A New Way of Doing Business

In Africa, there are more than 17 million pastoralists, who earn their living primarily through their livestock.

A move toward country-led development began to occur in the late 1990s with the introduction of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). In exchange for debt relief from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), developing country governments were directed to develop their own poverty-reduction strategies. Uganda laid the groundwork for the PRSPs by initiating its own National Poverty Eradication Action Plan in 1996-97;¹ the World Bank and IMF used it as a guide in formulating the PRSP process. The thought was that governments, by developing their own plans, would be more accountable for getting results from foreign assistance.²

The PRSP process continues to evolve. The plans that were produced in the first round were similar to each other. They were focused on health and education, largely because that’s what donors expected. Agriculture and rural development barely received a mention.³ Some countries lacked experience in developing their own innovative development plans; World Bank and IMF consultants⁴ tended to give countries standard advice that led to uniform PRSPs. Nevertheless, the PRSP process was a breakthrough, a good-faith effort to allow countries the opportunity to drive their own development agenda with donor resources. In all, more than 60 countries developed a PRSP.

In order to receive debt relief, countries had to comply with conditions in their PRSP process. One of these was that governments should consult with civil society and other stakeholders, including people who were poor, incorporating what these groups said was needed to reduce poverty.

The primary goal of some governments seemed to be to do as little work as possible while still getting the promised debt relief.⁵ Others embraced the PRSP process and reached out to a broad cross-section of citizens and civil society groups. Not surprisingly, countries where state control of institutions was entrenched were most resistant to developing a PRSP with stakeholder input and engaging with external stakeholders.

The most important outcome of the PRSP may well be the effort to engage citizens and civil society in policymaking. The process revealed how little capacity many civil society groups have to participate in shaping policy, a problem that remains to this day. Yet full participation by civil society is vital to long-term and sustainable development. Civil society brings key stakeholders out of the shadows and makes their voices heard as development priorities are being set.

The PRSP process was a positive experiment in aid reform. Donors were open to a different approach because they knew that aid was not getting the kind of results it should be and they realized that their relationship with aid recipients was part of the problem. Another benefit of the PRSP process was getting the donor community focused on long-term poverty reduction. “It opened up a small window for people and governments to begin again to plan long-term and comprehensively,” wrote Rwekaza Mukandala of the African Union.⁶

Other initiatives added to the momentum for foreign assistance reform. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals were established and all nations pledged their support.⁷ In 2005, donors and their partner countries in the developing world formalized a set of principles for aid effectiveness in a joint statement, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. At the top of the list was an unambiguous endorsement of country-led development.

In 2008, the parties who signed the Paris Declaration met in Accra, Ghana, to review progress and reaffirm their pledge to the principles agreed to three years earlier. A key development in Accra was support for the role of civil society in country-led development. The meeting in Accra helped define civil society much more broadly than nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on development programs. Civil society actors critical to development include minorities and other marginalized groups, farmer associations, community-based organizations, women’s groups, environmental groups, universities, independent research institutes, faith-based organizations, labor unions, and not-for-profit media.⁸

Issues