BOOK REVIEW: James, Valentine Udoh, ed. CAPACITY BUILDING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSIONS. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 1998.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Capacity Building in Developing Countries: Human and Environmental Dimensions DIMENSIONS Enslin J. Van Rooyen James, Valentine Udoh, ed. 1998. Capacity Building in Developing Countries: Human and Environmental Dimensions DIMENSIONS. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 344 pp. $75.00 (cloth). Many scientists in the twentieth century have studied development in the third world. Generally, the prevailing modern opinion is that capacity building in developing countries implies that local people should be empowered to create and implement their own policies best suited to their own conditions. The time when foreign donor and aid countries thoughtlessly and even naively poured in huge amounts of money and expected development to take place seems to be something of the past. The international community realized that active engagement in the developing countries' resource development programs is necessary. Without active engagement, the recipient countries will continue to remain undercapacitated since money, in many instances, only finds its way into the bottomless pit of corruption and misappropriation when accountability is limited. Financial aid does not automatically guarantee better education, an improvement of infrastructure, or proper skills enhancement. What developing countries need are well structured programs, negotiated with the nations concerned, that are implemented in partnership with local institutions and organizations. However, the kind of active engagement strategy followed by assisting countries is significant. Assistance in the form of foreign experts who manage projects without involving local decision-makers could result in no skills transfer taking place at all. Care should be taken not to create a “basket case” that is materially, intellectually, or psychologically dependent upon another country. Too many such cases exist and it does not contribute to sustainable development at all. The editor of the book Capacity Building in Developing Countries makes the following point in the preface: “The challenge, then, for developing countries, as well as the assisting/donor international community, is to attempt to enhance the ability of the people of developing nations to develop essential policies and management skills necessary to build their nations' human, economic, social, political, and cultural structures so as to take their proper place in global affairs” (p. xv). All assistance should be planned and implemented as a process of empowerment to the local community and its institutions and organizations. The point is that the relationship that occurs between the foreign experts and consultants and the locals, respectively, could be compared with one of a mentor and protégée. This, however, presupposes a mutual understanding of one another's culture and philosophy, a relationship based on trust, and a clear comprehension of what is to be attained through the partnership. In the end, the beneficiary of foreign aid should be sufficiently empowered to manage its own affairs in an economically and socially accountable manner that is also environmentally sustainable. The book identifies certain critical issues associated with the process of capacity building in developing countries. It effectively addresses the [End Page 136] social, economic, and developmental issues associated with capacity building in essentially separate sections, with some emphasis on humanity and the environment. Although in practice it is difficult to divorce the socio-economic and developmental issues from one another, it is understood that for academic and structural reasons this had to be attempted in the book. The book addresses case specific issues, such as: “Ethnicity in the Politics of a Nation: Nigeria and the Problems of Social Transformation,” and “Pineapple Production, Labor, and Marketing Relations in the Periurban Economy of Accra, Ghana,” as well as general issues such as “The Difficulty of Consensus Building in Developing Countries: The African Dilemma,” and “Management Capacity Building: A Strategic Imperative for African Development in the Twenty-First Century.” The authors and editor should be commended for selecting key issues related to development. It is not easy to effectively address the plethora of issues associated with capacity building and skills enhancement and sustainable development in one publication. The prominence awarded to environmental issues throughout the book also deserves comment. All too often the realization that humans and the natural environment should share resources is lost in books of this nature. This is the case in publications that lean towards addressing development issues from the viewpoint that gross domestic product is the...