Author’s note:
The work on this paper was first proposed by a colleague of mine for a publication project. The project was halted soon and the paper evolved into this material, though it is now much reduced in seize for the purpose of submission to journals for publication. The paper was declined by publishers twice, which is not surprising given that, as you will find out, the contents are too descriptive (in line with the initial purpose) and therefore lack rigorous analysis. It gathered dust in my shelf before I began thinking of posting it online (besides, I was not in this “publish or perish” business of academia). I am delighted to share it with our readers who don’t mind reading something that has nothing to do with Ethiopian politics. The paper can also be useful for NGO planners and students who are interested in the overall discourse of foreign aid and the work of civil society. It is presented as a draft version in case I decide to revise it for any purpose in the future.
Linking Aid Effectiveness with Bottom-up Development: Towards Comprehensive Planning (Draft)
Getachew Mequanent*
2006
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Abstract
In recent years, the issue of aid effectiveness has dominated the policy agenda of donor agencies. Aid effectiveness simply means improving the quality of planning and delivery of foreign aid programs, so that the tax dollars from donor countries are properly spent to promote effective development results in recipient countries. Nevertheless, this thinking has increasingly propagated state-led development planning, while reducing the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) to a consultative status. This article argues that the bottom-up development approach (along with the role played by CSOs) is still important and that changes in donor policies and practices in line with “aid effectiveness” create opportunities for sustaining and upscaling the results of bottom-up development initiatives. A planning model is introduced to help understand the planning aspects of sustaining and upscaling bottom-up development efforts.
Introduction
The issue of aid effectiveness has emerged as a central theme in the policy discourse of bilateral and multilateral agencies. The main concerns include improving the quality of management of aid programs and the promotion of country-ownership of the development process. These issues emanated from the criticism of large-scale project planning practices that were more common among donor agencies in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, the planning approaches of donors were criticized for creating structural dependencies; fragmenting development activities; and failing to bring about impact on poverty reduction (Lewis 1988). The aid effectiveness debate has also a political dimension particular to donor countries. For instance, stringent government fiscal policies - more so in the late 1990s - led to reductions in aid budgets and these necessitated the application of efficient methods of programming of aid initiatives. Furthermore, citizens of donor countries demanded public accountability of aid programs and transparent reporting of their results. All these issues pointed to the need for reviews of traditional aid delivery mechanisms including the development of common frameworks for planning, coordination and monitoring of aid programs. An obvious example is the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness which committed donor agencies to aligning their initiatives with country-level development strategies; improving the coordination of their programs; developing common indicators of results measurement; and promoting country-leadership of the planning and coordination of aid initiatives.
However, emerging planning paradigms that evolved out of the aid effectiveness debate do not appear to support the planning functions of civil society organizations (CSOs), which engage in hands-on bottom-up development work. For example, country poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) are developed by national governments in consultation with donor agencies, private sector and civil society. The sector-wide approach (SWAP), program-based approach (PBA) and big-push approach are other examples. Both SWAPs and PBAs are mainly intended to align donor policies and programs with country-level development strategies. These approaches require direct budget transfers to support sector policies led by governments. The “big-push” approach, advanced by Sacks (2005), the Commission for Africa (2005), and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (2001) framework, supports the development of comprehensive, multi-sectoral plans under the leadership of governments (Mequanent and Taylor 2007). Although these planning paradigms recognize the role of non-state actors in the development process, they do not provide specific frameworks to guide the planning and organizing of their development activities or their relationship to government led development initiatives.
A bottom-up development initiative is understood here as a program or project activity undertaken in the local area or at the community level. A “local area” denotes an administrative jurisdiction created by a national government. A “community” - a territorial entity embodying symbiotic socio-economic relationships - can then be viewed as a scale lower than a local area. This article uses the terms of “local development” and “community development” interchangeably.
