[afro-nets] Reducing Mozambique's reliance on donor aid (4)

["Peter Burgess" <profitinafrica@gmail.com>]

Reducing Mozambique's reliance on donor aid (4)
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Dear Dr. Jawad

I agree with you that rather than progress, there is regression in many aspects of relief and development. This is a bad outcome, but worse, in has come in an era of amazing progress in scientific understanding and technology. In scientific and technological terms there is absolutely no excuse for the dramatically poor performance in the relief and development sector.

I also agree with you that donor driven vertical projects may have the appearance of efficiency, but, as you observe they create distortion in the local economy and encourage migration of good staff from the responsible ministry to the project. But strengthening the "public sector" and public institutions may not be the way to go either since these institutions rarely have much (good) reach into communities and tend to pull resource from community into the center. Rather, the community where people live and work needs to be where resources are deployed and activities implemented that deliver socio-economic progress. Government and governance are important in the process of facilitating funding and activities ... but benefit should be delivered into a community.

And when I talk about metrics ... the most useful metrics are those that show how cost and activities and results in a community are related. Obviously there are some activities that are done best with central authority ... but I think most services need a distributed structure. I am convinced that management information about socio-economic performance at the community level can have the effect of improving results rapidly and sustainably.

With best wishes. Sincerely

Peter Burgess

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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
+1 212 772 6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
Tr-Ac-Net book "Revolutionary Change for Relief and Development"
350 pages http://www.lulu.com/content/477773