Comments

The District Authority concept won't quite work as our open mandated MPs are not necessarily highly educated. Some are village leaders and will genuinely need support and guidelines from the district administration, such as the District Authority (DA) and District Treasurer (DT).Furthermore services will be marginalised to MPs' cronies or voting bases, unfairly distributed. When the District Authority is in place, the DA and DT would be useless, the open MP can simply hire chartered accountants or consultants to run the show and spend district funds at will. Clearly District Authority is heading in a dictatorship fashion, very power-hungry fasion.

Sorry, what I also wanted to say is that I agree that skills transfer is a capacity development 'tool', particularly focusing on individual competencies (which might amalgamate, plus other ingredients, to collective capabilities). But I also think that simply placing people (volunteers, for example) in line positions within organisations can be a capacity development tool, too. If you use the Baser and Morgan definition, it fits. And I think examination of individuals in line positions, and the broader impact they may have, would be useful. Perhaps they actually achieve more capacity development than those tasked with skills transfer. Worth a thought. But ultimately, personally, I think capacity development contributions made by external actors come down to the skill, experience and attitude of the individual (in a variety of areas), their understanding of the context, and the relationships they build and maintain.

Hey there Stephen. Sometimes it seems like there are so many definitions of capacity development it ends up having no meaning. My favourite is: "that emergent combination of individual competencies, collective capabilities, assets and relationships that enables a human system to create value" (Baser and Morgan et. al, Capacity Change and Performance: Study Report, Discussion Paper No. 59B, April 2008, European Centre for Development Policy Management, p. 3). Recommended further reading are new (relatively) publications by two Australian practitioners, Ernest Antoine and Deborah Rhodes. They both wrote the useful 'A Practitioners Handbook for Capacity Development: A Cross-Cultural Approach'. And Deborah wrote 'Capacity Across Cultures. Global Lessons from Pacific Experiences.' Both make a fabulous contribution to the literature and it is wonderful to have Pacific experiences documented in them.

Dear Mr Motor Booty, Thanks for your response to my blog. I apologize for the lateness of my reply...I didn't know you had responded until now. Now, to your very well-made points. I agree that governance and anti-corruption support by foreign donors is inherently vexed, because the nub of the issue lies so deeply behind and underneath the formal apparatus of state. The Huntington view, typically realpolitik, is that corruption is a necessary aspect of state functionality, especially in its early stages. Seen in this way, corruption prevents all-out war between elites by giving them enough of available public resources to keep them at bay. But many others (such as Acemoglu et al) argue that social tolerance of predatory political behaviour quickly becomes institutionalized and thus commits societies to being impoverished for a long, long time. I don't have a precise answer to the question 'when should good governance advocates do deals with corrupt elites, and when should they walk away?' But these decisions are best left to actors embedded permanently within societies - sober and moderate, and unlike expatriate officials and advisers, they and their children live with the results of their policy prescriptions. A wise old man I worked with over many years, in respect of these issues, would advise me, "When you sup with the devil, make sure you use a long spoon." As to your question, 'will Australian aid take a more nuanced, and less state-centric approach to governance in coming years?' I hope so. Time will tell. The same pressures that undermine quality governance programming will always be there - the need to hire/lease the ongoing loyalty of local elites; spend the budget; avoid complexity; with a regular turnover of donor staff, some of whom may have little interest and/or experience in the area. In the end it seems that the well-spring of positive governance change is always local political action, and not external TA targeting public officials. Understanding and respecting that may be a step in the right direction. Thanks again for your excellent comments.

Agreed. Which highlights the need for appropriate regulation in this sector. The Vanuatu experience has illustrated that left to 'the market' Digicel would have exercised economic and political clout to get rid of the incumbent (TVL) leaving it with a monopoly.

Lately...the Porgera Gold Operator, Barrick Niugini Limited, is taking back and away land owner contracts operated by iPi Group and Porgram Camp Services Limited. It is making these land owner contracts in house. How can Land Owners participate meaningfully and economically when Developers such as Barrick do this? Can somebody enlighen us, the land owners of Porgera??

