Producing Home Grown Solutions: Think Tanks and Knowledge Networks in International Development

Mainstream international development discourse has long heralded the importance of home grown solutions and national ownership of development policies. Ownership has been seen as the missing link between the significant development aid inflows from the North and poverty reduction outcomes in the South. You only have to look to international agreements such the 2002 Monterrey Consensus or the 2005 Paris Declaration for evidence of this.

However, this goes counter to the fact that much of development knowledge—the theories, policies, and practices of economic and social development—is dominated by the North, mainly by international institutions that are largely controlled by the North, and by donor agencies which exercise considerable influence on Southern governments, particularly the poorer ones. Other factors such as conditionalities, resource imbalances, and historically-rooted prejudices together contribute to development knowledge asymmetries.

SHAPING THE KNOWLEDGE AGENDA

International agreements and planning instruments such as the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) often fail to question the parameters within which national plans are prepared. Home grown solutions can only be produced from knowledge and policies that are locally generated and context specific. Southern knowledge centers (or think tanks) then have a crucial role to play in promoting economic and social development in the global South, particularly in the poorer economies. For instance, the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) was established in 2007 to provide policy analysis and advice to African governments. It is unique in that it champions an African perspective, harnesses African talent from within the continent and from its diaspora, and draws on a network of international experts and preeminent African professionals.

In the last 10 years, there has been a huge increase in think tanks in developing countries that are working on developing country issues. According to McGann’s 2010 Global Go-To Think Tank Report there are nearly 6,500 Think Tanks around the world, of which roughly 2,000 are in developing countries. A considerable literature exists on the assessment of think tanks. Much of this is based on a US and European concept stemming from organizations like The Rand Corporation that were set up in the 1940s and 50s. Certain organizations in the U.K. performed similar functions, such as the Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) founded in 1831, and the Fabian Society which dates from 1884. Think tanks conduct research and advocacy on social, industrial or business policy, political strategy, or science, technology, and military issues. Some are nonprofit organizations; others are funded by governments, advocacy groups, or businesses, or derive revenue from consulting work or research related to their projects.

But recent research at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is challenging these assumptions, arguing that think tanks are by no means a novel phenomenon. They have been around in various forms throughout the world for a long time—including the academic societies of the 1790s in Peru, state-owned technocratic research centers in South Korea dating from the 1950s, and groups of academics in university research centres across several countries in postindependence Sub-Saharan Africa. And while providing policy advice is perhaps their main purpose, think tanks have other objectives too, for instance, legitimizing government or party policies, providing a space for debate, nurturing future policy makers, and channelling funds to political parties. These functions are performed by many different types of organizations: groups of researchers, policy research centers associated with academic institutions, and research-focused nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as well as party and state-affiliated institutes.

BRIDGING BOUNDARIES

In an increasingly interconnected world, Northern and Southern think tanks are joining forces in partnerships and networks to generate and use knowledge more systematically to address national, regional, and global challenges. Networks of think tanks can provide an extremely effective mechanism for learning and innovation, and enable collaboration beyond the usual institutional, cultural, and functional boundaries of an organization. Research by the RAPID programme at ODI on how networks actually add value to the work of individual members has identified a number of common features including:

• community building or coordination,
• filtering information and knowledge,
• amplifying common or shared values and messages,
• facilitating learning (research-based or otherwise) among the members,
• investing and providing resources, skills and assistance, and
• convening different stakeholders and constituencies.
   

Global knowledge networks or partnerships are an increasingly important feature of the international development architecture ranging from large diverse networks tackling a wide range of issues like the World Bank Global Knowledge Partnership, to small networks of individuals and organizations working on particular topics.  Most include Northern and Southern organizations undertaking joint analytical work and engaging policy debates both nationally and internationally. The Northern organizations often also play a supporting and capacity-development role to help their Southern counterparts to develop the capacity to engage with national and global research and decision-making processes.

The Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) is a good example of a knowledge network that spans  both the North and the South. It is a global partnership of universities, researchers, and nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Uganda, and five West African countries. In the U.K., the CPRC includes the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Universities of Manchester and Sussex, Development Initiatives, and HelpAge International.

CPRC works at the national, regional, and global levels. Building on research undertaken by its Ugandan partners, Development Research and Training (DRT) and the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), and on the findings of a conference of chronic poverty researchers from around the world held in Kampala in September 2008, the CPRC was invited by the Government of Uganda to design a cash transfer pilot scheme to address the needs of the chronically poor in Uganda. At the international level, the CPRC has been pushing for action around the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) particularly MDG1:  the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. In its first Chronic Poverty Report (2004-2005), the network estimated the numbers of people living in chronic poverty to be between 320 and 443 million people. The network went further with its second report in 2008, outlining five poverty “traps”:

• poor work opportunities,
• spatial disadvantage, such as living in slums,
• insecurity and poor health, and
• limited citizenship.
   

The report proposed the following policy responses:

• public services for the hard to reach,
• building individual and collective assets,
• antidiscrimination and gender empowerment, and
• strategic urbanisation and migration.
   

As a result, the CPRC has informed thinking among major international donors and agencies such as the European Union, Save the Children, and UNICEF.

The Climate and Development Knowledge Network is a larger-scale global alliance of private and  nongovernmental organizations working to support decision makers in designing and delivering climate compatible development by combining demand-led research, and advisory and knowledge-sharing services in support of locally owned and managed policy processes.  Just one year old, the network has commissioned research on the impact of climate change on energy, urbanization, food security, and livelihoods in South East Asia; advised the African Development Bank on the climate-related implications of the UN’s advisory group report on finance, and is supporting the development of a national climate change strategy in Rwanda. While too early to measure impact on livelihoods, the network’s support is highly regarded. According to UN Climate Change Conference (COP 16) delegates: “Pakistan was better prepared at COP 16 due to CDKN and LEAD—they had prepared five policy briefs and eight background notes for the COP 17 delegates that significantly augmented Pakistan’s negotiation capacity.”

BUILDING CAPACITY TOGETHER

What can donors and international agencies do to promote more “home grown solutions”? Most importantly, they must recognize that diversity is an inherent characteristic of the global community; that national context must be the point of departure for diagnosis and prescription; and that  development must be driven by local effort and initiative. Development cooperation should therefore support the incremental development of local capacities in the South in areas such as development research.  Such support should be long term and multilayered, helping think tanks and their networks to plan for the long term and respond to complex and changing organizational and environmental contexts. Capacity building initiatives should be locally designed and monitored to ensure their sustainability and they should address power relations—capacity building should be a two-way process where funders and Northern organizations have as much to learn as their Southern counterparts.

Ajoy Datta is a Research Officer and John Young is Deputy Director at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), an independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues located in the U.K.

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