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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Against all odds: the survival of the National Public Health Laboratory in Bissau
| Panel |
54. Guinea-Bissau: there must be a solution - djitu ten ke ten
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| Paper ID | 463 |
| Author(s) |
Einarsdottir, Jonina
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | One of the characteristics of development aid work and discourse are the shifting priorities and their corresponding buzzwords. Economic growth, appropriate technology, basic needs, community based services, popular participation, empowerment, structural adjustment, sustainability, absorption capacity, fungiability, partnership, ownership, good governance, harmonisation, coherence and alignment have had their more or less extended life-time.
In this paper I will focus on Guinea-Bissau, one of the countries that have lately been labelled as failed states, aid orphans and difficult partnership countries. I will trace the history of the National Public Health Laboratory (LNSP) in Bissau, a Swedish supported project that was inaugurated in 1978. Only few years later, LNSP was regarded as Sweden’s white elephant in development aid due to the alleged advanced technology applied in contrast to the seemingly macroscopic nature of health problems in the country. In sharp contrast, the Rural Integrated Development Programme with its impressive administrative center in Bula (later called Olof Palme Center) represented the new trend.
Numerous delegations came to Bissau in early 1980s to plan for withdrawal of support to LNSP, which however were not realised. In late 1980s and early 1990s LNSP gradually gained reputation as a successful project. Competent national technicians, in collaboration with expatriates, conducted research on crucial health problems such as malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, rotavirus, measles and HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless, withdrawal of support was still on the agenda, this time were among reasons lack of economic sustainability and aid dependency. Indeed, at this point of time the once so promising Olof Palme Center was already out of fashion and closed. The Swedes decided to cut Guinea-Bissau from its list of cooperation countries claiming bad governance and the government’s lack of political will to serve the population. Before these plans were implemented, military uprising broke out in Bissau in June 1998. Eleven months later one of the last bombs flying over Bissau hit the LNSP. After peace was established, the Swedes gave support to reconstruct the buildings as the last token of solidarity and headed for Dakar.
Against all odds, LNSP is still operating. How comes that the laboratory has survived the major policy trends in development aid during almost three decades as well as the destructive forces of war? |
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