Key messages
EWB has identified 6 key messages that capture our thinking in terms of improving Canadian aid effectiveness. While this set of messages is not exhaustive and will evolve with our own organizational learning, we feel the following ideas – if implemented by the Canadian government – would represent a sizable improvement:
1. Results rather than inputs: focus on impact
As was evident in the Canadian Government’s recent report on the progress of our ODA (learn more: ODA Accountability Act), donors often focus because they are easier to monitor than outputs.
2. Promote mutual accountability by creating mechanisms to allow beneficiaries to provide feedback about aid
3. Risk taking and innovation
4. Standards for aid transparency
5. Focus on implementation
When EWB entered development we planned to focus on engineering in development. But we gradually realized that there was a huge implementation gap – the difference between what a project looks like in theory and what it looks like in practice (and as a result, we bring our management/organizational experience to helping organisations bridge this gap). This implementation gap is a result of the following cycle. Donors design ambitious projects with hard targets (like water pumps installed) and the requisite soft “capacity building” of local institutions to repair and maintain the system. However, local implementation capacity is burdened by bureaucratic delays in getting the money and writing reports, and so is insufficient to meet the ambitious goals. Teams spend their time trying to hit the hard targets and ignore the soft aspects, which can’t be measured. Evaluation reports are done by a small number of firms that depend on donors for future contracts, so they don’t criticize. The cycle is repeated. The result, in Africa: over 200,000 handpumps have been installed but are no longer functioning (representing 60M people losing coverage).
Canada should emphasize in our support to local governments the value of implementation by: setting one person accountable for overall success of the project (current cida officers rotate in and out every 2 years); enable decisions to be made by field staff, not Ottawa; ensure that 10% of every budget is flexible funds to deal with inevitable changes in plans; create a staff training fund of 2% of every budget; review our projects 3-5 years after completion to assess sustainability; create innovative accountability mechanisms from the local population being served; ensure that projects have longer time-frames than 3-5 years.
5. Short-termism and lack of predictability reduces the effectiveness of aid
Aid remains unpredictable: internationally, only a third of aid is disbursed on schedule, making it impossible for governments to plan. According to Owen Barder, fellow at the Centre for Global Development,
“The single biggest constraint on the effectiveness of aid is not the corruption or incompetence of the recipients, but lack of predictability by donors. It is shaming (or should be) that aid is the single biggest cause of fiscal volatility in least developed countries (more volatile than commodity prices, economic growth or tax collection).”
6. Promote local ownership
We’d love it if you joined us.