The bottom-up development approach is still considered as one alternative strategy to promote equitable and sustainable development. For instance, the World Bank’s (2005) support for community projects increased from 5% in 1989 to 25% in 2003 (most of them supported through the Specific Investment Loan). The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provides funding for CSOs to deliver hundreds of local programs and projects each year, focused on what Sachs (2005) calls the “Big Five” priorities of international development: agriculture, health, education, infrastructure (e.g., building village feeder roads) and water and sanitation. Yet, writing for CIDA, Lavergn (2005) rightly pointed out that the untying of Canadian aid, increasing use of multilateral organizations as channels of aid delivery and direct transfers of funds to developing country national governments (through SWAP and PBA modalities) have reduced the visibility of bottom-up development issues in decision-making processes.
Be that as it may, the bottom-up development approach has also been criticized for failing to produce satisfactory results (Sanyal 1994; Anis 1987). First propagated by E. Shumaker’s book, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered (1973), this approach espoused the idea that small-scale development projects would stimulate innovation first in the local area and then over larger areas through another phase of replication. However, with the exception of a few success stories, these projects have too often become “wealthy islands” in the “sea” of poverty. There is a large body of literature that attributes this problem to a wide range of socio-economic, political, organizational and planning issues.
This article argues that the aid effectiveness debate creates opportunities to improve the quality of planning of bottom-up development initiatives. For instance, donor agencies and national governments are formulating policies and programs in the context of “aid effectiveness” concepts like harmonization, alignment, local ownership and results measurement (definitions provided in the next section). This trend creates policy environments that enable the alignments of bottom-up development programs and projects with country-level development strategies. In addition, there will be an increasing flow of aid resources to developing countries. For example, Canada has already committed to doubling Africa’s share of aid by 2010 from 2004 levels of $1.1 billion (Government of Canada 2005). During the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, donors promised to double aid by 2010, which would entail an additional aid contribution of $25 billion for Africa and $50 billion worldwide. All this means that CSOs will be able to access more funding to support programs and projects that bring about deeper impact on local and national development.
Clearly, there is a need to organize advocacy and lobbying campaigns that inform decision-makers of donor agencies and national governments of the importance of the bottom-up development strategy in the promotion of equitable and sustainable development. In particular, a portion of the increased aid promised by donors could be directed to CSOs, so that they can move away from small-scale project planning to comprehensive planning of sectoral and multi-sectoral programs and projects. It is no longer realistic to talk about “small-scale” development at a time when the mainstream development thinking is propagating the “big-push” approach to assault enduring conditions of poverty on many fronts (Mequanent and Taylor 2007). To use the words of Sachs (2005: 259) “(t)he main challenge now is not to show what works in a single village or district - though these lessons can be of great importance when novel approaches are demonstrated - but rather to scale up what works to encompass a whole country and even the world”.
There is a wealth of experience among CSOs in advocacy and lobbying work and I do not intend to dwell on this issue. I prefer to focus on examining the ways and means of improving the quality of planning of local or community-based programs and projects. In this context, I understand a “program” as a broader planning framework enveloping a set of project activities (e.g., a plan comprising of two, three or four projects). Broadly speaking, CSO planners are confronted with two challenges: a) producing effective results; and b) sustaining and upscaling them. To produce effective results, planners must develop good plans that address society’s needs. An example is the creation of a local health facility and training of doctors and nurses to improve the quality of health care services. To sustain and upscale this result, planners must also develop innovative strategies that link this initiative with permanent regional and national health agencies, and other programs such as public education, nutrition and sanitation. This way, the local health facility would be gradually integrated into government programs and permanently administered by the government.
In this article, I introduce a comprehensive planning model that serves the purpose of sustaining and upscaling of bottom-up development initiatives. Comprehensive planning encourages systemic thinking and the formulation of strategies that ensure strong linkages between local programs and projects and different sectoral activities in society and economy. My intention is not to prescribe this model. Planning approaches are effective if they are situationally appropriate. I want to contribute to an understanding of what can be done to sustain and upscale the results of bottom-up initiatives. In doing so, I also hope to encourage a debate on bottom-up development strategy in the context of “aid effectiveness”. A debate in this area will ensure the continued legitimacy of local or community development issues and the role of agencies working with communities. I will present brief overviews of historical and contemporary issues related to the aid effectiveness debate and proceed to outline a comprehensive planning model.
