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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the strategic partnership between a multinational, private mining company, a publicly funded NGO and a public college in Ethiopia, illustrating how the involvement of private actors to development aid influences established development discourses, practices, and policies.

Paper long abstract:

Involving private actors into public development initiatives has been raised as paramount to effectively financing and implementing the audacious Sustainable Development Goals. In Norwegian development policy this is operationalised through a strategic partnership programme that seeks to stimulate collaboration between private actors and publicly funded development agencies. This paper explores the formation of one such strategic partnership project in Ethiopia.

Empirically, the paper explores the strategic partnership between a miniscule vocational training college in Afar, Ethiopia, a small Norwegian NGO, and a huge private, multinational fertilizer company. The latter is on the verge of establishing a gigantic potash mine, but needs skilled labour to build and run the mine. It thus enters a strategic partnership with a local, public institution and a publicly financed, Norwegian NGO to cooperate in offering training to local youth. As the project unfolds, the actors’ different material resources, diverging interests and mandates crystalise – and the private actor fears the low college and training standards will deter its investors and shareholders. The private actor gradually withdraws, erecting firewalls vis-à-vis its own mining project to preserve its reputation, thus making the publicly funded development project a proxy for private interests.

Analysed in terms of ‘interface’, the paper explores the various encounters between public and private actors with different rationales and mandates that prove hard to reconcile in practice, thus illustrating how the involvement of private actors to development aid influences established development discourses, practices, and policies.