By Opa Kapijimpanga, Institute for Policy Studies, Lusaka, Zambia
The current aid regime is characterized by a disproportionate feeling of ‘power over†by donors in relation to African governments. This expresses itself in donors continuing to impose their understanding of how African economies must be run. As an example, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) is essentially an instrument which the IMF uses to define macro-economic parameters. For example the government wage bill is limited by the MTEF to 8% of GDP. This then sets the limits; including how many nurses or teachers Zambia can employ in a given year. The IMF denies this! Donors have also shown reluctance to directly deal with resolving the development constraints that they also visibly see. Their unwillingness to commit to meeting the MDGs is somewhat unacceptable.
The nature and character of the aid regime must therefore change. Some of the processes that might help in doing so include the following:
a) Donor support should be directed at supporting national development plans. The MTEF, a rolling three year framework must be the instrument for securing that plan targets are being met;
b) The relationship between donors and the recipient country should be based on an Aid Policy and Strategy drawn up by the recipient country. Such an Aid Policy should define the modalities for aid and also include a framework for evaluating the Donors
c) Donors, as a group, have to express their commitment to the Plan and Aid Policy through a Joint Assistance Strategy. This will help harmonize their behaviour and procedures; towards a more responsive aid regime;
d) Aid must be directed at resolving development constraints. And these are always clearly visible in any given reality. An assessment of how these are being resolved should be made on an ongoing basis.
Please send your response to this opinion to coordinator@futureofaid.net or click on 'add new comment' below
Source: AFRODAD
"African countries like many other developing countries need external resources primarily to supplement their meagre domestic resources from their economies. The assistance countries receive redress the financial gap that arises from their development needs and act as catalyst and play a complimentary role in the implementation of the national development programs as well as stretegies. The articles concludes by saying that aid architecture must address political interests of both donors and recipient as well. Aid would only work with good public institutions and if policies are nationally-owned. Other important factors include the need to address weak public finance management systems, respect public systems by donors, and the development of Partnership principles are mutually agreed. Lastly engagement with non-state actors and parliaments must be meaningful if Africa is to make head way in improving aid architecture in the continent."
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Source: CSPR
A lot of issues concerning aid effectiveness were discussed by representatives from civil society, government, and the cooperating partners. This dialogue formed a crucial platform to foster coordinated efforts from the three quarters of development stakeholders to ensure that aid becomes more effective. It is also important to note that the workshop signified the recognised valuable role played by civil society in managing and accounting for the aid.
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Source: Southern Africa Regional Poverty Network (SARPN)
This Bulletin is a product of the joint efforts of SARPN and its cooperating partners, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Services Centre. This Bulletin builds on the work of the first one and is an attempt to fill the niche in the region in terms of intellectual analyses of the MDG policy discourse. It also responds to the need for a regional quarterly and up to date publication which arouses interest, awareness and keeps the development workers in the SADC region (and beyond) informed about and engaged with developments and progress in the fight against poverty in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs are widely believed and accepted to offer the most comprehensive framework for the reduction of poverty. The SARPN MDG Bulletin is intended as a platform for debate and information exchange on practices and strategies around the framework. The MDG Bulletin is also intended to provide the space for a range of voices to interrogate underlying and emerging assumptions and trends as well as the policies and activities that relate to the MDGs. While the focus of the Bulletin is the SADC region, inevitably, and as a result of the global nature of the MDGs and, indeed, the global nature of poverty, some of the perspectives included may have relevance beyond the region.
The content of the MDG Bulletin will comprise a diverse range of articles and stories drawn from distinguished development workers ranging from consultants, academics, individuals working in different types of civil society and private sector organisations as well as policy makers.
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Source: African Economic Research Consortium
This edition of Research News was the first for Olu Ajakaiye, the AERC Research Director and the first after the launch of the AERC Strategic Plan for 2005 - 2010, whose theme is continuity and innovation. In Policy Forum, Stephen Gelb addresses the feasibility of attaining the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. After reminding us of the abysmal performance of sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2005, as enunciated in the MDGs progress report, Professor Gelb takes issue with the stance of the Millennium Development Project that the binding constraint to ending poverty in SSA is finance. In his view, at least two problems confront this money is the problem argument: The prevalence of states weakened by 20 years of structural adjustment and economic decline and the preponderance of even weaker or missing institutions. Without effective states and strong institutions, he posits that SSA countries would not be able to use the massive amounts of financial support proposed. Professor Gelb suggests that unless poverty reduction, improved health and education, and gender equity are at the heart of policy goals, any coalition to support policy would exclude the interests of the majority of the population and would stand little chance of succeeding politically.
