Decentralized Planning and Financing Programme in Mozambique Heralded as Best Practice by World Bank and Sussex University
New study on strengthening fragile states highlights success of UNCDF in strengthening local governments
Women in the village near Nampula collect water from a well that was delivered through the UNCDF-supported local development programme. Photos by Adam Rogers / UNCDF.
Health clinics are often identified as a priority by local communities when their participation is engaged in local development planning.
Building a new market in the village of Mecuburi.
MAPUTO: 29 March 2007 - A new publication from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and published by the World Bank has highlighted UNCDF's work in Mozambique as a best practice in building sustainable systems that have a long-term impact on reducing poverty in fragile countries.
The study, titled Aid that works: successful development in fragile states, focuses on project level case studies in five countries: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The case studies illustrate that development initiatives which engage local communities are more likely to have a significant and sustainable impact on living conditions at the local level. However, the study recognizes that for more substantial improvements to take place, lessons learned and progress made in individual communities or regions need to be scaled up horizontally (to other localities) and vertically (to higher levels of government).
Given the advantages of working at the local level and the difficulty of working through mainstream bureaucratic agencies at higher levels in these countries, donors often prefer to create 'parallel-agencies' to reach out to larger numbers of beneficiaries. However, this approach in the long run often weakens the legitimacy of mainstream government institutions. Some donor organizations, such as UNCDF, instead choose to work as closely as possible with government officials and to strengthen the existing institutional structures of local authorities to make them more accountable, efficient and effective in delivering infrastructure and services to meet the needs of local populations.
The study is aimed at understanding how the initiatives achieved success in the extremely difficult conditions commonly found in 'fragile states' (or, according to the World Bank terminology , 'low income countries under stress').
Led by James Manor, from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University in the United Kingdom, the researchers found that "development programmes need to be based not just on established principles from elsewhere, but also on an assessment at the outset of distinctive conditions at and just above the local level within fragile states."
Among these conditions, they added: "power dynamics and governance issues proved to be especially important." According to the authors, the resulting programmes should be implemented in a flexible manner, adopting an approach which incorporates "lessons learned from trials, errors and successes - and which avoids being too managerial."
In Mozambique, major contributions of the UNCDF-supported Decentralized District Planning and Finance Programme include capacity building and the establishment of key government institutions at a time when very few development partners were operating in Mozambique. A recognized contribution of the programme, established in 1996, has been the promotion of local governance through participatory district planning. Through this system, local governments and communities have had the authority to plan, decide and execute expenditures for maintenance of local institutions under their authority.
With assistance from UNCDF, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and other development partners including the World Bank, the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland have assisted the Government in replicating the UNCDF model, initially implemented in the northern province of Nampula, to other regions of the country such as Cabo Delgado, Manica, Sofala, Tete and Zambézia. Currently, the underlying principles established in the programme are being incorporated into national policy by the Government, and a national programme is being formulated to cover all 10 provinces and 128 districts in the country.
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