These are a few of my observations from the development work in which I have been involved.

• It starts with listening and learning.

  Projects that start in an airconditioned office half a world away, or in a meeting with local “experts” and officials, may be unneeded, unwanted or unviable in the homes and communities where they are implemented. Finding the right questions to ask and the right people to ask is the first and biggest hurdle. Find out first who is doing what in-country as there is so much overlap and duplication.

• Management skills are essential.

  This seems obvious but many of the problems I have seen in development projects are due to weak people management or financial management skills. One development organisation head boasted that her organisation had a higher percentage of PhDs than any comparable organisation in the world but the planning, execution and follow-up that I saw in the organisation were inadequate. Basic project and financial management skills are far more valuable than a PhD.

• Unreasonable pressure to disburse.

  One department head complained to me after I discovered serious and systematic problems that I “was going to ruin (his) 100% disbursement record.” I was surprised, both that he had managed to disburse 100% in all his projects and even more so that he thought that this was a good thing. Projects very seldom go according to plan, even in developed countries. To think that projects will always go according to plan in developing countries is naïve. In this particular case the recipient organisations were deliberately dragging their heels on implementation/spending so as to have more funds “left over” at the end which they were never asked to return.

• There are limits to how much aid or how many projects a development area can efficiently absorb.

  There are a limited number of competent and honest local organisations and people while there are often many bilateral, multilateral and local organisations trying to implement projects which compete for those limited resources. After the tsunami in Sri Lanka, donors bid against each other for a whole host of limited local resources while many donated goods depressed the market prices for local producers who had not been affected by the tsunami. I saw in Zambia how the frequent workshops, conferences and capacity building activities (and their attractive per diems) kept civil servants away from their desks and their real work for a large portion of their time.

• They are well dressed, well spoken and say all the right things

  Do not equate being well dressed and having good language skills with sharing your ideals and moral attitudes. There are many local people and organisations with their heart in the right place but there are also many people who have learned the jargon and are more interested in their own development.

• Embrace failure and share the lessons learned.

  There is little incentive for people and organisations to be outspoken about what didn’t work and why because it is unlikely that a failure in a distant land will reach home and often the same people are responsible for both implementation and appraisal. Few projects are outright successes and the lessons learned should be shared, not hidden.