Donors have recently developed new modalities of aid delivery in sub-Saharan Africa which aim to promote country ownership and internal accountability. This discussion paper, published by the German Development Institute, analyses the shift from project to programme-based approaches, and concludes that recent donor influence on recipient government accountability has been largely positive. Nevertheless, donors have not sufficiently taken into account the potential for new modalities to undermine internal domestic accountability.
External accountability means the accountability of aid-receiving governments to donors, international financial institutions and creditors. Internal accountability refers to the accountability of aid-receiving countries to their own people.
Aid can reduce incentives for domestic accountability because revenue is not dependent on taxes that are raised locally. Furthermore, donors may work around weak government systems, thereby undermining state structures and eroding government legitimacy. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness presents a clear intention on behalf of donors to enhance donor and partner governments’ respective accountability to their citizens and parliaments for their development strategies. New modalities of aid delivery, such as programme-based approaches (PBAs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), attempt to capture the spirit of the Paris Declaration by enhancing good governance and emphasising country ownership.
These new approaches have largely had a positive influence on recipient government accountability. Nevertheless, there have been some implementation shortfalls, and key challenges remain:
- Although recipient governments are empowered as the main source of public service delivery in the new PBAs, this only serves to strengthen external accountability to donors and erodes internal accountability to citizens.
- The involvement of parliaments in the PRSP process in sub-Saharan African has been limited and is the exception rather than the rule. The marginalisation of parliaments stems from donors’ traditional focus on the executive.
- Over-reliance on civil society organisations (CSOs) leads to the danger of replacing legitimate state organs and, thus, thwarting efforts to strengthen the state.
- The views of poor people are only marginally reflected in the PRSP process. Vulnerable, marginalised and disempowered populations generally have less voice and weaker networks than the average poor person and this form of powerlessness results in their exclusion.
New modalities for aid delivery have brought significant improvements in aid harmonisation and ownership by recipient governments in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, however, these modalities have created new problems, and may actually be undermining internal accountability. Donors must ensure that the new modalities deepen internal accountability, rather than undermine it, by:
- Recognising that effective internal accountability requires a political environment in which state organs can function and technically capable parliaments can scrutinse public finances.
- Strengthening the capacities of parliaments and CSOs for enhanced vigilance over government fiscal activities.
- Avoiding an over-reliance on CSOs, which tend to have narrow and sectoral interests, to the detriment of supporting state institutions (particularly parliaments).
- Finding new ways of building the capacity of parliaments whilst avoiding perceptions of partisanship, especially in one-party states and in states where parliaments actions and ideologies are not in line with standard democratic principles.
- Strengthening donor efforts to coordinate and align aid programmes. Harmonisation should help to strengthen internal accountability through increased country ownership and the more effective use of aid.