Large Scale Project Planning
In the 1970s, earlier development approaches - urban-based industrialization and import substitution - were increasingly criticized for failing to promote development goals (Lewis 1988; Lee 1981; Uphoff 1988; Rondinelli 1993). As urban and rural poverty rose in many developing countries, donor agencies, national governments and international organizations began to articulate the basic needs development strategy. This approach emphasized access to shelter, food, clothing, clean water, sanitation, education, health and other social services. It called for a move away from promoting single-purpose capital-intensive projects and towards initiating multipurpose social and economic projects.
The basic needs strategy thus required the formulation of large-scale multipurpose projects intended to provide various production- and consumption-oriented services. Donor agencies would simply deploy material, organizational and professional resources to plan and execute these projects. But the results were not satisfactory. Lewis (1988), who was with the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee at the time, pointed out four major problems: a) individual and area-specific projects could not be replicated easily; b) there were operational difficulties, arising from attempting to do too many things at once; c) reliance on expatriate staff to run many of the projects increased dependency; and d) project organizations were often established separately from national administrative structures, because donor agencies were trying to “escape the weakness of indigenous administration”. Uphoff (1988; 48) also wrote:
(T)he impulses mainly come, or were articulated from, the top, the center. But the determination was to reach the poor, all the way down, to the poorest of the poor in the villages. Such was to be the role not just of new-style indigenous developers, but also expatriate intervenors who, working at or close to the grassroots, themselves proposed to engage in hands-on, localized development promotions (emphasis in original).
The failure of donor-supported projects to produce significant results compelled donor agencies to rethink the way they planned and delivered aid initiatives. The first report issued by OECD (1992: 5) argued that aid had to be more concerned with “creating the fundamental conditions for its effectiveness”. The report introduced important concepts like promoting recipient country leadership in the planning of aid initiatives; coordination of aid activities among donors; and building recipient country capacity to manage aid programs. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (1994) released a report that discussed the importance of national ownership of the planning and coordination of aid programs and their alignment with country-level development strategies. The World Bank (1999) proposed a comprehensive development framework (CDF) that provided a foundation for the formulation of four key principles: long-term, holistic vision, country ownership, country-led partnership and results focus. In line with the CDF approach, the Bank also began encouraging developing country governments to develop poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) in consultation with donor agencies, private sector and civil society (today 70 countries have developed PRSPs). PRSPs discuss and elaborate sectoral plans along with structural reform proposals to support their implementation. Revised every five years, PRSPs are intended to guide the alignment of donor program initiatives with country-level development strategies.
The aid effectiveness debate was paralleled by the emergence of an international consensus on the need to take concrete measures to tackle the problem of aid management. In 2003, leaders of multilateral and bilateral agencies, international organizations and developing countries met in Rome to announce an aid management framework or what has become known as the Rome Declaration on Harmonization. Through this Declaration, donor agencies pledged to work towards fostering the harmonization of their policies and procedures and aligning aid programs with country-level development strategies. The Rome document stated the concern of the donor community as follows:
We in the donor community have been concerned with the growing evidence that, over time, the totality and wide variety of donor requirements and processes for preparing, delivering, and monitoring development assistance are generating unproductive transaction costs for, and drawing down the limited capacity of, partner countries. We are also aware of partner country concerns that donors' practices do not always fit well with national development priorities and systems, including their budget, program, and project planning cycles and public expenditure and financial management systems.
The Rome Declaration pledged to work towards fostering harmonization of donor procedures and policies and aligning aid programs with country-level development strategies. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness further elaborated these principles:
$ Country-ownership - developing countries will exercise respoonsibility and leadership in formulating development strategies and priorities and coordinating overall donor aid program activities;
$ Alignment - donor countries will base their overall support on developing countries’ strategies, priorities, institutional systems and procedures;
$ Harmonization - donor countries will coordinate their aid programs to improve efficiency and effectiveness;
$ Managing for results - donor and developing countries will collaborate on the development and application of indicators of measurement for results;
$ Accountability - donor and developing countries will work together to develop systems, procedures and practices that ensure mutual accountability and transparency in the use of aid resources.
