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Contributions from
the Column
Tribune
NGO work under changed conditions
Globalisation – opportunity or obstacle for development?
10/2003
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NGO work under changed conditions
Country concepts of DWHH/German Agro Action
[ By Dirk Kohnert and Hans-Joachim Preuß ] The conditions under which non-governmental organisations work today are very different from what they were ten years ago.
So concepts and tools need to be reviewed and, above all, NGOs need to base their work more firmly on analysis of problems and potentials on the ground. Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action was one of the first German NGOs to respond to the challenge.
The self-image, role and environment of development NGOs in the industrialised world have changed considerably in recent years. And one thing that has increased is the pressure to confirm legitimacy: no one doubts that NGOs have good intentions but it is no longer accepted without question that they actually do any good. And so far there is no conclusive evidence that they are any better at the job than governmental actors. At most it is conceded that they do it differently. As recent studies have shown, NGOs may call for accountability and transparency on the part of governments and private enterprise but they are often lacking in those very qualities themselves.1
New conditions
Regardless of the intentions or interests of NGOs, development aid and emergency relief have evolved into a new line of “business”. Like private companies, NGOs have to prevail in the face of competition. Respectable NGOs continue to put their ideals and their mandate to promote welfare and development first – instead of looking for market-based solutions. At the same time, though, as private-sector organisations, they need to pay attention to corporate objectives such as increasing revenues, maximising earnings and conquering strategic market positions if they want to survive in the global development aid and emergency relief market – a market where, when rivals clash, there are increasingly no holds barred.
Also changed are the conditions in which NGOs work in developing countries. On the one hand, democratic developments in many parts of the world are permitting civil society engagement for the very first time. On the other, NGOs are sometimes the only organisations, along with UN agencies, that can still provide relief in failing states. And in a third group of cases, NGOs plug the gaps where shortage of money (in conjunction with deregulation often imposed from outside) forces governments to withdraw from formerly state-managed sectors such as health, agricultural infrastructure, etc. Finally, new development approaches, such as the poverty reduction strategy programmes (PRSP) of the World Bank and IMF call for greater cooperation with civil society, and especially with NGOs.
Hand in hand with this goes a surge in the significance of NGOs operating at international level. Some occupy such a strong position in developing countries today that they can compete with the “market leaders” in the development business. What they say carries weight – not only with partners and (state) competitors but also in the eyes of governments and the big international development institutions such as FAO, IMF and World Bank. Just as their contribution is acknowledged, however, so too is the need for them to implement project planning and management procedures similar to those applied by their governmental partners. But the coordination of activities that is required – and increasingly realised – at state level rarely takes place among NGOs. Indeed, the shortcoming is actually encouraged by outmoded ideological thinking: the old motto “millions of projects rather than projects that cost millions” gets the support of grass roots movements and local initiatives but it is now known that the uncoordinated mass of mini- and micro-projects conducted by NGOs does nothing for the development of the countries in question; projects need to be part of a bigger campaign to produce results.
Country strategy papers as a planning tool
This was one of the reasons why a number of international NGOs in the mid-1990s developed country concepts as a strategic medium-range programme planning tool for the principal countries in which they worked. In this, they followed the example of governmental and multilateral donors, who had introduced country concepts or profiles as a similar planning instrument some years earlier.
The turn away from isolated project planning towards process-based programme planning was also due to the growing calls since the late 1980s for more stringent and more focused planning procedures – calls that were also directed at NGOs. Meeting both these demands promised not only more effective development work but also more transparency for other sponsoring institutions and cooperation partners – which seemed urgently needed in the light of the ongoing controversial debate on the usefulness of development aid. After all, it was no coincidence that planning methods had found their way into the debate about the political conditioning of development cooperation that flickered into life again ten years ago. It was only with the more frank political dialogue between donors and decision-makers in developing countries after the end of the East-West conflict that basic requirements of any country planning such as transparency, accountability and developmental gearing of national policy seemed really relevant and realisable. The strategic country planning system of the British NGO ActionAid played a model role here. Developed with the help of Robert Chambers, it was launched in mid-2000 under the acronym ALPS (Accountability, learning and planning system) and globally propagated as a new planning philosophy and ground-breaking subject-centred method of planning.
Between 1999 and 2001, after years of preparatory discussion, DWHH also introduced country concepts as a programme planning tool for an initial 20 of 30 priority countries.2 The idea was to:
define the key areas of DWHH work on the basis of a representative nationwide study of the problems and potentials of the target groups and partner organisations and set priorities for a reasonable period (normally three years);
significantly sharpen the profile of DWHH for partner organisations and other development actors as well as for the people actually working for DWHH in Germany and abroad.
Evaluation of DWHH
country concepts
The following summary of the results of a 2001/2002 cross-sectional study3 of DWHH’s country concepts consequently needs to be viewed against the background of a controversial political and academic discourse that has been going on for decades about the efficacy and sustainability of development cooperation in general and the assistance provided by non-governmental aid organisations in particular.
For ten priority countries, there are at present no country concepts. In most cases, the reason given is that political conditions are too unstable to permit a forecast for even a short planning period. This is not a convincing argument, however, because framework planning specifically designed to address the imponderables and identify a variety of contingent planning options would be possible even in a fast-changing environment.
Although the first planning period is now over (it ended in 2002), not much work has been done to revise country concepts. Mostly, the blame for this was laid at the door of the still-outstanding evaluation (started in May 2001), whose results had to be awaited and incorporated. But even after the evaluation was completed and approved in mid-2002, there was no sign of major efforts being made to update the “expired” country concepts. This is partly because of the additional workload of the country desks but in many cases it is also due to the fact that neither the factors that shaped the original plans nor the priorities themselves have changed substantially enough to warrant a revision of programme planning.
