In the case of Afghanistan, who was doing the infrastructure work before private contractors came along?
For the several years before 2001, the country was at war and there was little infrastructure construction. In early 2002, after donors pledged an initial $4.8 billion to Afghanistan’s reconstruction, U.N. agencies, NGOs and private contractors all entered Afghanistan and scaled up their activities. The question is not whether private contractors should be involved–there is certainly a role for them–but how contracts are designed, procured, supervised and what type of incentives are built into the system to ensure value for money, outcomes that are appropriate to the context, proper supervision and the appropriate allocation of tasks to communities. What about the for-profit model leads private contractors astray? Projects are often designed by aid officials without proper attention to the needs on the ground, or the availability of new technologies, or the needs of a carbon-constrained world. For example, we could be doing a lot more to leapfrog old standards, and move toward distri
