Aid dependence, sustainability and technical assistance Designing a monitoring and evaluation system in Tanzania David Hirschmann

Abstract

This article demonstrates how aid dependence operates in very concrete terms in the process of consultancy and technical assistance. It draws on the author's experiences in preparing a monitoring and evaluation system for Tanzania's Local Government Reform Program. It illustrates how a comprehensive system of aid dependence, such as prevails in Tanzania, has meant that concern with local ownership, institutional development, affordability and sustainability appeared to find limited support among Tanzanian professionals and in-country donors. The article illustrates how the contradiction between the critically poor data collection system, which seems to demand realism and low cost as priorities and the comprehensive nature of foreign aid operates in four M&E design issues, namely institution building, ambition of performance indicators, pressures for rapid computerization and participatory methods. Finally the article draws a few concluding thoughts about the experience and its relationship to the debates on aid dependency and local ownership.

Democratic Decentralisation through a Natural Resource Lens: An Introduction

“…To avoid delays and the 'politics' of the panchayat (elected local government), the administrators, in collaboration with local elite farmers, circumvent the committees and the inconvenience of local democracy [see also Ferguson, 1994], avoiding the 'politics' that are the heart of democratic decentralisation [see also Manor, this volume]. In short, Baviskar points out that project and funding imperatives and the incentives they create for administrators can lead projects to undermine the very processes they purport to be supporting [see also Mosse, 2001;Hirschmann, 2003;Vivian and Maseko, 1994;Kassibo, 2002]. The need to identify such 'successes' subverts any real attempt at building longer-term, locally rooted and locally accountable institutional processes.…”

“…Yet, just as decentralisation in practice is not always what central governments and donors purport it to be, this volume also brings into question the claims of 'participation' [see also Mosse, 2001;Hirschmann, 2003]. This volume shows that 'participation' -whether through elected authorities, co-management, committee-based management, or 'traditional' authorities -usually looks like a modern reproduction of indirect rule (that is, a means for managing labour and resources) [Ribot, 1995, forthcoming].…”

Does a multilateral forum work for Africa? Daunting tasks of Japan’s TICAD initiative

“…Thus, ownership issues are inevitably linked to specific settings of each recipient in a given activity (Weeks et al, 2002). Third, the recipient's ownership and that of the donor are not so readily disentangled (Hirschmann, 2003), and this is particularly the case with PPP and FDI. Lastly, ownership is largely influenced by the quality of government-government partnership (Eva Lithman in her foreword in Weeks et al, 2002).…”

“…Japan is expected to increase its bilateral aid to enhance its presence in Africa, but bilateral aid tends to have stronger correlations with a donor's political and economic interests (Bella and Reinhardt, 2008). To obtain a donor's favour, therefore, a recipient country may express a development plan that a donor wants to hear, and this deeper internalisation of donor requirements can function as a new conditionality (Hirschmann, 2003). Although there are exceptional cases, such as China's conditionality-free investment in Africa (Hughes, 2009), it would be quite 69 Does a multilateral forum work for Africa?…”

Planning for integrated lake management in Uganda: Lessons for sustainable and effective planning processes

“…These constraints on information collection, analysis and use reflect the Tanzanian experience in designing M & E systems, whose constraints included ‘difficulties of distance and remoteness, very poor – sometimes impassable – roads, inadequate transportation, inadequate facilities for communicating, lack of resources or vehicles for auditing performance through site visits, poor training of officers in data collection and reporting and their own lack of capacity to respond in a timely fashion’ (Hirschmann 2003).…”