NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
New Modalities and Aid Effectiveness: AusAID?s Education Policy in the Asia-Pacific Region
By Elizabeth Cassity, University of Sydney
Email: e.cassity@edfac.usyd.edu.auKeywords
Aid Effectiveness; AusAID; Asia-Pacific
Summary
This article explores AusAID?s experience in forming more effective partnerships with national governments in the Asia-Pacific region.
Debates about donor aid and its ability to impact educational development have undoubtedly intensified in recent decades. Forming more effective partnerships with national governments in the Asia-Pacific region has been an important policy focus for the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). The international focus on aid effectiveness has influenced many bilateral programs? agendas, and includes the discourse of partnership and donor harmonization. International commitments such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) have given shape to these agendas. Indeed, concepts and rhetoric emerging from these commitments carry considerable power in shaping the way that aid policies are designed and implemented.
As an organization AusAID has reframed its approach to developing aid policy in the past five years, especially as it engages with Paris and Accra. Two major shifts influence the extent of AusAID?s reframed approach. The first is at an organizational level where the process of devolution has granted AusAID overseas posts increased program discretion. This management model has enabled a more local and proactive response to policy and programming with partner governments. The second change is that AusAID is now engaging in sector-wide approaches and working through partner government systems as modalities of programming preference. At the strategic and operational levels, this policy shift is notable compared with AusAID?s deeply ingrained historical practice of using project modalities in education. At the same time, AusAID and its partner governments interpret sector-wide approaches in various ways.
The Australian Government?s most recent White Paper on aid affirms that a goal is to place Australia at the international forefront of aid effectiveness, and explicitly supports the Paris Declaration (AusAID, 2006, p. 66).[1] It recommended creating an Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE), which was established in 2006 to monitor the quality and evaluate the impact of Australia?s official aid program. Indeed, more considered text is devoted to elaborating how participation will happen, why it is important to encourage good governance, why poverty is a challenge in the region, and how AusAID overseas posts need to have authority devolved to them. The White Paper indicates that ?new and sensible sectoral approaches to education? should be developed in the Pacific, as well as the Philippines and Indonesia (AusAID, 2006, p. 52). AusAID?s 2007 education policy embraces the White Paper?s endorsement of program-based approaches (AusAID, 2007). Devolution theoretically enables these ?new and sensible? approaches to be implemented in partnership with governments and other donors.
The challenge, however, is that these approaches take different forms at different posts and involve various levels of commitment from donors and partner governments. By way of example, in Vanuatu the current form of a sector-wide approach is the Vanuatu Education Support Action Plan (VESAP) signed in June 2008 by AusAID, New Zealand Aid (NZAID), and Vanuatu?s Ministries of Education and Finance. While they have significant programs, AusAID and NZAID are not the only donors in Vanuatu. This raises the issue of harmonization. Arguably, harmonization as envisioned in Paris is and will continue to be a time-consuming and challenging process, particularly because of issues involved with donor agencies and partner governments aligning financial systems. Nation-states are bound to their own laws and constitutions.
On the other hand, while various donors and government partners support the idea of a sector modality in Indonesia, the donor community there is fragmented in spite of commitments to the Paris and Accra agendas. Given the number of studies that have been commissioned to examine the feasibility of a sector-wide approach and the wide-ranging opinions about the definition of such an approach, the policy environment in Indonesia for such a modality is anything but clear. Accra notes that further reform and faster action are needed to achieve 2010 targets to improve aid. In principle, AusAID and other donors have taken steps to develop partnerships, encourage country ownership, and become more accountable. Indeed the most recent DAC Peer Review of Australia recognizes AusAID?s efforts in the latter (OECD, 2009). However, fractured agendas in the policy environment in Indonesia set serious challenges to meet the 2010 targets.
There is no doubt that donors are beginning to operationalize their commitments to Paris and Accra through donor working groups and working through partner governments. A step in the right direction? Indeed. But at the moment, this is where the effectiveness agenda comes up short. Aid agencies are busy places, and without being trite, meetings need to be attended, reports written up, evaluations considered, and liaising engaged in. Certainly, the process of devolution in AusAID indicates it is becoming a more responsive agency. The diverse perspectives and level of agreement among donors about the best way to engage in sector-wide modalities, however, continue to raise questions about effectiveness for the end users of aid.
References
OECD (2009). Australia: Development Assistance Committee Peer Review.
AusAID (2007). Better education. A policy for Australian development assistance in education. Canberra: AusAID.
AusAID (2006). Australian aid: Promoting growth and stability. White Paper on the Australian Government?s overseas aid program. Canberra: AusAID.
Footnote
[1] Australian aid: Promoting growth and stability. White Paper on the Australian Government?s overseas aid program (2006) was written during the previous Howard Liberal Government. While the late 2007 election of the Rudd Labor Government indicates a shift to a more internationalist approach to foreign policy, a successive White Paper has yet to be published. Indications are that the Rudd Government even more strongly supports the principles of Paris and Accra.
Full contents of NORRAG NEWS 42.
Download the full issue of NORRAG NEWS 42 in pdf.
Not already a NORRAG member? Sign up for free here.