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

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approach, there have been many efforts to reform the aid process. Some agencies
have provided direct budget support or other non-project assistance. Particular
funding and technical assistance agencies have periodically relocated
primary responsibilities and authority for their support from headquarters to
field offices and the reverse. Procedures for proposing and negotiating support
arrangements, evaluating proposals, releasing and using funds, and activity
and financial reporting have been modified, some many times. Organizational
rearrangements, relocations of authority, and other modifications of
the forms and management of the aid relationship are likely to continue.
In practice, the initiative, sensitivity, responsiveness, and manner of the
people involved seem to matter more than the general approach and formal
procedures. Particular government officials and their agency counterparts
seem to be very effective in finding fertile ground for co-operation and in
developing strategies that achieve significant results while respecting each
government’s interests and sovereignty. They manage to do so within very
different ways of organizing external support to education in Africa (for
example, project vs. sectoral). Other officials in the same roles are much less
successful, no matter what the general approach.
The implication here is that while there are certainly grounds for working
to improve the general approach, we cannot assume that the outcomes
are primarily a function of the approach adopted rather than the people
involved. Nor is it necessarily the case that problems in the past can be
attributed to the ineffectiveness or inappropriateness of earlier approaches.
Promise and problems. Opportunities and constraints. The aid relationship
remains contested terrain.
Experiences from Burkina Faso:
Has coordination among the funding and technical assistance agencies and
between them and the government improved? Nearly everyone interviewed,
including both government and agency officials, considered the coordination
group, then led by the Netherlands, to be very effective. Most thought
that the coordinator provided informed and sensitive leadership. He was
both willing to take the initiative and at the same time remained responsive
to his constituencies.