Tackling rural poverty, together

Stephen Wallace

Chair, Advisory Group on Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness
Vice-President, Afghanistan Task Force
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Ottawa

Wallace: CSOs have started to seize the initiative on multi-stakeholder discussions for greater aid effectiveness

What are some common CSO characteristics?

Despite the extraordinary variety, there are common elements that come out time and again. One is the ability of civil society organisations to bring in and represent groups who are often excluded from the development process — either because they live in remote regions, or are poor, handicapped, or unable to fully participate in development process for one reason or another. This is especially noticeable in agricultural and rural development, where CSOs can reach out to people who are far from capitals. Another common element is the rise of women's organisations. An estimated 70% of the rural economy rests on the shoulders of women, so it's critical to see the growing strength of the voice of gender equality through CSOs.

How has the Advisory Group been working with others?

It’s been a process of branching out and working down through several layers of existing organisations. At the international level, we've drawn extensively on the networks and expertise of international CSOs such as Reality of Aid, AFRODAD, and Third World Network Africa, who are represented on the Advisory Group. At the national level, our major partners are often CSO umbrella organisations. Donor offices in various countries have also helped out, and in the Lusaka regional consultation last October, the Zambian government played an important role.

The level of involvement is striking. One of the best examples for this is Mali, where hundreds of participants were involved at the sub-national and national levels in the consultation process on CSOs and aid effectiveness. We haven't yet counted the number of organisations involved in all of the national and regional consultations, partly because they are still ongoing, but it is literally in the thousands.

Lessons learned so far?

This is the beginning of a long-term process. We started off with a relatively short-term focus, trying to get a stronger sense of how CSOs can play a more direct role in the wake of the Paris Declaration, culminating with the High-Level Forum this September. Now we find we're increasingly looking beyond Accra. There's strong interest on the part of CSOs to work with all development partners on an ongoing basis. They want to address the practical meaning of local ownership, mutual accountability, and managing for results, in ways that fully involve them.

Another lesson is that CSOs are not just aid recipients but also donors and partners in their own right. If we can help anchor that point in Accra, we believe we’ll have made a positive contribution to development effectiveness.

We must also be aware of the huge variability in local environments. One of the things we want to draw attention to is how to create an environment that can unlock the potential of CSOs and help them to flourish. There is much work to be done on capacity building and local legitimacy.

The Global Donor Platform, led by CIDA, recently conducted an initial survey of rural CSOs in 13 developing countries. Among the preliminary findings was that the rural space lacks a voice in national and local policy processes, creating what it refers to as "ownership gaps". How can the development community and donors address this problem?

The Global Donor Platform's consultations show that mutual respect is an important starting point. Governments, donors and aid-related civil society organisations from industrialised countries need to consult local and national CSOs, especially rural CSOs, as key development players. This will help ensure that emerging development policies respond to local conditions and needs.

The development community needs to build the capacity of rural actors to cooperate and coordinate their activities more efficiently. To close those ownership gaps, governments, "Northern CSOs" and donors need to foster rural CSO networks and consultative frameworks, implement more joint activities, and work on harmonising their approach. For their part, governments should ensure an enabling environment for civil society, including proper legislation and fiscal incentives and better protection of civil and political rights. And, whenever possible, donors should deal more directly with local CSO networks and support their development work. They should consider providing flexible funding for CSO capacity building, and longer funding timeframes, and help get simple information on donor programmes out to small CSOs active in rural areas.