Donor-funded development research: ethics and epistemic violence. Yacine Ait Larbi interviewed.

In this week’s episode, we speak to Yacine Ait Larbi about the critique he and Sarah Edgcumbe present in a two-part blog on paid-for development research. They outline the competing expectations of consulting companies who often value quick and relevant research outputs over research that is in-depth, reliable, well-grounded and ethical, due - in part - to time and resource pressures. 

We speak about development research being interest-driven rather than values-driven, and the consequences this has on ‘local’ research teams, the communities in which research is conducted and the way in which research findings are disseminated. 

Yacine talks about the clash of cultures between donor research agendas and community needs, where donor research often reproduces power dynamics and enacts epistemic violence.

Yacine Ait Larbi is a Ph.D. Candidate and a member of the Political Sociology program group at the AISSR of the University of Amsterdam. With over five years of experience in migration research, he has collaborated with international organisations like IOM and engaged in short consultancies. His research spans return and reintegration, forced displacement, and labour migration in various regions including France, North Africa, and the East and Horn of Africa. Yacine is passionate about discussions on decolonization, post-colonial migration, and social transformation. Additionally, Yacine provides part-time operational and logistical support for project management at ODI. Over the past year and a half, he has contributed to projects totaling £3.9 million in funding by organisations such as SIDA Mali, AFD, GIZ, and the African Development Bank.

Find out more about Yacine’s work, here:

• Yacine’s research profile
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Relevant resources:

• Larbi, Y., and Edgcumbe, S. (2023a) Development for profit: The commercialisation of research? Blog. New Thinking. 
• Larbi, Y., and Edgcumbe, S. (2023b) Development for Profit: Rethinking Research Practice. Blog. New Thinking.

Transcript

Kate: 0:00

Welcome to the Power Shift: Decolonising Development, a podcast series seeking to bring together thinkers, practitioners and activists to share ideas, inspire change and identify tools for practical action. I'm Professor Kate Bird, socio economist and director of the Development Hub. Sadly, my co host, Dr. Nompilo Ndlovu, cannot be with us today as she's on sick leave, but I know that she's here in spirit, and as a passionate oral historian, she'd love to be here with our guest today to talk about coloniality and race and research. Our guest today is Yacine Ait Larbi, a PhD candidate and member of the Political Sociology program at the AISSR at the University of Amsterdam. With over five years experience in migration research, he's collaborated with international organizations like IOM and engaged in short consultancies. His research spans return and reintegration, forced displacement, and labor migration in various regions including France, North Africa, and the Eastern Horn of Africa. Yacine is passionate about discussions on decolonization, post colonial migration, and social transformation. Additionally, Yacine provides part time operational and logistical support for project management in ODI, and over the last year and a half has contributed to projects totaling 3. 9 million pounds in funding by organizations including SIDA Mali, AFD, GIZ, and the African Development Bank. I've known Yacine for some time through informal discussions as part of ODI's in house group that meets to discuss decolonization, but this is the first time that we've had a structured conversation like this. In session today, Yacine outlines his powerful critique of paid for international development research. He talks about the business model and identifies that money is power and power is money in development research. He talks about how this links through to the pressure of time, creating research results for real time decision making is one thing, but the pressure on researchers to deliver quickly has real costs in terms of depth and quality and research ethics. He also talks about the clash of cultures between donor research agendas and community needs. He talks about power dynamics, white saviorism, epistemic violence, and dehumanization. So, as I said, I've known Yacine for a while, and we first met, Yacine, when we were chatting together informally as part of ODI's decolonisation group, and I became very interested in your ideas around migration and decolonisation there. I then went and read a paper that you've written, a short, two part series that you'd written with your fellow researcher, Sarah Edgcumbe and it really resonated with me, which is why I've invited you on today. I wonder if you could just tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about how you came to work on issues related to race and coloniality.

