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NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner

Public-Private Development Interfaces in Ethiopia

Alternative title: Offentlig-privat bistandssamarbeid i Etiopia

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

The DEVINT project explores what happens in the practical interface between public and private actors in international development and how private actors and interests affects publicly funded development aid’s mechanisms, principles and objectives. Increased cooperation and partnership between the public and private sectors are hailed as detrimental to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to provide finance for international development in the global south. Official development assistance and public aid are expected to have a catalytic effect for private partnerships and funding. The DEVINT project moves analytical attention from the level of policy to attend to the practical interfaces of public and private actors set to cooperate under the unfolding PPP policy. Policymakers expectations of what PPP may do to finance international development shadows for other practical challenges that emerge as part of PPP. For instance, public and private actors abide by different logics (respectively ‘not-for-profit’ vs ‘fo-profit’) that may be at odds with each other; public and private actors are part of different accountability regimes (respectively responsible towards donors and beneficiaries vs shareholders and investors). These interface dynamics, produces by PPP, not only affects international development’s principles and objectives, but may also undermine public-private partnership itself. Through detailed empirical case studies in Ethiopia, DEVINT will map and analyse different context specific renderings and modulations of public-private interfaces, the challenges and opportunities they present to development cooperation and the unintended consequences and impacts these changes have on development practice. The project attends to different empirical and analytical levels, from NGOs and philanthropies to processes involving the state and international organizations, such as the World Bank. The project’s empirical scope and analytical depth contribute to understanding how bold development objectives are converted to and affect development practice – thereby providing a theoretical insight into how discursive power, global governance and local development processes change the world.

A new aid regime is emerging. Private enterprises, businesses and large corporations have, over the past decade, entered the field of international development on an unprecedented scale. The private sector is given due attention in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, referred to both as a means and an end, and SDG17 aims to revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development, calling for greater collaboration between public and private actors. The enrolment of private actors to public and official aid brings new dynamics, opportunities and challenges to international development assistance: private actors’ self-interests and market-driven logic may come at odds with established aid principles, practices and policies. Through detailed case studies of various public-private development encounters in Ethiopia, the objective of DEVINT is to understand how the enrolment of private actors influences publicly funded development assistance. A key ambition is to move beyond the discursive policy level, to study these encounters in practice and from the perspective of actors. DEVINT thus zooms in on policymaking processes involving both public and private actors. These represent important interface situations and allow us to study the intersection of different knowledge regimes and social fields, where discontinuities based upon discrepancies in values, interests, knowledge and power are found. Studying policy and actors enables us to explore practical renderings of the new aid regime, including how dominant policies are implemented, translated or resisted by actors. Studying public-private interfaces enables DEVINT to explore how policy frames practice and the scope for agency vis-à-vis dominating development discourse, which is important in order to understand and improve how bold SDG-strategies are converted into practice. We also posit that doing so will reveal larger processes of governance, power and social change that are shaping the world today.

Funding scheme:

NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner