Huib Huyse

Dealing with complexity through actor-focused planning, monitoring and evaluation (PME):

This article reports on the results of a collaborative action research project (2010–12) in which 10 development organizations (nine Dutch and one Belgian), together with their southern partners, explored different actor-focused Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) approaches with the aim of dealing more effectively with complex processes of social change. A major challenge that organizations were trying to address during this action research pertained to the demonstration of observable results in complex contexts where such results are not always easy to measure or to quantify and where causal links between cause and effect cannot always be predicted. Drawing from recent literature, the article presents an analytic framework to assess the effectiveness of a PME approach in dealing with complex social change. This framework is then used to explore how actor-focused PME approaches can help international development programmes to manage complex processes of social change by stimulating processes of real-time results-based learning.

Evaluating NGO-capacity development interventions: Enhancing frameworks, fitting the (Belgian) context

Capacity development support of Southern partners has become a cornerstone of the work of many Northern development NGOs. While there is a growing consensus in the aid sector about the importance of capacity development (CD), the support base among the general public and policy makers for these kinds of activities is weak. This is linked with the observed difficulties of demonstrating the relevance and effects of CD efforts. In 2008, the Belgian Special Evaluation Office commissioned a large-scale evaluation focusing on CD support within NGO partnerships, including 31 partnerships of 21 Belgian NGOs in six countries. Important methodological challenges emerged, related to (1) the large diversity in actors, projects, themes and contexts that had to be assessed, (2) the dynamic nature and non-linearity of CD processes, (3) and the implicit character of NGO practice in this area. This article argues that the eclectic use of different frameworks – including more recently developed ones related to the nature of CD, support for CD, and organizational change – supports the production of comprehensive evaluation results.

Learning about the Effects of Development Education Programmes: Strengthening Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation (PME) through Reflective Practice.

This article reports on the results of an action research project (2010–13) in which ten Belgian organizations who implement development education programmes explored different planning, monitoring, and evaluation (PME) approaches with the aim of learning more effectively about their results. PME approaches piloted included outcome mapping, most significant change, and scoring tools. This article seeks to further the debate about the implications of the complexity of development education programmes for their PME. Such debate is needed in view of a growing call for results-based management of externally funded development education programmes. Based on the literature from the fields of international development cooperation and development education, and supported by our study results, we argue that there is a need for alternative results-based management approaches that promote learning and help actors involved in development education deal with unpredictability and non-linearity.

Editorial: Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity. The New Face of European Solidarity

The tens of thousands of refugees entering Europe since mid-2015 have led to heated debates not only in political circles within the European Union but also on the streets. For fear of home, security and work, citizens all over the EU express their concern with the unprecedented influx of refugees and asylum seekers. At the same time, others put up banners welcoming refugees and many are doing substantially more. In many countries, citizens spontaneously set up initiatives in response to the refugee crisis. Tourists on the Greek islands close to Turkey take care of refugees by driving them to the nearest port from which they can catch a boat to mainland Greece. Others start collecting goods to hand over to refugees or ship it to Calais for the hundreds of refugees whose main goal is to travel across the Channel. Welcome Shops are opened to act as collecting points for the goods that citizens want to donate for refugees and others again use social media to set up meetings with residents or to find rooms and houses for refugees. Under the heading of ‘amateur aid: the limits of good intentions’, Wall (2015) analyses these ‘spontaneous citizen and civil society-led initiatives in response to the refugee crisis’. Many initiatives, she states, ‘started with one person and an idea and have snowballed’. These initiatives are then characterised as ‘small, unofficial, unstructured’ without ‘legal status’ set up by people who ‘have never done anything like this before’. Still, many ‘have come together within hours’. Naturally, not all goes well. Apart from receiving ‘stained suits, high heels and erotic lingerie’ and the emergence of secondary markets where refugees resell donated goods, some of these citizen initiatives (CIs) raise ‘more money than they can spend or handle’ and many simply lack the experience and expertise in handling the work they have set out to do. For the authors in this volume, these characteristics and challenges are very recognisable as they are central to what are called CIs for global solidarity, private (development) initiatives, MONGOs (My Own NGO) or personalised aid. Notwithstanding the different names or abbreviations, all of these essentially refer to small-scale development organisations set up by private persons in the global North and aimed at improving the living standards of people in the global South. As such, this ‘vertical solidarity’ (Wilkinson-Maposa et al., 2005) refers to an actor in development that is still very much under the radar but deserves a much more central place in the discussion about development aid.

