Tanzania remains heavily dependent on aid and is a priority country for many donors. A strong partnership is critical if external cooperation is to provide effective support for national development objectives. In the early 1990s, however, the partnership was jeopardised by growing donor concerns about corruption, budget mismanagement and the lack of commitment to reform. For their part, the government viewed donors as inappropriately intrusive and demanding, and unable or unwilling to deliver on promises. Relations became strained and levels of development assistance declined sharply.

Fortunately, both the government and donors recognised the importance of effective relations and, moreover, remained committed to the principles of effective partnership. The proposal to engage an ‘honest broker’ was therefore endorsed by all sides. A high-level independent working group, composed of international and national experts with a mandate to place donors and government under the same degree of scrutiny, was appointed to consider aid relations.
 
The findings highlighted dissatisfaction and a significant degree of misunderstanding on both sides. The situation was well summarised by one donor, who believed that ‘ownership exists when they do what we want them to do, but they do so voluntarily’. A number of recommendations for improvements on both sides were proposed, including establishing more effective structures for dialogue in the context of government-led reforms. These recommendations then formed the basis for dialogue and a set of ‘agreed principles’ to guide relations in the future.
A follow-up report in 1999 found that progress had been made on both sides. To keep this progress on track, it was agreed at the 2000 consultative group meeting that institutionalised and regular monitoring take place. This would both review progress and provide an ‘early warning system’ to identify any emerging concerns related to the development partnership.
The 2002 Independent Monitoring Group report noted that, in comparison with 1995, relations were much improved. There had been a pendulum swing in aid relations, characterised by stronger country ownership, more responsiveness by international partners to the need to improve their policies and practices, greater transparency in the dialogue process and, ultimately, more effective use of aid.
In contrast to the views on ownership identified in the 1995 report, a key recommendation was that ‘the government must learn to say no’. This recommendation neatly highlights how independent monitoring can represent views the government may not feel comfortable expressing itself, thereby creating space for a more authentic ownership.
Independent monitoring seems to be a most useful instrument in mature partnerships like in Tanzania today. It recognises the inherent inequalities in aid relations and provides a concrete mechanism for holding all partners to account, with regular recommendations based on impartial and transparent assessments. Independent monitoring also offers a great potential both for mature partnerships and for more fragile contexts. The process of establishing more objectivity in aid relations can take many forms. It can evolve into an institutionalised mechanism, as in Tanzania, but it might also be more subtle. For example, a process consultant may be able to examine how the relationship functions, in order to correct misperceptions and encourage genuine dialogue. Finally, the lessons are relevant not only in the context of inter-governmental partnerships, but equally for NGO partnerships.

Success factors

In the Tanzania case the key success factors included:

• Despite the tensions that had emerged, there remained a deep-seated desire on both sides to see the relationship work more effectively.

• The appointment of trusted, respected and independent experts to review the situation was fundamental to ensuring that all sides were prepared to subject themselves to the same degree of scrutiny and then to implement the findings.

• The wider debate on aid effectiveness, ownership and capacity development taking place at the same time – now articulated in the Paris Declaration – gave extra impetus, providing all parties with the incentive to find concrete solutions and give practical meaning to a new aid paradigm.

• Independent monitoring promoted a new mindset, and defensive and reactive postures were replaced by a genuine and mutual desire for improvement.

Lessons for other countries

Considering the Tanzania experience of independent monitoring, a number of important lessons emerge. Each is generic and, with appropriate selectivity, may be considered as directly applicable to other country contexts.

•  The mere fact of conducting an independent monitoring exercise underlines the commitment of all partners to change, and this in itself can strengthen the aid relationship. Independent monitoring can therefore provide a vital impetus and goodwill where relations are strained.

• Independent monitoring can bring balance to aid relations. If the politics of aid mean that it is unrealistic to expect a country to take the lead in levelling the playing field, then genuine monitoring can help to create conditions for moving the partnership on to more equitable ground.

• Assessing separately either government performance or aid effectiveness is increasingly a false dichotomy. Increasing flows of direct budget support also underline this realisation. Monitoring ‘development effectiveness’ is therefore required – particularly in heavily aid-dependent economies – as a necessary part of assessing the intertwined efforts of government and its partners to deliver a poverty reduction programme.

• Independent monitoring also assists in promoting the role of civil society, an important third pillar in the development dialectic, to hold the government and its partners to account.

• The recommendations of any independent monitoring exercise should be translated into a compact of agreed actions and responsibilities. A concrete, attainable and benchmarked series of actions, ideally located within established national processes, will help to: (i) institutionalise the exercise; (ii) make implementation simpler; and (iii) reduce the transaction costs of aid while increasing its effectiveness.

Independent monitoring can also be valuable in the longer term:

• After an appropriate period of ad hoc monitoring, it is desirable to institutionalise the process. Lessons drawn from the pilot exercises can then inform a national policy on the role of development assistance in supporting national efforts to manage a fully owned poverty reduction programme.

• Independent monitoring can, particularly where relations are strong, secure a longer-term view to take the partnership to a higher level, and provide critical insights into issues relating to ownership and capacity.

• Continued high-level dialogue increases the likelihood of implementing the Rome Declaration agenda and of increasing the effectiveness of aid over the longer-term.

• The case for independent monitoring of a mature partnership is even more compelling, as it can serve as a safety valve through which emerging issues can be identified and resolved.

This article is based on a paper presented at the Paris High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness by the UNDP Bureau for Development Policy; a synthesis paper by Philip Courtnadge, Restoring Balance to Development Partnerships: Independent Monitoring in Tanzania (UNDP Tanzania, December 2004); and the casebook of experiences in Carlos Lopes and Thomas Theisohn, Ownership, Leadership and Transformation: Can We Do Better for Capacity Development (UNDP, 2003).