Yacine: 3:09

Yeah. So first of all, I myself, I'm a post colonial subject as an Algerian who was raised in France in the belly of the monster, as they say. So, I consider myself as a participant of colonisation, post colonisation, and decolonisation realms. Other than that, in a more concrete tone, I work in a variety of organisations such as Amnesty International, so in the field of human rights, I work for the United Nations in Algeria for the IOM exactly. So the International Organisation of Migration in Algeria, I work in many sectors in the development for small charities, for consulting organisation in the field of migration. My training is research, but I've also had the chance and the curse to be acquainted with project management as well, which actually opened my eyes on the situation behind those research that we do. And something that we do research in a very naive and neutral position, thinking that this research will naively impact for the better good and that we did our job and that it's what was asked. But the project management side of my training as well and of my career let's say, widened up the perspective from budget spending to how we pick consultants, how field work is apprehended, how we deal with donors as well, these are optimised in many ways, and brought me to the colonial reality of the development industry that I've started to be interested in and also started to criticised, or just explore and discuss with my colleague Sarah, who couldn't be here today, and that's how we came up writing this article.

Kate: 4:43

Thanks, Yacine. So you were supporting project management on the research side. So your support to project management has actually enabled you to get fresh and new insights and kind of open up the black box of the business model behind development research.

Yacine: 5:02

That's exactly right. That's very interesting. That's exactly it. When I was working in research, I was very like, I'm being commissioned to do this. I love what I'm doing, but I was in my bubble. It was a bit of a tunnel focus. So you were doing your research, but you didn't understand that there was actually agendas, budget constraints, how proposals were made, donors restrictions. The issue of timing, which is an issue I'm going to talk more about later. That is very important as well. The timeline. And you just realise that although it's a natural process, it's not neutral and that's what we should be aware of, at least, even if we can't do much about this, we should be aware of this or acknowledge this in order to maybe more be more mindful in our research, in our way we apprehend research, we approach people we work with participants, etc.

Kate: 5:50

So you're saying we should not be neutral, we need to be mindful, and you talk about international or global development research being a market, and you're talking about the business constraints and how that influences the way that international research is done. It's very interesting. So you've written a two part critique of what you describe as being for profit, development research. And one of the comments that you make is about the way in which development consultancies sprinkle words like decolonisation, ethics, and social justice on their websites, while simultaneously pandering to donors and exploiting the communities in which they collect data. I wonder if you can say a little bit more, firstly, about their damaging behavior. And secondly, about what you think drives the discrepancy between public statements and actual practice.

Yacine: 6:42

Yeah, sure. So for me, first of all, the pressure of time is a glaring issue. It's for me, the issue I had to encounter in the realm of consulting research in every organisation I've worked with and as a project manager in ODI as well, I've haven't come across one colleague or like one researcher saying that they're not stretched and they're not pressed and they need to meet deadlines very, very quickly, sometimes working even much more hours that they should. So, it's not solely about one organisation, my colleague Sarah and myself, we're not working on one experience, it's much more something that we've encountered in many experiences and in many of our work in our career, it's a normalised expectation for donors, particularly state donors, they often demand swift research and quick outcomes for political reasons because nation state is inherently short sighted and it often mirrors political agendas of government in place, et cetera, et cetera. So, for political reasons, however, this haste frequently strike sacrifice, of course, the place of research and the impact on the individual involved in data collection, be the enumerators or the participants or ourselves. That pressure is really palpable. And it often leads to rushed work with minimal depth and we often rush into very quick data collection and sometimes even sacrifice very important steps such as ethics, as you said, that is sometimes just dismissed in like a two hour training to the enumerators that we've recruited on the field which obviously is not ideal. The second part of your question is very important as well, the disparity between what they say they're driving by and the actual practice, something that we need to understand is that the development industry operates much like any other profit driving sectors despite claims to the contrary. Consulting agencies want to secure projects. This is their main goal. They want to secure projects rapidly. And this, even if they're like capacity. So they often want to secure project budget. And once they secure a budget, they recruit the people for this project. But this awful scramble to hire staff after project acquisition, leaving existing employees of the OIM stretched thin. There is a lot of also, turnover. You will see. I'm sure you know that. And that's why there is a lot of turnover and this transition is very hard to navigate. So naturally, this kind of rush in timeline, in timeframe, et cetera, affect the quality of work. And this scenario is a common place, it's all common today. I mean, for instance, a research fellow of mine is currently managing a significant project. And, she told me that she has already encountered the third project manager of the consultant company she has picked, so it's very common. The issue is that, yeah, they want to secure money at the end of the day, they want their margin, which is normal. I'm just saying that that hypocrisy that you've mentioned is palpable as well, because it's okay to make margin, but to say that you're driving by a sense of higher moral et cetera, it can be a bit a disappointment when you realise that it's not actually the case.

