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Sonja Bartelt, Coordinator
Miriam Heidtmann, Task Leader on Aid Effectiveness
Secretariat of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
Nater: What main trends do you see, from your perspective?
Bartelt: For 45 years, development was about donors saying, “I’m king of my project.” Now, that’s all changed. Donors today are formally obliged to coordinate their activities. Aid effectiveness is now at the top of the development agenda. At least in agricultural and rural development, the donor community is becoming more self-critical, more aware of its shortcomings and more determined to do something about it. There’s a new emphasis on consensus, joint practice and guidelines. And it’s great to be at the centre of this, putting our Steering Committee’s decisions into practice.
Heidtmann: I think the collective work our members have put into the new Code of Conduct for effective management of ARD programmes will mark a new milestone in donor harmonisation and alignment. The CoC is based on a set of joint minimum standards demonstrating how Platform members intend to do business from now.
“H&A involves a major shift in thinking and also stamina.”
Your Focal Points are the people nominated by member-organisations to represent their interests. Have relations with them changed since 2005?
Heidtmann: We’re handling far more requests from FPs than before. It’s important to make sure that all the activities we launch and accompany are participatory; it means making them really as inclusive as possible for all the FPs. The work of the Platform has to stimulate their intellect and satisfy their professional interests and, at the same time, avoid adding to their workload. The Joint Donor Mission we recently organised to Nicaragua to review progress on the PRORURAL programme is a case in point. It was a huge coordination effort, but we brought along representatives from SIDA in Sweden, the SDC in Switzerland, Denmark’s DANIDA, FINIDA from Finland as well as the World Bank.
Bartelt: Donor harmonisation and alignment is hard work. H&A involves a major shift in thinking and also stamina. It takes time and can mean delays in disbursement. That not easy to accept for members whose performance in the past was measured by the rate at which they spent their funds. So one important message to our Focal Points has been, “Keep the faith and stay the course!” We’re feeling more and more that this message is getting through.
Interview conducted and edited by Timothy Nater.
Photos: Timothy Nater
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