Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

The consultative group was conceived by the World Bank in the 1980s as a
mechanism for forging consensus and mobilizing resources among the major
donors of a developing country. In meetings, every one or two years, in
which the country is represented by its economic and finance decision makers,
a consensus is reached regarding the policies, priorities and performance
of the country. This review forms the basis for the level of financial support
which the country will enjoy for a given period.
The consultative group meeting which is held for the larger or betterendowed
economies of the developing countries is overwhelmingly dominated
by the Bretton Woods Institutions.
The round table is a parallel mechanism to the consultative group which
is also held periodically to review the policies, priorities and performance of
the poorer and less endowed developing countries. The Round Table process,
which is managed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),
is more inclusive in its country representation. This is considered a plus. It
is also more inclusive in the participation of UN agencies. This is considered
a minus.
Both the consultative group and the round table provide the potential
means for a dialogue between beneficiary and donor countries. However,
the quality of this potential is undermined in the consultative group by the
imperialism of the Bretton Woods Institutions and in the round table by the
lack of full confidence by the donor community in the professional quality
of the UNDP led economic analysis.
The Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA) formerly the Special Program
for Africa is a resource mobilization mechanism designed by the Bretton
Woods Institutions as a support for Structural Adjustment. It is an effective
mechanism for dialogue among the donors on the policies, priorities, and
performance of those countries covered by the mechanism.
The lack of country representation makes the SPA a donors’ club with
little scope or intent for dialogue with the beneficiary countries.
Ten years of pressure on the Bretton Woods Institutions to open the SPA
to a true dialogue has produced little success other than token representation
in the form of a presentation by a country or African institutional head
at the opening session. UNDP has been consistent in its push for equalizing
and rationalizing these three well established dialogue mechanisms.
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sistance – introduced in the early 1990s as ‘the continuum’ – made little
headway because supporting bilateral donors preferred the separation,
thereby giving more prominence to humanitarian assistance. In the delivery
of humanitarian assistance, there is limited scope for a dialogue. The beneficiary
country establishes the humanitarian need; the bilateral partners,
through the UN system or through NGOs, respond in accordance with their
availability and interests. In this fast and easy solution, beneficiary countries
have lost the opportunity to support more aggressively food production
and food self-sufficiency primarily through smallholders’ production.