Reforming foreign aid practices: what country ownership is and what donors can do to support it

In the last decade there has been a significant shift in the paradigm for foreign aid, embodied in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005. Recipient governments are urged to take ownership of development policies and aid activities in their country, to establish their own systems for coordinating donors, and only to accept aid that suits their needs. This briefing draws on research from eight African countries to analyse the reasons for weak ownership in many African countries, and to outline ways in which donors can bridge the gap between rhetoric and practice in supporting recipient country ownership.

The authors consider what the concept of ownership actually means and from a study of policy-making in African countries, they place their results on a scale ranging from strong to weak ownership. The paper shows how at the strong end of the scale sit Botswana, which has shown the strongest degree of ownership, and Ethiopia. Rwanda is placed in the middle, with medium ownership. Over time, these three countries have managed to preserve some degree of control over policy-making. At the weak end of the spectrum are the other five countries in the study: Ghana, Zambia, Mali, Tanzania and Mozambique. The authors explain how over two decades of continuous engagement with aid agencies has changed the conditions in which aid negotiations took place in these countries, providing the backdrop for a loss of ownership. The paper describes how donors have undermined ownership and offers some of the following recommendations to donors which will increase respect and support for ownership:

• recognize the right of African governments to choose their policies
• reduce conditionalities and strengthen domestic accountability
• change donor norms and attitudes
• get serious about supporting institutions and capacity building
• change the principles, not just the modalities of aid.