Corruption as an obstacle to development
My bias on the topic of corruption is that loving money is a mistake, and I do not equate law with truth or virtue. Laws should protect the innocent and punish the guilty, but this is not the case in the Global South, nor is it the reality for many in the Global North. Development has never existed independently of politics, yet serious political reform is never on the international development community’s agenda. Pragmatism requires working with what is available while acknowledging the limitations of your resources. International development organizations observe pragmatism through cooperating with corrupt systems. This type of depoliticized pragmatism overlooks the obvious. Instead, the international development community should acknowledge corruption as a major limitation of government, legal and financial systems, and circumvent these inefficiencies with technology. This is the approach needed to sow the seeds of real political reform.
A strong caveat: techno-solutionism is never the answer because progress with technology always generates disproportionate risks for the marginalized. A tolerance for moral complexity, however, is necessary to harness the potential of technology to bypass corrupt systems in support of development objectives that could lead to political reform. Consider the impact Meta has had in Nigeria. In May 2016, Mark Zukerberg launched Free Basics through Airtel Africa, which gives Nigerians free mobile access to Facebook and some information-related websites. Later in August 2016, Zukerberg partnered with Coollink to provide high speed Wifi across the country at an affordable cost. Today, Lagos City garners comparisons to Silicon Valley, but Facebook, and other social media platforms, facilitate the spread of misinformation and hate speech damaging the country’s social fabric.
It matters that Meta did what international development organizations and the government could not. Unfortunately, the cost of progress is borne by those most disadvantaged by existing corruption within legal and financial systems. Vote buying, fraudulent registrations, and lawsuits over election fraud were all issues in the most recent Nigerian election. Whether directly or indirectly, Meta has exacerbated all of these issues challenging democracy in Nigeria. Yet, Meta also provides the very infrastructure needed to overcome the obstacle of corruption, even as they continue to threaten stability. Moral complexities cannot be avoided, but acknowledging corruption as an obstacle is not the equivalent of casting a normative judgment on those involved. The incredible potential of technology in the context of development is to circumvent inefficient systems, and directly empower the most disadvantaged such that corruption is reduced through participation and endogenously-generated political reform. Careful documentation by scholars like Dr. Zeynep Tufekci highlight how social media has the potential to facilitate such reform.
Bequeathed by the past, corruption exists in historically colonized systems oppressing those invisible to law and policy makers. Equity barriers reduce socioeconomic diversity at elite institutions, thus those from the Global South employed in service of international development are most often from the highest income bracket of their respective societies. It is a disservice to international development to ignore those realities. Why should people who benefit from current systems, aid in dismantling their own privilege? On the other end, the most marginalized citizens may distrust their governments so much as to resist documentation through voter registration or census enumeration. This leaves them ineligible for programs such as unconditional cash transfers. Citizens should not have to trust their government in order to benefit. Good interventions risk failure from the inefficient systems in which they are delivered. If the goal is to reduce poverty while addressing climate change, then technology needs to be used to ensure fairness and generate trust, in lieu of the ‘developed’ legal and financial systems relied on in the Global North.
To be pragmatic about corruption, it is impossible to ignore the need for political reform. International development organizations that avoid politics avoid directly addressing the obstacle of corruption, but technology can bypass inefficient systems. Therefore, overcoming corruption and advancing development in the Global South requires harnessing technology to sidestep inefficiencies and better potentiate serious political reform.
