From aid negotiation to aid effectiveness: the case of food and nutrition security in Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper looks at aid ownership through the lens of negotiations that take place between a country and its development partners (DPs). Based on the case of Ethiopian food security policies, it combines a structural analysis of the negotiation capital of both parties with an actor-oriented analysis of the institutional setting through which negotiations take place. First, it shows that the growing influence donors have come to have in the shaping of Ethiopian public policies results from the relative loss of legitimacy the government has experienced after the 2005 political crisis and its greater need for external economic assistance. Second, the more recent creation of a negotiation platform between the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and its DPs has allowed the GoE to enhance donor’s alignment with its development policies and regain some control over its development agenda, while giving them more room to contribute to several food and nutrition security policy reforms which have been positively evaluated. The paper stresses the need for donors to better recognise the centrality of politics in any aid intervention.

Keywords:

• Aid negotiation
• aid effectiveness
• political economy of aid
• food security
• public policies
• Africa
• Ethiopia

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Nicolas Gerber, Samuel Gebressalassié, Daniel Mekonnen and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on a prior version of this paper. The authors only are responsible for any omissions or deficiencies. Neither the FOODSECURE project nor any of its partner organisations or any organisation of the European Union or European Commission are accountable for the content of the paper.

Notes

1. Gulrajani, "Transcending the Great Foreign Aid Debate.”

2. Hyden, "After the Paris Declaration.”

3. With the notable exception of Whitfield and Fraser, “Negotiating Aid,” from which we borrow much of our theoretical framework.

4. Bourguignon and Sundberg, "Aid Effectiveness.”

5. FAO, State of Food Insecurity, 40. Two other factors have played an important role in the progress reported. One is the strong economic growth Ethiopia has experienced from 2004 onwards (with an annual growth rate of nearly 11% according to World Bank’s data). The other is the successive good rainfall seasons Ethiopia has benefited from during this period. However, the effectiveness of Ethiopia’s public policy in the field of agricultural development and food security has also to be considered.

6. Bourguignon and Sundberg, "Aid Effectiveness.”

7. Pressman and Wildavsky, Implementation.

8. Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, States at Work.

9. Booth, “Aid Effectiveness,” 538.

10. There is no univocal/consensual definition of what aid effectiveness means. In this paper, we consider aid effectiveness as the extent to which a given policy, supported by some ODA, attain or miss its objective.

11. Monye et al., "Easy to Declare, Difficult to Implement."

12. McGee and Heredia, "Paris in Bogotá.”

13. Whitfield and Fraser, "Negotiating Aid.”

14. Hyden, “After the Paris Declaration,” 267.

15. Dijkstra, "PRSP Approach"; Fraser, Aid-Recipient Sovereignty.

16. Gibson et al., Samaritan's Dilemma, 63.

17. Recipient countries and DPs have often been interacting for many years, which can make it difficult to trace the initial position of each party in the final policy document.

18. Whitfield and Fraser, “Negotiating Aid,” 347–349.

19. Ibid., 347.

20. Dahl, "The Concept of Power.”

21. Our framework is fully aligned with the development cooperation octangle proposed by Gibson and colleagues in which the relationship between a DP and a recipient country is embedded in a complex web of relationships and not bilateral. Gibson et al., Samaritan's Dilemma.

22. Keeley and Scoones, "Knowledge, Power and Politics.”

23. Furtado and Smith, Ethiopia.

24. Cochet, "Recherches en cours sur les transformations contemporaines de l'agriculture Éthiopienne.”

25. Von Braun and Olofinbiyi, "Famine and Food Insecurity in Ethiopia.”

26. Whitfield and Fraser, “Negotiating Aid,” 351.

27. Vaughan and Gebremichael, "Rethinking Business and Politics in Ethiopia.”

28. Furtado and Smith, Ethiopia.

29. Ibid., 136.

30. Abegaz, “Aid, Accountability and Institution Building,” 1389; Berhanui, “CAADP Ethiopia,” 10.

31. Ohno, “Democratic Developmentalism and Agricultural Development,” 109.

32. FDRE, “Food Security Strategy,” 1.

33. Berhanu and Poulton, "Political Economy of Agricultural Extension Policy in Ethiopia.”

34. The twin project carried by the World Bank from 1995 to 2002 is a case in point: the Seed Systems Development Project and the National Fertiliser Sector Project aimed ‘to strengthen institutions in their subsector; prioritise the development of competitive markets, including private sector participation; and promote efficient input use through the agricultural extension system’. But according to an Independent evaluation made for the Bank, ‘Policies introduced independently by government at the beginning of the SSDP and NFSP actively discriminated against private seed production and the private retailing of both seed and fertiliser’. World Bank, Project Performance Assessment Report, ix.

35. Booth, “Aid, Institutions and Governance,” 14–15.

36. See FDRE, Food Security Strategy, 174, particularly the ‘poverty reduction policy matrix’ for the agriculture and FNS related issues.

37. Abbink, “Discomfiture of Democracy?” 187–190.

38. ‘Non-traditional donors’, for whom conditionality is less an issue – such as China and Brazil – play a growing role in the Ethiopian aid landscape; Alemu and Scoones, “Negotiating New Relationships.”

39. World Bank, Project Appraisal Document.

40. ATA, Overview of ATA's History, 1.

41. The New Coalition for Food Security was supported by UNDP, USAID and World Bank.

42. Wiseman et al., Designing and Implementing a Rural Safety Net, 8.

43. MoARD, Food Security Programme 2010–2014.

44. Bishop and Hilhorst, "From Food Aid to Food Security"; Devereux et al., "Graduation from the Food Security Programme"; ESPP II, Evaluation of Ethiopia’s Food Security Programme; Wiseman et al., Designing and Implementing.

45. Furtado and Smith, Ethiopia, 135.

46. Wiseman et al., Designing and Implementing, 10.

47. MoARD, Terms of Reference 2008–09, 1.

48. Alpha and Gebreselassié, “Governing Food and Nutrition Security.”

49. Kelsall et al., "Developmental Patrimonialism?”

50. This is partly the case in Ethiopia with two major difficulties identified by donors and scholars: respect of minimum democratic rules (Del Biondo and Orbie, “European Commission’s Implementation”) and support given to large scale land acquisition by state agencies, often assimilated as some kind of land grabbing (Lavers, "‘Land Grab’ as Development Strategy?”)

51. Booth, “Aid Effectiveness,” 548.

52. Gulrajani, "Organising for Donor Effectiveness.”

53. Hughes and Hutchison, "Development Effectiveness and the Politics of Commitment.”