Buying Cheap Isn't Always Best for Development

Public procurement is often portrayed as a technical, accounting issue instead of as a source of revenue for local industries and government. It can also be a tool for development, says lecturer Michael Jennings. In numerous cases, donors have pressured African countries into making public tenders open to international competition. Donors, argues Jennings, have either self-interested reasons, such as the protection of their own national "strategic" industries, or humanitarian ones, insisting, for instance, that cheaper foreign mosquito nets are preferable over more expensive locally produced mosquito nets because they can save more lives. In both cases, however, the key roles that monetary value and markets play in donor approaches to procurement obscure the further roles it can play. According to Jennings, humanitarian ends should certainly prevail, but approaches to procurement must not obscure the goal of supporting African solutions for African problems...More