DIVISION OF LABOUR AND COMPLEMENTARITY

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DIVISION OF LABOUR AND COMPLEMENTARITY

• Workshop I.

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Outline

• What is the main goal of division of labour? To
  reduce the number of donors involved in the same
  kind of activities through innovative ways of
  organizing development cooperation.
• Dimensions and guiding principles
• Dilemmas

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EU Code of Conduct

• Committment to implement the principles of
  ownership, alignment, harmonisation and
  management for results and mutual accountability
  as set out in the Paris declaration and the
  European Consensus on Development.
• Voluntary, flexible and self-policing.
• Promotion of wide discussions with partner
  countries and other donors.
• DoL should also enhance the coherence of EU
  external assistance.

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Implementation of CoC

• Immediately and in pragmatic way with the aim to
  gradually change the pattern of aid delivery and
  to avoid the cases of aid orphans and fragile
  states
• In-country complementarity
• Increasing participation in joint multi-annual
  programming
• Cross-country complementarity
• Assessment on the basis of relevant and
  forward-looking data (OECD/DAC survey)
• Dialogue with other donors and relevant
  international bodies
• Transparency in strategic planning
• Cross-sector complementarity
• Analysis of areas of strenght (emerging donors!)

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General principles

• Concentrate on a limited number of sectors
  in-country on the basis of donor's comparative
  advantage
• Redeployment for other in-country activities
• Lead donor arrangement
• Delegated cooperation/partnership
• Ensure an adequate donor support
• Replicate practices at regional level
• Establish priority countries
• Address the "orphans" gap
• Analyse and expand areas of strength
• Pursue progress on other dimensions of
  complementarity
• Deepen the reforms (decentralised structures on
  the ground, institutional incentives and
  redeployment of financial and human resources)

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In-country division of labour

• Ongoing processes of formulating donor-wide joint
  assistance strategies and the introduction of EU
  joint programming.
• How to improve in-country division of labour?
• By applying good practices specified in a code
  of conduct
• limit the number of sectors per donor
• limit the number of donors active in a sector
• use lead donor arrangements for sector policy
  dialogue and donor co-ordination
• use delegated co-operation outside focal sectors
  as a tool for quickly moving towards a division
  of labour.
• The EU should select a number of countries where
  these principles can be applied immediately and
  monitor the experiences with the implementation
  of the code of conduct.

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Cross-country division of labour

• How to improve cross-country division of labour?
  Through three complementary initiatives
• Each EU donor should individually assess its
  geographic concentration by benchmarking against
  other donors of similar size (creation of new aid
  orphans shall be prevented!).
• EU donors should develop a joint strategy for the
  limited number of cases in which there is
  substantial overlap in their choice of partner
  countries.
• The EU should embed a joint strategy for orphan
  countries in the context of the ongoing
  activities in the DAC fragile states group.

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Cross-sectoral division of labour

• How to improve cross-sector division of labour?
  Through two initiatives
• EU donors should discuss a coherent approach of
  concrete steps towards more sectoral
  concentration while maintaining the diversity of
  expertise for the EU as a whole.
• Individual donors should avoid an inefficient
  build-up of identical competences.

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Dilemmas

• Aid volume New and old member states
• Geographic orientation
• Thematic and sectoral orientation

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Concepts for organising a division of labour

• The following concepts are used prominently in
  the debate about a division of labour (GAERC
  2006 De Renzio / Rogerson 2005 Rocha Menocal /
  Rogerson 2006 Klein / Harford
• 2005)
• ownership of the partner country
• comparative advantage
• competition

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Comparative advantages

• Determined by, inter alia, any of the following
  criteria
• presence in the field,
• experience in the country, sector or context,
• trust and confidence of partner governments and
  other donors, technical expertise and
  specialization of the donor,
• volume of aid, at country or sector level,
• capacity to enter into new or forward looking
  policies or sectors,
• capacity to react quickly and/or long term
  predictability,
• efficiency of working methodologies, procedures,
  and quality of human resources,
• relatively better performance - without
  necessarily absolute advantage,
• lower cost compared to other donors with adequate
  standards of quality,
• building new experience and capacities as a
  emerging donor (Guiding principle 1 of CoC).

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Competition

• EU donors that are active in sectors other than
  the three concentration sectors should pursue one
  of the following options
• stay financially engaged in the sector through
  the use of delegated cooperation/partnership
  arrangement,
• redeploy the freed-up resources into general
  budget support,
• exit from the sector in a responsible manner
  while using the freed-up resources in scaling-up
  support for the sectors in which they will remain.