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When being an expert doesn't quite make you the expert.
In thinking about international development associations, groups, and organizations, I always wonder what makes people qualified to be called experts. A lot of the things we focus, on, cherish and show off seem to run contrary to the actual help that is needed. Based on that, I am sometimes baffled by the idea of “international development experts”.
This post is a reflection on my observations about who is often deemed the expert and who isnt. After reading a post the FP2P blog, one of my favourite knowledge and idea curative spaces, I realized this issue is not just in my head. It’s the reality about the respected players in international development, and likely other fields. In one such post, Farida Bena captured my thoughts and her introduction knocked it out the park, for me at least.
This trend has been the norm in a lot of rooms and spaces I have been in, heard of, and read about. I haven’t come to my “aha” moment yet but through reflections like these, I am hoping to put some more colour to my thoughts.
The expert and the problem with international development expert-ing
For many of us who have had the privilege of receiving an education, there is a lot our experience can teach us. The idea of thinking “critically” and engaging with content more “analytically” is lovely, we like it and we preach it. Why? It’s as close as we can get to being objective, and low key fancy.
That is not inherently bad, it’s a good thing really. What becomes problematic is when we fail to convey those ideas, findings, and outcomes in a manner that is accessible to many. Especially to, and for, the people we claim to want to help.
And as interesting as our output may seem to us and our graders, managers, and fellow academics, we tend to perpetuate the same ways of reproducing knowledge we claim to despise. A complex string of words understandable and accessible to a few. You see what I did there?
Helping a small community understand the findings of a survey and how to implement them is a lot of things. One of which is not flexing my English muscular abilities and doing all sorts of literary gymnastics on a page.
Here are a few observations of some of the characteristics of people tagged experts, myself included, that sometimes baffles me.
1. English as a language of query and interpretation for the development expert
Your big grammar and plenty jargon
Development is complex as it is, and we don’t seem to help ourselves with big words that mean little or lack true meaning. Perhaps more important is the use of jargon in our writing and verbal communication. Take good governance for instance. What does it mean exactly? Like I get it and I have said countries need it on countless occasions but what exactly do we mean by that. First questions, where does it even come from? Here is what I found.
Believe it or not, the concept actually came from African scholars who believed that the main challenge of African development was the establishment of state–society relations and the importance for these relations to be developmental, democratic, and socially inclusive. You get it? Read more about it from the African legend, Thandika Mkandawire.
So yes, much of the jargon we use is meant to simplify slightly challenging ideas. But, our inability to effectively communicate that plain and simple is problematic. Instead, our words have become passwords, accessible only to a few, and a huge turn off for many. It almost seems elitist and contrary to what we claim to stand for.
We therefore need to put more effort into making our ideas and thoughts open and accessible to all. Otherwise we risk becoming out of touch with the realities of our communities who will disengage and deem us irrelevant. And for some, this is already happening.
Humour me
When you visit Ghana, for example, English is widely spoken by many people who have had a chance to receive some form of formal education. However, if you have ever visited communities – the ones ridden by poverty and strife – you will learn quickly that there are many variants to the language that is English. I mean my people make it work. They will communicate with a bish-bash-bosh of words that honestly require familiarity, context, and tenacity to understand.
Sometimes I wonder how foreign experts manage on the ground. Translators? Yes, but do they always ask the questions right or even interpret properly? I don’t know, I’m asking.
To my Ghanaian Twi speakers, humour me for 60 seconds with the clip below – it’s only 1 minute for real. Listen then come back.
Did you understand what she said? I speak Twi but I cannot say that I got any of that.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s how we come across with our big English, laden with jargon and colloquialisms. It’s like “Very well said, poetically delivered even, but I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
2. Time, no one has got enough
Change can be a slow process. One rife with relationship management, securing buy-ins (getting people on board), negotiating power dynamics (some people benefit from the status quo and need to be incentivised to relinquish, or focus on other or mutual gains), and trying to create a consensus around ideas for change. Sometimes it is as complicated as all those words but I hope you get the gist of it?
Moreover, deep structural change doesn’t typically happen in a week, month, or even a year for that matter. And yet our experts are always in a hurry; frustrated with why one project or the other did not “work”. Even more for the donors and project heads in Washington, London, Paris, or New York, the struggle seems real. They need the results and publication fast, yesterday even.
To that effect, experts get flown in and out like the foreign aid Africa receives. The money comes in and goes right back out.
But a change does not always happen like that. We need time to do things properly and that, we do not always have. Development projects require patience and a tad bit longer of an attention span than some would care to realise. Even when we have the right stakeholders, resources, and political will, it takes time, much less in those countries where we don’t…
The race to first with international development experts
We cannot talk about time without addressing the demands on experts professionals and practitioners alike. In the post by Farida, she talked about how difficult it is to find a donor who is willing to pay for researchers to stay an extra day or two to hear about how projects may have impacted the people. Worse, even less time is accounted for to allow researchers to process, write, evaluate and reflect on the information they have gathered. As a result, we have our experts demanding and churning out information with a quickness. Only to write books and memoirs 15 years later about how they could have done better, if only they were patient. Except 15 years down the line is 15 years too many of wasted opportunities, and lives negatively impacted.
Trying to help people understand the world and how it works is no easy task. Collectively, we need to invest a bit more time, resources, and effort to doing that properly. We have gotten so much so wrong for too long to want to rush through the process of changing lives and communities. The process of being consultative, open to ideas, and allowing the experiences of the people we want to help to shape actions should be embraced the best way possible. Take Somaliland for example. Everything the country, more so the capital, is today is a result of a long and iterative process of reconciliation. Although it is not a perfect, over the past 29 years, Somaliland has managed to achieve peace and stability for itself in a way that even its neighbour to the South cannot boast.
The point is...
The point is that time is hugely important to make decisions as much as it is to understand and change lives. The latter requires us to be a bit more patient, thorough, and experimental.
As researchers, information gathers, and knowledge producers, we need to find the balance. Timelines and deadlines are getting shorter and the race to quickly “put something out there” may not be serving us as best as is needed.
Can we really say we are experts when we fail to properly communicate and rush through all decisions concerning our “constituents”? I don’t know but it doesn’t quite feel right. How do you manage such difficulties in a field you are most passionate about?
We need time to reflect, go back to understand further, explore, implement, and relearn ideas before it becomes gospel. But on whose watch, and dollars?
Noelle Wonders
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[…] The purpose of writing this came from a “disclaimer” I made when introducing a project I was recently working on. I had heard that disclaimer about the big consulting firms quite a number of times over the past two years and I always thought it interesting. I was beyond shocked that somewhere in my mind, I had internalised this or for some reason found it useful to toe that line in my own speech. Why? Je ne sais pas. Perhaps as a way to sound on brand? […]
Love how reflective this is and the clip in there is hilarious. More please,! Good job
There is s much more to be said on this but I am glad you enjoyed this very snippy version! Thanks for stopping by 🙂