development

Why do some projects work?

Graeme MacRae is an anthropologist based at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. His research interests include environmental and development issues in Bali, Java and South India. Graeme has also started blogging here, including numerous publications available for download. Some thoughts on development projects follow.

“Projects” are not very fashionable in development circles these days – least of all simple projects that do simple, practical things like fixing and building. But I’m an anthropologist, in the business of hanging out with ordinary folks, mostly in Indonesia, and listening to what they have to say. It seems to me that for these people practical projects are more important, or perhaps just more real, than ideas like governance, policy, gender equity, participation and empowerment. So if I take these people seriously, I’m inclined to believe in projects too.


The development landscape has, for half a century, been littered with projects that often did little good and sometimes plenty of harm, which is perhaps one of the reasons why they’ve gone out of fashion. But there are also some projects that actually work. I’m interested in what makes the difference – why some work and some don’t.


My first impression, based on projects ranging from organic agriculture, to waste management to disaster relief, is that there are several common factors in the ones that work. These include: smallness of scale (based on local face-to-face community), grounding in local knowledge and resources, the qualities of key people both inside the community and outside, providing the link to essential resources, the quality of the relationship between these people (the old-fashioned word “friendship” springs to mind). I’ll write more on this later …

© 2009 People and Development.