Towards knowledge–based aid: a new way of working or a new North-South divide?

This paper concludes the following about this activity:

• With just a few exceptions, it is being carried on for the immediate advantage of the agencies, and only down the line might turn its attention to Southern actors.
• This is because development agencies have been seen as just another multinational firm rather than as a unique organisation mandated to develop something other than itself.
• The result has been that the agencies have not started with the dramatic knowledge deficits of the South, nor with the key question of how knowledge management could assist knowledge development in the South.
• A continuation along their present trajectory will arguably be counter-productive; it will make agencies more certain of what they themselves have learnt, and more enthusiastic that others should share these insights, once they have been systematised.
• An alternative approach is still eminently possible at this early stage.
• It would need to turn the present approach on its head, and ask how involvement in agency projects could better build knowledge in the South.

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