North-South project collaboration: a look at how our local partners allow themselves to speak their minds about an intervention

Nearly 2 months ago, when I was in the DRC to provide vocational training to local partners, I found myself in a rather surprising situation. It reminded me of another one in Mali, under almost identical conditions, and raised questions about the freedom of expression that our African partners allow themselves – or not – when implementing project activities.
  
Let me describe the Congolese case. 
 
During the training, I wanted to get the audience to agree that it's better to turn to someone with proven skills in a field to obtain the desired service with the desired quality, so I took the rather obvious example of dental treatment. ​The participants all knew I was a psychologist, so I asked them if they would be willing to enlist my services to treat their dental problems. In other words, would they trust me to perform a filling or other dental treatment?

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To my great surprise, this question was followed by a 15-second silence: nobody ventured to answer. It was only after this lapse of time that an employee of the NGO I was working for dared to say "No, I wouldn't," after which a few other people responded in kind. Yet it was quite clear that none of them would have had the naivety to come to me with a cavity!

I was disturbed to see such a preoccupation with not wanting to displease me – because that's what it was all about. Voicing a refusal to be treated by me, as the NGO employee had dared to do, meant taking the risk, I suppose, of "offending" me. Yet, accepting the hypothetical dental treatment I proposed was clearly absurd; the participants felt trapped. 

​This was all the more disconcerting given that during the many exercises in the course, I had naively had the impression of an open and frank collaboration. Not to mention the exchange I'd had with one of the participants on the morning of the second day of training, during which François* came to explain to me why I'd been applauded at the end of the first day of training (which I'd found very pleasant, of course, but a little curious all the same). However, as he explained to me the next day, the assembly had applauded me because I had improved the way I considered certain orientation or insertion approaches (compared to the training course I taught in 2019) since these now took greater account of local inclinations. François* told me that whereas during the previous training course, the participants would have given me a mark of around 8.5 out of 10, this time the mark had risen to 9 or even 9.5 out of 10 (a fine improvement, by the way...).

​Nevertheless, it was striking that the "confession" didn't take place until four years later – my lack of consideration for certain local practices having not been mentioned at all during the first training course. 
 
Of course, local partners’ reluctance to express their disagreement because of the unbalanced relationship between them and representatives of the Global North is nothing new. Speaking their minds is not an easy exercise for local partners, even if they are invited to do so, for the fear of negative fallout from such a confession is probably never far away. But I was surprised to see that the fear of displeasing could intrude even into such light-hearted and – it seemed to me – non-issue-based exchanges. It raised the question (once again ?) of the degree of collaboration that can prevail between players in the North and South when they find themselves working on the same project - when the very desire to collaborate seems a fine idea in itself. 

Indeed, how can we guarantee the development of an intervention that is both relevant AND acceptable to all those involved in its implementation, if some stakeholders don't necessarily dare to take a stand? The question remains.


Catherine Ukelo, December 2023