CMI and Bangladesh: 40 years of collaboration and institutional capacity building

Abstract

The report reviews CMI's experience of technical assistance and institutional collaboration in Bangladesh, from the involvement of individual staff members working as experts in Pakistan in the late 1950s to the formal institutional cooperation agreements between CMI and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) since the late 1970s and until recently. The three BIDS-CMI cooperation agreements are examined in detail through their various stages of design, negotiation and implementation, providing a vivid illustration of the issues involved in institutional capacity building through research cooperation. Armindo Miranda, Senior Research Fellow at CMI, has been active in BIDS-CMI collaboration since his stay as a visiting scholar at BIDS in 1977-78, working on population issues in Bangladesh; more recently he coordinated the BIDS-CMI collaboration agreements for CMI. Ole David Koht Norbye, Senior Consultant at CMI, carried out numerous assignments in Bangladesh throughout his career, including a long-term period of residence in Dhaka as adviser to the World Bank sponsored Trade and Industry Policy Reform Programme (TIP). He has also written extensively about the history of CMI and its Development Research and Action Programme (DERAP).