Foreign Aid & Civil Society

Neutrality & Objectivity

My job, as GSB broker, has been to facilitate pro-poor investments. I try to identify sectors and industries where private enterprise can introduce services for the poor or reduce costs for them, and I try to identify companies that are interested in such BOP investments.

It is an exciting job. In a country like Kenya the potential for business is huge. Indeed, almost any successful business has at least some positive impact, and after working here, I would be loathe to work in the static and unchallenging environment of a developed market.

That said, how do I pick a company to work with? By facilitating specific company alliances, am I not inherently favoring one company? And can my doing so have perverse side effects beyond the benefit I intended? For instance, if a project provides financial services in rural areas through a company, is it possible that I may have denied the people in that region other better or cheaper options? Or, if I help a company develop cheap accounting software for SMEs, am I needlessly encouraging consumers to use something proprietary?

In the pure market economy, market is both king and kingmaker. There are market failures, such as those that lead to monopolies, but the market bears the blame for them. Without ascribing too much to my job, I can however, choose one company, technology, or business model over another. Am I then playing god in the market?

This is a problem not unique to my program. All project development work has the same dilemna. It requires objectivity and neutrality most humans are incapable of. We all prefer working with some people rather than others. We know of some companies and not of others. So, by default, if not by design, we are not neutral. There are things outside our frame of reference that we do not see.

In the grand scheme of things my contribution is unlikely to change the course of an industry. Not yet, anyway. Still, this is why it is important – no, essential – to have well-informed, ethically aware people in this work. Because when we, as kingmakers, have the power to decide who gets money and who does not, and our results cannot be easily measured, our only support is good-intentions and the desire to excel at our job.