Kate: 9:54

Absolutely. So, what you're talking about here is the pressure that's put on researchers and individuals working within consultancy companies that's driven partly by donors wanting kind of real time politically relevant research results, which erodes ethics and creates the pressure to take shortcuts. But you're also talking about staff within these organisations who want to make a profit or make a margin and the impact that has on them that leads to high staff turnover. So there's actually a human cost. It's not just some sort of abstract idea here where something's happening out there. It's impacting on staff. It's impacting, as you've said, on communities on the ground. So there are real costs here. And there are real costs, I think, from what you were saying in terms of the quality of the work that can be produced. And that's leading to this dissonance between the public statements and the actual behavior. Which, as you've said, is very disappointing.

Yacine: 11:03

Definitely. Just to add as well the issue of this rapid need to secure to secure a budget and to secure a project and to get money without not even having that capacity. It's something also that I have encountered quite a few times. It's also for prestige because an organisation capable of securing a big grant with the UN or the World Bank, et cetera. It's also like a big achievement that you can put on your website and this, even though you're not tailored for it, so you tailoring yourself, but this takes times and the projects need to start very quickly, and this transition time has often very, very heavy human costs, as you said, that's something I came across a few times indeed.

Kate: 11:48

Thank you. I suppose we actually need to also be aware of the costs faced and experienced by communities on the ground where there are shortcuts taken in terms of research ethics. And you talk in your paper about communities in need, and if we're thinking about eroded quality in terms of research design and research delivery and shortcuts in terms of ethics. There are going to be some real costs faced by people who aren't comfortable, privileged elites in, the minority world or the Global North. They're going to be, as you said, people in need in communities, perhaps in lower income countries or middle lower income countries. So these are real people living real lives who are meeting researchers who are perhaps not behaving the best.

Yacine: 12:36

Yeah, no, definitely. I think that's a very good point. The impact on community. It's very detrimental because first of all the research agenda, that should be the first thing that we need to like keep in mind when we work for communities, and there is sometimes a clash between the donor's agenda and the community's needs. As I said, the donor, whether they are state or big international NGOs or the banks, they have their own agenda, sometimes to feed, I don't know, financial integration, to feed the global capitalist system, whatever that is. And sometimes that's not something that is really fit for at the micro level or even at the middle level and that's not really impactful for the community. So we need to channel up and not go top down, but rather, ask what kind of research does the community need, what kind of research do they want? And I will even say that I will bypass local governments because sometimes there is big separations, big gaps between governments and their people in the remote area. So the issue of communities need is, it's at the center. I know many organisation is starting to work on these issues to address communities' needs and not necessarily donors' agenda. But at the end of the day, who's got the money, money is power. And, you need to fill your contractual obligations. But one of the solution will be about using the margin to do like some alternative research that is much more grassroots maybe. And this way, you benefit the industry, but for the better good, the question is that do we want to use our benefits to really do good, or do we just want to keep the cycle going?

Kate: 14:11

Yeah, and I suppose who says what's good? Who decides what is good work and what is good community initiated research. So, I think what you're talking about here is a kind of hybrid model where you seek to elicit a research agenda from communities and seek to feed that in with their needs. So you're talking much more about a kind of participative learning and action oriented approach perhaps, rather than just helicoptering in experts from outside. So I think that's an interesting kind of approach to trying to square this particularly difficult circle. But I'm going to move on now to our next question, so I'm going to shortcut that part of our discussion. And in your first paper in the series, you describe how development research is mired in a complex set of problems And we've talked a bit about those problems, but I wonder if you could say a little bit more about the problems that you have seen and experienced firsthand?

