This country case study on Sierra Leone outlines six macro-level challenges confronting statebuilding in Sierra Leone. Based on 24 interviews and a multi-stakeholder workshop which were carried out in October 2008, the report focuses on the roles, decisions and behaviour of donors and how these relate to strengthening state legitimacy and managing state-society relations.
In the case of Sierra Leone, it is not possible to simply ‘count‘ donor interventions in statebuilding because these have so far not been characterised as such. This is not to say that there has been no concern about the contributions of donor programs to statebuilding. During the in-country interviews with DFID, the European Commission, the World Bank and UNDP, the research found that a wide range of past interventions were considered by donor agencies as conducive to statebuilding in the country. However, this was due to their foci on essential functions and areas of state capacity and not because they follow a specific agenda for statebuilding.
Key Findings:
- Conceptually, statebuilding is widely reflected in donor activities in Sierra Leone. Yet this has been more of a deductive process in which the majority of development interventions in political structures, economic recovery and non-state activities are read or reinterpreted as implicit contributions to statebuilding ex post facto.
- Donors’ current expectations of what the state can deliver to its citizens and the role of donor agencies in building that capacity are unrealistic given technical, managerial and administrative limitations among government entities, as well as with respect to financial and coordination-related limitations among donor agencies.
- Donor agencies felt that in the Sierra Leonean context, assuming and maintaining a politically neutral position was difficult, especially given the recent change in government and a subsequent rotation of senior and mid-level civil servants.
- With respect to aid delivery, it seems clear that the past practice of channelling over 70 per cent of donor aid through NGOs rather than governmental channels is now widely discredited. Not only donor representatives but also senior level government staff acknowledged the need for more integrated aid management that delivers on both procedural and result-oriented objectives as part of the agenda of rebuilding the state.
- One area in which respondents across sectors urged donors to become more active was private sector development. Here, direct financial support a government was not considered the most effective modality; rather, support in the form of long-term capacity development schemes should be awarded to civil society organisations, including economic associations and labour unions.
Recommendations:
- Move from supply-driven to demand-driven funding.
- Expand public participation in development planning.
- Identify concrete areas in which a nationally driven development plan could be developed under national leadership.
- Implement an aid policy for better aid coordination. Help translate cooperation and understanding at high level (between main donors and senior government representatives) into cooperation and understanding at the operational level instead of tolerating destructive competition. Pilot a ‘radical sector approach’.
- Increase indirect resources for economic recovery and harmonise support for private sector development.
- Address multifaceted dimension of human security. Anchor rule of law in practice by coordinating access to justice across the country.
