Rachel Hayman

From Rome to Accra Via Kigali: ‘Aid Effectiveness’ in Rwanda

Since the mid-2000s, significant strides have been made in Rwanda to implement the ‘aid effectiveness’ agenda as captured in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. This article explores the historical evolution of this process since 1994, exposing the complex manoeuvring to establish workable practices, and the less visible political implications of this agenda. The Rwandan government is considered to have strong ‘ownership’ of aid strategies. However, the article demonstrates that the concept of progressive ownership implicit within ‘aid effectiveness’ discourse is misleading. The evidence points rather to joint ownership between donor and recipient, reflecting limitations to the amount of control over aid that donors will cede.

Budget Support and Democracy: a twist in the conditionality tale

Abstract Budget support—aid delivered directly to developing country government budgets—accounts for a growing proportion of overseas development assistance. In theory it has multiple benefits over other forms of aid in terms of attaining poverty reduction and development objectives. However, recent years have seen several incidents of budget support being frozen, halted or redirected because of slippage in the democratic credentials of certain countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nicaragua, Honduras, Madagascar and Rwanda. This article analyses these incidents in relation to debates over aid conditionality. It finds that donors are willing to apply political conditionality when otherwise good performing governments go politically astray, but it questions whether budget support is a viable instrument for pushing for democratic change. Co-ordinated donor action appears to be increasing, but aid flows to the countries discussed remain high and the governments in question tend to be dismissive in the face of such pressure.

Abandoned orphan, wayward child: the United Kingdom and Belgium in Rwanda since 1994

Abstract Analyses of the nature and policies of the Rwandan government since 1994 vary widely. On the one hand, the country is regarded as having made remarkable progress from a developmental perspective; on the other, concerns abound over the attitude of the government with respect to democratisation, human rights and regional stability. Donor agencies active in Rwanda engage with these governmental aspects in different ways, with some taking a more favourable view vis-à-vis such issues than others. This article examines the aid policies of Belgium and the United Kingdom in Rwanda between 1994 and 2005 – two donors with very contrasting historical experiences in the country. These examples demonstrate how the policies donor agencies pursue can be traced to their historical relationships with the recipient country, their domestic political contexts, and their approaches to aid. The article warns against a simplistic divide into “new” and “old” donors, a divide often used in the literature on Rwanda, as this masks more complex factors. The positions of individual donor agencies are constantly shifting, which raises broader questions regarding the current trend towards greater harmonisation in donor strategies with regard to developing countries.

Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, A Strategic Vision for Africa: the Kampala Movement . Washington DC: Brookings Institution (paperback US

deals with the proactive role played by the Gambians in the passage of the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights (the Banjul Charter) and in unsuccessful ECOWAS mediation in the first Liberian crisis. The study ends with the overthrow of Jawara and the installation of the Jammeh regime which went on to clothe itself in civilian garb. Given the blame attributed to the latter by the Senegalese in the escalation of the Casamance crisis, one suspects that there is a follow-up book waiting to be written.