COMMENTARY

Spring 2010

by Eckhard Deutscher

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Roger Riddell puts his finger on a number of problems that for years have plagued development co-operation; insufficient focus on results, a patchy record on living up to aid commitments and, especially, the absence of a properly designed international system for development co-operation.

He also refers to the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action, the two key pillars for enhancing aid effectiveness. Together, they go much further in addressing these problems and rethinking development co-operation than his article acknowledges.

By being very results orientated, the aid effectiveness effort aims to change behaviour and recalibrate the system to make it work where and for whom it matters – on the ground with co-operation driven by their needs and priorities of poor countries and poor people.

The broad alliance of development stakeholders taking the aid effectiveness agendas forward has addressed such issues as the predictability and volatility of aid flows, the fragmentation and proliferation of aid, untying aid and the use of recipient countries’ systems for delivering aid. It also focuses on aligning issue-specific funds with the development efforts of particular countries. Yes, we’re still a long way from having solved all these problems, and especially those connected with the fragmentation and proliferation of aid donors, but there is a real effort to make progress.

This is being made possible because the aid effectiveness agenda has given us a roadmap and a unity of vision that is unprecedented. It has generated strong political will for reform, and political will is likely to prove more relevant than any legal resolutions. But political will is also fragile, and can only be sustained if we can point to concrete results. Enhanced development results are the most relevant yardstick, and the one we should apply.

The main reason is the link between aid levels and impact. Roger Riddell laments the disproportionate fixation on inputs, meaning aid volumes in relation to positive outcomes. The truth is that the focus on results has increased dramatically. In years past, donors made aid commitments on the expectation of sound development returns. While we at the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) are watching closely to see how donors live up to their commitments, the most decisive impact on long-term aid levels is going to be the donor countries’ ability to deliver and demonstrate results.

Riddell’s article suggests that a solution to systemic problems would be the creation of a global fund that all donors would contribute to on the basis of their assessed ability to pay, with the proceeds then distributed according to need. But in practice channeling all development assistance through a single entity strikes me as neither feasible nor desirable, for it would invariably stifle innovation and the competition of ideas. It could even be argued that this approach might well accentuate some of the problems that are highlighted in his article – attention would shift away from results and towards the distribution of this global aid pot, and a centralisation of needs assessment would remove control over development strategies further from poor countries.

What is needed much more is decisive action on the aid effectiveness agenda’s ambitious roadmap for change. This will in itself amount to a radical overhaul of development co-operation. But I would go further. Roger Riddell’s article rightly states that aid is a core component of international relations. Yet aid alone will not be the solution to the development challenge. Global factors beyond aid have a huge impact on development, and the donor world needs to become less insular and more involved in the development dimension of policy areas like climate change, trade, investment and finance, security and migration. Aid agencies need to work with the many other actors who shape poor countries’ development.