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Development Aid

“Izandla ziyagezana” - “Hands Wash Each Other”

Local ownership of development is viewed as a significant, positive trend by the
respondents in the "Global Disrupted Development" survey, but one that puts into question

the relevance of the Western model of development implementers. Raj Kumar
characterizes this shift as "old aid" driven by donors- "decisions made by people in large
institutions at great remove from people they sought to help"-and "new aid" driven at the

local level. Ann Mei gives the rationale for localization as "proximity is crucial to
understanding problems, integrating customers through the validation process."

"The Future of Aid: How the Global Development Business Is Evolving." 454
Brookings Institute (Blog) (May 2019)

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“ Ownership should not be viewed as a dichotomous concept but rather as a spectrum,
with locally driven and donor-driven reforms at the two extremes. Let's take a look at the

four key "degrees" of the spectrum.
At one end of the spectrum we find donor-driven intervention, which means donors

determine the type of reform and the action plan. This normally happens by importing
reform strategies from developed countries, with which comes the obvious concern:

different circumstances might require different strategies, therefore implementation of
foreign strategies comes with a questionable level of effectiveness.

The next option on the road towards local ownership is the locally selected, donor
directed approach. This gives developing countries a little more autonomy in that they
can follow their own priorities, but the course of action is still determined by the donor

country or organization – however, they usually choose to implement strategies used in
fellow developing countries.

For example participatory budgeting that allows citizens to partake in deciding the
allocation of public budgets first emerged in Brazil a few decades back and has since
been implemented in several other developing countries.

One step away from complete local ownership we find the locally directed, donor
supported approach, which gives the assisted countries the freedom of designing their

own reforms while they receive financial and technical support from the donors. This
form of intervention was highlyefficient in the case of Rwanda, where – after the 1994
genocide –the court system was too weak for prosecuting perpetrators. Its reform was

based on a traditional local tribunal system while receiving more than half of its funding
from foreign aid.

At the other end of the spectrum there are the locally driven interventions. This not only
allows developing countries to design the course of action but also lets them oversee the