Resources or race? Explaining (un)equality in international development partnerships

Abstract

Whereas diversity can be observed in the type of North?South partnerships, overall the call for equality in the partnerships between Northern-based development organizations to their Southern-based counterparts, has hardly been successful. To come to an encompassing understanding of both this diversity and stagnation, in this study we combine two explanatory lines of reasoning: one focused on financial resources and one on racial perceptions. We study partnerships of Dutch-based development organizations working in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Kenya through this analytical lens. The research finds that there are three different narratives held by Northern organizations on citizens of countries where they work and their partner organization: a negative one, an internally inconsistent one and a reflective one. The data also shows there is a relation between the narratives and the type of partnerships: the negative narrative leads to repression, the internally inconsistent narrative to confusion and the reflective narrative to more inclusion. We conclude that histories of perceptions, including racial ones and systems of financial domination and dependence interact in multiple reinforcing ways, leading to different levels of equality in partnerships.