Marta Cumbi
4 September 2008
opinion
African countries and donors share the belief that aid has the potential to contribute to economic growth, reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, the way both donors and recipient countries are performing for delivery and use of aid undermine this potential.
Some of the conditionalities imposed to aid recipient countries to access aid reduce the extent to which it can contribute to poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs by forcing governments to implement policies that lead to unemployment, bad quality of public services and reduced capacity by citizens to access basic services. Privatisations, cuts in government expenditures in public services such as education and health and adjustment of prices of essential goods like water, electricity and transport to reflect market prices result in unemployment, shortage and lack of motivation of civil servants as well as incapacity of poor people to access these essential services are some examples of such conditions.
On the other hand, recipient countries still face challenges in ensuring good governance, adequate institutional capacity and coordination of activities at different levels. Corruption practices without an appropriate mechanism of imputing responsibilities, lack of coordination across sectors and weak institutions and systems combined with the absence or weak donors' coordination and harmonisation practices undermine the full potential of aid.
BACKGROUND
The Mozambican government has been putting in place policies and strategies aimed to promote economic growth, reduce poverty and reach Millennium Development Goals. Over the last 17 years the country has embarked on structural adjustment programmes to reinvigorate the economy and reduce poverty. Development partners have been instrumental in providing resources to finance government development efforts given that internal resources are insufficient to respond to growing needs. Thus, Mozambique has been an aid dependent country for a long time. Over the last years overseas development assistance has remained strong constituting 29 per cent of gross domestic product in 2000 and 16 per cent in 2005. In absolute terms grants and loans to Mozambique excluding IMF (International Monetary Fund) and highly indebted poor countries grants amounted to $724million and $926million for 2000 and 2005, respectively (GMD 2007). In 2007, aid covered more than 50 per cent of the state budget.
Despite this level of development assistance flow and impressive economic growth averaging 8 per cent over the last 5 years, Mozambique continues to be highly dependent on foreign aid. Moreover, 54 per cent of the population still lives in absolute poverty meaning that the government will continue to seek external assistance to pursue its development agenda in line with its five year development plan, poverty reduction strategy programme/plan of action for the reduction of absolute poverty (PRSP/PARPA) and MDGs. Hence, Mozambique needs to engage its development partners in a permanent dialogue to improve the quality of aid in line with the present aid effectiveness agenda.
AID EFFECTIVENESS
The ultimate goal of aid is to support governments in their efforts towards the development of countries, institutions and the people. Looking at aid flow overtime and development indicators one can conclude that the achievements have been lower than desired. It is within this context that donors, governments, civil society organisations and other development actors started seeking ways to make aid more effective. Several gatherings have been taking place with the view to defining strategies and actions to promote aid effectiveness. The Monterrey consensus of 2002, the Amsterdam high level meeting, the first high level forum on aid harmonisation held in Rome in 2003 and the second high level forum held in Paris in 2005 all made commitments related to aid effectiveness, in which donors and partner countries shared responsibilities in making aid work. In particular the Paris declaration set five guiding principles to monitor the course of actions to be undertaken by donors and partner countries namely:
(1) Ownership: partner countries exercise effective leadership over development policies and strategies and coordinate development outcomes;
(2) alignment: donors base their overall support on partner countries' national development strategies, institutions and procedures;
(3) harmonisation: donors' actions are more harmonised, transparent and collectively effective;
(4) managing for results: managing resources and improving decision-making for results and;
(5) mutual accountability: donors and partner countries are accountable for development results (high level forum, 2005 'Paris declaration on aid effectiveness'.)
It is against this background that this paper seeks to explore the Mozambique experience on aid effectiveness in terms of mutual accountability and donors' alignment to national programmes and harmonisation and assess the implementation of policies to advance the country's and peoples' agenda setting regarding the delivery of aid.
OWNERSHIP OF DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES
Ownership implies that partner countries exercise effective leadership over development policies and strategies and coordinate development outcomes. It means that governments play a leading role in the definition of the development agenda and strategies, ensuring the participation of all stakeholders, namely civil society, private sector, the parliament and the public at large and taking responsibility for development outcomes.
In Mozambique the development agenda has been spelled out through different instruments:
(1) agenda 2025: a long-term vision that sets development objectives for a 25 year horizon. It was formulated by a group of counsellors composed of reputable citizens from different political parties, private sector, academia and civil society;
(2) the government five year plan which is inspired by the agenda 2025 and sets development objectives and strategies for five years. This plan is formulated by the government with the participation of government officials;
(3) PRSP/PARPA: a medium term plan that sets objectives and strategies for poverty reduction over a five year period; and;
(4) medium term expenditure framework: a fundamental tool for the construction of plans and macroeconomic frameworks for short and long-term, aims to indicate the amount of financial resources needed to implement activities over a three year horizon, to respond to policies defined within the five year plan and PARPA.
The implementation of the five-year plan and PRSP is done through annual plans termed plano econÃ'mico e social (economic and social plans) and their monitoring is ensured by Balanço do plano econÃ'mico e eocial.
By definition, PRSP is formulated in a participatory manner involving all stakeholders ranging from government officials to civil society organisations, private sector, individual citizens and donors. From a simple consultation in the first PRSP, the second generation was characterised by increased civil society and private sector participation in the planning process as well as in the production of contents, excluding the macroeconomic framework. A similar structure was created at the provincial level to allow for more citizen participation in this exercise. Parliamentarians, though, did not take part in the process.
Although the PRSP exercise is considered satisfactory, it faced some constraints that require due attention. Unlike donors that have policy experts, both government and civil society organisations faced capacity challenges in terms of human resources and/or expertise to meet the needs of this complex exercise. This has resulted in external influence to the process. The formulation of medium term expenditure framework with its subordination to macroeconomic framework set by the IMF leaves little room for the government to expand its budget to respond to felt national needs. On the other hand, the fact that the government has to comply with commitments set within multilateral and bilateral agreements make national programmes underpinned to external agendas. Thus, there is a need to strengthen the capacity of national actors to promote a true ownership and reduce the conditions that undermine national leadership. On the other hand, parliamentarians should exercise an oversight role in the definition of development agendas to safeguard national interests.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
