Aid industry in Nepal: lot of things to be improved but also something moving on in the right direction

Gyanu Adhikari recently published an article in the Kathmandu Post, “Donors Darlings, which was extremely interesting although provocative.

He imagined sharing the personal and professional life trajectories of Vikas and Anju: the former, a well educated, well connected English proficient speaker that ends up in lucrative development work, the latter, an average citizen, product of public education that, although frustrated, finds a government job because she is unable to break into the development industry.

The article, criticizing the way donor agencies like DFID preach accountability and good governance, ends with the following question:”Does Nepal even need DFID? Or is it DFID that needs Nepal?”

I would like to reformulate the question to the following: “Does the Government of Nepal and its citizens need international aid?”

I wish the answer would be simply an outright “no”. The reality is far more complex. Unfortunately the country still needs development aid but a different type of aid, smarter and more effective. I believe that slowly we are getting there although the pace of change is slow and frustrating.

At this stage, the Nation needs development aid as much it needs political stability but there is an inverse correlation between the two: the more the country is stable, the less it needs any form of development aid.

Imagine if the Government, with contributions from civil society, would draft a national socio economic blue print, something ambitious called Nepal 2030, a strong political document that sets the strategic directions towards national prosperity and development.

The document will be instrumental in addressing a simple equation: the more taxes are collected, the less aid the country needs. The strategy will enshrine a clear political commitment to fight corruption and graft at all level.

What should the government ask and demand from the donor agencies and what should the donor agencies, expect from the Government of Nepal?

Let me do a bit of the role playing game.

If I were the government, I would ask the donor community to continue to invest in the Aid Monitoring Platform, possibly linked up with the Social Welfare Council’s monitoring system that, with the support of donor agencies, should be extensively improved.

I would make a stronger case to continue to strengthen the direct budget support to the Government the same way it has been done in the education and health sectors.

I would expect the United Nations to strongly embrace the One UN-Delivering as One-, a global initiative that brings a much closer cooperation among all of the UN Agencies, going far beyond the existing common UNDAF planning. This effort will massively bring down the overhead costs and possibly would shut down the operations of less effective agencies.

The Government should encourage the “diversity agenda” already undertaken by Social Inclusion Action Group, SIAG, the interagency working group, led by passionate and motivated professionals, that is trying to make development more inclusive.

SIAG has been forging a strong agenda to make development work accessible also to persons like the imaginary Anju mentioned in the article.

Yes it is true that still the majority of staff working in the development sector are from predominant ethnic groups but this is a mere reflection of the current patterns in the society. Investing in SIAG is the way forward for a more “diverse” development.

While demanding more aid effectiveness from aid agencies at all levels, I would be aware that, being myself weak in the area of accountability, I would genuinely try to engage the international community in devising some sort of win win situation that can bring to a realistic good governance agenda.

I would also expect all the donors to drastically reduce the implementation of development aid outside the system creating parallel structures and micro systems.

Lastly, I would also ask them to start thinking out of the box and replicating some social innovations being now experimented in their own countries in order to achieve better social outcomes. This would be important as poverty can be eradicated if we propose new bold ideas. Social Innovation must be spread out in traditional aid for development too.

Now switching to the donors’ side, I would frame the following policy statement:

As long as the Government of Nepal is not able to create the right leverage and compliance system at all levels, we, the External Development Partners, are compelled to embrace the least worse working modality, that indeed creates some duplications and avoids the government structures but that ensures, to some extents, the delivery of development outputs.

(Clarification note on the statement: Working with INGOs, bypassing the national system is often the only way to ensure higher level of delivery although the INGOs system itself, despite its undeniable achievements, has space of improvement).

To continue, If I were the donors, I would also demand the Government the commitment to enhance the capacity of the Social Welfare Council, especially M&E. As donors’ community, I would offer a matching fund if adequate public resources are allocated for this purpose.

As a further proof of my good intentions, I would set up a joint and independent evaluation watchdog of all donors’ agencies programs, with clear benchmarks and indicators.

Let’s be clear now. Aid for development alone is not going to eradicate poverty but it can play an important role in this endeavor. Still, every citizen, not only the beneficiaries in Nepal but also the taxpayers in developed countries must expect from aid what aid is supposed to do.

Aid has some side-effects but certainly the entire blame of current dire status of development cannot simply by default be put on the aid agencies.

More could be done also in order to limit the impression, deeply rooted within the population and to some extent well justified, that aid professionals are having a great life, far away from the daily pains of the average populations they are serving.

Still generalizations have their own limitations. Within the sector, also including the expat community, there are plenty of passionate people, some of them with awesome salaries, some others here as volunteers, but all driven by a great self determination to help ending poverty in Nepal.

Changing the system is not an easy game. Hopefully not only people like Vikas but also persons like Anju will be able to have a role not to adjust and adapt to the system but to improve and make it better.

P.S.

By the way, DFID, with or without having spent 32.000 pounds in the country director official residence in Nepal, has made the concept of “value of money” a central aspect of its working modality. Citizens and British taxpayers will be eager to see the results.