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[ Aid effectiveness ]

“A major step forward”

The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) was the result of a multilateral conference held in the Ghanaian capi­tal in early September. The “triple A” is meant to speed up the implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PD) of 2005. Eckhard Deutscher, chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) discussed the implications of the AAA in an interview.


[ Interview with Eckhard Deutscher ]

What is in the AAA for disadvantaged and marginalised people of mal­governed countries such as Zimbabwe, Birma or North Korea?
The most important aspect of the AAA is the re-emphasis on ownership, but with a clear statement that ownership needs to be broad-based and representative, not just reflecting the demands of the executive central government. The AAA thus stresses the role of parliaments and civil society. Improved transparency and mutual accountability are equally key priorities. It is clear that the Paris Declaration and AAA are unlikely to bring about change in all places. Aid effectiveness depends on a constructive, joint commitment to deve­lopment, with developing countries taking the lead and donors supporting their efforts. There has to be a will on behalf of the recipient countries to cooperate in a meaningful way with the international community. Where that is not the case, the aid-effectiveness agenda cannot offer a magic solution.

To what extent can traditional donors push for change in malgoverned countries, and doesn’t aid from China or India undermine such efforts?
Let’s be clear about one thing. The idea is not for donors to push for change. Aid effectiveness is a joint effort. As I said, the basis is a common commitment to sustained development. The push for change needs to come from the developing countries themselves, from their diverse domestic stakeholders. Donors then need to support such momentum. Regarding China, India, and indeed many other countries, it is most welcome that more and more countries contribute resources to international development. It is important to stress our shared interest in lasting development results. We should avoid thin­king in terms of competition between DAC members and countries like India or China.

The AAA invites all development actors to adopt its guidelines. What strategy is there to get emerging donors on board?
The basis of the AAA is a shared commitment to the effective use of resources. Emerging donors and participants in South-South cooperation are no exception. We must accept that approaches will differ, and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It is important, however, to have an agreement on principles and to engage on the basis of these principles: all of us need to cooperate better in future; and the AAA provides entry points for doing so. That does not mean that everybody has to do exactly the same. What matters, however, is to work together more, to share information and to make progress in line with shared principles. The PD and AAA emphasise – and help to facilitate – local coordination under the leadership of the recipient country. True to the ownership principle, the best way to get China and others on board is developing countries themselves asking these partners to do so.

Capacity building is about skills, insti­tutions and systems, according to the AAA. In what sense is it different from institution building or, indeed, nation building?
At the DAC, we prefer to talk about “capacity development”, which we understand as the process whereby people, organisations and society as a whole unleash, streng­then, create, adapt and maintain capacity over time. We use the term capacity deve­lopment in deliberate distinction to the traditional capacity building, which suggests a process starting with a plain surface and involving the step-by-step erection of a new structure, based on a preconceived design. Experience suggests that capacity is not successfully enhanced in this way. Almost all aspects of development require capacity development. Under nation-building, however, the DAC understands the process of building a sense of common national identity, whether defined in an ethnic, cultural or political sense.

The AAA stresses that capacity building must be demand-driven. What does that mean in fragile situations – let’s say Afghanistan – where governments do not have adequate capacities to assume ownership?
It is true that in some cases foreign exper­tise will be required to fill gaps in public services in situations where governments lack basic human capacity, particularly in post-conflict situations. But in general, donors must pay more attention to deve­loping capacity as opposed to delivering services. The current evidence suggests that donor efforts tail off in fragile situations just at the point when governments can make better use of aid for building capacity. What we need, therefore, is a more persistent and patient approach to supporting fragile institutions.

According to the AAA, ownership is not only exercised by central governments, but also by parliaments, civil society and local authorities. To what extent can aid promote operational checks and balances on central govern­ments, which are the ones to negotiate the terms of aid with the donors?
Everybody agrees on the need for checks and balances. And that is why mutual accountability is one of the five principles of aid effectiveness. Apart from ownership, they also include alignment to recipient-country systems, donor harmonisation and results- rather than input-orientation. These principles are interlinked, it does not make sense to look at them in isolation. In the past, donors applied checks and balances to ensure that their funds were used in line with their respective procedures. Doing so, however, donors largely bypassed the systems and institutions of developing countries. Now, the idea is to link development cooperation to checks and balances in developing countries, respecting and at the same time strengthening those systems. The very fact of using domestic systems more for aid flows, and of working together to strengthen public-finance management, for instance, will boost the ownership of developing countries, also in the sense of strengthening institutional checks on the executive.

The AAA mentions the media among the relevant development actors. What does that imply in terms of support for the media?
The media is indeed very important, and I hope and believe that donors will con­tinue to give due attention to media, and in particular to local media. For a strong sense of representative ownership, after all, public debate of developmental issues is essential.

If recipient countries do not live up to commitments, aid funds will be reduced. What kind of sanctions are there to enforce donor compliance?
This is a tough issue, and it is not easily resolved. First, I think we should point to one important particularity of the PD: it has given the aid effectiveness agenda clear indicators and an in-built monitoring process, which implies the possibility of “name and shame” donor countries that do not comply. We expect this process to be followed very closely, certainly by civil society, but also in the DAC itself. Moreover, we can point to progress in two crucial areas:
– we are moving away from conventional donor-imposed ex-ante conditionality to mutually agreed conditions that focus on development results, and
– the AAA will improve predictability.
Developing countries have made it clear that, to plan budgets and implement their own programmes effectively, nothing is more important than information on the resources available to them in the years ahead, rather than only within the current budget year. In Accra, donors have pledged to provide such information on a three- to five-year base. This may not co­ver 100 % of the aid disbursed, and the information will not be perfect. But the commitment is a fundamental step forward.

In the past, conditionalities were about all sorts of issues – from macroeconomic stability to respect for human rights and many other things. What kind of conditions should there be according to the AAA?
The essential thing is to change the nature of conditionalities so as to strengthen country ownership. This clearly applies to macroeconomic policy choices. Beyond that, it is important to remember that development cooperation is fundamentally a matter of choice-based mutual trust, commitment and accountability. The AAA certainly does not imply that donors will channel funds directly to the governments of developing countries if they have profound doubts about those governments’ commitment to basic international agreements, for instance in the area of human rights.


Questions by Mohamed Gueye (Le Quotidien, Dakar), Jennifer Dube (The Standard, Harare) and Hans Dembowski (D+C/E+Z, Frankfurt). This interview was conducted by e-mail after the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. It was organised in the context of conference coverage by a group of 13 journalists from different countries. This programme was organised by InWEnt’s International Institute for Journalism on behalf of the European Commission.

D+C, 2008/10, InWEnt Forum, Page 388-389