Considerable attention is given to 'Collaborative Research' in this issue because the substantive aspects of all collaborative research projects embarked on during the late 1990s have been concluded. Some of the projects were massive – they produced numerous individual country case studies and involved as many as 150 researchers – and as a part of the dissemination process, it is important to articulate clearly the key findings and policy lessons that can be drawn from them. Accordingly, the project coordinators have provided summaries of the major findings and policy lessons emanating from the following research projects:
• African Imperatives in the New World Trade Order
• Explaining African Economic Growth Performance
• Poverty, Income Distribution and Labour Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (phase I)
• Managing the Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa
• Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Africa
The collaborative research project on 'Managing the Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa', coordinated by Samuel M. Wangwe and Carol Lancaster, stemmed from concern about ever higher levels of aid dependence in Africa, coupled with equal concern about the efficacy of aid. The output of this project has already been published by AERC in the form of the report of the dissemination conference organized in collaboration with the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF), the World Bank, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The ODC also published a Policy Essay on Managing a Smooth Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa.
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Source: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
Prescriptiveness and insensitivity vis-à -vis African realities and perspectives are exacerbated by the arrogance and ignorance that come with ambitions of dominance. Equally unhelpful to Africa’s cause is the fact that most of the scholarship that informs development initiatives is uncritical of the European origins and assumptions of the social sciences. This is very much in evidence in the current proliferation of ‘scholarly’ prescriptions on the so-called ‘failed states of Africa’ (See for example Stephen Ellis, ‘How to Rebuild Africa’, Foreign Affairs 84(5): 1- 14, 2005), as blame is systematically taken away from the problematic assumption that ‘nation-states’ are possible and that they could be anything but dysfunctional in the current neoliberal configuration of global power relations, and that Africans are at fault for not attaining functional nation-states. And so, everything must be done to bring about ‘functional states’ in Africa, even if this entails placing ‘failed’ or ‘dysfunctional’ states under some kind of ‘international trusteeship’. There is a growing body of literature by African scholars highly critical of such problematic assumptions that Africanists can ill-afford to continue to ignore (See Abdul Raufu Mustapha, this Bulletin). The contributions in this Bulletin thus critically situate themselves in relation to the problematic nature of scholarship by analogy, and in particular, to the mediocrity and insensitivities that such scholarship inspires. Such mediocrity and insensitivities are hardly in the interest of Africa and African Studies.
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AfriMAP
This report reviews the stalled process for APRM self-assessment in Mauritius, initiated in 2004 but on hold from mid-2005 to June 2007, and urges Mauritius to learn the lessons of its first phase and open up the process to much wider civil society engagement.
The report argues that the NESC, responsible for leading the APRM self-assessment failed to reach out effectively to civil society and relied far too heavily on government information for its first attempt at preparing the self-assessment report. The National Coordinating Structure, the steering committee for the APRM, was also too narrowly constituted, without participation from the full range of Mauritian society.
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Source; AFRODAD
China-focused African campaigners, Chinese African Studies academic specialists, NGO representatives, concerned researchers and campaigners from within and outside China came face to face in China to discuss and analyze the country’s new role in the South and the global system, with Africa as a focus of study. It was successful for it provided a good starting point for the participants to think about Africa – China relations with a more nuanced and broader perspective, as well as, identify possibilities for future collaborative work
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Source: Afrimap
African leaders debated proposals for the rapid creation of a United States of Africa at the 9th Ordinary Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union that took place in Accra, Ghana, 1-2 July 2007. AfriMAP was the major sponsor of two important fora that took place in advance of the summit and enabled civil society organizations to debate the proposal for a Union Government and provide input to what was termed the 'Grand Debate'. The first was a one day roundtable during the official Pre-Summit Civil Society Forum organised by the AU Commission's Civil Society Directorate (CIDO), held on June 20. The second was a two day continental conference (June 22 -23) hosted by our national partner, the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) that brought together over 150 men and women from 100 organizations in 30 countries across Africa and the Diaspora to discuss the proposal to establish a Union Government. Other sponsors of the meeting were the Centre for Democracy and Development-Ghana, Oxfam UK, the UN Millennium Campaign, the African Capacity Building Foundation, the Pan-African Movement, Action Aid and Fahamu. For these two discussions, AfriMAP commissioned papers on aspects of the Union Government proposal by several individuals who have been close observers of the project for continental integration. These papers – which will be supplemented by other contributions – are available on the AfriMAP website, with the communiqués from the meetings
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Source: European Centre for Development Policy Management
The AU Executive Council proposed a joint EU-Africa Council of Ministers to take place in Cairo at the end of November in order to prepare the Lisbon Summit and most likely approve the joint EU-Africa Strategy and examine the political declaration before it is submitted to the Heads of States and Governments. This meeting would take place in November just before the Summit. This proposal still needs to be discussed with the European Union. The EU-Africa Ministerial Troika (only assembling the two Commissions and respective Presidencies) planned to be held in Accra on 31 October will have already examined a very advanced version of the Strategy.
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