|
Electronic Roundtable I: May to September 2006
Ownership, Leadership and Accountability
22 May to 2 June 2006
Short text summary of concept note:
This session focuses on the issue of ownership of Poverty Reduction Strategies, a principle at the heart of the PRSP process. In theory, country-owned PRSs are country-led processes that engage government in a dialogue with a broad range of stakeholders. But what does country ownership really mean in practice given the role of donor countries in financing and endorsing PRSs, the limited capacity of developing countries in formulating PRSs, and the often times competing objectives among domestic stakeholders and between domestic and foreign stakeholders? The emerging consensus is that African leaders have tended to be more accountable to donors than to their domestic constituents.
Furthermore, the PRS process has been associated with the development of parallel processes that have bypassed and or duplicated national systems including parliament. These developments have undermined ownership and fuelled the perception that the PRS is a donor driven process. As practitioners in various aspects of PRS design, implementation and monitoring, eight questions have been formulated to guide the discussions and draw from participants' rich experiences in providing insights into how, in practice, the concept of country-ownership plays out in participants' respective countries or in countries that they have been associated with.
[]
[]
[] |