As an individual, I agree with the plan as it will provide potential opportunity to the rural communities in PNG. I will solve more issues like bringing to the rural level socio-economic activities.

The The Queen 'Mamohato Memorial Hospital in Lesotho built under a PPP, which is the first of its kind in a low-income country and has been described as opening a new era for private sector involvement in healthcare in developing countries. There have been a number of reports and discussions regarding this project from its inception to today and more will be completed before the end of the 18 year project period. The project is indeed being watched with much interest by a variety of interested parties and its success or otherwise will impact the future of healthcare in many countries. It is therefore critical that the project be fully and openly examined, including the roles of all parties and the any resulting reports be analysed as for any country contemplating such an investment must fully understand all issues including costs over time. The Feachem/Thompson article rightly states that the Boston University report and the Oxfam study are quite divergent in their purpose and conclusions and there is not much they agree on. They do agree that the PPIP hospital has delivered far better services than its dilapidated predecessor, but that financial sustainability is a key challenge that needs to be addressed. A critical issue to be contemplated is what happens at the end of the 18 year project period? What options does the Government truly have and at what cost?

To clarify, both the reports on which Oxfam based its numbers, as well as the report by Boston University were commissioned by the World Bank. I can not comment on the data, analyses or methodology of the report done by the academics to whom David Yates refers, because they have not made this information available for public review. The full Boston University Report containing their analyses is available <a href="http://www.bu.edu/cghd/publication/endline-study-for-queen-‘mamohato-hospital-public-private-partnership/" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

...and surely we (and the World Bank) should be highly allergic to an approach which sucks money away from rural and primary services in order to meet the tertiary care needs of the urban elite.

I agree with all the comments made so far. I also agree that aid and development are complex issues that need careful research to identify problem areas in each recipient countries as recipient countries are different in so many ways; cultural diversity, poor capacity, political culture and movies, etc. had to be better understood. From my practical experience in dealing with aid projects (as a recipient) two important aspects have not been addressed and these were 1) donor requirements for accountability in countries where capacity is poor to very low , reporting was always a problem (as reporting is a requirement for next funding). 2) timing cycle of funding by door agencies often missed the timing of recipient governments fiscal year, so dateline expectations of aid delivery were at odds from the start. 3) the English language (communications mode) used in applications forms were cumbersome, many don't understand, 4) most developing countries lacked project cycle instruments to guide the projects to completion. These were some examples of aid failures experienced first hand. The second point I would like to make is the criticisms in the past about boomerang aid are stories that have some substance, and should be taken notice of. The question is how can AusAid ensure its objectives are not hijacked by bureaucrats in Canberra, their consultant friends, and bureaucrats and political cronies in recipient countries? Perhaps, we should consider channelling aid through the third sector (NGOs) but then again, they would need to build capacities & capabilities to deliver. The next question is how would AusAid deal with fragile or failed states? Secondly, how do we (recipients & donor) deal with corrupt officials and politicians in aid delivery, so it can be effective in those fragile or failed states? My last point is cutting AusAid at a time when China (and India to an extent) have moved "big time" into the Pacific Islands which put AusAid (and NZODA) at the back burners is not wise.

I agree that it'd make more sense to count the grant equivalent of the loan. This is one of the options that the OECD's Development Assistance Committee is considering in its current work on modernising the ODA concept. The DAC is also looking at changing the way that concessionality is measured, which would help to address the issue Robin identified about counting lending on harder terms as aid. There are more details on each of these issues in a recent <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/externalfinancingfordevelopment/documentupload/SLM%20Dev%20Fin%20DAC(2014)9.pdf" rel="nofollow">DAC paper</a> [pdf]. If the DAC can reach agreement later this year on some of these recommendations, that could go some way towards reducing the current year-to-year volatility in reported aid figures.