Yacine: 15:10

As I said, I mean the issue of time dictate everything that come after so going back to the intense pressure and short sighting leads to many follow up problems as you have mentioned, there is the challenge. We discussed this with Sarah, and I think that was a very interesting discussion as well. The challenge of replicating methodologies, like in a vastly different context. Sometimes, organisations, they have methodologies like set up. And they just copy past methodologies, which is like they change the countries, the names, the number of participants or things like that. And that can be very problematic. I had one example, I assisted the consulting organisation in recruiting an Algerian researcher for a project with the African Union and the methodology involved interviews with high ranking officials across selected countries, including Algeria. However, the political and cultural landscape of Algeria and Ethiopia, for example, are starkly different. Accessing officials in Algeria, which is relatively a very close country, proved to be extremely difficult. And there was a lot of bureaucracy and hurdles, and that was causing a lot of delays that were basically frustrating the donors and also the organisation. And also the researcher that was actually hired for this task. So I recalled her calling me and basically sharing her frustration with me. So it's essential to recognise that not all contexts are the same. Like Western Africa, that is much more acquainted with let's say Francophone models and Eastern Africa, which is much more like English speaker, et cetera. It also comes with different cultures, different governments, different ways of interacting with people and a crucial consideration of these differences is important before committing to work in a particular region. You can't just respond to a call for tender and say"we will be able to do it, we will, we will,". And do a budget on countries you never worked on or you don't even really know, just to secure the budget and then thinking that you will just recruit someone from that country and this person will be able to do X, Y and Z. You really need to work on what you know can be achievable, and you need to work smart. You can't just work to secure as many projects as you can. And this experience with Algeria also opened my eyes on this, because I remember being in the middle of a complicated relationship. So yeah, you need to be aware of the political constraints, of the cultural sensitivities, cetera. And furthermore, concerning the hiring conditions, there is often a tendency to deploy underprepared individual to field work in sometimes hazardous conditions, and sometimes very fragile states. And even sometimes in states in conflict. So, we often celebrate the data they managed to collect in South Sudan or in the north of Mali, et cetera, without paying attention in practice to the traumas they may have went through, sometimes they're not even insured. And we don't really care because those consulting contracts are not really binding in term of insurance, etc. We're just very happy to get the data and then move away to the next project. That's also something we need to be, I think, more careful. I mean, I and Sarah think we need to be more careful about this one. The next one is the colonial agenda. So Sarah and I discussed a lot about the power dynamics that is donors predominantly from the Global North, they often dictate agendas that serve their interest framing development work as an investment rather than a value driving grant. I've heard a lot of organisations and a lot of country and donors saying that our work is value driving, it's value driving, it's value driving. I don't really believe in value driving work in development sector. I think that's a narrative but it's interest driving and I'm not saying it's bad or it's wrong. I'm just saying that the issue with development sector is that there is this saviourism image that we're here to make the world a better place. And in reality, you realise that it's much more about what donors can get out of this research and how state works on this research, etc. I remember the World Bank paper, and my supervisor is basically working on the very back on migration narratives. And he basically says that basically the EU is funding North African countries to mitigate migration. And they say that by developing those countries with the money that we give them, people will stop moving. The reality is that the more a country is developed, more migration capabilities it has. So that can also result to more migration. And because that's not in the interest of the World Bank or states to have this kind of narrative. And I remember a World Bank paper being commissioned to counteract this narrative to say that no, no, no, if we develop countries, first of all, it's very arrogant to say that an outsider will develop a country, but if we develop countries, people will start moving illegally, irregularly, et cetera, et cetera. Again, this is very short sighted. So the colonial agenda is, it's always very short sighted and you often align with economic reforms with, again, the global capitalist system and perpetuate arbitrary categorisation in words and such like irregular or someone that is illegal. And there is also a question of epistemic injustice. And I'll say much further saying that it's epistemic violence. And that's what this research are for, to normalise these kinds of categorisations. You're regular, you're irregular, you're high skilled, you're low skilled, you are low income country, you're underdeveloped, etc. So such agendas are designed to resist challenge and making it difficult to enact substantial change. So we need to be aware of that. I'm not saying that we need to stop everything. We just need to have that in mind. And it has repercussion for participants and even for researchers because we're internalising them. We start considering them as normal, those words. And now when we apply for grants, we reproduce those words, those categorisation, because we want the UN or the IOM etc. We want them to understand us, to understand what we mean. So we use the same words as they're using. And the thing is the words they're using is not always the right ones, and they're often very national, let's say, nation state driving, which is problematic to me. Sorry, it's been a bit long, but yeah, that, that was very important.

