A COUNTRY PILOT OF THE GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR EFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERATION
Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) carried out pilots in 10 countries aimed at promoting lessons learning, knowledge exchange and implementing effective development cooperation. The objective of the country pilot, GPEDC was to support increased effectiveness at country level and to demonstrate the positive impact of effective development cooperation on the achievement of national, regional and global development goals. Uganda is one of the countries piloted and this study was over seen by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development with support from Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
This report takes stock of Uganda’s Partnership through the GPEDC’s principles of; Country ownership, accountability, effectiveness and inclusiveness. The report therefore makes a number of recommendations on each of the four thematic principles as follows:
Effectiveness: The Current Partnership and cooperation arrangements including the National Partnership forum (NPF) are not well structured to address multi-stakeholder responses to counter existing challenges. There is therefore need for a multi-pronged stakeholder approach to review the current NPF arrangements to address emerging partnership challenges.
Accountability: The existing accountability mechanisms/tools (GPAR, Budgeting Processes, NDP process etc. have not been able to compel stakeholders to account to each other especially after the collapse of the budget support arrangements. DP’s, CSO’s and the Central Government therefore need to come up with a fresh mechanism to enforce commitments and account to each other.
Inclusiveness: Financiers/DPs and implementation actors have changed on one hand, while the coordination structures have not adjusted to address these changes. Government together with other relevant stakeholders need to come up with a new mechanism of ensuring the new players participate in established dialogue mechanisms for better results. The new players include China, India, GAVI, Global Fund, International NGOs, SMEs and other vertical funds.
Ownership: Many DAC Partners are increasingly using implementation modalities that avoid working directly with the central Government. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult for both Government and the DPs to jointly own the results of programmes implemented outside Government systems which goes against the Paris Principles. Stakeholders therefore need to come up with a new mechanism that facilitates working together and joint prioritization which will ensure joint ownership of results.
The above findings have come at a crucial time when Government is formulating the Development Cooperation Policy which will guide on how Development Partners and Government can work together to foster development and inclusive growth. Therefore, findings from the report will contribute greatly to the formulation of this policy. I would like to take this opportunity to appreciate the efforts invested in carrying out this country plot and look forward to implementation of the recommendations.
