Failure is the f-word in international development. Unspoken in polite company, yet a reality we all must face.
Failure in International Development
We often work in failed states, in market failure economies, on intractable problems that have stymied others for decades, if not centuries. How arrogant or foolish of us to expect success 100% of the time?
But if you read our project reports, we have “uneven successes”, “lessons learned”, and every other euphemism we can imagine just to keep from saying one simple word: failure.
Project Failure Examples
We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.
Let’s navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development:
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