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Reflections on Dialogue in Current Development
Co-operation
Abby Riddell 1
Introduction
Dialogue is a fundamental constituent of development cooperation, probably
more so today than in previous times. This is because the shift toward
programmatic aid away from projects entails the inclusion of development
partners at the budget table, a position formerly reserved predominantly for
the IMF. This shift away from delimited projects toward recipient-countryled
work programmes has emerged from lessons of research into aid effectiveness
and has brought about an increasing accountability of developing
country governments to their own stakeholders, rather than primarily to the
development agencies that support such programmes. An increasing exchange
of ideas – one definition of ‘dialogue’ – is more necessary than when
compartmentalised, bilateral projects were more prevalent. Dialogue has
been ‘bought’, essentially, the price being less day-to-day control over expenditure,
placing the onus of development on the recipient country governments
themselves.
Poverty reduction and comprehensive development strategies are the new
compasses, and sector wide approaches or direct budget support are two
new means of providing aid. There is also an attempt, through such means,
at coordinating support from the development banks and multilateral and
bilateral donor agencies. Thus, dialogue is increasingly multi-party, and not a
tête-à-tête between a bilateral and a recipient government.
One can trace the roots of dialogue to the earliest days of development
co-operation, when ‘partnership’ was an important theme, emerging from
post-colonial relationships, viz. the Report of the Commission on International
Development chaired by Lester Pearson and entitled Partners in Development.
2 But then as now, the partnerships, and the dialogue based on
such partnerships, were unequal. Even the proposition, that there should be
‘dialogue’, comes from the development agencies. Developing countries
1 Abby Riddell (UK) has a PhD in Education from the University of London, Institute of Education,
1988. She works now as an independent consultant. She has researched and written for many
development agencies, most recently on sector-wide approaches and other programme-based aid
modalities. She was formerly DFID’s Education Sector Adviser in Zambia, Senior Lecturer in
Educational Planning at the University of London Institute of Education, and on the staff of the
Harvard Institute for International Development.
2 Pearson, Lester B., 1969, Partners in Development: Report of the Commission on International
Development, Praeger, London.