ABSTRACT

In the 1970s many aid agencies switched from capital-intensive infrastructure projects for rapid industrialisation to worrying about what was happening to poor people whose basic needs for income, health, and education were not being met. The Youth Training Centres Project was framed as a basic needs project, in this case the need being employment of young, uneducated people in provincial Sudan. A change of ideological climate had accompanied the economic recession. Belief in the welfare states capacity to provide full employment, deliver social services and keep prices stable had diminished. Students learn to think critically about development at university but once employed, forget it when there is a lack of fit with how the world looks from the perspective of the organisation employing them. However, such practices are useless which is why they are soon abandoned without political skills to manage the implications for action.