In Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace, Pierre, a young noble, does some philanthropic work in the Russian wastelands. His projects complete, he is thanked profusely by the women, peasants and priests, whom he thought he had benefited. Satisfied, he returns home full of self-worth. However, it soon becomes clear that Pierre had not helped anyone. In fact—working without cultural context or experience—he has aggravated the situation.
The moral of this story—in the context of 21st century development—is perhaps “plus ca change, rien ne change.” The results of developmental efforts today do not seem to be all that different from the 1800s: corruption, bloated governments leeching off donors, lack of social accountability between government and people. The list goes on.
Arguably, many of these problems could be fixed if donors adopted more of a “bottom-up” approach: giving recipients more say in donor targets, funding and project development.
Fortunately, as ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) becomes more sophisticated, the development field has this option. Combined with social media and access to technology, particularly Internet and cell-phones, we have new development tools that encourage and allow beneficiaries to participate more actively in the development process.
Take Twitter as one example.