ACBF Series – Mobilizing Capacity for Post-Conflict Reconstruction & Results

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Permalink Reply by song minyem jean emile on August 17, 2010 at 4:58am

G'day George!
As my english is not fair i will try to contribute in french.
le probleme dans la resolution et la prevention des conflits n'est la batterie des lois et engagements signés par les principaux leaders des zones en troubles.
la coordination des acteurs est la clé de la réussite dans la reconstruction, mais il faut que les les objectifs à atteindre s'alignent aux attentes des populations affectées par le conflit. la realité montre que les populations sont abandonnées à elles meme dans ls zones de conflits au Cameroun. les projets et les en faveur de ces zones sont accaparés par les intellectuels.

il faut une participation effective des populations locales à l'execution des projets à leur intention.

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Permalink Reply by Sheka Bangura on August 21, 2010 at 11:41am

Thank you, Mr. Kararach, for floating a thought provoking discussion, indeed a topical one in our seemingly ever growing world of natural and human induced crises. My country, Sierra Leone, has been widely written about, regarding her bloody 10 year political upheaval over the period 1991-2001. It was reported in the recent past to have been among post conflict countries receiving the highest per capita donor support. This would already leave you to imagine the aid complex the country may have encountered over her post conflict period 2002-2007. Over this period, two poverty reduction strategies were implemented as crisis response development packages to restore sanity in the country and take it back to its normal socio-economic footing. This era witnessed a heap of aid agencies appearing to be supporting the existing national development programmes (the PRSPs). For instance, in 2003, the reported aid agencies providing support to the country included 14 bilateral organisations, 7 multilaterals, 8 UN agencies, and uncounted number of local and international NGOs. The sources of funds for a number of NGOs proved difficult to enumerate.

This web of aid complexity justified the restructuring of the country aid coordinating architecture. A robust aid coordinating system was established at both policy and operational level. An external assistance database was developed and there were well elaborated aid-data capture forms. Since 2007, the database has been hosted online with imputing of aid data done directly from source with little physical contact. An aid policy has been developed to strengthen the coordination process.

However, compliance by donors with government systems continues to remain a mammoth challenge despite the advocacy predicated on the spirit of the Paris Declaration as well as compliance by government agencies to allow themselves to be coordinated by a central structure. There is a development assistance coordination office to oversee activities related to and report on all external aid but this, at best, has remained a herculean task for the office. Even when improved modern technology has been installed, information disclosure on aid has not been the desired expectation.
Proliferation of donor benchmarks was a serious encounter and many a time has been confusing and duplicative for a post conflict country trying to find its capacity feet after a protracted civil war. Another contention is the issue of use of country system measured by the amount of donor support directly going through government budget. In Sierra Leone only 4 donors have been putting direct monies in government budget. Even with the direct budget support partners, support is sometimes unpredictable and affects government financial planning. Many are of the hypothesis that state building and state effectiveness should be the thrust of donor intervention in a post-conflict setting, an hypothesis evaluated by the quantum of support geared towards building national capacity and use of country system by donors. It should be noted that donors should not be perceived to stay in support of a country at all times. Therefore, a lasting peacebuilding dividend is one that is steered by a well developed local public service architecture maintained by the state; the need for such architecture cannot be overemphasised in the face of expected diminishing role of international and non-governmental actors over time.

The list of challenges is unending. Take the case of foreign technical assistance. A lot of this is provided by donors without due consultation with relevant government institutions on the country manpower need at the point in time. Can this be a results-oriented aid?

More to come on this topic. The discussion is indeed thought provoking, especially in the case of Sierra Leone, a country that continues to hover around the bottom of the human development index. Who is really responsible for results failure in a post-conflict context?

Thanks once again.

Sheka

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Permalink Reply by George Kararach on August 23, 2010 at 3:42am

Thanks Sheka: I wonder how donors fail to walk their talk! Indeed, there is emerging discourse on how to redesign the current aid architecture. It would be great to hear from colleagues what has worked and why without increasing the fragility of post-conflict countries.

