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

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and use can and will have a substantial impact on efforts to forge international
partnerships and promote sustainable development.
Notwithstanding the adoption of the new terminology and optimism
about improved co-operation and coordination, the available evidence suggests
little has changed in the aid relationship. Though rarely discussed explicitly,
national and institutional interests structure the provision and receipt
of external support. The size of the education gap to be closed in most
of Africa and the many pressing demands on available resources combine to
nurture heavy reliance on external funding, which in turn makes it difficult
for the government to assert and maintain an independent posture. Collectively,
funding and technical assistance agencies apparently continue to instruct
more than listen and thus undermine the dialogue and partnership
they claim to construct. The pressures to maintain the aid relationship, including
its patterns of influence and dependence, regularly overwhelm initiatives
to change it.
Let us consider the evolving terminology by reviewing concrete experiences
in Africa. What do we learn from observations in the field?
Evolving terminology
Recent discussions of external aid, and especially aid to education, assert the
importance, and in some countries experience, of a transition from project
assistance to sectoral support. That shift, from a focus on relatively discrete
activities to an integrated approach to the education system as a whole, has
been accompanied by an evolving understanding of the role of funding and
technical assistance agencies. In a recent interview one funding agency official
characterized that transition: “There has been an evolution of thinking
among the donors. We have moved from doing to countries to doing for
countries to now doing with countries (Samoff, 2001 a).”
The apparent trend is toward sectoral support. Note that the common
terminology is often used inconsistently. While some regards ‘programme
support’ and ‘sectoral support’ as synonyms, others distinguish the two, suggesting
a continuum from project (narrow) to programme (broader) to
sectoral (broadest) support. The term ‘sector’ is generally understood loosely
to refer either to all education activities or to one or another of the major
education sub-sectors. Programme or sectoral support is expected to have
several powerful advantages for both the government and its foreign partners:
a clear global vision, a strengthened national role, including both leadership
and ownership, improved coordination, less duplication of effort,
economies of scale, and integrated activities. The program or sectoral approach
reflects a holistic understanding of education. Where efforts are linked
across the education sector, progress in one area, say school construction,
will not be undermined by inattention to another area, say preparing teachers
or instructional materials for the new schools. Similarly, a sectoral ap-