Developing a Programme Strategy
Annex 7: Some Tips on Implementing the Paris Declaration through Programme Strategy Development
Ownership and alignment
In the programme strategy development process it is important to emphasise the primacy of the partner’s own development strategy(s). A donor country programme strategy is not a national development plan. The major question should be ‘what is NZ’s niche in supporting the partner’s plan?’ Because of NZAID’s interest in poverty analysis, gender analysis, wide consultation etc, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking we come to a country strategy process as though we have a blank slate and it is up to us to decide what the country needs. It isn’t, unless we have sound reasons for working in areas other than the priorities of the partner government. There will be times when it is appropriate to engage in high level dialogue with our partners in order to advocate for a development issue to be addressed. These policy messages may form a part of the workplan associated with implementing a strategy.
We need to do the analysis that enables us to notice any flaws in development plans. The way and time to do something about it is in their development plan process. We should be aware of the significant risks involved in substituting for perceived gaps in a partner’s development plan by addressing it ourselves in our own programme.
Managing for development results
Aligning to a partner’s development plan helps with the preparation of results frameworks – in particular by the use of identical development objectives and targets to the national ones, maybe supplemented with indicators specific to aid management (see below).
The development of a programme strategy requires consideration of modalities. Guidance on these and their relationship to the Paris declaration can be found in the Aid Delivery Mechanisms Guideline. Once the sectoral priorities for a strategy have been proposed, it is important to focus sufficient time and effort on the question of how NZAID is going to do something about those areas (i.e. the modality). This leads to the need for NZAID, in our strategies, to set concrete targets for “aid modality” questions including Paris Declaration targets. See Example: Country programme strategy targets relating to aid delivery mechanisms, based on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Strategies should if possible have a plan for or commitment to meeting the Paris Declaration 2010 targets (or an explanation of why they’re not appropriate in this particular case) and lay the foundations for what is going to be done post 2010 - what the plan is, for example, to improve partner procurement and Public Finance Management so we can move more towards programme or budget support.
Mutual accountability
Strategy consultations are also the right time to bring up ‘mutual accountability’ with the partner. How are we to hold each other accountable? Practice on this is still emerging but it may be by institutionalising stocktakes of partner and donor actions that get set out in the Strategy.