Country concepts at present not a central planning tool: DWHH has all project documents checked and approved by an independent committee of experts prior to implementation. When the country concepts were introduced, it was planned to present them to the committee instead of the individual project plans. What was found, however, was that the lack of detail in the country concepts largely precluded expert appraisal. So at working level it looks as though country concepts in the medium term mean extra work, with no direct benefits for country desk personnel.
The question is, therefore, how the benefits for staff charged with planning and managing the country programmes can be increased. One possibility, for example, would be to produce country concepts spanning a longer period of time and use them as a basis for operative programme plans covering a shorter period, such as a year. These could then be presented to the decision-making bodies.
Conflict of objectives between improvements in performance and transparency: Between the two goals connected with country concepts – better strategic programme planning and more transparency – there is an inherent conflict of objectives. On the one hand, a realistic self-critical presentation of an aid organisation’s strengths and weaknesses is a good basis for boosting efficacy; on the other, more transparency and open discussion of weaknesses exposes the organisation to criticism by personnel, partners, competitors and donors. Hence the unmistakable tendency for country concepts to present operating conditions and an organisation’s own performance in a more positive light.
But the answer here should not be to split country concepts into a planning document for internal consumption on the one hand and published, widely disseminated country information papers on the other. One of the primary objectives of any aid organisation – to promote understanding between the people concerned – requires a more courageous approach to frank dialogue, also and especially with partners and target groups.
Not enough participation: Despite all the rhetoric about participation from DWHH and its partners overseas, the poor and the marginalised – who are the principal target groups – have so far been scarcely involved in the planning process – at best indirectly through partner organisations but mostly only as the passive subjects of planning. And there is no change on that score in the new country concepts. In this regard, DWHH is not much different from other governmental or non-governmental aid organisations. Its partner organisations – as target group brokers – will remain key contacts for the foreseeable future. However, measures designed to help gear institutional structures to target group needs should form an integral part of any country concept.
In the long term, there is no getting around the need to incorporate target group views more substantially in the development of country concepts; it is a fundamental requirement for effective help for self-help. A stringent definition of aid priorities based on a representative nationwide study of target group problems and potentials – which is what the term “country concept” suggests – is found only in isolated cases among the country concepts produced so far. In view of the organisation’s own limited resources, holistic country plans of that nature could only be realised at all in closer cooperation with other donors.
DWHH’s profile not sharp enough: The country concepts are structured and formatted in line with standard international practice but they still fail adequately to reflect DWHH’s salient features, its special profile. Analysis of general conditions accounts for some 60% of the total volume of the country concepts, which is too much. It should be condensed and much of it placed in the appendix or in a periodically updated database accessible by everyone concerned, e.g. on the organisation’s website.
Project reality not properly mirrored: Because of the short-term nature of emergency relief, the prominent role it plays in the assistance provided by DWHH as a whole is not adequately reflected in medium-range country planning. This undermines the value of country concepts as strategic management tools and is all the more regrettable since shortterm humanitarian aid forms a truly central part of DWHH’s work, accounting for some 60% of total assistance, and the organisation’s proven expertise in this field is particularly appreciated by private and public donors.
However, DWHH’s charter sets out a commitment to transforming direct emergency relief into sustainable self-help. So in chronic crisis countries like Angola or Sudan, where DWHH has been providing emergency relief for decades, this is also reflected in the country concepts. What the concepts do not adequately portray, however, is the positive and negative structural change that may be caused by this emergency aid.
Conclusion
Country concepts have been successfully introduced by DWHH and have been developed for the majority of priority countries. Even a year after the completion of the evaluation, however, there are still not many papers revised on the basis of the evaluators’ findings. Stronger management would be welcome here to enable DWHH to maintain and further sharpen the profile it has gained. To develop country concepts as a strategic programme planning tool, the project approval procedure at DWHH needs to be changed. There should be more critical appraisal of past performance and future prospects; even the external criticism that may ensue as a result should be regarded as a dividend. It would also be good to see the specific needs to which DWHH responds and the actual benefits of its activities more vigorously underlined. This applies particularly to the role of short-term emergency relief, which has grown in importance in recent years and can only dovetail with developmental action if it is embedded in a medium-range planning horizon.
1) Chambers, Robert, et al. (2002):
The New Dynamics of Aid: Power, Procedures and Relationships. IDS Policy Briefings, 15 / Fowler, Alan (ed., 2000): Questioning Partnership: The Reality of Aid and NGO Relations, in: IDS Bulletins, Vol. 31, No 3
2) Preuss, Hans-Joachim A.:
Landeskonzepte in der nichtstaatlichen EZ.
Erfahrungen der Deutschen Welthungerhilfe
(Country concepts in non-governmental development cooperation. Experiences of DWHH),
in: E+Z 2000:9, 245
3) Kohnert, Dirk (2002):
Landeskonzepte der Deutschen Welthungerhilfe –
Eine Querschnittsevaluierung (DWHH country concepts – A cross-sectional evaluation), Hamburg/Bonn, March 2002, 48 pp. plus appendix. Copies of the study (available in German only)can be ordered from DWHH (programme@dwhh.de)
Dr. Dirk Kohnert is deputy director of the Institute of African Affairs, Hamburg
kohnert@iak.duei.de
Dr. Hans-Joachim A. Preuß is Secretary General of DWHH
gs@dwhh.de
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