These principles would be fully applied by 2010 and progress will be reviewed in 2008. More information on the discussion about the 2005 Paris Declaration can be found at www.aidharmonization.org.
Small-Scale Project Planning
In the 1980s, donor agencies were supporting a wide range of community-based small-scale initiatives in developing countries intended to promote positive social and economic changes. This strategy was perceived to have the following advantages: a) it helps to identify target groups and their appropriate needs; b) by encouraging beneficiaries to participate in the process, it gradually enables communities to take ownership of programs or projects; and c) it taps into community social and economic resources to reduce costs. The small projects would stimulate innovation first in the local area and then over larger areas through another phase of replication. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were viewed as suitable social agencies capable of facilitating such a process, because, as Sanyal (1994:38-39) pointed out, they were “neither coercive nor profit seeking. Rather, they (were) genuinely interested in raising the political consciousness and in improving the economic well-being of the people”.
All this was easier said than done. The impact of community development projects was insignificant. According to (1994: 39), with few exceptions, NGO projects “have provided neither employment and income-earning opportunities to a large number of people, nor have they been able to increase significantly the income of those fortunate few who were given easy loans”. Annis (1987: 1) also wrote:
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are so frequently lost in self-admiration that they fail to see that the strengths for which they are acclaimed can also be a serious weakness:
-in the face of pervasive poverty, for example, “small-scale” can merely mean “insignificant”;
-“politically independent” can mean “powerlessness” or “disconnected”;
-”low cost” can mean “under-financed” or “poor quality”;
-And “innovative” can mean simply “temporary” or “unsustainable”.
Sanyal (1994: 40) also wrote:
Most of the proponents of development from below . . . never took into account this connection between overall economic performance of the country and the bottom-up projects, in part because they assumed that the economy at “the top” was not connected to the economy at the “bottom”. And the few who did believe that such a connection exists argued that it exploited the small producers at the bottom, and hence, should not be encouraged.
Linking Aid Effectiveness with Bottom-up Development Strategy
The issues identified in the quotations from Annis (1987) and Sanyal’s (1994) above (bottom-up/topdown synergy, insignificance, disconnection, under-financing and temporariness or unsustainability) are intrinsic to the two challenges of bottom-up development planning identified earlier, namely, producing effective results and sustaining and upscaling them. And I have argued that the aid effectiveness debate would create policy environments that provide opportunities to address these challenges. To illustrate:
$ Poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) and similar national development frameworks provide concrete information which facilitate long-term program and project planning. For example, sectoral plans identified in a national plan of a developing country enable planners of civil society organizations (CSOs) and other local development agencies to seek and identify strong linkages between bottom-up development initiatives and a wide network of social, economic and political development activities.
$ In the 2005 Paris Declaration, donor countries pledged to implement common financial arrangements and simplify their funding procedures. This means that, for example, donor agencies can easily create “pooled funds” intended to support joint initiatives. Joint funding mechanisms, in turn, provide CSOs with long-term, stable and predictable funding. They will be able to plan comprehensive programs and projects that bring about deeper impact on local and national development. Furthermore, joint funding mechanisms encourage donor agencies to support initiatives that complement or supplement with one another. For example, one donor agency supports an education project that builds on an already established education program funded by another donor agency. This approach nurtures and sustains development results.
$ The idea of “using country-systems and procedures” to implement donor-supported development initiatives would encourage CSOs to work towards building the capacity of local partners. For example, a CSO delivering a community-based human rights education provides its local partner with training and tools that build the capacity to generate local revenues and recruit local volunteers. This will ensure the continuity of efforts to promote human rights in local society.
To further illustrate the issues outlined above, let us consider two hypothetical examples of how bottom-up development initiatives can achieve synergies with a wide network of development activities. The first type is a project intended to test whether there is an acceptable rate of uptake by farmers of an improved ploughing method. If the rate of uptake by farmers of the new ploughing method is satisfactory, the ministry of agriculture will consider including this technology with its agricultural extension service plan. Once this is done, the project is phased out and the project site is either dismantled or maintained for a follow-up activity.
