The myths of working in fragile states | Devex

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resilience, fragile states, dependency aid, high severity crises

> https://www.devex.com/news/the-myths-of-working-in-fragile-states-85483 <https://www.devex.com/news/the-myths-of-working-in-fragile-states-85483>
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> The myths of working in fragile states
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> Hodon Mohamed holds her daughter Mushtaq outside a nutrition room at a U.K.-funded health center in Puntland, Somalia. The U.K. Department for International Development scaled up funding to fragile states but a new report has yet to see evidence of its impact on the ground. Photo by: Colin Crowley / Save the Children / DfID <https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/8703083859> / CC BY-NC-ND <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/>
> Does channeling more aid to fragile states create enough impact to help these countries transition into stability?
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> It remains unclear, at least in the case of six countries that have received increased support from the  <https://www.devex.com/en/organizations/dfid>U.K. Department for International Development <https://www.devex.com/en/organizations/dfid>, which the Independent Commission for Aid Impact evaluated in its latest assessment.
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> The U.K. aid watchdog found that while the decision taken by the donor agency in 2010 to increase funding to fragile states was commendable and “logical” — the United Kingdom committed to channel 30 percent of its aid to fragile states by 2014 — country offices were given only a very short period to plan. This led to overbidding and promising overly ambitious outcomes to meet DfID’s increasing focus on “large and quantifiable results.” Some country offices also decided to just continue ongoing programs, expanding them even, instead of “breaking new ground.”
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> David Booth, senior research fellow on politics and governance at the  <https://www.devex.com/en/organizations/odi>Overseas Development Institute <https://www.devex.com/en/organizations/odi>, noted that these findings only add to growing debate that aid spending based on a donor country’s willingness to give and political priorities is “a bad idea.”
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> “It’s almost common sense that it should be set by the ‘absorptive capacity’ of the recipient country, which is partly a matter of the ability of aid agencies to put together clever programs for dealing with really difficult issues,” he told Devex. This problem, Booth further pointed out, applies to the “current politics of aid” and is not unique to support channeled to fragile states alone, as emphasized in a recent ODI report calling for a radical change in the way the development community approaches aid.
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> Nowhere near target
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> Most of the early projections have been scaled down, as can be seen in the graph below. But while ICAI found U.K. aid has produced positive outputs in a number of programs, it has not seen strong evidence — in field visits or case studies — that the increased funding has led to moving the countries in question out of conflict and toward stability, which is the main purpose of the review.
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> Click here to view a larger version. <http://neo-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/news/Jenny-DfiD-Graph-Large.jpg> Source: ICAI report, “Assessing the Impact of the Scale-up of DFID’s Support to Fragile States”
> It acknowledged that working in fragile states isn’t easy. The lack of data that would allow donor agencies and implementing partners to measure progress has also contributed to the problem. But there are other issues as well, including a short program time frame, the lack of a clear road map against which to assess progress, and a weak focus on building state capacity, which is essential to achieving sustainable development.
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> Countries like South Korea and Portugal for instance, which were once in fragility, reached some semblance of good governance after decades, not just in four or five years. And even then, these countries had “much more favorable starting conditions than those experienced by fragile states in which DfID is working today … [so] DfID needs to take a more patient and realistic approach,” according to ICAI.
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> Booth agrees to some extent, but argued short program cycles are not the main problem. ICAI’s findings, he noted, seem to exaggerate the impact development aid can make in fragile settings such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya and Somalia.
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> “In that sense, the ICAI report is guilty of fostering a common illusion: that being realistic about improving the governance of countries with aid is just a question of having a long-time perspective,” the governance expert argued.
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> He did stress the need for donors to be politically smarter and to leverage “supporting country actors” who have the knowledge and experience to help find solutions to “really intractable problems” if they want to achieve “any kind of real progress in these countries.”
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> Same old mistake
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> Taking locally led solutions instead of a top-down approach has long been peddled in development discussions. But this often does not translate into practice.
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> In the case of DfID’s funding scale up to fragile states, for instance, Booth noted that the decision was made at headquarters, brought about by pressure from groups in the U.K. that “encourage them to make politics with the big numbers.”
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> “A big mistake is imagining that the likelihood of having a useful impact, and avoiding doing harm, is related to the scale of the spending,” he said.
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> The aid watchdog underscored the importance of having a better analysis of country contexts, and making sure money comes after — not before — proper, targeted interventions are identified. This way, funding will be allocated according to actual needs and not “to meet a top-down financial objective to spend a certain amount of money (or percentage of budget).”
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> In a statement sent to Devex, a DfID spokesman focused on the results U.K. aid has achieved since 2010.
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> “ICAI recognizes that, despite the challenges of working in the most dangerous places in the world, we are now acknowledged as a global leader in this field … From supporting female provincial councilors in Afghanistan to training government officials in districts liberated from al-Shabab in Somalia, our work in fragile states is improving millions of lives and creating a safer world.”
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> Erratum: The earlier version of this article says ICAI seems to downplay instead of exaggerate the impact of U.K. aid in fragile states.
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> What other mistakes are donors making when engaging in fragile states? And what are they doing right? Have your say by leaving a comment below.
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