Citizen science on speed? Realising the triple objective of scientific rigour, policy influence and deep citizen engagement in a large-scale citizen science project on ambient air quality in Antwerp

Citizen science projects are increasingly recognised as catalyst for triggering behaviour change and building social capital around environmental issues. However, overview studies observe recurrent challenges in many citizen science projects in terms of combining high levels of data quality with deep citizen engagement and policy influence. This paper reports on the findings of the CurieuzeNeuzen project (www.CurieuzeNeuzen.eu), a large-scale citizen science project on air quality in Antwerp, delivering results in the three areas described above. Through CurieuzeNeuzen, 2,000 citizens studied the air quality levels in and around Antwerp in 2016 and were intensively deliberating on possible causes and solutions. Surveys were conducted at the start and towards the end of the project, with participants stating that their participation resulted in changed views and behaviour towards air pollution, mobility solutions, and city planning. The findings were picked-up academically and contributed to policy debates on air quality at city and regional level.

Negotiating the technological capacity in Chinese engagements: Is the Tanzanian government in the driving seat?

ABSTRACT Is the Tanzanian government in charge of development cooperation programmes with China? The literature has portrayed the Tanzanian and other state actors in Africa as passive and weakly coordinated players over the five decades of intensified cooperation with China. This paper will attempt to challenge this narrative by drawing on lessons from the negotiation efforts of individual and institutional actors in Tanzania, as they sought to improve the countrys industrial and technological capacity, among other interests. Our findings revealed a gap between the capacity to attract Chinese investments and development assistance, and extraction of knowledge and technology from such engagements. President John Pombe Magufulis anti-corruption measures signal a paradigm shift against the rent-seeking tendencies, elitism and limited utilisation of local content under the Chinese partnership projects. Nevertheless, the combination of a declining share of official Chinese engagements with the increased involvement of private actors necessitates further policy innovations in order to boost inter-firm technological spillovers.

Cooperation between China and Tanzania on ICT: fish, fishing tackle or fishing skills?

Abstract Tanzania has ambitions of moving from a mere consumer of information and communication technologies to a designing and manufacturing base. This paper aims to assess the role of public–private partnerships with Chinese institutions in the achievement of this goal. Through an in-depth case study, this paper examines the contributions of three Chinese multinationals in terms of technology transfer and technological capacity building in local firms in Tanzania. The analysis contrasts the organisation of improvements on the manner of technology transfer and capacity building in these partnerships with prior Sino-Tanzanian partnership efforts in technology and industry. The Chinese multinationals had a labour localisation rate of 60% on average, with some training services provided to Tanzanian nationals and supply of services and equipment to Tanzanian firms. However, the overall level of technology transfer continues to be weak. Observed barriers to technology transfer include weak incentives for collaboration between Chinese and Tanzanian firms and low-level technology embedded in activities offshored by the Chinese multinationals to Tanzania.

Mapping the Belgian NGDO Landscape in Relation to Development Cooperation: Dealing with Fragmentation and Emerging Complexities

This chapter aims to provide a general overview of the Belgian non-governmental development organization (NGDO) landscape and the challenges it faces within the development cooperation framework. Belgium with its consociational federal state, historically characterized by deep linguistic, regional and ideological cleavages, has a NGDO landscape that bears similar traits. To a large extent segmented into ideological pillars (catholic, social democratic, liberal), divided into Walloon or Flemish regions, yet increasingly linked to international networks, the NGDO landscape is fascinatingly fragmented. Subsequent reforms in co-funding systems have attempted, with limited success, to partially fix the fragmentation problem. Today, fragmentation once more figures high on the agenda as a problem, because the recent aid effectiveness debate has put more international pressure on donors (bilateral, multilateral but also indirect actors) to harmonize, manage for results, professionalize, concentrate, specialize and become more effective in delivering aid. In Belgium, on the sides of both the government and the NGDO sector itself, there is a genuine concern to deal with these challenges and to improve the quality of the NGDO sector. Yet there is also resistance toward these new tendencies. Resistance is in part fed by the success of a huge number of locally embedded particular non-professional development initiatives and small organizations, part of the so-called ‘fourth pillar’1 — which do not necessarily follow the recommendations of the international aid effectiveness debate, yet they compete with professional non-governmental development actors for 16 private donations and are very successful in doing so.