Addressing a country's development priorities requires an overall conceptual framework, or vision, that provides the direction, consistency, and focus essential to sustain any long-term process. The concept of a long-term, holistic vision includes several elements. A coherent long-term vision provides the foundation for a medium-term strategy that includes country-specific development targets, a balanced and well-sequenced set of policy measures, and a program for building the capacity needed for implementation. A holistic or comprehensive strategy considers all of the major domains for developmental policies and the many linkages among them, although different emphases may be placed on each, depending on country context.
A medium-term strategy based on a long-term, holistic vision should not constitute a top-down national development plan in the sense of governmental directives about all major investment decisions. It need not set forth the details about policy design and should not be a rigid framework, but should be reviewed and adjusted from time to time. Such a strategy is not expected to eliminate ongoing political debate about the right investments and the best policies or their timing. However, to the extent that a strategy can build widely shared understanding about realistic long-term goals and broad directions and their affordability, it can help to focus that debate on details of design, selectivity, implementation, and accountability, rather than on fundamental choices. In doing so, it can mobilize and guide support both within society, including the government, the private sector, and civil society, and among external providers of developmental assistance. And it can contribute to continuity in broad development policies across successive administrations.
Lessons of Experience:
Over decades the effectiveness of development assistance has been severely impaired by its focus on projects which were not well integrated into a broad country strategic framework and which had relatively short time horizons. By contrast, successful development has been achieved when countries have been able to pursue integrated policies and programs over a broad front for sustained periods. In particular, experience has shown that achieving growth and poverty reduction depends on maintaining macroeconomic stability, on undertaking structural reforms to increase investment and enhance productivity, and on providing key services to improve economic opportunities and the quality of life, especially for the poor. Achieving a balance among these dimensions within a realistic national development strategy, and sustaining that balance over time, are the keys to success. This is greatly facilitated by an articulation of a country’s own long-term, holistic vision for its future.
For an overview on progress in implementation of the CDF principles, see CDF Progress Report 2005, Enabling Country Capacity to Achieve Results; OR click here for detailed CDF implementation progress by country.
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