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Created: Saturday, 10 November 2018 14:15
On November 9th, 2018, I spoke on "Power relations in development work in Africa" at the Global Issues Network at Copenhagen International School - to 80 young people from Turkey, Spain, Denmark, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Quite a mouthful, quite a challenge. I used two stories framed in a bit of theory (the Powercube). First story about the female village president from Guinea-Bissau who withdrew from a formal power position, because she did not want to navigate in the imposed power structure in spite of having legitimacy in her position as village midwife. And second story from Mozambique, where China cleverly navigated in the national power structures, provided infrastructure development and established strong networks with government officials at different levels - and therefore benefitted in exploiting the country's natural ressources.
The presentation is anecdotal and personal - read it here.
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Created: Saturday, 11 August 2018 13:26
In 2017, Danida commissioned a review of its youth-related engagements in the overall development portfolio. The review resulted in the presentation of a Youth Package and increased focus on development by youth, not for youth. Time has come to operationalize the 19 recommendations, and Bente Consulting in collaboration with Next Generation Advice, GROWconsult, Verner Kristiansen ApS and graphic design from Skinnydogsfilms.has been contracted to develop tools to mainstream and materialize a youth-focus and youth-engagement in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs' programs and instruments. The assignment runs from August 2018 to January 2019 and contains different components: explorative data collection with Embassies and Country Programs in Mali, Uganda and Ethiopia; interviews with MFA staff; consultations with Youth Sounding Boards in the three countries and with youth organizations in Denmark; development of tools and a knowledge sharing platform; and organization of an international state-of-the art seminar to be held in Copenhagen in December 2018.
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Created: Wednesday, 18 July 2018 08:07
Tanvir Mokammel is an old friend of mine - we met in 1980 at Dhaka University Campus, while I was preparing field work for my master thesis in Bangladesh. Tanvir has grown into one of Bangladesh's well known and acknowledged film makers with a special interest for portraying historic events, often related to the 1947 partition from India or the 1971 partition from Pakistan. With modest contributions, Bente Consulting ApS has supported an earlier film project (The Borderline) through crowd funding and recently also the latest film project: "Quiet flows the Rupsa River".
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Created: Friday, 09 March 2018 11:43
Bente Consulting is contracted by CISU (Civil Society in Development) to undertake an organizational Capacity Assessment and Appraisal (CapApp) of a concept note for at Governance in WASH program in East Africa prepared by Danish Peoples Aid. The assignment includes interviews with six partner organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Somalia, as well as with head office staff in Nykøbing Falster. Focus is i.a. on internal systems for management, administration, monitoring and evaluation, as well as strategic orientation, relevance and sustainability. The assignment takes place in Febryary - April 2018.
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Created: Friday, 09 March 2018 11:35
The evaluation of CIVICUS was commissioned by the Civil Society Unit at Sida through the framework agreement on evaluation services. The concluding assessment is that CIVICUS is relevant to Sida’s civil society strategy and the organisation is fit-for-purpose to achieve its mission and contribute substantially to fulfilment of its strategic goals. Sida is seen as a flexible, cooperative and risk-taking donor, valued for its engagement in critical dialogue. Recommendations are mainly addressed to CIVICUS, acknowledging that they are refinements to processes and initiatives already set in motion. Sida has embarked on a sound collaboration based on core funding and the recommendation is therefore to continue the partnership based on these principles. Down load the report from Sida's publication website here.
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Created: Thursday, 02 November 2017 11:38
The global civil society platform CIVICUS connects civil society organizations and activists from more than 170 countries worldwide. Sida has supported CIVICUS since 2004 and has commissioned an evaluation, which focus on the organizational capacity of CIVICUS to manage and implement an increasing program portfolio and corresponding budget. The evaluation is carried out through the Sida Framework Agreement with NIRAS Indevelop, and Bente Consulting provides the team leader. The evaluation included visit to the CIVICUS head quarters in South Africa, interviews in India and extensive skype interviews with member organizations, board members and staff in Latin America, North America and Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa. The evaluation took place from October 2017 to January 2018.
Sida was very satisfied with the result of the evaluation: "I must say that despite quite an open and broad assignment, you’ve done an excellent job overall to capture key points. You’ve particularly done a good job with trying to make the recommendations meaningful and possible to follow-up, not merely repeating things already known......... it is so well-written, structured and dense with very valuable details........." Niklas Hansson, Sida CIVSAM team, 19.01.2018.
Power relations and development in Africa