Doing Development in West Africa

"The perspectives of the students in this collection make it clear that simply having good intentions, dedication, or even excellent innovative ideas are not sufficient to implement the initiatives that development workers hope to. A grasp of local politics and regional histories and social forms is critical, not just to success, but to understanding the nature of the 'problems' in the first place. An innovative work, Doing Development in West Africa is an eminently readable and teachable text valuable to courses in international relations, political science, and anthropology." - Brad Weiss, author of Real Pigs: Shifting Values in the Field of Local Pork

"Doing Development in West Africa takes us into the vast, frustrating, and rapidly changing world of international development from the perspective of undergraduates seeking to carry out their own mini-development projects. Their essays throw into clear relief the issues of cultural understanding that are so crucial to successful development, while offering a rich trove of reflexive thought and outward-oriented cultural discovery." - John P. Hawkins, coauthor of Health Care in Maya Guatemala: Confronting Medical Pluralism in a Developing Country

"Students are refreshingly candid about the nature and multitude of problems they faced and the need to scale back their expectations. As Piot notes, development is hard work. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty."
  - S. Paul, Choice

"Doing Development in West Africa constitutes an impressive practical and scholarly accomplishment. . . . Contributions and challenges, strengths and limitations, joys and frustrations find articulate and compelling voices in this forthright treatment of selected small-scale student projects undertaken over the past eight years." - Peter H. Koehn, Journal of Modern African Studies

"Doing Development in West Africa will be a valuable book for courses in international development, African studies, and development anthropology, and provides good 'hands-on' guidance for students preparing for summer projects in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. While written for undergraduates, the book also provides important lessons for development practitioners who often fail to appreciate the importance of local context, history, and knowledge systems, and then wonder why their development efforts go awry." - Peter D. Little, African Studies Review

"This is an unusual and unusually useful volume. . . . Clearly, this little volume can be used to advantage not only in courses on development but also in applied anthropology and qualitative methods courses." - Constance deRoche, General Anthropology

"The depictions of development achieved in this work . . . are strong examples of lessons learnt that can be scaled-up to improve development practices at all levels." - Madeline Byers, Progress in Development Studies