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Philip Mikos
Head of the Environment and Rural Development Unit, DG DEV, European Commission, Brussels
No more squabbling over pencils and motorcycles
Nater: What was your first experience with donor coordination?
Mikos: I’d say it was the PROAGRI programme in Mozambique, which was tabled in 1996 and finally got underway in 1999. That was one of the first attempts to put together a coordinated agricultural development programme, what you would call a SWAp today. I was involved with it for about five years, shuttling between Mozambique and my headquarters here in Brussels. PROAGRI was launched right after the end of the Mozambique civil war, so the programme had to deal with a devastated sector and a very complex set of issues. Though the main drivers on the donor side included the World Bank, the EU and USAID, there were a very large number of other donors present, many trying to promote different agendas, plus about 120 NGOs. Also, at the time, about 80% of Mozambique’s national budget was aid money, and almost half of all spending was beyond the government’s direct control.
But what made all the difference was the new Mozambican government. It was tough and clear-minded and simply not willing to deal with 200–300 different projects and 15–20 separate donor missions a year. And the human chemistry was strong, as well, especially with the then vice-minister of agriculture, a very forceful woman called Isidora Faztudo.
And the lessons learned?
One: a government that knows what it wants — and the Mozambicans were very positive that they wanted a sector-wide approach — can bang donor heads together to good effect. Two: early consultation with the finance ministry in RD programmes is very important. When you’re drawing up a sector-wide programme with a technical partner like the agricultural ministry, their tendency is to go for a mega-plan: the bigger, the better. Initially, PROAGRI was scheduled at €300 million over five years. But the Mozambican Minister of Finance and Planning came on board early and asked his colleagues from agriculture, “Are you sure you can spend that much? How much will that generate in additional recurring costs?” The result was that PROAGRI was scaled down to about €200 million.
“A government that knows what it wants can bang donor heads together to good effect.”
What was the effect on donor behaviour?
Our thinking evolved considerably. Remember, ten years ago, structural adjustment programmes still meant pages and pages of minutely-detailed donor conditions. In Mozambique, the temptation among donors to go that way was still very strong. In fact, PROAGRI before 1999 was all about extremely detailed planning. For example, instead of donors discussing extension policy with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, there would be squabbles over the cost and allocation of pencils and motorcycles, department by department. After about three years of that sort of micro-management and piles of documents and draft legislation that no-one could enforce, our choice was either to fail, or to change our approach.
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