“Salvation sat and crossed herself; called the devil partner”
A really busy week; apologies for not getting this out sooner.
Post-Christmas lethargy is dissipating and momentum is gathering on my pet project, designing an ideal system for recording donor activity in Malawi that meets all our needs at the Ministry of Finance. It’s an ideal system in that it’s what we would want to have in a perfect world, a system that captures the information we need to monitor our progress against our PRGF (Poverty Reduction Growth Facility) targets set by the IMF, while also allowing us to keep an eye on every project being undertaken in the country, spotting problems as or even before they arise.
But as much as I love it, Malawi isn’t perfect. There is no way we’re going to get this best case scenario off the ground any time in the next two years. Donor’s will balk at the information requirements (though in practice they won’t have to provide much at all) and will also be wary of publicising their spending patterns. On our side, I’m not sure we have the capacity within the ministry to make sure that the system is maintained, so a less ambitious version will have to do for now. But that doesn’t mean the position paper I’ll be writing over the next couple of days is an academic exercise; with any luck it will allow us to define our position when negotiating with donors before we sit down and finalise the design of the system.
This isn’t a minor consideration. Until now we have tended to go into meetings without a clearly articulated position to use as a starting point from which to make compromises. As a result, the agenda tends to be dominated by the donors. This can be problematic for two reasons.
Firstly, no matter how well intentioned they are, donors have a different agenda to us. This is set partly by their home government(s), who invariably have pet projects and hot topics that the donor is obliged to pursue, and partly by a wider desire in the development community to see a particular type of growth. Most development economists and aid workers these days go misty-eyed when someone mentions ‘small holder agriculture’ or ‘medium-sized businesses’. Of course, none of these countries developed using either of these two forms of production or and pretty much every success story of the last 50 years has relied on either large scale enterprise like the zaibatsu in Japan and chaebol in South Korea or a politically powerful emergent capitalist class, but lets not mention that. In the current climate, a desire to grow by encouraging capitalism despite the inevitable relative inequity and consolidation of wealth that this entails is treated like a suggestion that heroin be introduced to school lunches.
Secondly, donors squabble. It’s as simple as that. Most donors have a deeply ingrained superiority complex when dealing with the host government, and as a result, most operate on the assumption that they are always right (when in fact, it’s me who is always right, don’t you know…). This attitude is carried over to their dealings with other donors in multi-lateral talks like those we’re about to start over this information system, with the result that unless we can provide an agenda and a starting point, the whole exercise could descend into an extended argument between donors over what font to draw the title page in…
* * *
The good news is: ndili ndi nymuba! I have a house. I’m moving in at the end of the month. A colleague has decided to leave Malawi early, and I’ll be taking up her vacant Ministry of Finance house. Although I’ll be very sad to leave all my friends at the lodge, I can’t wait to have my own kitchen.
Post-Christmas lethargy is dissipating and momentum is gathering on my pet project, designing an ideal system for recording donor activity in Malawi that meets all our needs at the Ministry of Finance. It’s an ideal system in that it’s what we would want to have in a perfect world, a system that captures the information we need to monitor our progress against our PRGF (Poverty Reduction Growth Facility) targets set by the IMF, while also allowing us to keep an eye on every project being undertaken in the country, spotting problems as or even before they arise.
But as much as I love it, Malawi isn’t perfect. There is no way we’re going to get this best case scenario off the ground any time in the next two years. Donor’s will balk at the information requirements (though in practice they won’t have to provide much at all) and will also be wary of publicising their spending patterns. On our side, I’m not sure we have the capacity within the ministry to make sure that the system is maintained, so a less ambitious version will have to do for now. But that doesn’t mean the position paper I’ll be writing over the next couple of days is an academic exercise; with any luck it will allow us to define our position when negotiating with donors before we sit down and finalise the design of the system.
This isn’t a minor consideration. Until now we have tended to go into meetings without a clearly articulated position to use as a starting point from which to make compromises. As a result, the agenda tends to be dominated by the donors. This can be problematic for two reasons.
Firstly, no matter how well intentioned they are, donors have a different agenda to us. This is set partly by their home government(s), who invariably have pet projects and hot topics that the donor is obliged to pursue, and partly by a wider desire in the development community to see a particular type of growth. Most development economists and aid workers these days go misty-eyed when someone mentions ‘small holder agriculture’ or ‘medium-sized businesses’. Of course, none of these countries developed using either of these two forms of production or and pretty much every success story of the last 50 years has relied on either large scale enterprise like the zaibatsu in Japan and chaebol in South Korea or a politically powerful emergent capitalist class, but lets not mention that. In the current climate, a desire to grow by encouraging capitalism despite the inevitable relative inequity and consolidation of wealth that this entails is treated like a suggestion that heroin be introduced to school lunches.
Secondly, donors squabble. It’s as simple as that. Most donors have a deeply ingrained superiority complex when dealing with the host government, and as a result, most operate on the assumption that they are always right (when in fact, it’s me who is always right, don’t you know…). This attitude is carried over to their dealings with other donors in multi-lateral talks like those we’re about to start over this information system, with the result that unless we can provide an agenda and a starting point, the whole exercise could descend into an extended argument between donors over what font to draw the title page in…
* * *
The good news is: ndili ndi nymuba! I have a house. I’m moving in at the end of the month. A colleague has decided to leave Malawi early, and I’ll be taking up her vacant Ministry of Finance house. Although I’ll be very sad to leave all my friends at the lodge, I can’t wait to have my own kitchen.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 9:52 AM
