AfCoP and the AAAReflections on future engagement

By

Richard Ssewakiryanga

Rssewa@yahoo.com

1. What should the AfCoP do to influence the country systems and development strategies in order to improve the lives of the poor?

Origins

The AfCoP started as an initiative that brought together practitioners in the area of MfDR within the context of the Paris Declaration to share information, lessons and skills.

Over the last 2 years the AfCoP has been involved in several teleconferences and e-discussions on several important issues related to the MfDR agenda

The AfCoP is also privileged for having been borne at a time results management is taking centre stage

The Context

2008 Paris Declaration Monitoring Survey – states that less than 10% of countries surveyed have sound frameworks to monitor and assess development results – the target for 2010 is 35%

Further more the aid landscape is changing rapidly

New sources of financing are becoming available including from a wider range of non-DAC donors, private foundations, other private sources of funding and an increasingly well-funded northern non-government (NGO) sector.

This implies aid effectiveness is now couched in myriad of funding mechanisms that are sometimes competing more than complementing.

The Context

This is one of the critical reasons for having the aid effectiveness debate.

AfCoP should be cognizant of this context and changing landscape and work more closely with all actors to promote the issues around MfDR and strengthening country systems.

What should we do? AfCoP needs to be more aggressive in sharing

information across countries and across actors to influence the strengthening and setting up of sound frameworks for monitoring development results

This would require more focused and intensive sharing, organizing AfCoP events that have got a high profile, conducting systematic case study sharing events to energise those that are part of the CoP process

What should we do? The first phase evaluation of the Paris Declaration

conducted as one of the build up activities for the Accra High Level Forum also makes the point that there may actually be under-reporting on MfDR due to a lack of clarity of the concept, unclear definitions, and understanding.

This therefore is an opportunity for AfCoP to develop methods, documents and contribute to the various understandings and practices of MfDR across the African continent.

What the AfCoP needs are examples from the continent that have worked.

Remember that ….. The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) as an outcome

document of the 3rd High Level Forum made strong recommendations for improving the MfDR agenda.

Specifically the AAA states that ‘developing countries will strengthen the quality of policy design,

implementation and assessment by improving information systems and will work with donors to develop cost-effective

results management instruments to assess the impact of development policies and adjust them as necessary’.

Clearly these aspects point to the need to do more in terms of sharing knowledge, learning from each other and clearly defining what is achievable over the short term.

What should the AfCoP do to strengthen Country Ownership over development?

The Context

As defined in the Paris Declaration, ownership requires active leadership by the country over development policies, strategies and the coordination of development actions.

Ownership is very central to the Paris Declaration because without ownership it is very hard to implement the other principles of the PD.

Ownership is measured by the Paris Declaration by examining the extent to which a country has a functioning development strategy or Poverty Reduction Strategy paper.

The Context

During the preparations for the Accra HLF, we saw a lot of intensive advocacy especially by NGOs suggesting that the Paris Declaration should expand its conceptualization of ownership to also include issues around democratic ownership, and national leadership and capacity.

Democratic ownership itself requires commitment and participation of all stakeholders including parliaments, local government bodies, NGOs, community based organizations, business organizations and the media.

What should be do?

This means that the AfCoP should expand its vision beyond working with Government actors and donors to include the much larger cohort of development actors that represent democratic ownership

AfCoP should consider functionally expanding the range of actors that are involved in this shared learning – Govt, private sector, NGOs, academics e.t.c

What should be do?

AfCoP should also support future work of the MfDR JV as a means of ensuring that the MfDR agenda stays in the build up to the 2010 Paris Declaration final review

AfCoP should start interesting African regional groupings in engaging with the MfDR agenda – e.g. SADC, COMESA, EAC, AU, IGAD, NEPAD - through lobby engagements and making technical input into their meeting agendas

Beyond Accra? The Accra High Level Forum was built on a number of

major international meetings which included:

(i) Monterrey Conference on Finance for Development, 2002; (ii) Rome High Level Meeting on Harmonisation and Alignment,

2003; (iii) Marrakesh Roundtable on Managing for Results 2004; (iv) Paris High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, 2005; and (v) Hanoi Roundtable on Managing for Results, 2007.

These meetings were always grappling with the question of improvements in aid effectiveness and fed into many other parallel processes pursued by, inter alia, G8, the World Bank, IMF, OECD and regional development banks. Civil society has also contributed in shaping these outcomes.

Conclusion It should be noted that the Accra HLF3 was designed to

take stock, review progress and address the main challenges to implementing the Paris Commitments as a whole.

In light of that, what the HLF3 offered are important analytical inputs that should structure the future reflections on the Paris Declaration after the Accra.

The AfCoP is one of those initiatives that should take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that is around and work towards strengthening the development results agenda.

Thank you for listening!