Governing aid coordination in regional platforms: the G20 Compact with Africa case
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221139541 |
| Author | Beatrice Fabiani,Rocco Frondizi,Noemi Rossi |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Governing aid
coordination in regional
platforms: the G20
Compact with Africa case
Beatrice Fabiani
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Rocco Frondizi
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Noemi Rossi
Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy
Abstract
The diversity and increasing number of development actors is a factor of complexity for
recipient countries that puts at risk the efficiency of assistance delivery and undermines
country ownership. The G20 Leaders have called on the international community to
promote country platforms, owned by governments, to foster coordination among
development partners and mobilize private investments. The objective of this study is
to analyse the coordination exercise of the G20 Compact with Africa, a regional plat-
form initiated under the Germany G20 Presidency in 2017, in line with its mandate
to leverage private financing. In particular, we will investigate how the international com-
munity pursues common goals in the sectors of operations under the Compact with
Africa and how Compact’s countries structure their national development and sectoral
strategies in synergy with development partners. The analysis will be triangulated
through a documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews to assess how country
platforms can contribute to promoting a coordinated approach among development
partners in the definition of government priorities and attract private sector
investments.
Corresponding author:
Beatrice Fabiani, Department of Management and Law, Universityof Rome Tor Vergata,Via Columbia 2, 00133,
Rome, Italy.
Email: beatrice.fabiani@uniroma2.it
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(4) 1147–1164
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221139541
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Points for practitioners
The implications of this work emphasize that country platforms can act as a vehicle to
harmonize, monitor, and narrow the number of development priorities in a country. For
this mechanism to be effective, country leadership and ownership should be inclusive of
all development partners and in line with governments’needs and targets.
Keywords
aid architecture, country ownership, country platforms, development finance, multilevel
governance, public financial management
Introduction
Over recent years country ownership has become a central priority in the international
development agenda and aid governance has been reshaped to better exploit synergies
among partner countries and achieve development effectiveness. Starting from the
Paris Aid Declaration on Aid-Effectiveness in 2005, leadership of partner countries
over their national development strategies has been recognized as a key element to
accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Even if the literature recognizes
the lack of a universal definition of country ownership (Buffardi, 2013), there are four
main aspects characterizing this concept which encompass power and legitimacy, com-
mitment and responsibility, capacity and accountability (Watson-Grant et al., 2016).
The Paris Declaration and Busan Partnership also included specific indicators on the
alignment of donors with recipient countries’priorities and the use of public financial
management and procurement systems (OECD, 2012).
Country platform is a concept coming from past experiences of donor coordination,
with different definitions and configurations. It can be described as a governance mech-
anism aimed at fostering coordination between donor partners and catalysing private
sector investments by placing the development priorities of the country at the centre
(Berglof and Peters, 2019). There exist multiple areas and sectors where this instrument
can be deployed to help coordinate donors’interventions, including infrastructure (IsDB,
2020a), health, climate change, migration (African Development Bank et al., 2019), post-
reconstruction in fragile and conflict-affected states (IsDB, 2020b; Papoulidis, 2020a;
Schreiber and Loudon, 2020). Even if a systematic categorization and classification of
country platforms is not documented in the literature, they are usually referred to as
‘country systems’(OECD, 2010), ‘partnership platforms’or ‘donor partnerships’
(Bassler and Smit, 1997; Heinrich, 2013), a ‘coalition model’(Shannon et al., 2012)
and ‘innovation platforms’(Pali and Swaans, 2013). If on the one hand the governance
may differ among countries and development agencies, on the other side this is usually
led by a local high-level steering committee directed by presidents or prime-ministers
and composed of various development partners, sectoral working groups and a secretariat
controlled by the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Planning (Papoulidis, 2020a).
For country platforms to be effective in mobilizing resources, they should be
country-owned and country-led, and build on existing structures rather than attempting
1148 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(4)
To continue reading
Request your trial