Project name
Graveyards of Development Projects: Why do they fail and how to prevent it? The Case Study of Kosovo
Short:
Kosovo Development Cooperation (KDC)
Duration
1.09.2021-30.06.2023
Project funding
Hans Rentsch (economist)
Abstract
The development of post-war Kosovo is strongly dependent on international aid. Agriculture is among the top five sectors where aid is allocated, with the aim to enable various projects from the land enclosure, through reconstruction of farms, and agricultural objects, rural development, repair and building of agricultural infrastructure, to the improvement of environmental and sanitation conditions on the farms and the countryside. The variety of programs of development cooperation indicates that there is a strong need to target rural areas in Kosovo where 61% of the entire population lives and predominantly works in agriculture. But the failure of development cooperation in the agricultural sector in Kosovo is understudied and rarely discussed. In this project we seek to understand what causes the failure of development cooperation projects in agriculture and why they often turn into the dead capital; why they fail to generate the creation of the new jobs, strengthen the local economy and social ties, and reduce the outflow of youth; and how such failures can be prevented in future? The project is based on ethnographic case studies of development cooperation in two villages in western and south-eastern Kosovo.
Project team
Jovana Dikovic, principal investigator
Philipp Aerni, researcher