Under Development
A journey without maps
Armed with a university degree, the Boy Scout’s solemn oath and a snakebite kit which he left on the plane, Ian Smillie set out more than 50 years ago to confront ignorance, want and war. He taught at a remote school in Sierra Leone, was an aid administrator in Nigeria during the Biafran War and for a time he knew more about cement than anyone else in Bangladesh.
In his travels as a writer, consultant and teacher, he had encounters with Graham Greene, Wole Soyinka, James Baldwin, the Queen and the ‘Butcher of Beijing’. He was instrumental in the campaign to halt blood diamonds, and he was the first witness at the war crimes trial of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Smillie’s story moves from war-torn Bosnia, the Khyber Pass and a Paul McCartney quest in Moscow, to a just-before-9/11 meeting at the Bin Laden-obsessed CIA headquarters in Langley.
This is a memoir about development: personal development, the development of ideas and understanding, rights and justice, war and peace, poverty and prosperity. It's about one of the greatest imperatives of our time: the drive to end global poverty and why, despite exaggerated claims to the contrary, it isn’t working. Bill Clinton called one of his books about international development ‘insightful’ and of another, The Economist said, ‘Read Smillie if you want something constructive.’
Published: 2024
Pages: 382
eBook: 9781788534147
Paperback: 9781788534123
Hardback: 9781788534130
In his travels as a writer, consultant and teacher, he had encounters with Graham Greene, Wole Soyinka, James Baldwin, the Queen and the ‘Butcher of Beijing’. He was instrumental in the campaign to halt blood diamonds, and he was the first witness at the war crimes trial of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Smillie’s story moves from war-torn Bosnia, the Khyber Pass and a Paul McCartney quest in Moscow, to a just-before-9/11 meeting at the Bin Laden-obsessed CIA headquarters in Langley.
This is a memoir about development: personal development, the development of ideas and understanding, rights and justice, war and peace, poverty and prosperity. It's about one of the greatest imperatives of our time: the drive to end global poverty and why, despite exaggerated claims to the contrary, it isn’t working. Bill Clinton called one of his books about international development ‘insightful’ and of another, The Economist said, ‘Read Smillie if you want something constructive.’
| 1 Getting There | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Sierra Leone | |||
| 3 The Heart of the Matter | |||
| 4 Nigeria | |||
| 5 My Brilliant Film Career | |||
| 6 Ramblin’ Boy | |||
| 7 The Far Country | |||
| 8 Cement, the Vasa and the Mary Rose | |||
| 9 Hey Jute | |||
| 10 Among Equals | |||
| 11 Baba & the Maulana | |||
| 12 The Feminine Mystique and Sharia Law | |||
| 13 The Body Count | |||
| 14 Liberation | |||
| 15 The Land of Lost Content | |||
| 16 Intervals | |||
| 17 The Cold Hand of Charity | |||
| 18 Pakistan | |||
| 19 Isles Beneath the Wind | |||
| 20 Back in the USSR | |||
| 21 China | |||
| 22 Six Ladies from Dortmund | |||
| 23 Fighting Fire with Misfire | |||
| 24 Hard Rocks | |||
| 25 Hard Men | |||
| 26 Hard Time | |||
| 27 The Obsessive Measurement Disorder | |||
| 28 Abed | |||
| 39 Journey Without Maps |
'Through lived experience, Ian Smillie shows what is practically possible, with patience and determination, in alleviating poverty and spreading fairness and justice.'
Stéphane Fischler, former president World Diamond Council and current Board of Trustees, Resolve.ngo
'Ian Smillie has written a spellbinding memoir of a life’s journey that, beginning when he was a diffident 22-year-old Canadian just out of university, takes him through newly-independent Africa – hopeful in parts but already showing signs of corrosive fissures – to Asia and the Caribbean, during which he grows into a grizzled, wise, and venerable warrior. Like his hero Graham Greene, Ian really seems to have lost his heart to Sierra Leone, returning there again and again, even amidst a civil war fuelled by a warlord, Liberia’s Charles Tayor, who he finally helped put behind bars. I am proud to have worked with him in this effort, and to call him a friend. No-one reading this rich, penetrating and deeply moving personal record can fail to appreciate the depth of Mr. Smillie’s commitment to that elusive and protean thing, ‘development’.'
Lansana Gberie (PhD), Ambassador of Sierra Leone to Switzerland, author of A Dirty War in West Africa (Hurst)
'Weaving anecdote, insight and incomparable breadth of experience, Ian’s memoire navigates a development labyrinth. There are pathways to unviable projects, to messy aid politics, to personal risk, to justice happening. From decades of travel, here is an explorer's guide for the developmentally curious.'
Professor Alan Fowler is a pracademic: a co-founder of INTRAC and of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment at the University of Witwatersrand
Under Development describes the amazing adventures of a remarkable development practitioner, thinker and author – who lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Canada gaining technical-cum-political expertise on diamonds, jute, concrete and so much more. Ian Smillie tells his real-life adventures with the narrative and descriptive skills of a novelist while also challenging the international development community to reimagine and transform development.'
Marty Chen, Harvard University, WIEGO and BRAC Global
Ian Smillie
Ian Smillie has lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Bangladesh. He was a founder of the Canadian NGO, Inter Pares, Executive Director of CUSO and he was a leader in the campaign to end “blood diamonds.” He has worked as a development consultant with many Canadian, British, American and European organizations and he is the author of several books.
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