gains for vulnerable populations around the world. For civil
society organizations, for example, the Busan forum is a particularly significant milestone as it marks the first time that
they will participate as a full and equal stakeholder in aid effectiveness negotiations alongside governments and donors.
This presents an opportunity to rethink the global aid architecture. By fostering a broader partnership, Busan could
enable more progress toward the MDGs and a vital pathway
to 2015, when a new consensus on global development goals
must be reached.
Figure 2 Total Development Assistance, 1992 and 2008
1992: $92 billion
NGOs
5%
2008: $194 billion
New
bilaterals
10%
ODA
95%
NGOs
27%
ODA
63%
At the same time, they have contributed to better, more
constructive partnerships among developing countries and
donors. A good example is the global effort to coordinate
technical cooperation between the Joint United Nations
Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Global Fund to
Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. UNAIDS has
also taken steps to improve coordination of technical assistance among U.N. agencies through division of labor and the
development of joint programs of support that are aligned
with national HIV/AIDS strategies.10 At the country level,
this means that governments are in a better position to align
their own development priorities with support from donors
more effectively.
So far, the accomplishments of the efforts to coordinate
technical cooperation include:
• More partner countries have sound national
development strategies in place that reflect local needs,
and these tend to be more clearly prioritized than in
2005.
• Higher quality results-oriented frameworks are in place
in many countries. The evidence suggests that MDGrelated statistics are becoming increasingly available
within developing countries themselves.
4. Country Ownership
Source: World Bank Institute’s calculations based on OECD/DAC (2008) and
Hudson Institute (2009).
3. Capacity Building
Although the objectives for coordination of technical cooperation have been achieved, there is still room for improvement. Data on outcomes on the ground show that technical
cooperation is still more likely to be a donor-driven process—
and therefore, it is more likely to be “tied” than other forms
of bilateral assistance.9 Experience also shows that donor
support for capacity development needs both to be better
designed to meet the needs and priorities established by the
countries themselves and to focus on longer-term impact in
order to reduce poverty. In turn, to enable this to happen,
developing countries need to adopt strategic approaches to
identify and articulate their capacity development needs; put
in place appropriate institutional arrangements; and take political leadership to ensure that donor support responds to
their priority needs.
The experience of developing countries that have put
these principles into action show that these concepts still
matter—for development and not just for foreign aid. They
have not only helped to ensure that aid is better managed but
have also strengthened core state functions—for example, by
improving the management of public expenditures, procurement, and accountability.
www.bread.org
Experience shows that country ownership—a process
through which countries decide and direct their own development paths—is the foundation of sustainable development.
Effective, efficient, and sustainable policies that are well
adapted to local contexts can help countries to maximize
and tap into external development assistance. In the absence
of ownership, however, the development process fails to meet
the tests of effectiveness, sustainability, or inclusiveness.
There is widespread agreement that there is still a gap between the theoretical understanding of ownership and actual
practices on the ground. Some argue that the aid effectiveness movement has defined ownership too narrowly, focusing on ownership by the national government rather than
on the authentic participation of wider societal groups and
actors.11 As we take stock of this core component of the aid
effectiveness agenda, it’s important to ask: How can “countr