2.4.3 Challenges Experienced by Government in Making
External Aid Effective
The post genocide government was new with little experience
and resources; the coordination office lacked enough staff, funds, logistics
and all resources necessary to perform all the coordination duties. The
Regional Director of IRC suggests that NGOs did not respond promptly to support
government directly, because most of them received funds from donors and could
not spend the funds as they wished. For example, the American Office Foreign
Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was the biggest donor but because it is not a
development agency, it does not deal with government directly. Funds from OFDA
to NGOs were not supposed to be used to support government (Keys, 1999). Donors
were not supporting government directly, and their policy did not allow NGOs or
other boundary partners to support government directly. Unlike areas like
Somalia where agencies supported activities in a kind of vacuum, with no
authority, Rwanda was different because the RPF had defeated the criminals,
halted the genocide and installed a new government. It was still new with few
resources but it was present with very dedicated people eager to make things
work and to put Rwanda back on the road to development (ibid).
After the war and genocide when a new Government was set up
there was competition among different government ministries each wanting to
co-ordinate. In fact there was no clear coordination authority. Procedures in
the department were long and bureaucratic, ministries took long to provide
policy guidelines and they delayed to show needs, and priority concerns to
partners. In this regard, this lack of clear government
policies and guidelines resulted in a situation where some important areas were
not well covered e.g. agriculture (food production and food security) and
education sectors. Local community leaders were not trained in project
planning, management, and sustainability. Therefore they were not able to
direct development partners sufficiently. This delayed work and led Donor
Community to work on their own because they had their own deadlines.
There was little of coordination between line ministries and
between local and national levels. Provinces and Districts co-ordination
committees that include representatives of NGOs did not operate well in a
number of areas or tended to be slow. This made NGO work difficult. NGOs
complained that they were not consulted during the evaluations, and suggested
that the basic agreement should be reviewed and updated to improve relations
with the different partners (Report of the Workshop on NGO/Government
Collaboration, 1996). Since both sides (GoR and its Development Partners)
agreed on increasing the effectiveness of aid in November 2006, successful
development, in terms of broad-based economic growth and sustained poverty
reduction, is best achieved within an enabling environment, characterised by
peace and security, good governance, effective rule of law, respect for human
rights and full participation of civil society and the private sector as
stakeholders in the country?s development. Aid effectiveness is also built on
these sure foundations. (MINECOFIN, 2007). But currently, different findings
dramatically illustrate the bigger problem that Rwanda faces today, namely the
low quality of aid. Rwanda is already one of the most aid dependent countries
in the world at US$55 per capita per year in ODA. Yet, we see mitigated impact
on economic growth and disappointing results in terms of poverty reduction.
This is because much of the US$497.6 of aid reaching Rwanda
today is neither on budget, nor on plan, let alone being aligned with the MDGs.
(HDR-UNDP, 2007). The United Nations Development Programme 2005, Baseline
Survey estimated that more than two-thirds of all aid coming in to Rwanda comes
in the form of projects and is, for the most part, neither on budget nor on
plan. There is a real risk that a rapid scaling up of aid flows could lead to a
further deterioration in the quality of aid and, hence, to an increase in
wastage, duplication and inefficiency. Basing on these government and donors
different publications, one may argue that aid may have a little bearing or
impact on eradicating the so-called domesticated poverty at family level; hence
this affects development, since Seers, (1980) views development as eradication
of inequality and poverty. Thus the change in poverty is a function of growth,
initial distribution, and change in this distribution which also will depend on
policy?s pursuance.
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