entirely in the reality of his characters. Nkrumah’s part is that of the savior of this people from foreign oppression. To give point to the part he has had to invent the oppression, but that was not difficult, nor in his eyes wrong. Nationalism is a passion, not an exercise in logic, and to passion’s servant all means are justified.

Continue reading A political economy analysis of Ghana… Sixty years ago