Country Ownership and Aid Effectiveness in Ethiopia
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Date
2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Country Ownership in designing and managing development assistance is critical for achieving
sustainable development and promoting effective development cooperation between recipient
and donor countries. However, there is a widespread misconception and lack of comprehensive
studies on country ownership in Ethiopia. The objective of the thesis is to examine the country
ownership comprehensively including Government of Ethiopia (GOE)’s ability to exercise
effective leadership over its development policies and strategies; aid coordination and
negotiation practices in Ethiopia; donors’ use of country’s system in aid delivery; and GOE’s
ability to mobilize finance for development. The Study uses primary and secondary data
collected through interviews and document reviews. While there are strong and functional joint
government-donors aid coordination structures in Ethiopia that support country leadership over
its development policies and strategies, nearly half of the development assistance in 2013 was
disbursed outside the country financial and procurement system, which undermines country
ownership and sustainability of the development efforts. In a bid to increase donors’ use of host
country system in Ethiopia, the joint government-donors Development Effectiveness Taskforce
calls for the donors to set individual targets on use of host country systems. However, the Study
found out that public sector capacity constraints are hindering more use of host country systems
in Ethiopia. In this regard, the writer suggested for rolling-out the Global Alliance for Vaccines
and Immunization (GAVI) - Civil Society (CSO) Support model for aid delivery across sectors.
The GAVI - CSO Support model minimizes public sector burden by providing aid funds that were
channeled through the government system to local and international None-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs). As the model uses GOE’s financial and procurement systems in
disbursing aid funds, the government remains in charge in designing and managing the
development assistance, while the NGOs play a mere implementation roles. The Study also
argued that some authors’ fear of western donors’ continued dominance in aid partnership and
dialogue with recipient country is no longer the case because Western countries’ Official
Development Assistance is no more the only source of development finance. Domestic revenue,
south-south cooperation, foreign direct investment, non-concessional private lending, private
foundations, and remittance became additional and increasingly important sources of finance for
development in developing counties including Ethiopia. With this new development finance
landscape, a vibrant country ownership is emerging that both developing countries and their
development partners must embrace and uphold it
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Effectivness in ethiopia