Kate: 21:21

That's great. Thanks. Thanks, Yacine. So in that last part of your response, you were talking about epistemic violence. And also a process of desensitisation and absorbing a donor lexicon in order to access funds because you are wanting to use terminology and language that resonates with the donor. And I'm very aware of that trend. And just looping back to some of the comments that you were making earlier in your response there, and you were talking about researchers commonly interviewing elites. And when they're talking about key informant interviews, the key informants that they're talking about, and you say this in your paper, are often other donors. So they're country level donors or other elites at the country level, but very rarely people living particularly in remote rural areas, but actually just your general public, an ordinary citisen are rarely recruited to answer questions as a key informant. So their reality, their existence, their perceptions, are discounted and the value of their knowledge as an expert in their lives is devalued. And I find this very interesting, because elites are often very comfortable with other elites. And if you think of international development researchers, they are by nature elite, and they travel globally, so they become part of an international elite. They're very comfortable with other people who similarly travel internationally. The metropolitan elite is much more comfortable to them than sitting out in a community with somebody, perhaps, who has a vastly different world experience, a vastly different level of education, different livelihood activities, different worldview. So there's a clash of ontologies, there's a clash of worldviews, and then there's a clash of epistemologies, a clash of the valuing of other people's evidence and other people's knowledge. And I do think that if somebody from an elite group tries to talk to somebody from a non elite group, they may need translators, they may need local knowledge to identify who to talk to, and they may need different skills and methods to the methods and skills that they have become known as an expert in. So suddenly their expertise is not so valuable. They need new expertise, or they need somebody to partner with and work with who has those skills. And I think that's challenging and it requires reflexiveness. And I think that sometimes in very short supply in international development. So I think the critique that you've outlined here is a very powerful critique because it goes to the heart of what we mean when we're talking about applying an anti racist lens and applying a decolonised lens to international development research. I think your critique is very far ranging and it's multi layered. I'd like to move on to our next question here.

Yacine: 24:12

Just a quick comment on that one. It's very interesting that you said, we use the same, like the high level key informants, and that's very true sometimes in different projects. We go to different donors saying that we have access to such and such key informants and sometimes it's basically the same for all the projects you work in so that's how you basically attract interest of donors. So you stay in your bubble, in your zone of comfort. And it's also the same at the micro level, as you said, because that allows you not to go to remote areas and to meet with people that can put you out of your zone of comfort, whether it is culturally, whether it is, again, in your research, and that will question your own positionality, et cetera, et cetera. So everything I think is designed to keep you very protected. Even when you go, you know, you're in a fancy hotel, when you go in Mali, you're in the best hotels, you have a driver. So that's very interesting that the way you've described it as well.

Kate: 25:07

Thank you. So, as I've said, I think your critique as you lay out in your two papers is far ranging. And one of the things you say is about the way that local or national researchers are treated in research value chains. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that. You've touched on it already, but I wonder if you could expand that point.

