Beyond Africa, Forging South-South Partnerships in MfDR

The text reproduced below is the foreword of the August issue of the AfCoP Newsletter.

By Abdou Karim Lo and Devendra Parsad Ruhee

Countries and organizations are facing similar challenges in implementing Managing for Development Results (MfDR). Roundtables on MfDR and Source-books are already allowing practitioners from all over the world to share knowledge, best practices, and provide fodder to build strategies tailored to their local realities.

As MfDR practitioners, we believe that we can strengthen our capacity by learning from other’s experiences. To us, free and open discussions on MfDR issues allow us to move from ill-conceived methods to new approaches that produce relevant policy outcomes. For that reason, the AfCoP online platform prominently features electronic discussions as its main feature. These discussions demonstrate efforts made all over Africa to learn and disseminate MfDR.

Our work also goes beyond Africa. Since the launch of the community, we have featured our partners’ progress in our newsletters and other reports. Both the Asian and the Latin-American and Caribbean Communities of Practice (CoPs) have produced a large volume of knowledge on MfDR that we benefit from. Both Communities are or have recently produced their own regional Sourcebooks. Our collaboration is now at a turning point and will be reinforced so that a large amount of cross fertilization on MfDR ideas continues across the globe.

We will continue to build on existing exchanges of information by opening a new dialogue with our colleagues from other regions. We feel that other CoPs can learn from African MfDR experiences as much as we can learn from theirs. For that reason, in the next months the AfCoP will host joint online discussions on topics of common interest.

What are the different challenges in implementing MfDR methods throughout the world? How does each region and country have to adapt a specific me-thod to its own environment in the pursuit of en-hanced development effectiveness? At what point is knowledge customized to the local context and local knowledge incorporated into development efforts?

E-discussions with MfDR practitioners based in Asia and Latin-America working in government offices, civil society organizations, and private sector companies will be soon hosted on the online AfCoP platform. It will provide each of us an opportunity to connect with colleagues off the continent who will enrich our experience and encourage us in our work. The diversity of the South, united in its quest for better development results, provides a great resource for forging mutually beneficial partnerships to work towards the common goal of strengthening MfDR capacities through leveraging each others’ knowledge.

Finally, we welcome the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development-Development Cooperation Directorate’s (OECD-DAC) “Global Partnership on MfDR”. This forum gives regional CoPs a prominent role and aims at actively supporting them as platforms for structured dialogue and peer-to-peer learning. The AfCoP will work with this group on a common agenda to further develop South-South cooperation and learning in MfDR.

M. Abdou Karim Lo and M. Devendra Parsad Ruhee are the Co-Chairs of the AfCoP Core Management Team.