Country Ownership

Country ownership means that there is sufficient political support within a country to implement its developmental strategy, including the projects, programs, and policies for which external partners provide assistance. Country ownership requires that the government has achieved sufficient support for the strategy among stakeholders within and outside of the government. This likely includes line ministries, parliament, subnational governments, civil society organizations, and private sector groups. The participatory processes needed to build country ownership will be unique to the country’s political culture and circumstances. Ownership requires that a country has sufficient institutional capacity for defining and implementing a national development strategy. For PRSPs, it means that PRSP decisionmaking processes are mainstreamed, or institutionalized, into those of the executive, parliament, local governments, and country stakeholders.

Country ownership does not require full consensus within a country. It means that the government can mobilize and sustain sufficient political support to adopt and implement the desired programs and policies even in the presence of some opposition. For example, major policy changes require strong political support at the national level. A relatively small-scale program may require only local-level community support. In deciding upon and designing support for programs and policies, external partners need to assess the extent of ownership at the appropriate level.

Lessons of experience:

Development does not take place unless it is achieved by the country itself. It cannot be done for a country by development assistance agencies. Externally financed programs and projects might be reasonably well implemented during the period of external support but will not be sustained without country ownership. Policy and institutional change will not achieve its objectives without country ownership. More specifically, the track record indicates that using conditionality associated with external financial assistance to induce policy and institutional change seldom succeeds unless there is adequate understanding and support for it within the country. Therefore, development assistance is most effective when it is driven by demand from the country, not by internal incentives among development assistance agencies to supply certain types of assistance, and when it is deployed only in support of programs, projects and policies for which there is sufficient country ownership.

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.