NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
PREFACE
By Kenneth King, Norrag
Dambisa Moyo, who we invited of course to contribute to this special issue, is to be congratulated in doing what most academic analysts of aid don't manage in a life time ? to get the debate about aid onto the centre pages of serious papers and serious blogs across the world. To Aid or Not to Aid has become a headline issue. Her short book on aid ineffectiveness has become more well-known than the declarations of Paris and Accra about aid effectivenessWe have brought together lots of very different commentators on aid ? from the East and the West, the North and the South. Many of them, especially if they are currently concerned with development and area studies, may well have worked also in some way connected to aid, as a secondary school teacher, university teacher, volunteer, researcher, consultant, expert, conference participant or advisor, not to mention working directly in a development agency, whether non-governmental (international or national), bilateral, or multi-lateral. It would be fascinating to see how many different aid roles were covered by those contributing to this special issue. Many individuals will have been involved over their professional lives in multiple roles, many of them wholly or partly funded by aid.
This personal or people-to-people dimension of aid is still central to the popular perception of aid in the donor countries and is still crucially important in the recipient countries. Ordinary informed people whether in the North or the South still think of aid principally in terms of actions by people in support of others. They may also think of aid as things given, whether schools, clinics, books, computers, vehicles. By contrast the language of the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda is not about experts or technical assistance but about systems of alignment, harmonisation, ownership, accountability and public financial management.
In this special issue of Norrag News, we seek to understand some of the meanings of this Paris and Accra discourse for the delivery of day-to-day aid or international cooperation whether in Ghana itself, in the rest of Africa, Latin America, or in the countries that are thought of as traditional donors, as well as those now termed emerging donors.
Running through the special issue is the red thread of the critique of aid by Dambisa Moyo; many of our contributors engage with this, and hopefully this issue makes available a variety of interpretations of her work. At the same time, there is an attempt to explore the impact of the so-called new aid modalities and approaches for the traditional sectors in which aid has been utilised, such as higher education or skills development.
We carry also a series of different contributions to understanding China?s re-emergence as a ?donor? or cooperator, especially with Africa. The other country given some special attention is Ghana, perhaps for obvious reasons, as it became the host for one of the latest of the High Level Meetings around aid effectiveness.
We should also announce in this issue that there is a new agreement to fund both NORRAG and NORRAG NEWS for the next four years. Swiss Development Cooperation and DFID (UK) are the agencies principally involved in continuing their support, but with support in kind coming from NUFFIC (NL). The last five years saw a dramatic rise in the formal membership of the NORRAG network, from around 400 to over 2,600. And thanks to the open access policy, there are many thousands more who can engage with the last 41 issues of NORRAG NEWS, even if they don't enrol as members.
Several new things will be attempted in this next four years, but one of them will be an attempt to re-engage with sister networks involved in the areas of education and training in different regions. We shall start with ERNWACA, the Education Research Network in West and Central Africa (http://www.ernwaca.org), and RedEtis, the network that is concerned with education, work training and inclusion in Latin America (http://www.redetis.org.ar/). ERNWACA has some 400 active members, and RedEtis some 2,900, including over 200 in Europe and North America. Readers of this bulletin will not need to be reminded of the politics of partnerships (see NN41). But all three networks are looking forward to exploring what this new strategic partnership could mean. Doubtless we shall understand better why there are only about 100 NORRAG members in the whole of Latin America, and why only a small number of the more than 500 members in Sub-Saharan Africa come from ERNWACA countries. Language is a key factor in the case of Latin America; there is already a complete version of NN in French; so language is not a sufficient reason for the small numbers in Francophone West Africa. Tri-lateral or triangular networking will be a new challenge for all three participating groups. But the ways forward will be mapped out at a first meeting in Geneva on June 24th 2009.
NORRAG members are encouraged to note that there is a very rich menu on offer at the biennial Oxford Conference of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) on the 15-17th September. There is a whole section of the conference organised by NORRAG, in conjunction with the RECOUP Consortium and with the UNESCO Centre in the University of Nottingham (http://www.cfbt.com/ukfiet/). Many of the contributors to that NORRAG and partners? section on The new politics of aid partnerships have given us a foretaste of the full papers in this issue of NORRAG NEWS. As usual there will also be a NORRAG open meeting within the Conference framework, and we shall let you know if there is a NORRAG UK Cluster meeting held on the morning of the 18th, immediately after the Conference.
We know that many of you read NN in order to get a short sharp insight into key debates, world conferences, and key published works. But we would also encourage you warmly to read the books and key papers by many of the authors represented here, including those such as Moyo and Easterly who were not able to contribute.
We also note that ERNWACA has just launched this month vol.1 no. 1 of the Journal of Educational Research in Africa http://www.ernwaca.org/panaf/jera/en/.
Kenneth King, Edinburgh, Scotland, 19th June 2009