The second type is a program or project that has long-term objectives. The plan is to achieve the integration or institutionalization of the initiative into society and economy. An example is a community health program which is designed to promote the delivery of quality health services. This program constructs a community health centre, trains doctors and nurses and develops systems and practices for planning and delivering health services. Once the results are demonstrated, a government department comes in to take ownership of the health facility, while making perhaps minor modification in the program structure including the staff hierarchy. The next section outlines a planning model that helps to understand what is involved in the planning of these and other bottom-up development initiatives.
Towards Comprehensive Planning
Our task here is to outline the principles and practical steps that guide the initiation and undertaking of comprehensive planning of bottom-up development initiatives. As pointed out earlier, the model proposed here assumes that there are policy environments conducive to bottom-up planning and this includes favourable political climate such as good governance (especially recognition of the role of CSOs role) and political stability. The comprehensive planning model embodies the following five principles:
1. Comprehensiveness. This means studying and analyzing the dynamism and complexity of issues and trends in society including aggregated (and disaggregated) socio-economic and environmental data, policies, regulations, sectoral plans, programs, etc, as well as the application of a set of criteria to determine priority areas of intervention. To illustrate, a CSO chooses a country of intervention and sets about to formulate analytical questions such as the following: what are the issues inherent in politics, society and economy? What is the nature of the country’s development policy? How many donor agencies are involved in the country? What are donors’ sectoral priorities? How are donors coordinating their activities? How are local governments and civil society participating in the development process? What are the areas or critical gaps that can be addressed by the proponent (CSO)? These questions identify intersecting issues which affect the nature and scopes of program and project plans.
2. Strategic linkages. This means identifying potential linkages between bottom-up initiatives and development activities in different sectors of society and economy. CSO planners seek to align programs and projects with overall country-development strategies and opportunities for collaboration among government departments, private sector and other agencies. The following three planning frameworks can be considered:
$ Creation of new initiatives (consider potential linkages with other sectoral initiatives).
$ Building new initiatives on some or all of the components of already established successful programs or projects. For example, a CSO applies the results of a successful health delivery model (developed by a government department or another CSO) in the design and implementation of a comprehensive health program.
$ Designing parallel initiatives that complement or supplement sectoral plans. For example, a CSO plans to deliver a business training program that complements an initiative designed by a donor agency or government department to provide micro finance services and other support systems for local entrepreneurs.
3. Long-range consideration. Normally, bottom-up development programs or projects should have durations of two (2) to five (5) years, although decisions must be made on the basis of objective assessments of the wider planning environments. For example, if the plan is to promote energy efficient stoves in the local area and later encourage uptake by a government department of the project, planners must ensure that there would be sufficient time to demonstrate the benefits of improved stoves to government officials. They must also ensure that the government has the capacity to support the project. Failure to meet these conditions can defeat the purpose of the project.
4. Local Participation. Planners can organize meetings of local people under the trees in villages or bring community representatives together in formal planning workshops hosted in conference rooms. Surveys and formal and informal interviews are equally important in facilitating stakeholders input into planning processes. However, such exercises can result in an unnecessary waste of time and resources unless they are managed efficiently. For example, if a CSO is able to develop a program or project concept out of the country’s poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP), there may not be a need to spend money on organizing “local participation” (e.g., cost of overseas travel, hiring local consultants and hospitalities). Concept papers are documents that provide generic outlines of the nature and scopes of proposed programs and projects and they are mainly intended to initiate discussions with donor agencies to explore funding opportunities. The financial resources can be used later to initiate iterative processes of stakeholder participation to analyze sectoral issues and identify program or project goals, action strategies and anticipated results.
Planners must also consult with governments and country-based donor officials (embassy staff) to tap ideas and suggestions of improving the quality of planning processes. Proposals that have the support of these officials have potential to attract major investments by donor agencies.
5. Budget. A detail budget planning and analysis to determine the resource capabilities of the organization to carry out the comprehensive plan should accompany the four steps of planning outlined above. It means carefully assessing available technical, organizational and financial resources including forecasting the level of support from donors and other sources and formulating financial management approaches which ensure efficiency, flexibility and stability.
