International Development, Where Now‪?‬ Oxford Policy Management

Loosely defined as the transfer of funding and decision-making powers to local actors, localization is certainly not a new concept – phrases such as ‘locally-led development’, ‘community-led development’ and ‘doing development differently’ have been pretty commonplace for years.

But as an all-encompassing narrative, localization took centre stage a few years ago when US Agency for International Development administrator, Samantha Power, outlined it as the rhetoric at the centre of what her department does. it has gained further momentum through the movement to decolonise aid – itself a reaction to a number of external factors, not least the Black Lives Matter movement and the need for greater inclusivity around language used within the aid sector.

But what is local? How can we ‘localize’ in a meaningful way and what’s our role as development consultants in all this?

These are just some of the questions we tackle in this latest episode of our ‘International Development, Where Now?’ podcast.

We’re not afraid to face up to some of the thorny issues in the sector in this soul-searching discussion that sees us delve into what it really means to go beyond the ‘fly in, fly out’ nature of development consultancy, whether there’s still a role for global communities and how we do away with knowledge hierarchies.

We also cover some of the potential risks and barriers to localizing and try to offer some achievable, pragmatic solutions.

Can leaders choose a development path? Who decides and how? What conditions lead to a pro-development agenda and what’s the role of external agencies in all of this?

We ask leading economist and former policy advisor to the UK Foreign Secretary, Stefan Dercon, these questions and more in our latest podcast: International Development, Where Now?
Chatting about his revealing book, ‘Gambling on Development’, Dercon draws on his long and far-reaching experience as a senior civil servant within the UK’s Department for International Development, to explain why some countries - like China and Indonesia - seem to opt for a growth-based future while others, like Malawi, remain poor.

Stefan Dercon is the Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, former Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development and former Development Policy Advisor at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. He chats to Stevan Lee, Chief Economist at Oxford Policy Management.

Thanks for listening to the first series of Policy in Pandemics. We're taking a short break while we line up the next episodes but will be back in a couple of weeks.

Despite an unexpected delay in covid-19 mortality rates, Africa is facing an 'unprecedented policy crisis'.

We speak to Kate Dooley, the West Africa Regional Director for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Kate talks about her experience working on Ebola in 2014-15 in Sierra Leone and the differences of covid-19 to Ebola. We discuss what is happening on the ground in Africa, what might be behind the surprisingly low mortality rates, and the impact an economic shock of this size will have on Africa, especially as the rest of the world begins to re-open their economies.

Host: Peter Harrington
Editor: Emmie Fairbairn
Producer: Katherine Valentine

Can covid-19 bring greater transformation and morality in economic policy making? We conclude our conversation with Matt Andrews examining the longer term impact covid-19 might have on the international development sector.

Matt discusses the opportunity for ‘game-changing growth’and his hope that this crisis will accelerate a shift towards countries taking greater ownership over reform, and greater authorship of their own development pathway.

In the first of a two part conversation we discuss what makes good crisis management, good communication, and leadership in the public interest. We speak to Matt Andrews, head of the Building State Capability Programme at Harvard, and Edward S Mason professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

We explore what some countries have got right, empowering people at all levels of government to lead and take risks – moving from ‘control orientation’ to ‘coordination orientation’ – and the need for mechanisms to enable rapid learning to develop context specific responses.

Host: Peter Harrington
Editor: Emmie Fairbairn
Producer: Katherine Valentine