DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATIONS AND THE AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1962-1982

When the Agency for International Development (AID) was established in 1962, it inherited a communications program that had begun during the days of the Marshall Plan after World War II. Under the influence of social science theories of the role mass communications might play in influencing national development, AID transformed the program to emphasize communications projects based on social learning models. The result was a program of development communications, defined as the systematic application of communications hardware and software in support of planned programs of change in development sectors such as health, education, agriculture, nutrition, and family planning. The initiatives for communications projects, however, came principally from outside AID: the White House Task Forces on communications in the 1960s and the Programs for Peaceful Communication, passed by Congress in 1969 to establish a commitment to development communications in foreign aid legislation. The AID bureaucracy, especially the geographic regional bureaus and their field missions, opposed, limited, and erected obstacles to the use of development communications, refusing sufficient funds or adequate access to field projects. The bureaus resented interference from Congress and the White House and from central technical assistance offices within the Agency. They wanted to emphasize macroeconomic approaches to development rather than individual behavorial change, the focus of development communications. They considered development communications, born in educational technology, to be education and not necessarily relevant to agriculture or health. And because the bureaus saw few successes in this new field of communications, they did not allow the time or money for it to prove itself. As a result, the Agency has no policy to direct and encourage communications in development. In spite of a lack of communications policy or politically secure base of operations, the communications program in AID has supported more communications applications projects than any other donor. And with the advent of the AID Rural Satellite Program, telecommunications has been added to the Agency's communications agenda. But the Agency still needs a communications policy that supports continued R&D, trains more professional development communications experts in recipient countries, and that establishes a central communications office to chart the introduction of new communications technology into development programs.