African Community of Practice Managing for Development Results June 2008
ONLINE
A newsletter about the African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results
Update Letter from the CMT Chair Report on the Meeting o f the JVMfDR
Up-dates on Accra Asian CoP-MfDR Up-com ing Events
CoP Library Join Us Contact Us
Update Arun Rasappan closed up the discussion of the first topic, Integrated Results Planning, at the beginning of June. A summary of that discussion is available on-line in both French and English. He will begin the second topic, Integrated Results-Based Budgeting, in mid-June. Also in mid-June, the Francophone online discussion on Managing for Development Results was launched! This discussion is beginning with the same topic discussed in English, Integrated Development Planning and will parallel the English discussion, although behind in timing by a few weeks due to a delay in launching this group. This discussion group will be lead by MfDR experts Herman Snelder, Dick van Blitterswijk and Melinda Wezenaar – all part of MDF and headquartered in the Netherlands. The goal of the electronic discussion groups is to build capacity through sharing of knowledge. Members of the Core Management Team (CMT), and specifically the Publicity Team, have begun preparing a strategy and materials for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to take place in Ghana in September. The AfCoP will be sending delegates, preparing a poster for the Marketplace, distributing flyers, organizing a side event, and working to ensure a presence across the agenda by briefing African delegates prior to the event. The Networking & Recognition Team has begun planning for the next annual meeting of the AfCoP which is tentatively set to take place near the end of October in a Francophone country.
Letter from the CMT Chair The Road to Ghana- what is our agenda as the AfCoP? Dear Members of the African Community of Practice, greetings. I believe the struggle continues in our effort to ensure that the culture of evidence based decision-making takes root in our institutions, systems, national governments and the whole of Africa. As you are all aware, the Accra High Level Forum is just around the corner. Within a few months we should be meeting the strategic decision makers within our Governments and Institutions on the key issue of
June 2008, Issue No5
In this issue:
This ONLINE is a monthly newsletter that provides a forum for members of the African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (AfCoPMfDR) and other interested parties to share experiences, discuss issues, and post upcoming events. ONLINE is available in English and French on the African CoP website, www.cop-mfdr-africa.org.
Online: A newsletter about the African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results June 2008, Issue No. 5
development effectiveness. The key questions that these delegates will be asking is “how much progress have we made since Paris, 2005 when we signed and accented to the Paris Declaration? Are we on course or off course?” Answering these questions requires assembling of evidence. Our challenge as a community of practice is to assemble evidence of performance of the objectives of the Paris Declaration Principle for Managing for Development Results. We need to show case this evidence and make a story that the culture of managing for development results is catching up in African Governments and institutions. However, assembling and showcasing evidence of performance is just but one side of the story. I guess on the flip side of this story, we have to use this opportunity to make some demands. Demands that processes such as supporting data systems and legal frameworks to support results and performance are put in place in national governments and donor institutions. The current accountability frameworks in most of our Governments and donor institutions are biased towards financial accountability. Managing for developments results is beyond financial accountability, yet it lucks the legal framework to support its implementations. Friends, therefore, as we move towards Accra, I propose that we strategically position ourselves to be a factor in the High Level Forum. Let us show case what we have achieved so far on one hand and on the other let us demand for an enhanced environment to facilitate the development of a culture for managing for development results in Africa. I look forward to the growth of this movement! Ssentongo Mukisa Peter Uganda, Chair, Core Management Team, AfCoP
Report on the Meeting of the OECD-DAC Joint Venture on MfDR Paris, March 2 – 6, 2008: OECD Headquarters BACKGROUND In March 2005, the OECD organized the Paris High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which was attended by over 60 developing countries as well as over 60 multilateral and bilateral donor agencies where the “Paris Declaration” was endorsed. The Paris Declaration was a concrete effort towards the successful implementation of the development agenda especially the Millennium Development Goals adopted by Heads of State and Government at the Fifty-Fifth Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000. The Paris Declaration resolved to take far-reaching and monitorable actions to reform the way aid was being managed and delivered. The Paris Declaration came up with the following five commitments: • • • • •
Ownership: Partner countries should exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies and coordinate development actions. Alignment: Donors should base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions and procedures. Harmonization: Donor’s actions should be more harmonized, transparent and collectively effective. Managing for Development Results (MfDR): There is need to manage and implement aid in a way that focuses on the desired results and using information to improve decision-making. Mutual Accountability: Donors and partners should be accountable for development results.
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MARCH 2 – 6, 2008 MEETING: PARIS, FRANCE The OECD manages its activities through the work of committees. One of these committees is the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Between March 2 – 6, 2008 the DAC organized a meeting in Paris which was aimed specifically at looking at two of the Paris Declaration Commitments: • •
Managing for Development Results and Mutual Accountability.
