To what extent has the increase in donors’ influence over policy affected the potential for recipient ownership of aid? How can this be addressed? This working paper from the Global Economic Governance Programme explores the case of Mali as an example of ‘donor-driven ownership’. It offers recommendations to encourage the growth of recipient ownership and donor support, thus increasing the Malian government’s limited room for manoeuvre on aid issues.
Since independence, Mali’s development strategies have been largely inspired, imported, or imposed from the outside. Three dimensions of aid dependency have strongly undermined the potential for ownership in Mali: structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), the limited room to manoeuvre of recent governments, and the implicit division of labour that developed over time. The policy of Mali’s ruling elite has often been to maximise aid flows, even if this has meant a loss of ownership.
Recent attempts at aid reform to address these problems have had mixed results:
- The country’s aid management system remains fragmented, despite the recent establishment of a ‘secretariat for aid efficiency’ to co-ordinate and negotiate with donors. In practice, the various government ministries responsible for managing aid divide tasks in a way that is often confusing and rarely transparent.
- Mali’s ‘second generation’ Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (PRSPs) have been driven largely by international financial institutions. Mali’s PRSP unit lacks the resources to ensure its mini-planning function.
- New aid modalities, such as Sector-wide Approaches (SWAps) and General Budget Support (GBS), have improved ownership and planning at a central, formal level—especially in the education and health sectors. However, general conditions in the country have not improved as a result.
- Donor intervention in capacity-building has been fragmented and short-sighted, encouraging technocratic aid-management capabilities rather than the promotion of the public good through strong development management.
- Decentralisation of authority is one area where the government has made a strong and successful case against donors, displaying a capacity to negotiate effectively and take ownership of aid.
- The Malian government failed to overcome donor pressure in planning the upcoming privatisation of cotton, partly because of the World Bank’s effectiveness in pressing its agenda and partly because of a lack of unity.
A number of factors may provide opportunities to improve the country’s leverage on development policy:
- The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative may provide an opportunity for Mali to increase it’s sovereignty. Whilst resources are meant to be used strictly within the PRSP framework, the government has discretionary power over the way the money is used.
- The emergence or re-emergence of certain donors with a ‘pragmatic’ approach to aid may represent a new asset for Mali. Chinese loans, for example, escape the IMF’s vigilance and provide the government more flexibility and discretionary power.
- Donors need to restrict the extent and normative character of their actions in order to let recipient governments find the necessary space, time and incentives.
- Truly national strategies can only emerge from national players with alternative views based on a more assertive claim over their own sovereignty, and a greater sense of accountability towards citizens.
