Donor coordination in the field and partnerships with government
Edward Heinemann
Regional Economist, Eastern and Southern Africa Division, IFAD
Introduction:
 Neither donor coordination, nor partnerships with governments, can be treated as a
normative issue, independent from the specific in-country circumstances: the local
situation must determine the nature of the coordination and partnerships required.
 Donor coordination works best where there is agreement as to shared objectives, and to
determining the best ways of achieving these.
 Good coordination does not necessarily mean everyone doing the same thing; rather it
means capitalising on the strengths of the different donors, but making sure that where
there are different approaches applied, they fit together and contribute to the overall
objectives.
 Likewise, the nature of the partnerships with government will vary, according to the
government in question, and the development instruments being mobilised – be it
budgetary support, a sector-wide programme, projects, etc. The point is to identify which
type of partnership is best for the circumstances.
So why do we want donor coordination?
 To ensure complementarity and synergy of interventions financed.
 To learn from each other’s successful and less successful experiences, and promote best
practice.
 To ensure common position in discussions with government.
 To provide the basis for more substantive collaboration between donors.
 Ultimately, (a) to add value in dealings with governments – improve the quality of donor
support to them, and (b) to assist governments to reduce the cost of managing their
relations with numerous donors.
 This can be done best by encouraging and assisting governments to play the role of
coordinator of donor support – first, through the establishment of sector-level strategic and
programmatic frameworks, within which donors should fit their support; and second,
through the creation of specific sector-level coordinating bodies, which can ensure
complementarity of different projects.
What are the main obstacles to donor coordination?
 Enormous differences between donors: varied mandates, priorities, approaches, and
internal procedures of different donor agencies.
- Lack of a common language of communication – one word meaning different things
to different institutions (eg. ‘supervision’, ‘project execution’, ‘commitment’).
- Fundamentally different views about what constitute public goods and thus the role
of government in service provision.
 ‘Donor agency culture’:– a pervasive normativism: ‘the way we do it is right, the way you
do it is wrong’; institutional arrogance; and each agency needing to show how it adds
value.
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Lack of fit between policies determined at headquarters, and their application in the field.
In some cases, lack of field presence (eg. IFAD); in some cases, field presence through
embassy staff, lacking technical expertise.
What are the most successful arrangements for in-country donor coordination?
 Different arrangements are likely to be successful in different countries – dependent on
e.g. nature of relationship between donor community and government; on government’s
commitment to rural poverty reduction, and institutional and policy reform; on the number
of donors and their relative weight; and on instruments used to support rural sector
(projects, sub-sector programmes or sector-wide approaches).
 Need to avoid donor only coordination mechanisms, which exacerbate ‘us and them’
syndrome and undermine need for partnership with governments.
 Need to ensure transparency of information flows – sharing / distributing strategy
documents, TOR, project documents, etc.
 Success depends to a large extent on individuals and personal relations – suggests
importance of the donor agencies promoting within their organisations a culture of
collaboration.
How can donors better manage their relations with governments?
 Promote governments as managers of the coordination process: assisting governments to
take over the driving seat in prioritising strategic and programmatic priorities.
 Consider governments as partners rather than recipients – avoiding ‘us and them’
relationship.
 Promote policy and institutional reform through support to processes, rather than as
conditionalities.
 Lengthen funding commitment periods – reduce the fear of ‘the tap being turned off’.
 Be less insistent on the need to recruit northern technical assistance to manage projects /
funds, and more balanced in use of local as well as northern NGOs.
 For governments, the greater the number of donors, the greater are the institutional
demands placed upon them. How to reduce that weight: more active donor collaboration?
 Collectively, promoting Basic Principles, agreed to by all parties, which define
government’s sectoral priorities and provide a framework within which government can
develop its programme of expenditure for the agriculture sector, assured of donor support.
How can the EC and member states work differently so as to raise the effectiveness of
development cooperation in tackling rural poverty?
 Currently, the level of funding going to rural development is declining – this must be
reversed.
 Need to use PRSPs as the instrument to influence both developing country governments
and EC and its member states, by emphasising the following:
 poverty – particularly in Africa – is principally rural,
 that poverty alleviation depends on measures to improve economic livelihoods,
as well as provide social services,
 that agriculture is the basis for economic livelihoods of majority of rural poor,
and
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that supporting those economic livelihoods requires analysis of constraints and
opportunities, not merely support to existing institutions.
Focus support above all else on the empowerment of rural families and communities to
strengthen their productivity and increase their assets. This empowerment embraces both
access to material goods and organization to collectively assert their influence - not only
with government, but increasingly with the private sector. The poor must be assisted to
build the institutions, skills and knowledge necessary to articulate viable livelihood
strategies and contribute to their realisation.