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| 20 Feb 2006 - 15:19 | |
| admin Registered: 18 Feb 2006 Posts: 7 
| "Appropriating" the aid dollar On the question of how aid recipients can have more say. I will not comment on broader policy issues on this but limit my suggestions to thoughts on how to get people on the ground involved in "appropriating" the aid dollar through their normal activities. Aid agencies need to exert greater influence on how procurement by their implementing partners is done on the ground. Despite the obvious increased administrative burden this will create, there are benefits in ensuring that where possible every dollar is left in the recipient community. One way of doing this can be illustrated as follows: If an NGO gets funding for a health project and chooses to buy bicycles as community ambulances, when procuring for them, the donor should insist that efforts are made to organise community businesses to tender. It is often the case that tenders are awarded at national level rather at community level. The approach suggested here should be managed to ensure no nepotism, or corruption. It has the potential to stimulate trade and hence make the aid dollar go further! Surely this deserves efforts irrespective of the challenges posed in ensuring proper implementation. Food procurement is a similar case where the UN and donors should support private interests that are willing to organise small farmers to be able to tender for the WFP supply of grain. This can only work if donors insist on it. This aspect of aid administration will grow in importance in the next few years because most donors have committed to increase their ODA with others intending to double it in the next few years. The question I'm therefore posing in a round-about way is 'is there sufficient thought and effort being put to organise communities to absorb this in a meaningful way?' if the answer is no, then we should be alarmed and there are many reasons why we should be worried chief of which is that most of the aid will go to the same old beneficiaries and continue supporting historical inequalities in recipient countries rather than being about the transformation of the conditions of the most needy. Certainly there are many in the recipient countries who are willing to dedicate themselves to doing the hard work of setting up necessary mechanisms and all donors need to do is harness their labour.� originally submitted via the old FFA website by David, South Africa |
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