Decolonising Development Management: Epistemological Shifts and Practical Actions

Abstract

The processes and tasks of decolonising development are complex and multifaceted. In relation to this, my comment reflects on how development management might be decolonised and re-imagined. I argue that the increased standardisation of ever more invasive tools and technologies for planning and management in the international aid sector amount to a kind of colonisation by bureaucratisation. The ideas that underpin these enmesh actors and organisations in forms of market coloniality that functions across and through the hierarchies of the aid industry. These institutions and processes are extensions of colonial power relations, predicated upon powerful myths of modernisation, and justifying complex and demanding technocratic processes that conceal the political nature of the sector. I conclude that for the aid sector to move from universalist western frameworks of modernity and science to a pluriverse of practice (Narayanaswamy, 2022) requires a total transformation of purpose and systems, given that the aid sector is itself an expression of colonial regimes.