Yacine: 25:26

Yeah, the issue of equitable compensation is basically, it's the most straightforward issue today to address and often overlooked. But I'm glad more and more organisation is starting to talk about this. I'm just saying, implementation wise it's still very scattered. So, putting on my project manager hat this time. I've encountered the belief that basically locals shouldn't be paid as much as those graduating from prestigious universities, for example, like LSE, et cetera, because when you come from the University of Algeria, or when you come from the University of Casablanca, you may not deserve as much as someone that graduated from Columbia or LSE, even though you have more expertise because you work in the country or because you speak the language, et cetera, et cetera. So that's something I think that is still very entrenched in our minds. But, I don't think that's specific to this industry. I think that's very much how we think today in our society, like in at least Northern societies, but also in the South, I can tell. So the rational often given is that paying locals according to the local market rate prevents market disruption. So practitioner or researcher they said that we can't pay them as much as someone in the Global North because it's not the same market rate, basically, so the living standards are not the same, etc, etc. But I believe this reasoning is flawed and very hypocritical because when those expatriates, as they like to call themselves, although they are migrants going to the Global South, when they're coming to our countries, they're paid in dollar. I can tell that in the UN, for example, you have the international staff, whether they're in Burundi or in Kenya or in Afghanistan, they're paid in dollars. So they also disrupt the local market with their dollars. So the issue of local market, I think is a very hypocritical one. This issue requires international or headquarters benchmark, like the organisation has a benchmark for everyone based on years of experience. That's why we're starting to do with ODI, and I'm very glad about this, at least in my team, is that we have now a benchmark sheet that basically states that if someone has 15 years of experience, you must be paid between these range, like between this and this one. If someone has three years, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of anything, basically. So that's very important. So that's basically how I approach this. But yeah, it's a big issue. How do we pay locals, researchers? I'm also concerned that smaller for profit organisation. I mean, it's easy for ODI, which is like very prestigious and is held much more accountable, but I suspect that smaller consultant organisations, etc may still benefit from this unequal pay rate distribution because they are obviously not held accountable by international actors or etc. So there is also that level that we need also to consider.

Kate: 28:19

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things you're talking about there at the end is about accountability and transparency in an unregulated market. And one of the things that NGOs are doing on this is to work on transparency and budget making with some work around participative budget making. And I think looking at how research teams can bring full transparency into the budget creation process would be interesting as a way forwards because it would force people to have some very uncomfortable conversations and to work through that discomfort into a new and different way of working together. So, you've also talked in your paper about problematic behaviour related to how researchers work with local communities, and I've got local in inverted commas there, because my local is wherever I am, so wherever I am is local to me. So, I wonder if you could talk to that issue about how researchers interact with local communities.

Yacine: 29:15

So I'm a sociologist in training. So for me, it's crucial to do a sociological assessment of our own practice. Monitoring and evaluation is okay, but I think it's confined to figures and outputs, assessment, et cetera, but most also acknowledge that power dynamics often work in our favor, basically. So, for example, to come back to the issue of pay, we know very well that someone from South Sudan will accept a very low pay, even if he deserves more. And even if someone says, no, we know that we will find someone because we know how the situation is, and this is very troubling because that contributes to the disposability of this individual. We make them disposable, basically, because we know how hard it is for us there. So that's why, again, to come back to the issue of accountability, I think it's very important. I think that has a very bad impact on individuals' psychology, because they end up accepting those kinds of behaviors and they will often say, this is normal, don't worry, this is how they pay us. This is normal. This is the market. However, they will even justify for us, at a very local level which is in contradiction with our strive which is to support them. But that is not enough to get to give them a good treat. We must also ensure it's not enough to pay them the normal salary. We must also ensure that they define the agenda with us. Importing agenda to collectivities by the end of the nation state does not work. It's not transparent. It's not participative and to some extent, it's not democratic because the lack of legitimacy of some governments can also be problematic because collectivities or locals in remote areas, or in, let's say, opposition led areas, do not benefit much from the agenda we set that we propose to governments. So that's very important for collectivities and local groups to be able to channel up their own social, cultural, and economic distress or concerns depending on where you want to work. So, we talked about the colonial agenda, but also the centralisation of an agenda as if the country is always homogeneous. That's why Nation State wants us to believe that the country broadly has the same concern over places. So we need to make sure it's really participative, as you said earlier. And sometimes we overlook this aspect because it's easy to accept the agenda that the call for interest is suggesting and not for us to implement because we want to secure budget, money and prestige basically. And to go back to the sociological aspect, the issue of political positionality, I think it's very important because it also helps us to not seeing participants as data basically. And it's also very important to tackle that sentiment of entitlement as participants. And whether they are migrants, whether they are locals, et cetera, we are not entitled to them. They don't wait for us, let's say. That's participating in dehumanisation. So we need to be very careful with that. The Global South is not our laboratory, so it's not because you throw money at someone that you can do good research, it's actually the opposite and it gives you that image of the white savior that comes with these big ideas. So please give me basically your interviews or let me do this and that and your life will change. That's not how you should work. So positionality is very important to know your place, to know what you're here for, to know that you may not know actually. And I think that's important.

