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Aid Effectiveness Network

Newsletter - October 2005

Highlights

  • G8 agree Debt Deal
  • Better Aid Week: 7 to 11th November
  • "UK: More Country Ownership" DFID article published

Aid Relationships

Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs)/Country-Led Approaches

  • The DFID articleExternal link"UK: More Country Ownership" was published in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) Finance and Development magazine. It sets out the following guiding principles for effective development - support country strategies; match aid instruments to country needs; harmonise aid; make aid flows predictable and insist on mutual accountability. Contact Ellen Wratten for more information.
  • The World Bank and IMF have issued new guidance on Joint Staff Advisory Notes (JSAN) for Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and Annual Progress Reports (APRs). A JSAN will no longer include a recommendation that it be the basis for concessional lending, thus formally ending Washington sign-off. Details of the new guidance can be found on theExternal linkWorld Bank's website. 
  • A seminar on how to secure participation and ownership in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process was held at DFID. It looked at how experience gained from five years of PRSs can be used to make the PRS process more country led. It also addressed recent new thinking around participation, and how strategic communication can be used to achieve country ownership. Discussion involved the experience of civil society and government representatives involved in the PRS process in Uganda and Rwanda.

Aid Harmonisation and Alignment

  • The United Nations (UN) Development Group has issued guidance and an action plan to all field offices on how to implement the principles of harmonisation, country ownership, alignment with country systems and aid effectiveness that it signed up to in the Paris Declaration. 
  • The three main conclusions from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Paris Declaration monitoring group on the 28th September were: the group should rapidly proceed with work on a questionnaire and technical guidance note; the group should be formalised with every effort made to limit participation so that effective discussion can occur; and the group will also propose arrangements for the medium and long term monitoring of the Paris Declaration indicators and commitments.  The group will meet again in mid-November following further discussion at the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness on 19/20th October.
  • A report onExternal link"Aid Harmonisation: What Will It Take to Meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?" was produced by Development Gateway. It contains interviews and feedback from the donor community, aid recipients, civil society, and private citizens discussing the complexities of donor harmonisation. 
  • External linkThe Government of Ethiopia is using the Development Gateway Foundation's Aid Management Platform (AMP), a web-based information-sharing system that aims to improve the coordination and harmonisation of international development aid. 

Conditionality

  • At the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, the Development Committee approved papers on theExternal linkWorld Bank's approach to conditionalityPDF document, agreeing a set of good practice principles for the use of conditionality in World Bank programmes and projects. These include country ownership, harmonisation, customisation, criticality, and transparency and predictability. Regular monitoring and a review of implementation will take place next year.

Mutual accountability

  • The fifth meeting of the Africa Partnership Forum (APF) took take place in London on 4-5 October. The agenda for the meeting focused on the Role of the APF; a Joint Action Plan, covering commitments both by the international community and Africa; on prospects for financing Africa's development; and on the African Peer Review Mechanism. 
  • The OECD article onExternal link"MDGs, Taxpayers and Aid Effectiveness"PDF documentdescribes how the MDGs and new aid-effectiveness targets are an opportunity for donors to explain what they do before growing scepticism erodes taxpayer support for aid. It argues that political leaders committed to poverty reduction should seek to develop more critically aware domestic constituencies. 
  • The Overseas Development Institute's (ODI's) Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure hosted a workshop onExternal linkAid, Budgets and Accountability on 3-4 October. This took a look at: delivery challenges for the aid system in the 2005 agenda and beyond; the track record of budget reforms; contradictions in donor-recipient relationships; and the role of parliaments, oversight bodies and civil society in domestic accountability. 

Aid Instruments

Poverty Reduction Budget Support

  • DFID’s Evaluation Department has taken the lead for a joint evaluation of General Budget Support, 1994-2004. The study was undertaken with donor organisations and recipient countries, through the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee.  Case studies were undertaken in seven countries:  Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Uganda and Vietnam.  The case studies and overall synthesis report are being finalised, and will be available for dissemination in early 2006.  For more information please see theExternal linkDAC website or contact Kate Tench.
  • Evaluation Department have produced "Citizens, Accountability and Public Expenditure: A Rapid Review of DFID Support", a mapping of what DFID is doing to strengthen domestic accountability on public expenditure with a particular focus on countries where some of our aid is provided as budget support. Copies of the draft report are available from Jane Gardner. 

Policy Coherence

  • The OECD have produced aExternal linkDevelopment Dimension Series on Policy Coherence to provide more analytical information about the consequences of different government policies on development. Increased global interdependence calls for heightened attention to be paid to the trans-border impacts of national and regional policies. 

Global Funds

Aid Volumes

  • The major achievement of the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF was the agreement for the G8's proposal to cancel all remaining debts to the IMF and International Development Assistance (IDA) (the World Bank's concessional lending arm) of countries that complete the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.  
  • DFID announced an extra £40 million for the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) over the three-year period 2006/7 to 2008/9, bringing the total UK contribution to over £50 million. FTI was launched in 2002 as a global partnership between donor and developing countries to ensure accelerated progress towards the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.

Other Aid Effectiveness Information

  • The Millennium Review Summit reinforced G8 commitments to increase and improve development assistance. It also recognised that sustainable development is a key element to the overarching framework of UN activity. TheExternal linkfull outcome is available on the UN website. 
  • The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2005 Human Development Report was published in September, entitled:External link"International cooperation at a crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world".
  • DFID's factsheets on the Millennium Development Goals have been updated by the Poverty Analysis and MDG Review team. They show the current state of progress, and give examples of the challenges and successes for each target. Contact Michael Howells for more information.
  • DFID's Poverty Awareness Training course is being revamped and the new format will include aid effectiveness issues. DFID's training and development unit aim to pilot the new training this financial year. Contact Chris Pontin for further details. 

Upcoming events:

  • Better Aid Week is running from 7-11 November. A range of events and activities are planned to encourage all DFID staff to focus on the impact of aid effectiveness, and what their role is in making DFID's aid more effective. Contact Roman Puchkov for further information.
  • DFID are sponsoring an ODI workshop on country level mutual accountability mechanismsPDF document(53 kb), involving government, donor and civil society representatives from Afghanistan, Vietnam, Tanzania and Mozambique on the 17-18 November. Contact Anna Walters for further information.

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