SWAps | Sector Wide Approaches
Key Challenges in making SWAps work
Challenge 1: Partner governments must take the lead
A key motivating factor for working in a sector-wide way is to support partner country ownership of all aspects of sector activity, from planning and implementation, through to monitoring and review. To complete the circle, development partners must respect and be guided by an agreed sector plan, thereby deepening partner country ownership through the aid relationship.
For partner governments and development partners, this may represent a significant departure from past practice. Taking on this holistic role may represent a considerable challenge for officials and practitioners in the sector (responsible ministries, educational providers, training institutions, etc), and will often require substantial technical assistance.
There is an ongoing and intensive role for NZAID Post staff in the shift to a sector-wide approach. The Post plays a critical role in actively managing the process, nurturing partnerships, and participating in evolving rounds of formal and informal dialogue with country stakeholders.
To build momentum around partner government leadership, it can be useful to identify highly placed ‘champions’ (e.g. a Permanent Secretary). Champions are often critical in building support for a shift from ‘traditional’ development partner-led practice.
Challenge 2: Development partners must learn humility and accept changes to the balance of power
Development partners will need to ‘unlearn’ years of practice and recognise that in order for there to be gains in terms of long-term poverty reduction, partner country systems and procedures must become the driving force. Development partners need to accept that the processes involved in establishing a SWAp may be lengthy and have to be based on the partner government’s timeframe. The development partners will also have to recognise what it actually means to relinquish ownership in terms of reduced visibility and increased exposure to fiduciary risk.
Challenge 3: Recognise the broad range of capacity building that will be needed
In a sector-wide relationship, development partners make a shift from detailed project management (operating in accordance with the development partner’s systems and timetables), to a concentration on partner country priorities and work programmes.
In a sector-wide approach, partner governments take on the role of:
- developing high-level and long-term sector plans (in practice, sector plans can span three to ten years, or longer)
- converting the longer-term sector plans into annual plans
- taking action on identified priorities through implementation
- reviewing performance through monitoring and evaluation systems
In most cases, partner governments will require support in taking on these integrated planning, implementation and review functions.
Shaping a sector is complicated and difficult to manage, so partner governments will need support in all aspects of the Activity Cycle, see the NZAID Activity Cycle Management Guideline. In considering the technical assistance that may be necessary, the key word is support for personnel in the partner country, not substitution or replacement of local staff with international consultants. Partner governments need to manage the cycle themselves but they will need support, particularly in the initial stages of ‘leadership transfer’ in a sector-wide approach.
Challenge 4: Focus on the desired policy outcomes for the beneficiaries (results-based management)
In short-term relationships, development partners and partner governments tend to focus on activity- or output-oriented monitoring (e.g. how many clinics have been upgraded? How many teachers have been trained?). In a sector-wide approach, development partners and partner governments broaden the focus to include longer-term considerations (e.g. has community health improved? Has the literacy level of children improved?).
It is still important to maintain a focus on short-term inputs and outputs. Without solid, day-by-day implementation on the ground, the longer term outcomes and impacts will never be achieved.
Challenge 5: Getting development partners to work together
For many years, development partners and partner governments have operated largely within a bilateral funding system. This has meant that each development partner has developed relationships with the institutions of the partner country independently from others. In some cases this has encouraged an attitude of competition rather than cooperation between development partners.
For a sector-wide approach to work successfully, development partners and partner governments need to put effort and resources towards the strengthening of partnerships. As discussed earlier, two key elements of a partnership approach are harmonisation (between development partners) and alignment (between development partners and the partner country’s policies and systems).
Doing so requires compromise on all sides. Every country and every development partner has ‘their’ way of doing things, from the start/finish dates of the fiscal year, to procurement systems, to appraisal approaches, to the method for conducting progress reviews. Harmonisation and alignment is essentially about:
- determining which systems and which timetables are most appropriate in a specific country context
- providing the necessary support to the partner country so that systems can work as well as possible
- development partners making the necessary compromises in their systems to fit in (align) with the partner country’s systems
The degree to which each development partners can harmonise with the systems of others and, more importantly, align with the partner country’s systems is a key measure of how ‘country-led’ the sectoral support has become.
One of the main challenges in development partner harmonisation is that different agencies have differing attitudes to the implementation of SWAps. These differences are generally associated with the financing mechanisms that the agency is prepared to use. In many cases this is decided on a country-by-country basis but it can also be based on fixed agency positions and operational guidelines.
Challenge 6: Involving civil society and non-government bodies
The partner government is an important, but by no means only, actor in the planning and provision of services within a country. Churches, community groups, civil society organisations (CSOs), non-government organisations (NGOs), the private sector and individuals each have an important role to play. Each can provide unique perspectives on where activities are going well, where more effort is needed, and in other associated issues of transparency, accountability, and the identification of good practice.
Organisations and groups outside of government are frequently key agents in the delivery of services, either providing services directly, or complementing and adding to the services provided by government departments. Community-based organisations are usually much closer to the ground and are therefore more aware of the needs and viewpoints of the community.
By its very definition, a SWAp is sector-wide, and should involve all stakeholders who are willing to participate. How they participate will be determined by negotiation at the country level, and the decision-making of the organisations themselves.
In some cases, CSOs and NGOs may well challenge government performance and press for greater accountability, each of which may pressurise government (and development partners). Also, some NGOs and CSOs may be reluctant to work closely, either with each other or with government. In other cases, entities outside of government are highly active in sector working groups, operating closely with government and other partners.
In a sector-wide approach, it is good practice to establish a regularly scheduled consultative forum. One purpose of such a sector consultative forum - sometimes known as a ‘Sector Coordinating Committee’ - is to provide a wide range of stakeholders with an opportunity to engage with the sector lead ministry on activities, both planned and undertaken, in the sector. Membership tends to be broad, including the lead ministry/ies, CSOs, NGOs, other government ministries, country stakeholders (e.g. churches and the private sector) and development partners.
There are several benefits to developing a Sector Coordinating Committee:
- it establishes a regular forum in which government officials, together with development partners, must: publicly outline overall planning for the sector; report on current activities; and identify forward priorities.
- it provides other government ministries with an insight into activities in the sector, and a public forum in which to query or endorse practice. In addition to the benefit of whole of government coherence, this practice allows other government ministries to gain an understanding of the benefits and challenges in a sector-wide approach.
- it allows stakeholders outside of government to learn about and comment upon government planning and practice. Consultative forums should provide a space for national stakeholders to raise issues, query interpretations of data, and provide local level feedback on the outcomes and impacts of government practice.
- it provides public accountability to government activities.
Lead ministries may be reluctant to expose themselves to public scrutiny. However, there are also a range of benefits that may flow to them, and to the government more generally, in establishing a Sector Coordinating Committee:
- government may celebrate their successes by putting these more firmly in the public domain.
- government may ‘clarify the record’, identifying forces beyond their control that may have delayed progress.
- innovative practice at the local level may be identified, for possible adoption at the national level.
- NGOs, CSOs and development partners may be aware of good practice from other country contexts that may be usefully applied.
In other words, public accountability need not be viewed as a punitive or an auditing process. Rather, public accountability is about broadening ownership of sectoral activities through a free and frank consideration of issues. As public servants, ministry officials act as agents for the population at large: the sector is owned by the people, not them.