NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
Beyond Aid: The Case of Further Education and Training in South Africa, 1994-2009
By Simon McGrath, University of Nottingham
Email: Simon.Mcgrath@nottingham.ac.ukKeywords
South Africa
Summary
This piece presents the example of South Africa as a case where ODA has been far less significant than either national funding or international policy borrowing.
There is considerable attention in this issue of Norrag News to the shifting modalities of official development assistance (ODA). My focus, however, is on a case where ODA has been far less significant than either national funding or international policy borrowing.
By the early 1990s, as Apartheid was nearing its end, South Africa had a technical college system that, in its white urban form, was largely reminiscent of its English counterpart but which also had a growing component of separate facilities for African, Indian and coloured learners.
In the early discussions about a new college system, South African actors were hugely influenced by two international models in particular: the American community colleges and the British further education colleges (especially as they were transformed by the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act). Indeed, it is possible to see much of the subsequent development of the South African further education and training college sector, at least in crude terms, as the victory of the British model over the American.
However, the new model did not come about as a result of DfID influence. Rather, DfID remained resolutely uninterested in the college sector throughout the period. Indeed, I can recall one education advisor in Pretoria telling me that he was happy to meet me on one research trip but that I was wasting my time if I wanted to talk to him about the college sector.
Neither did it come through the influence of the World Bank?s policy work on vocational education and training in sub-Saharan Africa, which supported many of the British reforms (albeit largely implicitly). The only Bank input into the sector was a report written by Richard Johanson and myself in 2003 - which was not acted upon.
How the British influence did work is important as it points to some influences that are not accorded much importance in typical accounts of aid to Africa. First, the initial debate about policy borrowing was heavily influenced by returnees from both Britain and America. This was bolstered by a large number of study tours sponsored by either the British Council or USAID.
Indeed, it was the British Council, rather than DfID, that was the key conduit for British ideas and its mix of cultural diplomacy and trade promotion was far more important than any considerations about new aid modalities. However, I want to suggest that the Council?s way of working was actually more partnership-oriented than would have been the case if this had have been an aid project. The Council did not have the money or power to impose positions nor did it use British officials and consultants to deliver its programme. Rather, led by a black South African returnee, it partnered South African government and a leading business-funded agency as a broker of ideas. Crucially, the key learning took place through a series of practitioner engagements. 88 college middle managers were taken to Britain for three-month placements at colleges, whilst visits to South Africa were arranged for British college principals and managers from key organisations such as the Learning and Skills Council and the Association of Colleges.
My intention here is not to downplay the complexities of policy learning, which I will address in a longer version of this story. Rather, it is to highlight the ways in which a different type of relationship arguably had more success in developing a locally-owned system that, nonetheless, demonstrated major international influences. At the heart of the success here was clearly having the right people in place, most importantly a British-educated, black South African at the heart of the network. Equally important was the way in which South African college managers and leaders were able to engage with counterparts from Britain in a direct exploration of what worked rather than getting this filtered through agency staff. Moreover, the recent British experience of systemic transformation was also seen as highly pertinent by many South Africans. Although the British system was clearly more advanced, it had gone through many of the same challenges in the past decade.
Of course, South Africa is not a typical African country when it comes to the aid relationship. The largest ODA intervention in the sector (by Danida) was on a similar par to the largest project funded by the national Business Trust and was dwarfed by the state-financed recapitalisation scheme. South Africa had a far stronger overall capacity than most of its neighbours and a far stronger cadre of brokers of international ideas in policy and practice, including a large returnee group.
Nonetheless, this case does illustrate some ways in which policy learning can take place in a way that may be more equal than is possible in the ODA relationship even with its new language.
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