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Review of the Norwegian Development Fund Portfolio in Ethiopia
Get PDFThis report reviews the Ethiopian portfolio of the Development Fund (DF), a Norwegian
NGO, which has evolved from supporting relief work by one Tigrayan organisation in the 1980s to supporting ten projects with several organisations in Tigray and Afar
Regions and networking with other organisations in Ethiopia and beyond. The portfolio focuses on socio-economic development to alleviate poverty and increase food security, primarily through agriculture, and on natural resource management in dryland areas, including maintenance of biodiversity. The DF is giving growing attention to strengthening civil society and pastoral livelihood development. The portfolio has been managed in a satisfactory way through good communication and regular monitoring visits. The partnership model, built on mutual trust, involves considerable delegation of managerial responsibility to Ethiopian partners. This model is probably cost effective, although it involves certain risks. On the whole, the resources provided through the DF have been used efficiently to achieve the objectives. The DF’s participatory approach helps anchor projects in local communities and provides space for dialogue and mutual influence. By promoting local ownership of the projects, a basis is laid for successful and cost-effective implementation and long-term sustainability. The DF is involved in several networks, the most important ones for the Ethiopian portfolio being the Dryland Co-ordination Group (DCG) and the Triangular Institutional Cooperation Project. Much of the DF partners’ work focuses on empowering women in economic, social and political terms. The DF is broadening its range of partners to include NGOs in different ethnic and geographical contexts. It wants to support government decentralisation and to create synergies with traditional governance institutions, especially in pastoral societies.
There is a need for more dialogue with partners about this strategy and about addressing human-rights issues in the specific context of Ethiopia
Corruption in tax administration: Lessons from institutional reforms in Uganda
Get PDFOver the past two decades many developing countries have implemented comprehensive reforms of their tax administrations in order to increase revenue and curb corruption. This paper examines recent experiences in the fight against corruption in the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). It argues that the technocratic remedies supported by donors have underplayed the degree to which progress in tax administration depends upon a thorough ‘cultural change’ in the public service. The motives of individual actors are often inextricably tied to the interests of the social groups to which they belong. In the URA patronage runs through networks grounded on ties of kinship and community origin. As such, people recognize the benefits of large extended families and strong kinship ties, even as their social and economic aspirations may be indisputably modern.
This implies that such social relations may undermine formal bureaucratic structures and positions. If these problems, which are rooted in social norms and patterns of behaviour rather than administrative features, are overlooked, the result may be to distort incentives. As a consequence, the government’s commitment to reforming the tax administration may also be undermined
Afghanistan: Findings on Education, Environment, Gender, Health, Livelihood and Water and Sanitation. From Multidonor Evaluation of Emergency and Reconstruction Assistance from Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom
Get PDFThe Chr Michelsen Institute (CMI) (Lead agency), Copenhagen Development
Consultants (Copenhagen DC) and the German Association of Development
Consultants (AGEG) undertook during 2005 a Multidonor Evaluation of emergency and reconstruction aid to Afghanistan (2001 to early 2005) on behalf of Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The full report (in English) and a short version (in English, Dari and Pashtu) are available from Danida Evaluation Department.
This evaluation included in-depth studies of the main sectors supported by the five donors, being education, health, livelihoods and water and sanitation, and of two cross cutting issues: gender and environment.
The authors of these studies are:
Education Sector Holger Munsch
Environment Daud Saba
Gender Sadiqa Basiri
Health Sector Merete Taksdal
Livelihoods Sector Sarah Grey
Water and Sanitation Sector Richard Eller
Maybe free but not fair: Electoral administration in Malawi 1994-2004
Get PDFEntering the third decade of multiparty democracy on the African continent, incumbents appear able to secure electoral mandates without opening for extensive political liberties. The paper argues that the administration of the electoral process is a key factor for understanding the still limited institutionalization of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. Focussing on the case of Malawi, we show that electoral administration has not improved since the founding elections in 1994. Explaining why electoral administration has not improved, we focus on the institutional capabilities of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) by assessing its capacity to administer free and fair elections. We find that the commissions’ limited control over its budget, its inability to enforce the electoral regulations, and the appointment structures limits the commission’s ability to carry out its functions. Second, we assess the electoral commission’s relational resources in terms of its interactions with other political institutions. We find that the MEC is not perceived as an independent organisation by political stakeholders and civil society. The limited trust affects its ability to perform. Furthermore, the international donor community’s active — in some instances intrusive — role in electoral administration has reduced national ownership of the electoral process
Fissions and fusions, foes and friends: Party system re-structuring in Malawi in the 2004 general elections
Get PDFThe issue of presidential term limits is emerging as an important political norm on the African continent, but the effects of the third term debates on the institutionalization of the party systems have so far not been analyzed. We argue that the third presidential election represents ‘a window of opportunity’ for politicians aspiring for the top position, leading to party fragmentation (fissions) and party mergers (fusions). Politicians pursue an office seeking strategy, weakly connected to ideological or political priorities. We demonstrate that the combination of leadership centered parties, executive dominance, and the institutional rules for presidential elections, encourage turbulence in the party system in the context of the third democratic elections. We illustrate these processes with the case of the 2004 Malawian presidential and parliamentary elections. In Malawi, the third elections after the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1994 led to a number of new party formations. After the elections, fusions of parties and coalitions among parties became alternative strategies for winning office. Thus, rather than having institutionalized over time, the Malawian party system appears to have fragmented
"Economic Aid to Post-Conflict Countries: A Methodological Critique of Collier and Hoeffler"
Get PDFThis paper retests the analysis of “Aid Policy and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies,” by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (October 2002 and forthcoming in European Economic Review). It finds that their data and analysis do not support their conclusions and policy recommendations on the optimal timing and amounts of aid. These conclusions depend on very few observations (13 for the period of peace-onset, 13 for years 4 to 7 when a growth spurt is said to make aid particularly effective, and 8 for the period when aid should taper off); are vulnerable to the same methodological misspecifications identified in the Burnside and Dollar approach on which this analysis is based; and are not grounded in any theoretical formulation about the special relation between aid and growth in post-conflict conditions.
