This short book is targeted at young development professionals. It presents stories as a way of deconstructing the complexity of development processes and bringing out some details from practice, and of presenting these to young practitioners to stimulate questioning and reflection. The issues put forward are wide ranging, but most focus on the provision of basic services to low-income communities within what the author refers to as a wider context of development planning. Throughout the book, questions and discussion points are posed at the end of chapters to help young professionals and students reflect on the dynamic processes of development.
In Chapter 1, the author narrates how his work has been influenced by a number of internationally renowned development thinkers such as Akhtar Hameed Khan, Arif Hasan and Robert Chambers. A common lesson he has learnt from them is that development practice is a dynamic process that requires learning and reflection at each stage, and contains known and unknown elements. The author further points out that these great development teachers believe that poor people are very capable and hardworking, and that often their potential is unrecognized by development practitioners due to organizational reasons such as poor governance.
In the second chapter, the author points out that the engineer’s role is important in society and should involve building some basic skills within the profession, but also enhancing professionals’ ability to work across disciplines. Currently, engineering practice and research tend to be more concerned with physical failures of infrastructure and poor financial viability of certain services.
Chapter 3 addresses the dynamics of knowledge processes and criticizes the supply-driven nature of knowledge. It is now universally accepted in international development circles that in order to achieve sustainable services, approaches need to be people centred. In the fourth chapter, the author explores the processes that lead to building on the existing potential of low-income people, illustrated with examples of community-managed solid waste management projects in Kenya, Nepal and Zimbabwe. In Chapter 5, he reflects on some of the key obstacles to harnessing this potential, drawing on examples of solid waste management projects he has been involved with. In Chapters 6 and 7, the author presents his observations of development work in Kenya, Sudan and Pakistan. The final chapter brings together the key issues from what has been presented in the earlier chapters.