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Aid Effectiveness Network

Seminar on 'How to Secure Participation and Ownership in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process'

Thursday 8th Sept 2005, 12:30 - 14:00

Country ownership is essential for ensuring Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) are implemented, effective and sustained, so how can we ensure the PRS process is country owned? 

This seminar 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. 

Strategic communication in the PRS process is about building consensus and deepening the exchange of ideas between government and citizens, managing expectations, promoting transparency and accountability and maintaining momentum in the PRS. For example, using plain language guides to the PRS and holding village and council level consultations. Authors of the recent World Bank / DFID publication With the Support of Multitudes: Using strategic communication to fight poverty through PRSPs(1170 kb) will demonstrate how to use the case studies, analysis and best practice guidance in the publication to achieve strategic communication which contributes to a successful PRS. 

Proceedings of the seminar

Chair: Joy Hutcheon 

Presentations:

12:30 Presentation on ‘Overcoming challenges to participation and ownership in the PRS process’: Fiona Shera

This focused on the importance of institutionalising the PRS and particularly mainstreaming participation into national and local processes, strengthening accountability systems and incentives, and the need for longer term approaches. Constraints to participation and ownership include the difference between country and government ownership (and how using communications strategically could achieve country ownership and promote accountability, rather than just government ownership), the continued existence of 'donorship' and lack of communication on PRS monitoring and implementation. 

12:45 Sina Odugbemi presented the recent publication ‘With the Support of Multitudes, Using strategic communication to fight poverty through PRSPs’ and a preliminary follow-up report on the opinions and experiences of implementers of communication interventions 

The presentation emphasised how communication was integral to poverty reduction through the power it had to promote accountability and democracy. A PRS should be about how an entire country, not just the government, plans to fight poverty, and the role of communications is to voice the opinions of the country rather than only the government. 

Points raised during Discussion

Discussion included contributions from DFID Uganda and Rwanda and government and civil society representatives involved in the PRS process in Uganda and Rwanda (by video conference), DFID Guyana (by tele-conference), Abercrombie House (by video conference) and external participants. 

• The issue of government versus national ownership was considered critical, as a PRS can only be nationally owned when a country has agreed on how poverty reduction will be achieved. Whilst it may be unrealistic to assume it is possible to achieve consensus on all issues in a political process, to not aim for national over government ownership would be to deny a peoples' right to democracy. The crucial result is not a 'national agenda' that everyone agrees with, but an agenda that is open to debate in public spheres. As a stakeholder, governments in all countries have their own interests (i.e. maintaining power), and this is easier to achieve if a government's policies appear to have the backing of much of the population. Thus a government that knew its own interested could be well served through taking a participatory approach would have made a major step towards national ownership. 
• The institutional and legal frameworks that empower people to participate are essential for the participatory process in the PRS, and creating this environment requires strengthening institutions at the local level.
• It is not essential for the main focus of a government's agenda to be on poverty reduction for poverty reduction to be achieved, as this can often be the indirect result of other agendas (e.g. wealth creation), and it is important to bear this in mind when considering government focus. 
• Effective communications is critical to sustaining changes and growth, as the impact of change will be longer lasting if it is accompanied by a change in the participatory processes that surround it. In order to strengthen accountability through 2nd generation PRSs, media and communications must have high priority. To achieve this DFID needs to build and move forward on existing work, encourage more debate at the local level about what can be done and look widely for lessons learnt in this area, including to ex-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (ex-USSR) countries. 
• The location of responsibility for PRS communications within government will affect the success of the communications strategy, as communications is more effectively coordinated by an outward looking ministry open to making full use of the media. DFID needs a clearer understanding of how the media operates, and how to assess strengths and weaknesses of the media within a country to work to improve media performance. It is important to recognise the different roles the media plays, and the opportunity it provides to 'buy' space. 

Questions raised included DFID's plans to strengthen the role of the media and the role DFID sees the media playing in PRSs. It was also recognise that the most important consideration was how to move forward and convert these discussions into action.

Please contact Lucy Vallance for further information.