Kate: 32:45

Thank you Yacine. So embedded in that, you're talking about how elite researchers commonly from the minority world can enact in dehumanising the people who engage in their research or the respondents of their research and erode their dignity through engaging in compromising behavior. And you're wanting elite researchers to be aware of their own power and positionality and be more reflexive and basically embody ethics in the way that they engage in research. I'd like to move on to your second paper now which in particular outlines.

Yacine: 33:21

Can I just add something? I'm just going to add something on the dehumanisation is very important. I just want to go back to something. It's also very important to be aware of your positionality because you can sometimes revive trauma to the you talk to. That's an example we mentioned in the paper as well. And that you don't realise sometime, when you reconstitute the very torturous journey of a migrant, you're very happy with the data you come back with, but you don't realise that reviving that trauma for someone who may have lost someone in the process, et cetera, may be very, very, very harmful for them. So that issue of positionality is not something to take lightly and to be aware that actually people died on the process for the data that you collect.

Kate: 34:03

No, I think that's a really important point actually, and I think treating people as humans, whole human beings and with respect is so important and they're not a widget. They're not a thing. It's not a data point. You're actually talking to a human being. I think it can be quite difficult for some people working in international development to remember that, that actually real people are on the receiving end of their interactions. And, we wouldn't want to be treated like that. I wouldn't want to be treated like that. I don't like being thinged it really offends my sensibilities. I get very angry when I feel that somebody's treating me like that. So why would anyone feel any different? But let's move on to our next question now, which is about the second paper. And that in particular, you outline some potential solutions to racism and coloniality in development research. So I'd like to move on from this far ranging critique that you've outlined to think about solutions. Could you talk us through what you think are some of the key steps in this agenda?

Yacine: 35:09

Yeah. So we had four suggestions. I mean, very broadly, I'm going to try to outline them very, very quickly. So first of all, we would suggest to avoid relying, I think that's a common place for many, we will suggest about relying too much and oversimplifying Western centric views, which sometimes distort the world through the lens of colonialism. And again, this sentiment of entitlement, not only through research objects, but also behavior during the data collation, et cetera. So money is always power. And as I told you, I'm a sociologist in training, and I recognise Bordieu's work, when he says that basically it's primarily economic capital that allows for specific social and cultural structures. But reflecting on that reality will be a first step to know that we don't live in a structurally neutral world and that we need to avoid that Western centrism and that maybe decenter these oversimplifying views and even dichotomies. Maybe incentivise more donors from the Global South to reestablish balance, maybe to also allow the South to do research about the North. Another option will be to rechannel the money that, I mentioned this earlier, but will be for example, to rechannel the money you get from the margin into alternative decolonial research. ODI for example, part of the margin we make is basically redistributed to the decolonial task force. So the decolonial task force is basically mandated to produce decolonial research and event activities and to suggest new ways of doing research and researching about policy. Obviously open channels of communication with communities, I mean, we discussed that, are also very important, stop imposing research paradigms and work with research community communities to develop context relevant methodologies. So avoid the oversimplification and to avoid that, you need to talk to the people you're going to do research with, or at least to people living with people you're going to do research with to ensure that your methodologies are not harmful, are context relevant, cultural sensitive, so we don't participate, as I said before, in the retraumatisation and exploitation of intimate stories. That's also very important. We're not entitled to anything, so ensure that we have a deep understanding of this aspect is important. Provide finance and time to really work meaningfully and not just for the agenda. And the last, which I think will be the most important will be to encourage a donors dialogue, although it's limited, more donors start to be interested in decolonial research and work, at uni, for example, we have a seed grant for decolonial research, so we have interest, it's there, we need to work with them to re insure donors that decolonisation is not about replacing enlightenment, as I may have read in a few critiques of the organisation. It's much more about moving away from over disseminated Eurocentric narratives. It's much more about de centering Western view and propose indigenous knowledge systems and propose new perspectives as well. So we need to reintroduce donors because at the end of the day, they've got the money and we need to tell them and I know some are open to it. The channel foundation, we're open to discussion and we have more and more power open to discussion and we need to re-ensure them, that's not going to impact the quality of the research in any way on the contrary. So this kind of dialogues need to take place. Of course. Most won't be very happy about change. But if they truly believe in value driving work, this dialogue will have to take place. But if they truly believe in value driving work, but that's another question because again, there is the issue of interest, which is at the center of money donation like fundings, etc.