Conventional econometric procedures are often not followed; recoding the sample to exclude cases that are not civil wars reduces the effect of aid on growth in post-civil war countries to less than half of what they claim; and the difference with the relationship for “normal” countries becomes negligible (0.26 percentage points), although it depends on identification of the sample. Their claims on the poverty-efficiency of aid are assumed, not analysed. The confidentiality of their policy measure (CPIA) prevented testing the aid-policy relationship
"Money has no Name": Informalisation, Unemployment and changing Gender Relations in Accara, Ghana
Get PDFEconomic crisis and structural adjustment in Ghana have put large numbers of formal sector employees and civil servants out of work. This informalisation process has gendered consequences. Unemployed people, rural-urban migrants and school-leavers of both genders seek employment in the urban informal economy, and increasingly take up occupations hitherto categorised as ‘female’ – particularly in retail trade. Overcrowding in women’s economic domains thus occurs. This study examines how informally employed men and women in Accra get by in a changing macro-economic environment, and how they accommodate but also stretch local ideologies of gender-appropriate behaviour in their economic strategies. Thus, even if female traders face competition, declining returns and a heavier dependency burden, frustration with government policies failing to create decent jobs (for men) is more prevalent than gender antagonism and ridicule of those who find gender-untypical ways of eking out a living
Precarious peacebuilding: Post-war Lebanon, 1990-2005
Get PDFThis paper analyses Lebanon’s post-war period (1990–2005) from the perspective of peacebuilding and argues that the country’s precarious attempts at implementing a peacebuilding agenda must be sought internally in the country’s inability to confront its war-time past, regionally in its subservience to Syria and internationally in its strategic irrelevance in the post-cold war period. The start of the Lebanese post-war period coincided with the launching of “peacebuilding” as an international agenda for peace in 1992. However, there was never an international peacebuilding strategy for Lebanon and the country was left to fend for itself having lost its pre-war strategic importance.
This partly explains why Lebanon’s post-war period violates many of the criteria for ending violent conflict and rebuilding war-thorn countries. It also explains the international community’s tacit acceptance of the Syrian tutelage of Lebanon for most of the post-war period and why the fragile peace is under pressure from many of the same forces that are believed to have triggered the war in the first place: poverty, sectarianism and political confessionalis
Fast-tracking East African Integration. Assessing the Feasibility of a Political Federation by 2010
Get PDFThis report assesses the feasibility of the time schedule proposed by the socalled fast-track committee towards the establishment of an East African political federation by 2010. The long history of collaboration between the three East African states with its ups and downs has left a legacy for good and bad.
Notwithstanding the historical legacy, the current situation is fundamentally different from that obtaining nearly 30 years ago. The regional integration project has progressed considerably. The major achievement is the conclusion of a customs union protocol. In other fields the rate of progress has also been impressive, albeit variable. The fast-track committee recommended a middle-ofthe- road option: overlapping and parallel processes of integration. It discarded the compression of the stages of integration and shied away from immediately establishing a political federation. The launching date for the political federation was set at 1 January 2010. After the customs union, the East African Community
(EAC) would progress to a common market and the harmonisation of employment/ labour policies and legislation. None of the respondents saw the 2010 target date for a political federation as a feasible proposition and subscribed instead to a gradual building-block approach. All member states have democratic deficits and internal security problems. The EAC secretariat is small but effective. Capacity is overstretched, dangerously close to overloading. The donors were recommended to contribute to the planned EAC Development Fund and to engage in institutionbuilding
efforts
Micro and Small-scale Industry Development in Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique
Get PDFThis report sets out the background, analyses, conclusions and recommendations from a review of a project on Micro and Small–scale Industry Development in Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique (UNIDO Project number TF/MOZ/01/001). The objective of the Project is to “improve institutional capacities for small-scale industry development in Cabo Delgado Province at the Provincial and District Authorities, and in the private sector”
Under an agreement signed in early 2002 the Project will be implemented by
UNIDO and financed by the Norwegian Government. The key project partners are the Cabo Delgado Provincial Government and the Mozambican Ministry of Industry and Trade.
The field work for the report took place in and around Pemba (the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado) around the middle of October 2004. The team included a representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Mozambique, a representative from the Norwegian Embassy in Maputo and an independent consultant.
Field support was given by UNIDO