OECD Development Centre and the Accra High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2-4 September 2008)

Successful development policies are those which are “owned” by developing countries. This, in a nutshell, describes the “ownership” principle of effective aid, which was prominent at last week’s Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2-4 September 2008).

For the past year, disentangling the ownership principle has been at the heart of activities at the OECD Development Centre, including publications and international policy dialogue events. Most recently, the Centre supported Colombia and Switzerland in preparing a Roundtable on Ownership at the Accra Forum.

• Read about events on ownership in our OECD Global Forum on Development
• Take a peak at our book on “Financing Development 2008: Whose Ownership?”
• Read the Report and Issues Paper of the Accra Roundtable on Ownership
• Read our four short policy insights on ownership:
  • “A Farewell to Policy Conditionality?”, by Andrew Mold and Felix Zimmermann
  • “A Paris Declaration for International NGOs?”, by Dirk-Jan Koch
  • “En Route to Accra: The Global Development-Finance Non-System”, by Helmut Reisen
  • “Home-owned and Home-grown: Development Policies that Can Work”, by Felix Zimmermann

At the Roundtable in Accra, four messages struck a chord with participants, and were passed on to Ministers on the final day of the Forum:

1) There can be no ownership unless developing countries have the capacity to exercise it. Reinforcing such capacities is the responsibility of developing countries and goes beyond technical improvements in, for example, public financial management in central government agencies. Ownership is a long-term process that requires the promotion of endogenous development knowledge and the creation of space for all stakeholders to engage in the policy debate at local and national levels.

2) The imposition of policy conditions by donors remains controversial, with strong evidence to suggest that policy conditions do not work as intended and are not enforced inconsistently. To promote ownership, donors must take this evidence seriously. They should respect country leadership when negotiating the terms and conditions of aid. This, of course, does not mean that human rights, including women’s rights, should take a back seat.

3) It is in the interest of both donor and partner country governments to be transparent in their management of aid. Donors ought to provide reliable forward infor-mation on programmable aid. Partner country governments ought to ensure that information on aid is available and communicated to their citizens and institutions, as well as national and local constituencies.

4) Cooperation between developing countries (South-South Cooperation) has great potential to foster development, and especially to promote capacities in developing countries. However, information about this form of cooperation remains scarce. There is much room for countries to share experiences with it and to learn how it can be made most effective for development.