F rom Aid Effectiveness to Development Effectiveness

1. From Aid Effectiveness to Development Effectiveness By Vitalice Meja RoA Africa Network

2. Development cooperation should be judged on the basis of outcomes on the ground. The outcomes should however be beyond the delivery of goods or services, or higher income • Development effectiveness should be about protecting and fulfilling the rights of impoverished and marginalised people and on empowering them to claim their rights on an ongoing basis • Therefore the outcomes should lead to social and economic justice, and increased capacity of poor populations to shape policy and practice at the national level

3. Aid relations should be based on independence and autonomy following national sovereignty and democratic governance principles, and responding to priorities set through local democratic participatory processes and institutions • Rather than aid being provided as a charitable contribution to the wellbeing of others, it should be a formal commitment to empower poor and vulnerable communities to claim their rights • Rather than depend on voluntary principles new aid architecture should be about promoting affirmative action approach where stronger parties commit to provide support to weaker ones.

4. Commit to completing and deepening reforms under the Paris Declaration and the AAA agenda to include among other things • The centrality of gender equality, human rights and environmental sustainability, • The use of country systems, • Elimination of conditionality, and • Promotion transparency and mutual accountability

5. Promote democratic ownership of development effectiveness • Putting citizens to be the primary focus for all development agenda • Enable people’s organizations, including social movements and civil society, to take part in the development and governance processes • This will include initiating processes and institutions that mobilises and transforms the voices of the hundreds of million of citizens’ across the continent into meaning and relevant development agenda

6. Promote a stronger role for developmental state • For development effectiveness to take shape at the national level, there will be a need to have a strong developmental state that plays both facilitative and catalytic role in developments. This calls for • Building a transformative and democratic institutions to promote development effectiveness agendaboth at national and global level • This needs to be backed up by a strong leadership and an adequate bureaucratic and organizational capacity and political will • The result should lead to enhancing the human capacity of their citizens to participate and own development program

7. Create Enabling environment • The above ingredients should facilitate   • Citizens to participate in decision-making, public monitoring, and implementation of the national development plans and programs • People to have opportunities to acquire assets and have access to sustainable employment • The articulation of national development goals and programs draws on democratic public deliberations. • The bank and the fund improve their coordination with national governments to enhance their own development effectiveness

8. Create Enabling environment • Local and national deliberative mechanisms and processes are institutionalized, either through an act of parliament that makes it mandatory for the State to consult with non-State actors, or by ensuring that there is an informal but institutionalized process of consultation • CSOs are facilitated to engage with the process of national development