Strengthening rural development management through international assistance projects

The importance of project management is well recognized and the favoured approach to improving management is to discard classroom based, technical transfer models of management development and develop training of direct relevance to field responsibilities. This article highlights the importance of recognizing in aid assisted projects that development projects serve some bureaucratic interests and hurt others with the consequence that projects need to be designed so as to maximize those interests which support its goals. The article is built around a case study of an Agricultural Management Development project in Ghana, begun in 1975 and appraised by a team led by the author in 1979. The appraisal revealed considerable achievements but also focused on facets where there were significant difficulties. These difficulties can be understood and explained in terms of the bureaucratic political interests in the Ministry of Agriculture which stood to lose from the development project, and the author indicates how the project itself could have been assisted by adding to it incentives which made the success of the project attractive to additional bureaucratic interests.