RE: What can we do to improve the quality of development projects? | Eval Forward

Dear Mr. Javier Guarnizo,

Thanks for sharing your experience in development project management, especially on the key pointers to achieving effectiveness.

My take on the pointer about Government Ownership is that it usually stops at the level of the signing of the Financing Agreement. African Governments (for what I know) have often not lived up to the promise of making their counterpart contribution, for instance. In fact, they have often generally failed to honour the Malabo declaration of allocating 10% to Agriculture in their national budgets. We have seen projects struggle to receive regular and timely disbursements of local government funding (GLF). So it is one thing for Government to sign up to a development project but I think it is quite another to use that as a guarantee of its continued commitment to the course.

Based on your experience, I would like you to further share with us, how donors can hold governments to live up to their commitment, at least to ensure the committed contribution is disbursed 100%?

Another point of concern I have is, how can government ownership, as expressed in the signing of the Financing Agreement and disbursement of counterpart funds (let us suppose this is the case), be translated to beneficiary ownership, which I think is the ultimate result of the project?

Thanks, it's interesting reading from you, Sir.