Development Assistance: A Practitioner's Perspective

Anthony S. Chan PhdSeptember 2009

* The views expressed in this presentation are strictly my personal opinions and should not in any way be interpreted as reflecting the views of USAID

Development Assistance: A Practitioner’s Perspective*

Aid Agency effectivenessLong Debate – Rostow (1960) to Easterly (2006)Blogs“ there is a surprising degree of unanimity that the aid

system today is deeply flawed and could be much improved” (Easterly 2006)

Lack of Coordination among agenciesDevelopment Finance is of poor quality System for allocating aid is haphazard, uncoordinated,

unfocused

Debate on Aid Effectiveness – Consensus?

Even if we agree, will need to have an accurate understanding before we can proceed to fix

Very common to think that we share a common understanding of a problem; often not the case

A better appreciation of the difficulties in allocating, designing, and implementing aid

Benefits of Understanding the Reality

Do we have a common framework In the broadest terms:Political Economic Social At a reasonably broad level – yes, but…..StaticDynamic

Model of Development ?

Everything is necessary , no sufficient conditionsNeed to do everything rightLeadersLuckLong term vs Short term

Development Modernization Quality of Life

Model of Development : The Reality

Preferences – stakeholders, administrators, implementers, counterparts

PoliticalEconomicSocialDonorsPersonalitiesIndividualsImplementersNew waysOld waysEthnic groups

How does it all work?

Projects

administrators

stakeholders

counterparts

Best practices adapted to local conditionsOn balance market oriented is generally more

efficientAppropriate role for the stateRules establishedDispute resolution mechanismsImpartial EnforcementSecurity – personal, transactions Reconciling the long term and the short term

Adaptation

Analysis Problems Causes SolutionsDesign Specific Interventions - Feasible SetImplementation Mechanisms: Contracting, GrantsFiduciary ResponsibilityCapacity BuildingTraining – Long Term, Short Term

Project Design

Alignment of the stars – political willGenerally no time for analysisForesight, luck , off -the-shelfNeed for quick winsPolicy Dialogue – knowing what you are asking Donor’s foreign agendaTechnical assistance, TrainingMultilateral ConditionalityCoordination

Project Design Policy Reform

DifficultCostlyMedical analogyDynamics – Time Horizon - cant say with a great degree

of confidence – when and what can one expect to observe results

Will the results continue – sustainabilityStakeholders Time Horizon vs actual time for Impact

Measuring Impact

Adminstering Assistance is labor intensiveCoordinationResponsibilityManageable Interest

Labor Intensive

Putting money through the governmentWhat is the recourseHow does one judge performanceStakeholder toleranceQuality of counterpart leadership

Conditions on the Ground

Proving the counterfactualQuality of dataAgreeing on the question

Measuring Impact

Fertility and Child Survival• Supporting over 49,000 Female Community

Health Volunteers

• Providing supplements to over 3,600,000 children a year

• Increasing voluntary, early planning for birth, and infant care

1985 – 2006 Results• Total fertility down from 5.1 to 3.1 children per woman• Modern contraceptive prevalence up from 15% to 44%• Under-five mortality down from 196 to 61 deaths per 1,000 live births

USAID reaches millions of people 735,000 Nepalis now benefit from access to rural roads

6 million people are reached by radio programs on democracy, elections, health and peace building

275,000 rural farmers have increased their incomes by 50%

90% of all children reached by USAID’s Vitamin A campaign

50,000 Female Community Health Volunteers working in all districts of Nepal providing health services to rural Nepalis