Foreign Aid Safari: Journeys in International Development

We are his audience and in a sense his superiors, for it is our tax money that he is employed to spend, well or poorly, at the behest of the aid agencies and international organizations that are supposed to make a difference.

The public often hear words like devolution or decentralization as the key to successful reforms in government, but these terms are as mystifying to us as they seem to be to both the recipients and implementers of these programs. Without real human relationships between donor and grantee-or for that matter citizen and bureaucrat-none of these concepts can proceed, and George Guess is there to make sure part of the relationship should succeed with locals, whether an encounter in an olive grove in Albania, a river boat of dubious usage in Central America, or a basketball game in Kyrgyzstan.

From his series of letters home during a long career in the field, we find out that the local and national bureaucrats are guilty of keeping their own interests close to their hearts, and it is only with many threats of penalties that any progress, i.e., learning, is made to enable people to change their lives. Rather than facilitate, they impede.

We may find similar comparisons in Robert Klitgaard's handbook to development gone wrong, Tropical Gangsters, and George Guess does his best to intimate that donors may be as dysfunctional as the states they seek to improve. Though this book could be construed as a somewhat cynical summary of a career in foreign aid, he does not approach this without pointing us to his commitment to the pillars of freedom that are essential for any model of democratic governance and his belief in making people's lives better through very simple mechanisms, like reasonable taxation, easy access to credit, and provision of basic services like water, sewerage, electricity, transport and education. Many states simply cannot get the recipe right and this is what is the most upsetting.

If one is tired of academic hair-splitting over what is the "right" policy and would relish an insider's view on what is really happening in the world of development aid, then this book will provide a welcome and humorous relief. Surely it will be useful for anyone considering leaving home for a possibly exciting, potentially frustrating stint in the business known as development. Sign up at your own risk! And beware of car wrecks, booze, ministries and spooks!