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Willi Graf, Ph.D.
Senior Adviser, Natural Resources & Environment, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne
A major problem is the weakness of national institutions
Nater: What are the obstacles to good donor harmonisation and alignment?
Graf: No matter how hard we try, I don’t think we’ll ever get ideal donor harmonisation. Yes, donors must team up to support local initiatives in a coordinated way and refrain from establishing their own little kingdoms in partner-countries. But we’ve got to be realistic, and also look beyond the donor community. I think that a major problem is the weakness of national institutions. We’ve got to promote the autonomy of technical institutions more forcefully. Excessive political influence on institutions, government allocation of posts to family, friends and allies — these are killers for any programme. We need to help design institutions that can effectively combine public funding with private investment. Getting the private sector on board is imperative for rural development. This is one of most important issues to resolve in Nicaragua, for instance. They’ve got to strengthen their existing institutions to permit proper private and public involvement, and create new ones if they’re needed.
Can donors do anything about that?
Somebody has to stand up to local governments and insist that certain institutional conditions are met. Political appointees are still the norm, and there is little prospect of change. I think the only way to get most donors to refrain from forcing bilateral experts on governments is if partner-governments appoint technical experts in decent civil service schemes and grant them appropriate decisional autonomy and job continuity.
“Excessive political influence on institutions, government allocation of posts to family, friends and allies — these are killers for any programme.”
And the Global Donor Platform?
We should focus on resolving problems on site, in the field. Our studies and reports are important, but all the research into SWAps in the world is not going to provide solutions for a specific country situation. That’s why I think that one of the great strengths of the Global Donor Platform is linkage with the pilot countries: Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Cambodia. Another strength is that it’s a group of people convinced about the value of RD and also knowledgeable about it. Agriculture & RD are coming back onto the agenda. So the Platform must be ready with solutions.
We should find a way to grow the Platform’s work out of the pilot countries, out of that experience. We should spend time and energy sticking close to that experience, and synthesising it into something useful. The activities and concerns of the Platform should move closer to themes specific to rural development and away from general themes of the development agenda, such as financing schemes for SWAPs. Other organisations are already covering those fields. Let’s find out, for example, what we can really do to support on-going efforts in Burkina Faso. Let’s take more time to listen to what our people there are saying, get beyond formal PowerPoint presentations in meetings in European capitals and enter into the real substance of the problems. We need to permit bottom-up flow of real-world information and know-how and then adjust our actions to this.
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