The meeting was designed to support mutual learning by partner countries and donors on how broadly endorsed Management for Development Results principles can be turned into everyday practice. It was also designed to contribute to and review recommendations that had been made on the subject of Mutual Accountability between donors and partner countries for development results to be achieved. This work was being done in preparation of the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness that will take place in Accra, Ghana from 2-4 September 2008. The Accra Forum will set priority actions for partners and donors that will have high impact and remove key bottlenecks in the implementation of the Paris Declaration. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE ON MANAGING FOR DEVELOPMENT RESULTS In this respect, the DAC invited Regional Communities of Practice on Managing for Development Results to support its work. The following Communities of Practice (CoPs) were invited: • • •
Asia – Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.
These CoPs respectively represent model cases for South-South Cooperation and peer-to-peer learning in the pursuit of enhanced development effectiveness. They constitute major partner country networks and platforms for mutual learning, dissemination of knowledge and capacity development. The Africa Community of Practice (AfCOP) was represented by the following Core Management Team members: Solomon Mhlanga, Sylvester Obongo, Zaam Ssali, Claude Kakule, Dev Ruhee and Tamirat Yacob. The other two communities were represented by delegations from their respective membership groups. Since the African Community of Practice is still new, the idea was for the members to learn as much as possible from the activities of the other two CoPs which have been in existence for more than two years. From the interactions, AfCOP members gained a lot of insight on how the other two communities from Latin America and Asia-Pacific became well established organizations which are deeply involved in a lot of activities including capacity building in MfDR in their regions. THE JOINT VENTURE MEETINGS The Joint Venture meetings involved representatives of all bilateral and multilateral donor organizations. Draft Technical Papers on how to concretize the two Paris Declaration Commitments of Managing for Development Results and Mutual Accountability were presented for discussion. This was part of the process of finalising the papers for presentation in Ghana.
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The following technical papers were discussed: •
Conceptual and Technical Guidance Note A technical note directed at Policy Makers, definding what is MfDR.
•
Country Capacity Assessment A technical guide on how to assess the state of preparedness before a country introduces Management for Development Results.
•
Mutual Accountability at the Country Level Defines accountability boundaries between donors and partner countries on aid delivery.
•
Mutual Accountability at the International Level Defines accountability boundaries at the International level between donors and partner countries on aid delivery.
Further work will be done on the papers after incorporating comments that arose from the discussions before these papers can be declared final. BENEFITS OF PARTCIPATION BY AfCOP MEMBERS Participartion by AfCOP members in the Joint Venture meetings was a major capacity building exercise as it gave members the big picture on the MfDR agenda between Developing countries and their Bilateral and Multilateral partners. Secondly, the interaction that occurred with the other Communities of Practice in MfDR has given impetus to the AfCOP Core Management Team members to ensure the actualization of the African Community of Practice in MfDR which is in its formative stage. Solomon Mhlanga Zimbabwe, CMT Member
Updates on Accra: 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness Sourcebook on Emerging Good Practice in MfDR: Update on 3rd Edition The aim of the Sourcebook on Emerging Good Practice in Managing for Development Results is to increase the understanding of Managing for Development Results (MfDR) and to show that partner countries and development agencies can effectively work according to the MfDR principles. Since the Call for Nominations, we received 34 cases. After a review process in which the cases were reviewed according to five selection criteria - strength and content, leadership, replicability, format and target audience, and problem solving - 18 cases have been selected for adoption in the Third Edition of the Sourcebook. These cases come from: AFD, Afghanistan, Brazil Ceara, Cambodia, Chile - Management for Results Leader, Colombia, Development Gateway Foundation, Guinea Bissau/D.R. Congo, IFAD, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Pakistan – National Highways and Motorway Police, Sri Lanka, Honduras, Madagascar, Moldova, and Yemen. The cases are divided according to leadership visible at country level, institutional level and at the level of an individual. All the cases are currently being edited by the authors and their peer reviewers. The first draft of the edition of the Third Edition of the Sourcebook on Emerging Good Practice in Managing for Development Results will be launched at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Ghana, 2-4 September 2008.
