A new ingredient in the development effectiveness debate is intercultural competence – that is, the ability to overcome challenges posed by working with colleagues and partners from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The aim is to turn diversity into an asset.
“When you work in development, by default you’re expected to understand others coming from different cultural backgrounds,” said Virginia Manzitti, working in the European Commission’s International Cooperation and Development branch. “But intercultural competences do not come naturally, you need to work them out. When you realise this, you make a big step forward.”
With 30 years’ experience in development, Manzitti is convinced that training on intercultural communication can contribute to the quality of development work. “Sometimes policy dialogue fails because of gaps or barriers in understanding,” she said. “We are not well prepared and equipped to deal with cultural differences and diversity.”
Developing this capacity is increasingly important in the context of a shifting development model. The donor-recipient set-up is giving way to a model based on partnerships, “and you cannot succeed at partnership if you don’t understand your partners,” said Manzitti. “If you see cooperation as an exchange, rather than seeing aid as something which needs to be delivered, it’s much more important to have this competence.”
Training in intercultural communication is already well-established in the private sector. As well as facilitating smooth business transactions and boosting profits, intercultural training has been shown to improve internal and social cohesion.
The development sector has not yet incorporated this in its formal training (see Milton Bennett’s video below); but it could gain a lot from investing in these skills. “Cultural diversity, when properly managed, improves performance and innovation,” said Manzitti. “But to deliver these results it needs to be properly supported.”
‘A special institution’
The intercultural challenges in development work are magnified for EU Delegations with their diverse mix of staff. Before they consider their relationships with partner governments and NGOs – which might themselves be made up of staff from several cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds - there are the in-house dynamics to address.
“We’re a bit of a special institution,” said Bryan Fornari, Head of Cooperation in the EU Delegation to Laos, Thailand & Malaysia. “It’s not only the difference of European cultures coming from different backgrounds,” said Fornari. “Even more marked is the difference between that European group and the national staff.”
An additional complication is that the different layers of administration are associated with staff origin. “Typically local ‘national’ staff have lower positions and international staff have higher managerial positions, so that of course plays out in the relations in the team,” said Fornari.
Although Delegation staff tend to have international experience already and are exposed to intercultural relations at work, Fornari believes that dedicated training could improve working dynamics and avoid misunderstandings. “We are not really very equipped for this,” he said. “There is a lot of potential to work on it to find the best way of maximizing the work we do together as a team.”
This in turn could make Delegations more effective in their dealings with national governments, implementing agencies and other partners.
Bridging world views
The importance of being able to recognise, understand and bridge gaps between European and partner countries’ world views has been highlighted by several current and former heads of EU Delegations.
“You can have programmes which are well thought out technically, economically and financially, but don’t achieve the expected result or are completely blocked or stopped,” said Dominique Dellicour, former Head of Delegation to Senegal. “If you look at the causes, they are bound up in a lack of understanding of the context – political and cultural.”
Sometimes development projects fall foul of religious sensibilities, or rub up against certain communities’ land interests. This was the case in a sanitation project proposed in Senegal. As it was designed in response to a need expressed by the national government, “normally this kind of project could be rolled out without a problem,” said Dellicour. But in this case some communities were not in favour and the project could not be completed under EU funding. Lessons were learnt from these gaps in communication, and a new sanitation project was much more carefully prepared. By identifying the actors involved and discussing their needs and concerns, the Delegation was able to forge alliances and reach a “win win” situation.
The importance of cultural understanding and consultation with local actors when working towards development goals was also highlighted by Kristian Schmidt, Head of Delegation to Uganda. He highlighted how stepping back from moralizing judgments based on one culture’s norms can be key to moving forward with a partner government on delicate policies.
The gulf between cultural norms was particularly wide in the case of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law. Known as the “Kill the Gays” act in western media, it proposed a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and imprisonment for failing to denounce homosexuals to the police.
Although the law was “outrageous, discriminatory and a blatant human rights violation” from a European perspective, said Schmidt, “the worst thing we could do to help them would be to come with loudspeakers and Hollywood stars to hammer the message in. That would simply put people’s lives at risk,” said Schmidt.
Focusing on the cultural context, in which conservative and religious leaders held sway, helped the EU successfully advocate against the act. The Delegation consulted with civil society and religious leaders and supported local activists protesting against the law. On the policy level, the EU Ambassador expressed his concern to the government, and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs issued three statements urging Uganda to uphold its human rights commitments.
With “careful diplomacy and using all the influence of the EU,” including temporarily suspending development assistance, the law was ruled unconstitutional. “If we were to reveal everything that was done we would be stepping on toes,” said Schmidt. “Sometimes the best successes are best kept quiet.” Hear more from Kristian Schmidt in our Views from the Field interview later this summer.
Best of both worlds
For Tim Clarke, former Head of Delegation to Ethiopia and Tanzania, the best intercultural successes in development are when local communities adapt and develop an idea brought by a donor.
“If the idea is powerful enough, even though you have different values, systems and instruments, people will run with it and find their own way of making it work,” said Clarke.
In the following video Tim Clarke addresses why intercultural understanding is important for the development sector, and how intercultural training could benefit the EU:
He believes donors’ role in development should be to promote innovative solutions and ideas, create a knowledge base for sharing experiences, and provide an enabling environment for local communities to then “tailor make those ideas to their own interests and their own dreams.”
According to Milton Bennett, director of the Intercultural Development Research Institute, intercultural competence must go far beyond business and social etiquette, and address “how we can use cultural difference to address tactical and strategic issues.”
The tactical dimension involves identifying cultural differences which are likely to make a difference to communication, and making appropriate adjustments to understanding or behavior which reduce the chances of misunderstandings occurring.
The strategic element has to do with the way cultural difference can be used as an asset. “We sometimes mistakenly think that diversity in and of itself is valuable, but it’s not, it’s actually more problematic,” said Bennett. Yet with conscious effort and training, it can become “something valuable to an organisation, society or individual relationship, and it’s that strategic dimension which is exciting for development work.”
According to Bennett, intercultural training could improve aid effectiveness in two ways: at the basic level of wasting less time on misunderstandings; and at a deeper level, “It would create a climate of respect for diversity, which as you’d imagine is the basis for partnership.”
Group
Culture in Development Cooperation
Further reading
Voices & Views: Mind, Society, Behaviour
Video: Tim Clarke on Eco-Villages - Interculture in Development
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Virginia Manzitti with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team. Image credit: EarthDayPictures via Creative Commons.
Log in with your EU Login account to post or comment on the platform.