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Table 1. Internal development efforts in sub-Saharan Africa
Region Savings, per ODA, per cent ODA per
cent of GDP of GDP capita (USD)
Sub-Saharan Africa 14 4.1 21
Low-Income Countries 19 1.3 7
South Asia 19 0.9 4
Latin America 20 0.2 9
East Asia 37 0.5 4
Source: World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001.
As policy reform was considered essential to bring about positive developmental
outcomes, in many forums a ‘development policy dialogue’ took
place between donors and recipient governments to define what such policy
reform would consist of, and to ensure that aid would be committed and
disbursed in support of the agreed-upon policy reforms. Unfortunately, unlike
what donors did in Asia in earlier periods, in sub-Saharan Africa they did
not link the implementation of policy reform programmes to their provision
of foreign assistance, despite their statements that they would concentrate
their aid on the ‘reforming’ countries. 2 In the 1990s, donors were not
be successful in inducing recipient governments to reform their policies as
long as they were not firm in their reactions to shortfalls in policy performance.
3 By the end of the 1990s the World Bank felt it had to admonish
donors to focus their aid more on ‘reforming’ governments in Africa, implying
a severe criticism of bilateral aid policy in the 1990s. However, the Bank’s
statements rang hollow, as not infrequently – and inter alia in Zambia in the
1990s – the World Bank itself let commitment and disbursement pressures
prevail over policy performance criteria. Fortunately, many donors now feel
that new approaches are needed to confront the lagging development performance
of countries where inadequacies of economic policy and governance
are key obstacles to progress.
Few people would deny that the key to development progress in sub-
Saharan Africa lies in the design and vigorous application of strongly
domestically-owned policy reform programmes, supported by adequate levels
and modalities of external aid. Few people would deny also that the initiative
for policy reform in sub-Saharan Africa must come from within, and
that a strong recipient government commitment to economic growth and
poverty reduction is essential for the achievement of development success.
On the donors’ side, the key question now is how to focus aid programmes
2 Inter alia in the meetings of the Special Programme for Africa as well as in the DAC/OECD.
3 This often happened because of donor feelings that the immediate alleviation of poverty
commanded the highest priority; or because of non-economic policy considerations.
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