Findings and recommendations .1 Transformation of the aid paradigm

Given the available evidence, the baseline clearly showed that most countries and aid providers were at an early phase of the road towards higher aid effectiveness. A major contribution of the PD was that it sharpened the focus on five key principles as determinants of aid quality.

In simple terms, the PD argued that better quality required serious actions, particularly:

 stronger exercise of leadership by partner countries of their development plans, strategies, priorities and aid management;

 alignment of aid providers’ support to these strategies and priorities, and refraining from using parallel priorities inconsistent with those of partner countries;

 harmonisation among aid providers of their support and aid delivery methods, in consultation with partner countries;

 reorientation of policies and practices by partner countries and development partners, working together, to focus on development results; and

 establishment of effective mutual-review mechanisms to assess progress and address challenges.

Each of these requisites constituted challenges, some of them formidable.

Difficulties existed on both sides and required “policy and behavioural changes”, which required strong political leadership and commitments to move the change process forward.

A useful summary of the shifts required to move from the “old” to the

“new” aid paradigm was given in a Danish study, summarised in Table 9.

Table 9: Reversing the negatives: From the old to the new aid paradigm

“Old” aid paradigm “New” aid paradigm PD principles Donors prioritise, criticisms were expressed by respondents and experts who established the system.

 First, some definitions were not as precise as needed, leading to confusion and varied interpretations, producing data of suspect reliability and comparability.

 Second, questions arose as to whether all the data required was of relevance and high priority. This called for shorter and more selective monitoring indicators.

 Third, the exercise proved costly in terms of time, human resources and money.

 Fourth, data inconsistencies were not a minor problem, as illustrated when partner country and aid providers’ figures were compared and reconciled.

 Fifth, the three-month period set for fieldwork was too tight to allow sufficient time for in-country consultations with government departments and country-based providers’ offices.

 Sixth, there was little evidence that partner countries had been consulted or involved in monitoring survey design. Involvement would have anticipated implementation difficulties and led to revision of certain aspects.

On the partner countries’ side, the first monitoring round underlined the necessity of setting up a coordinating task team of key departments to generate and validate data. Such a team – at least in Egypt’s experience – was instrumental in helping resolve apparent inconsistencies in figures due to the use of more than one definition. Coordination with aid providers was no less important.

The Survey Report acknowledged many shortcomings. As a result, organisers planned changes in future surveys, including

improving the guidance; clarifying and standardising definitions;

complementing the scope of the survey with localized and qualitative data; expanding country coverage; including more fragile states;

strengthening the role of National Coordinators; reducing the burden to partners and donors in filling out the survey; and ensuring that the 2007 aid disbursement data is collected at country level well before the end of the first quarter of 2008. (OECD, 2007b)

3.4.2 Who is driving the implementation bus?

Much of the progress in aid effectiveness depends on collaboration between partner countries and development partners, with the former exercising leadership and ownership of their development agenda. Logical as this is, some development partners had their doubts about partner countries’ abilities to lead.

These doubts were expressed eloquently during a Paris roundtable discussion. An aid-provider delegate was reported to have said:

There may be many ways to get to the airport, but first of all you need to agree that the airport is where you want to go!, and if we have agreed that the airport is the common destination, we need to be prepared to take a bus there, instead of everybody taking his own mode of transport:

... and donors need to accept that the partner country is driving the bus!

(OECD, 2005a)

In response, a number of aid providers questioned “whether the partner country had a valid driver’s licence”!

This is a legitimate question, of course. But the answer should not be that difficult to establish. The spirit, aside from commitments, of the PD suggested that development partners should assist “would-be and learner drivers” to obtain their driver’s licences, and refrain from placing obstacles on the road towards drivers’ destinations and continually raising the bar of expectations.

3.4.3 Consequences of poor progress

We conclude this chapter by using layman’s language to describe the consequences of lack of progress in applying the Paris Principles. These principles urge partner-country leaders to take ownership of their development priorities and put their houses in order to ensure that aid received is put to effective use. Without this, aid funds could be misaligned with development priorities – a serious problem that delays progress and derails the direction of development itself. This is a joint responsibility, in which aid providers must adjust their policies and practices to conform to these priorities, and desist from imposing their own vision of “what is good for the partner country”.

Regrettably, evidence shows that – well-meaning or not – some aid providers found the departure from existing policies to be too difficult or unacceptable. Similarly, the multiplicity of aid providers active in a given partner country necessitated the harmonising of their contributions to avoid duplication of efforts and a wasting of resources. The difficulties facing this objective were discussed above and cannot be ignored.

However, harmonisation is as essential to improving aid quality as

alignment. Once again, this requires joint action by both sides, with partner-country leadership setting the direction of harmonised actions.

Evidence showed that, if left to aid providers alone, this task could not be accomplished.

Part of the responsibility of partner-country leaders is to focus on achieving and assessing results, not how much was received or what was spent on what. These inputs have their place in aid management but are not the “bottom line”. In fact, the lack of focus on results could be regarded as a partner country’s worst enemy. And there are many temptations not to focus on results, especially when these look shaky and politicians on both sides are eager to report “something positive”, forming a silent and tacit alliance to announce expenditures, visible brick-and-mortar construction, and similar “inputs and outputs”.

Finally, to the extent that development assistance represents a partnership, both partners have an obligation to be accountable to each other for their actions. As these actions directly impacted their political constituencies at home, each partner also had to be accountable to its domestic constituents.

This is the essence of the mutual accountability principle.

All five Paris Principles are intertwined and inseparable. Although these were by no means perfect, they represented a very significant move forward, underlining that there was more to aid effectiveness than harmonisation and alignment, important as these are. The five principles capture the essence of what it takes to ensure viable future designs and imple-mentation of development assistance initiatives in any setting. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, Paris became a landmark event, which not only survived for a few years before being replaced by another set of commitments, but also actually laid firm foundations guiding all future aid effectiveness discussions and serves as a reference point for any form or modality of development cooperation. In that sense, the impact of the Paris outcome was underestimated by many stakeholders at the time.

4 Implementing Paris commitments: Actions, results