With the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) less than four years away, the Busan Forum for Effective Development Cooperation, (Busan, South Korea, November 2011), agreed to modernize, deepen and broaden co-operation, involving state and nonstate actors in shaping a development agenda that had previously been largely dominated by a narrower group of development actors. The Forum established a new global development partnership embracing diversity and recognizing the distinct roles that all stakeholders in co-operation can play to support development.
Yet notwithstanding these commendable intentions, reality on the ground is often very different. In Niger, Burkina Faso and Ghana, for instance, finance for the rural sector still largely depends on contributions from international development partners. While coordination is therefore crucial for aid effectiveness, the agriculture sector remains largely dominated by the project approach - notwithstanding repeated calls from ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) to move towards a sector-wide approach.
In this context Oxfam’s 2011 Research Report: Aid Coordination and Alignment: myth or reality? the Case of the ECOWAS Regional Agriculture Policy, provides an excellent analysis of the factors needed to ensure partner coordination and alignment as well as for drafting and rolling out the national agricultural investment programmes. Such factors include (re)organization on the part of partners and the way they work and collaborate so they can intervene on a regional scale, and the introduction of funding mechanisms that respond to the financial needs of the regional agricultural policy.
This analytical work has become all the more pertinent and has found resonance on a larger scale following the Busan Forum. To overcome some of the problems which the report uncovers - and which the Busan Forum highlighted - the GM is working closely with its partner countries in West Africa, especially in the context of the Global Donor Platform on Rural Development (GDPRD).
For more information:
Mr Christian Mersmann, Managing Director
Tel. +39 06 5459 2155
c.mersmann (at) global-mechanism.org
