Putting Paris into practice: Foreign aid, national ownership, and donor alignment in Mali and Ghana

Abstract

This paper examines the application of the first two principles of the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, namely ownership and alignment, to the cases of Mali and Ghana. It argues that Western donors and recipient governments have adopted the Paris Principles mainly in form, rather than in substance, not because of a lack of capacity but rather due primarily to a lack of will, related to interests and incentives on both sides to maintain the pre-Paris status quo. As a result, the impact on Mali's and Ghana's relationships with their traditional donors has been minimal and short-lasting. To the extent that donors and recipients have not significantly changed their practices in either Mali (a poor, fragile, aid-dependent country with low state capacity) or Ghana (a wealthier and more stable country with greater capacity), it seems unlikely that they will be able to apply the Paris Principles elsewhere. Together, the cases of Mali and Ghana, placed in a broader context, suggest that the Paris Agenda is dying.

Mali: desk study on aid and democracy

“…There are also some hints in the literature that the way that aid is distributed in Mali may account f or its ef f ectiveness. Assistance is increasingly circumventing direct government channels in Mali, and there is of ten disconnect between aid distributions and the of ficials charged with carrying out these strategies on the ground (Brown 2016). Theref ore, despite the massive f lows of aid that have entered the country, there is of ten a lack of coordination and capacity in their implementation, which has ultimately limited the ef f ectiveness of this assistance.…”

“…Since political elites were largely the ones to benef it of f this system of high aid f lows, there was little incentive to ref orm or reconsider the aid regime in the country. Because of the country's need f or income f lows, Malian of f icials were also of ten willing to align with donor intents and draf ted vague or inclusive assistance plans to f it those parameters, in order to continue securing high volumes of donor support for themselves (Brown 2016). It became easy then f or donors to overlook the implementation of these plan or reassess how inclusive the aid actually was in Mali's political and economic development, so long as the working relationship between donor and recipient was so seemingly in alignment.…”