Countries in the Driver's Seat: Making Poverty Reduction Strategies Work
April 13, 2007
The international aid environment is changing, with the existence of many assistance providers and the emergence of different donors—their role is to fight AIDS, build libraries, or bring drinking water to remote communities. Does this increasingly complex and fragmented aid environment undermine the development and execution of country-owned poverty reduction strategies? At the workshop, country leaders and development practitioners shared their perspectives on the country-based development model, as more and more countries prepare their latest poverty reduction strategies (PRSs), and seek to better integrate, scale up, and monitor aid. The emergence of global funds targeting specific areas, also referred to as vertical funds, is a positive development for Richard Manning, chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. “It’s not a question of either-or, but a question of balance,” said Manning. “The challenge is how to link vertical funds to the country model without distorting it.” That means donors should work according to their specific value-added, having as common denominator the priorities of the country, rather than trying to impose their own. And in this context, official agencies and multilateral organizations like the World Bank are seen as essential. “We have narrower and more defined objectives,” said Geoffrey Lamb, former vice president of Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships at the Bank who oversaw the IDA 14 replenishment and who now works for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s annual commitments total between $2.5 and $3 billion. “The function of an entity like IDA is to be the anchor of the country efforts,” Lamb said. Countries have had various experiences in trying to balance their strategies with the objectives of donors––something reflected in the first generation of poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs). The PRSPs were launched in the late 1990s by the Bank and the IMF as an attempt to put countries in the driver’s seat by defining more clearly their development priorities. Initially there was a large gap between the PRSPs and countries’ actual development priorities. “Reducing the gap between the first generation of PRSPs and the real country priorities is exactly what we have addressed in the Africa Action Plan,” said Hartwig Schafer, acting vice-president for the Africa Region. Fifty-one low-income countries are implementing their PRSPs, and ten have completed their second ones. In Vietnam, the national development strategy has gathered a high degree of ownership, resulting in an effective, participatory poverty reduction strategy. In Tanzania, sector strategies and monitoring systems increasingly focus on the impact of policy actions on poverty reduction, and in Ghana, fostering citizens and government’s mutual accountability has been a key part of the process. “There should not be any complacency,” said Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of Ghana. “We need the sense of urgency to achieve what we set ourselves to do.” Now that the efforts to link PRSPs to real country-priorities are under way, there are several challenges that countries, international agencies, bilateral donors and private foundations have to tackle. Among them, how to: align the country systems and the willingness of donors to use them; make official development assistance more predictable; and balance the donors’ need to see clear results and the capacity and institution building needed to achieve those results on the ground. “We’ve made enormous progress, but we still have a long way to go,” said Danny Leipziger, PREM vice president. “We need to become an effective integrating force to help countries achieve their development priorities while ensuring that donors live up to their commitments.” The challenges could not be more urgent. Donors’ commitments to scale up aid have created incentives for developing countries to enhance national development strategies and systems. “We have seen good progress in many countries,” said Managing Director Graeme Wheeler. “If these trends are to become more widespread and produce faster poverty reduction, donors will need to back up their commitments with hard action in the next year. If not, we will risk falling far short of the goal of significantly reducing poverty by 2015, particularly in Africa.” [adopted from an internal WB article written by Madjiguene Seck and Alejandra Viveros, PREM communications team] Back to 2007 Spring Meetings Civil Society Forum |
RSS