Some useful material:

Cheers,
George

Attachments:

• capacity and fragility.pdf, 2 MB

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Permalink Reply by Oumarou sali on August 29, 2010 at 10:06am

Hello Dear Sheka
i want to thank you for your contribution and your strong analyze.Your point exactly what i wanted to demonstrate in my masters degree thesis oriented on result based management.
Well as you mentioned ,there is no coordination between the donor and there is still no harmonization as the Paris declaration suggest.In this way how can a country can manage a post conflict situation when we know that external aid and expertise is sometimes necessary for the management of post conflict situation (aid,mediation,reconciliation etc).?
Also,i have observed that some country,adopt very fastly the concept of result based management not as a new approach of management but only as a fancy in order to obtain the "new aid" based on result based orientation and strategy.
For me the a true management of a post conflict situation should be based principaly on internal forces and ressources.The national forces can be able to put in place all the mechanism and structures(consensual) in wich external actors are going to act and coordinate their efforts.
Sorry for my poor english ( i am french speaker
Bests regards

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Permalink Reply by James F. Kollie, Jr. PhD on August 29, 2010 at 6:11pm

This is very interesting topic for discussion and I am pleased to bring my experience from Liberia to bear on this topic:

1. The complexity and dynamics of reconstruction in post-conflict and fragile environments lead to interventions from multiple actors – the State, multilateral, bilateral and international NGOs, CSOs as well as diplomats and security sector actors – which may create coordination issues. Please describe the myriad of actors working in your country and how it leads to development challenges.

The mix of actors in post-conflict Liberia is no different from those in other post-conflict countries: the UN, WB, IMF, USAID, EU, AfDB, etc. Each of these actors comes with its own set of requirements and rigidities. The challenges in dealing with these are complex. There are always issues around alignment and harmonization. In most cases, these actors come with pre-determined programs and projects. Trying to align these country priorities can be a huge challenge. The trade off for post-conflict countries can be whether to accept these assistances even if they do not align to country’s priority. Governments represent people who are destitute and desperate. Do you turn an aid because it doesn’t align to your priority when in fact your people could use whatever is available? These are vexing questions we wrestle with everyday in practical development work. Meanwhile, if you do not take strong stance, every development partner or implementing organization will do whatever they wish and at the end of the day, there will be nothing to show for the millions in aid. I think that as post-conflict countries move further and further away from relief, the need for strong policy regimes that articulate the quality aid should be the necessary first step in managing development activities. This is no easy task as development partners will fight against any attempt to formulate a policy that doesn’t support their modality.





2. There is no denying that post-conflict reconstruction and capacity development require a broad and effective partnership as no single institution can go at it alone. That said: a) why does this often appear much difficult to achieve? and b) what could be best mechanism for donor coordination?

The fact remains that there is no way that any post-conflict country undertake full scale reconstruction and development without the required capacity to do so. Then again, in all post-conflict countries, capacity is a serious challenge that MUST be dealt with in a holistic and strategic manner. The challenge has been should we build the required local capacity before undertaking reconstruction or should hire foreign capacity to undertake reconstruction? This is truly a false choice as both can be can undertaken together but getting partners and government to do this has been the problem. Most development partners want to come in a get a piece of job and if the capacity to undertake the task in not available locally, which his usually the case, they seek foreign technical assistants to do the work. In my experience, these TAs have not been successful in transferring skills to local folks which further complicate the development equation as projects are not usually sustained once the TAs have left. I think the best mechanism would be for partners and government to work together to ensure that each foreign TA has a local counterpart and that the ToR of the TA should clearly spelt out that transfer of knowledge is a key deliverables or output for the position. It makes no sense to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for TAs that do not transfer knowledge to local people for the continuation of the project.

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Permalink Reply by George Kararach on August 30, 2010 at 10:22am

Thanks James. So why is it that these governments do not work with partners to ensure effective mentoring programs? What alternative knowledge management mechanisms should fragile countries adopt to allow for project sustainability and of course development results?
Cheers,
George

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