Tackling rural poverty, together

Extract

Opinion piece signed by Andrew Rogerson and Paolo de Renzio, which "draws heavily on recent work that the authors have contributed to the OECD/DAC Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, and on the draft declaration being circulated in preparation for the Paris High Level Forum.

When leaders from developed and developing nations meet at the ‘High-Level Forum on Harmonisation and Alignment for Aid Effectiveness’, to be held at the end of February in Paris, their challenge will be to come up with concrete proposals to put into practice what they committed themselves to in the ‘Rome Declaration on Harmonisation’ two years ago.

In the past two years, numerous efforts have been undertaken in the attempt to improve aid effectiveness, so far with limited results. However, the available evidence and further debate have generated a growing consensus on what needs to be done, at least in the more stable and better managed country environments.

The ‘seven habits of effective aid’ towards which formal commitments are in place for such countries, but which deserve to be clarified, reconfirmed and strengthened can be summarised as:

1. Aligning financing on partner country priorities
2. Improving aid predictability
3. Relying on country systems
4. Increasing donor complementarity
5. Intensifying and incentivising joint action
6. Ensuring mutual accountability
7. Strengthening systemic capacity