Conjuring ‘Win-World’–Resilient Development Narratives in a Large-Scale Agro-Investment in Tanzania

Abstract

Through a case study of a public-private partnership (PPP) for development in which the Swedish development agency Sida supported a Swedish company trying to implement a large-scale agro-investment in sugarcane in Tanzania, we unpack the underpinnings of what we call ‘win-world’, a resilient development narrative maintained by actors promoting the investment. Rich empirical descriptions show that this narrative was highly resilient to accumulated academic knowledge and current real-world problems. We found that the privatisation of development increased the resilience of the narrative to evidence of its own shortcomings.