Towards a more effective Belgian Development

Cooperation: concentration, specialisation, task division

Geert Laporte

Assises of the Belgian Development Cooperation, 13-14 May 2008

Brussels

Outline of Presentation

1. Negative effects of lack of harmonisation

2. Progress in terms of policy intentions

3. What geographic concentration?

4. How to promote sector concentration and allocation of tasks?

1. Lack of Harmonisation & alignment = limited impact

• Multitude of fragmented projects of too many donors with different aims, conditionalities, procedures and accounting needs, duplication,etc

• Management of aid is heavy burden and diverts time and scarce resources from core business of partner country

• Increasing aid channels (China, India foundations,…)= less coordination

2. Progress … at least on paper…

• Maastricht Treaty 1992: ‘3 C’s’ (Role Belgian Presidency)

• EU Consensus on Development (2005)• Paris Declaration Aid Effectiveness (2005)• EC Communication: ‘Delivering more, better

and faster’ (2006)• Code of Conduct on Division of Labour

(2007)• EU Draft Reform Treaty (2007)

Between comparative advantages and vested

interests• Rational arguments for concentration, specialisation

and task division: efficiency, track record, historical and cultural ties, growing complexity of aid system, financial critical mass, neutrality,…

BUT• Selection of partner countries and sectors largely

based on political considerations• Do donors and recipient governments have a real

interest in changing the current aid system?

3. Geographic concentration

• Cotonou: “ EU is there to help ACP countries that are willing to help themselves’’

• General tendency to provide more aid to well performing countries or success stories (‘donor darlings’)…

• …but should aid not be about promoting change processes in poor and difficult country contexts (‘aid orphans’)?

Recommendations for Belgium

1. Continue to focus on poor and ‘ fragile’ countries in Africa

• Combine poverty reduction with active policy to promote state building, democracy and governance

• Systematic search for complementarity

• Adaptation of working methods and procedures to specific context

Recommendations (continued)

2. Keep limited number of success stories in other regions (learning experiences for other countries in terms of strategic support, aid modalities etc )

3. Restore regional and pan-african focus (RECs, AU,…) in a context of increasing regionalisation

4. Specialisation and allocation of tasks

• In principle doubling of EU aid by 2015- Is this desirable and manageable?

• Increasing number of ‘new’ fashionable areas in development (climate change, sustainable energy,…)

• Obvious need for sector concentration, specialisation and division of labour

EU Code of Conduct • Each EU donor maximum 3 sectors per

partner country• Limitation of active EU donors per sector

to maximum 5 • EC and MS: each define comparative

advantages and areas of added value (should be recognized by partner country)

• ‘lead donors’ arrangements in all sectors

EU Code of Conduct (continued)

• Involve non-EU donors in exercise

• EC ‘driving force’ complementarity and division of labour

• Primary leadership with partner country

• ‘voluntary, flexible and self-policing’

EC Communication: EU Aid Effectiveness Roadmap to

Accra and beyond (April 2008)• Implementation of the Code still in an

‘embryonic stage’ • Challenge is to pass from rhetoric to

action and to translate new policy frameworks into field reality: in-country, cross-country and cross-sector

Mixed results sofar…• Highly political process: independent foreign policy

decisions define complementarity agenda • Lack of implementation guidelines and time tables

(freestanding)• Lack of leadership and capacity partner country• Lack of reliable and detailed country information on

global EU aid and in-country division of labour • No harmonisation of procedures: several donors can

not delegate management of funds to other donors

…but some progress is being made…

• Increasing use of lead donors• EC sector concentration in Country Strategy Papers• EU legal innovations such as co-financing• Increasing number of new sectors= incentive to

reduce and harmonise• Emergence of new donors = competition= incentive

EU to improve effectiveness • Lisbon Treaty: European External Action Service

Recommendations for Belgium

1. Deepen self-assessment of comparative advantages and specialise in a few (sub) sectors and thematic areas

2. Specialise in areas of Belgian ‘know-how’ (e.g social sectors, education, food security, infrastructure, constitutional reforms, local governance, small and medium enterprise,…)

Recommendations (continued)

3. Clearly define role as lead partner, active partner or silent partner in each sector

4. Systematically share good practices and information (3 C’s evaluation)

5. Become knowledge based and learning organisation (strengthen development research capacities, independent evaluation)

Recommendations (continued)

6. Strengthen country led process (alignment) through capacity building

7. Participate in donor consortia that speak with one voice with developing country: joint country analysis, joint consultation, joint programming, joint financing, joint monitoring etc…

Thank you for your attention…Geert Laporte

gl@ecdpm.org

For more information on ECDPM’s work on EU aid effectiveness,

ACP-EU and AU-EU relations:www.ecdpm.org