Kate: 38:50

Thanks Yacine. So so you're challenging donors to move away from rhetoric and actually show through the way that they fund the work they do and also how they engage with researchers to ensure that the work they do is not harmful, it's not re traumatising, it's not extractive, and that it's engaging properly in grassroots level driven agendas, that the work quality is actually improved rather than reduced. That's really useful. Thank you. I wonder if you could help us finish up today's discussion by expanding on that idea about a donor agenda. If you were to ask donors to do one thing, one practical thing in the way that they commission developed research so that they can contribute positively to the decolonisation of the research value chain, what would it be? So what should donors do in the way that they commission research?

Yacine: 39:51

First of all, if we talk about decolonisation, I think the first thing will be to define what it means to decolonisation. And for many, decolonisation doesn't mean the same, from a donor to another, from a context to another from an international NGO, for a state. So this involves historical and systemic inequalities. So, yeah, recognise to what extent decolonisation can be implemented as well. May vary for from different factors and different donors. So we want also to tell us. So what do they understand when they hear decolonisation? Do they mean localise it? Because many donors right now trying to divert from decolonisation towards localisation, let's say, and they will say that localisation is a kind of soft decolonial way of doing research, which again can be very critiqued. I think to me not the case, but to ask them to define decolonisation, what it means for them, how radical for them is the agenda and to what extent can we implement it within their understanding. That's the 2nd point, assess. We will ask them to assess leverage and feasibility. We recognise that it's easier for some research institute or for some donors to implement this kind of agenda for various reasons. So while we understand that this may be aspirational, it should also be feasible. So we asked to assess the level of feasibility of these agendas. Some again, can do more than others. We recognise that it's not an homogeneous process. It's a long process. It involves unlearning as well. So that's why the issue of defining and assessing. It's very important. It needs to take place from the donors themselves, but I would even argue from the organisations as well. But the donors will be basically the more impactful in that aspect. So, yeah, and the last one will be to strive to implement as much as we can to be committed and be aware of limitation challenges. Again, it's not easy, as you said, many talk about decolonisation as if it was the obvious answer, but we need also to recognise that it's not easy and we need to navigate very, very complicated power systems and economic structures and epistemical injustices. So it's not easy, but we need to do as much as we can to ensure that we can improve and progress and relearn in a much more equal and equitable way. But if it was easy, everyone will do it. No one will talk about this. So yeah, I will advise not only donors actually, but all organisations working on this topic.

Kate: 42:21

Thank you. That's quite a substantial list. I think what I take away from that is that donors really need to start somewhere. They need to look at what they can do, what's feasible for them. That decolonisation is a verb. It's about doing decolonisation, not talking about decolonisation. They need to strive to implement, and they need to be aware of the limitations and challenges while they navigate complexities. So, I think we'll leave our conversation at that point. I've very much enjoyed talking to you, Yacine, and I look forward to taking this conversation forward with you privately. Because I'm very interested myself in decolonising my own research practice. So thank you very much.

Yacine: 43:02

Likewise. Thank you for inviting me, Kate.

Kate: 43:04

Thank you.