Country Ownership And Aid Effectiveness In Ethiopia

Country Ownership in designing and managing development assistance is critical for achievingrnsustainable development and promoting effective development cooperation between recipientrnand donor countries. However, there is a widespread misconception and lack of comprehensivernstudies on country ownership in Ethiopia. The objective of the thesis is to examine the countryrnownership comprehensively including Government of Ethiopia (GOE)’s ability to exerciserneffective leadership over its development policies and strategies; aid coordination andrnnegotiation practices in Ethiopia; donors’ use of country’s system in aid delivery; and GOE’srnability to mobilize finance for development. The Study uses primary and secondary datarncollected through interviews and document reviews. While there are strong and functional jointrngovernment-donors aid coordination structures in Ethiopia that support country leadership overrnits development policies and strategies, nearly half of the development assistance in 2013 wasrndisbursed outside the country financial and procurement system, which undermines countryrnownership and sustainability of the development efforts. In a bid to increase donors’ use of hostrncountry system in Ethiopia, the joint government-donors Development Effectiveness Taskforcerncalls for the donors to set individual targets on use of host country systems. However, the Studyrnfound out that public sector capacity constraints are hindering more use of host country systemsrnin Ethiopia. In this regard, the writer suggested for rolling-out the Global Alliance for Vaccinesrnand Immunization (GAVI) - Civil Society (CSO) Support model for aid delivery across sectors.rnThe GAVI - CSO Support model minimizes public sector burden by providing aid funds that werernchanneled through the government system to local and international None-GovernmentalrnOrganizations (NGOs). As the model uses GOE’s financial and procurement systems inrndisbursing aid funds, the government remains in charge in designing and managing therndevelopment assistance, while the NGOs play a mere implementation roles. The Study alsornargued that some authors’ fear of western donors’ continued dominance in aid partnership andrndialogue with recipient country is no longer the case because Western countries’ OfficialrnDevelopment Assistance is no more the only source of development finance. Domestic revenue,rnsouth-south cooperation, foreign direct investment, non-concessional private lending, privaternfoundations, and remittance became additional and increasingly important sources of finance forrndevelopment in developing counties including Ethiopia. With this new development financernlandscape, a vibrant country ownership is emerging that both developing countries and theirrndevelopment partners must embrace and uphold it

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism