What, exactly, are we doing here......?

Finally an answer to this question in the form of a paper published by the ODI:

"Implementing Knowledge Strategies:
Lessons from international development agencies
Ben Ramalingam
April 2005
Overseas Development Institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London
SE1 7JD
UK"

Buried in some fairly dense text is the following:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3 Knowledge for development: background

Despite the growth of the knowledge economy as described above, the awareness of the central role of knowledge in economic and social development is far from new. The initiation of the age of
development itself has been linked by many thinkers (Sachs, 1989; Rist, 1997; King and McGrath, 2004, among many others) to Point Four in the inaugural speech of United States President Truman in 1948.

Because of its clear focus on the transfer and utilisation of knowledge, the text of the speech is worth reproducing here:

‘...Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery.

Their food is inadequate.

They are victims of disease.

Their economic life is primitive and stagnant.
Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.

For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people... The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other peoples are limited.

But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible. I believe that we should make available to peaceloving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life...’ (Truman, in speech, 1949, emphasis added)

But this transfer was also increasingly recognised as being far from simple a process. As it was put in an American Economic Review lecture in 1966:

‘The recognition that development is essentially a knowledge process has been slowly penetrating the minds of economists, but [they] are still too much obsessed by mechanical models…to the neglect of the study of the learning process which is the real key to
development.’ (Boulding, 1966)

Such ‘mechanical models’ of knowledge have informed much of development theory, in the form of modernisation theory and its variants, and development practice, through for example, technical assistance. However, knowledge and learning was brought high on the development aid agenda in 1996, in the inaugural speech of the incoming President of the World Bank.

Before 175 international Finance Ministers, James Wolfensohn – a former investment banker – made the following announcement:

‘The Bank Group’s relationships with governments and institutions all over the world and our unique reservoir of development experience across sectors and countries position us to play a leading role in a new knowledge partnership... To capture this potential we need to invest in the necessary systems that will enhance our ability to gather development information and experience and share it with our clients. We need to become, in effect, the “Knowledge Bank”.’
(Wolfensohn, 1996)

There is some evidence to suggest that the motivation for this strategic shift was not simply the stated vision of improving effectiveness (King and McGrath, 2004). At the time, the Bank was facing increasing criticism for its practices, and the knowledge programme was a key response to this.

It is worth noting that the development-specific rationale for the shift was to come later, in the 1998 World Development Report, Knowledge for Development, which stated that:

‘For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge has become the most important factor determining the standard of living – more than land, than tools, than labor.’ (World Bank,
1998)

Since the publication of Knowledge for Development there has been a rapidly increasing emphasis on the knowledge and learning, leading to a renewed attention on both development processes and development organisations as essentially ‘knowledge-based’. This has led to the widespread adoption of knowledge-based strategies amongst the plethora of agencies within the development sector, including donor agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research institutes, and institutes based in the South (King and McGrath, 2002).

There is now an increasing appreciation, in development organisations of all sizes, of the value of knowledge and learning practices in terms of enabling timely access to institutional knowledge (Creech and Willard, 2001).

The trend through which the knowledge and learning approach has seen its apotheosis in development agencies has been variously termed ‘knowledge for development’, ‘knowledge-based aid’, ‘KS’ or ‘OL’.

The specific practices advocated cover all of those outlined in the conceptual model articulated in section 2.1 focusing on better knowledge and learning within given organisations. The movement also includes, however, a set of practices geared around the notion of sharing knowledge with Southern counterparts and the poor, and a further set which addresses knowledge economies in the South and attempts to overcome issues of the ‘digital divide’ (World Bank, 1998).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for sharing that.