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More information on the Sourcebook can be found at: www.mfdr.org OR please contact: Elizabeth Ashbourne at eashbourne@worldbank.org, Ingwell Kuil at ikuil@worldbank.org or Daphne Leger at dleger@worldbank.org
Marketplace Following the First High Level Forum (Rome 2002) and the Second High Level Forum (Paris 2005), the Third High Level Forum (HLF) in Accra (2-4 September 2008) will bring together world leaders, ministers, agency heads and representatives from civil society organizations to discuss making aid more effective. Along with the Roundtable Discussions and the Ministerial-Level meetings, delegations at the Forum have been invited to participate in the Marketplace of Ideas, which facilitates the dissemination of successful methodologies for aid effectiveness. Participants highlight a best-practice case on a 1m x 2m poster, which will be on display in the Accra International Conference Center for the entirety of the Forum. Cases will demonstrate practical applications of Ownership, Alignment, Harmonization, Managing for Results and Mutual Accountability, the five key themes of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Several African delegations have already accepted their invitations to participate in the Marketplace. If you are in contact with your country’s Accra HLF delegation, encourage them to submit a poster for the Marketplace. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Victor Barnes, vbarnes@worldbank.org or Melissa Janis, mjanis@worldbank.org for more information.
Asian CoP-MfDR From late February to early March, 25 practitioners from the finance and planning departments of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Philippines, People’s Republic of China, and Viet Nam attended the first Performance Budgeting Training Program in Singapore. This was jointly financed under Asian CoPMfDR regional technical assistance project of the Asian Development Bank and by the Singapore Ministry of Finance. The course combined lectures, case studies, and sharing of real life experiences. At the end of the program, participants developed a performance budgeting toolkit jointly with Singapore experts. Participants from the People's Republic of China have also conducted a performance budgeting pilot in Hainan City, with experiences distributed broadly to other local governments. Workshop files can be found in http://cop-mfdr.adb.org Members of the CoP-MfDR also participated in the 12th meeting of the Joint Venture on MfDR, held in Paris last March. The delegates presented the voice of developing countries and made wellreceived contributions to the discussions. Similarly, COP members played an active role in the Regional Consultative Workshop for Third High Level Forum, with delegates commenting on the first draft of the Accra Action Agenda and presenting country experiences. The Asian CoP supported the development of two important MfDR tools to assess readiness and build capacity in public sector organizations in South Asia. The CoP provided a virtual room where drafts, iterations, and reports could be uploaded for review and discussion. In late 2007, CoP-MfDR members from South Asian countries were part of a forum in Bangkok, Thailand, to discuss and provide feedback
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on the pilot implementation of the readiness assessment tool. The tools can now be accessed at this web address: http://www.adb.org/mfdr/publications.asp On the virtual front, a new round of online discussions on Integrated Results-Based Management is about to begin. This will be led by a group of Asian experts, mainly from Malaysia and Singapore. The online discussion can be accessed at http://cop-mfdr.adb.org
Up-coming Events JV Meeting on Managing for Development Results Team Leaders of the Core Management Team will be attending the OECD-DAC Joint Venture on MfDR meeting in mid-June. They will be participating in the planning process for the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF3) which will take place in Ghana the beginning of this September.
Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, September 2 – 4, Accra In September 2008, ministers from over 100 countries, heads of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, donor organizations, and civil society organizations from around the world will gather in Accra for the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Their common objective is to help developing countries and marginalized people in their fight against poverty by making aid more transparent, accountable and results-oriented. This forum will: • • •
review progress in improving aid effectiveness, broaden the dialogue to newer actors, and chart a course for continuing international action on aid effectiveness.
If you know of any up-coming MfDR events and would like to have them included in this listing, please contact Sheila Daunt Escandon at sdaunt@worldbank.org.
African CoP Library We are continuing to collect resources that will be posted on the African CoP website. If your department, organization, or colleagues have recently written anything that you would like to share with your fellow CoP members, please contact Sheila Daunt Escandon at sdaunt@worldbank.org.
Join Us If you are interested in becoming a member of the African Community of Practice, please visit our website, www.cop-mfdr-africa.org and submit a request to join. For more information, please contact Sheila Daunt Escandon at sdaunt@worldbank.org.
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Contact Us If you have any questions, comments or suggestions in regards to either this newsletter or the Africa CoP, please feel free to contact sdaunt@worldbank.org or any team leader within the Core Management Team (CMT): • • • • •
Networking, Recognition, and Sustainability -- Peter Ssentongo, Uganda: peter.ssentongo@gmail.com Decentralization and Membership -- Zaam Ssali, Uganda: zaam.ssali@gmail.com or zssali@yahoo.com Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning, and Publicity -- Ali Doungou Boubacar, Niger: doungouali@yahoo.fr Capacity Building -- Solomon Mhlanga, Zimbabwe: solo9088@yahoo.com Monitoring and Evaluation -- Claude Kakule, Congo: claudeK@unops.org or claudekakule@yahoo.com
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