Designing Initiatives
Using the model outlined above, CSOs design bottom-up development program and project initiatives in two stages. The first stage involves preparations of concept papers that contain the following information:
$ Brief descriptions of country situations (where programs or projects will be undertaken) and broad outlines of project goals, strategies and anticipated results. The program and project concepts should sound original (innovative) and demonstrate why the proponents (CSOs) would be suited to plan and undertake the initiatives.
$ Workplans which outline planning activities, timeframes and resource requirements including requirements for research and analysis, establishing local contacts, overseas planning trips, stakeholder consultations and other logistics.
$ Descriptions of methodological aspects of the planning processes. They indicate sources of data or information, data analysis methods, scopes of planning (local, regional or national), level and extent of stakeholder consultation and other technical and organizational aspects of the planning processes.
The second stage is the development of full program and project proposals. Up on acceptance by donor agencies of the concept papers, CSO planners employ the principles of the comprehensive planning model outlined above to analyze and plan proposed programs and projects. Once full proposals are submitted to donor agencies, their officials review and assess them by applying merit-based criteria. Since donor agencies’ decision-making procedures are agency-specific, it will make little sense if I talk about how donor officials review and assess proposals. Donor agencies also provide adequate information about their funding programs and review and assessment procedures.
The comprehensive planning model considered here can be viewed as an extension of the rational model of planning. The rational model puts a strong emphasis on the application of “system view” approach to identify planning issues in a broader context. The “do everything at once” approach has an apparent appeal to planners and decision-makers in times of rapid changes. However, the model has often been criticized for overemphasizing technical rationality at the expense of considering qualitative factors such as value systems, positions of power (e.g., economic and political interests) and capacity requirements (organizational and financial resources) (Lang 1992). Moreover, one can also contend that this comprehensive planning model is a strategic planning model. It is not. Strategic planning is focused on adjusting or adapting the policies and objectives of organizations to real or perceived issues, opportunities, threats, changes, or similar phenomena within their internal and external environments. In comparison, the comprehensive planning model here is focused on micro level issues specific to program or project planning. Let us not be concerned with comparing the value of planning approaches. These days no one would like to spend time arguing over contesting theories or methodologies of development planning. Attention is focused on producing effective results that promote economic growth and poverty reduction. More importantly, as I stated earlier, the preceding discussion was meant to help understand what can be done to sustain and upscale the results of bottom-up development initiatives.
Let us then conclude this section by saying a few things about the resource requirements of developing comprehensive bottom-up development plans. Many organizations are often reluctant to invest their scarce resources in planning processes, especially if they do not know the outcomes of decisions by funding agencies. It is therefore important that donor agencies provide CSOs with small grants (up on accepting concept papers) to assist them in covering some of the costs associated with the development of comprehensive plans, such as hiring consultants to research and analyze information, overseas planning trips and organizing planning workshops. If donor agencies want to finance good quality programs and projects, they ought to start investing early in planning processes to shape the nature and scopes of plans.
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated how the aid effectiveness debate provides opportunities to advance the bottom-up development agenda. In particular, the increasing articulation by donor agencies of concepts like alignment, harmonization, country-ownership and results measurement facilitates the planning of bottom-up initiatives within broader national development frameworks. A portion of the increasing aid budgets promised by donors could also be directed to civil society organizations (CSOs) to support bigger sectoral and multi-sectoral programs and projects that bring about deeper impact on national and local development. However, emerging planning paradigms do not provide CSOs with effective conceptual and practical frameworks to initiate and undertake comprehensive bottom-up initiatives. To address this gap, the article introduced a comprehensive planning model that encourages systemic thinking and formulation of strategies that seek and identify strong linkages between local programs and projects and different sectoral activities in society and economy. This approach achieves synergies of bottom-up and top-down development efforts and promotes the sustaining and upscaling of results.
Reference
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*Getachew Mequanent lives in Ottawa, Canada. He has worked extensively in international development and also carried out
multidisciplinary research mainly focused on rural development (planning and
policy analysis), resource management, public sector reform, democratization
and human rights. Principal areas of research interest include governance,
civil society and rural development. E-mail: gmequanent@rogers.com