Supporting the Democratization Process in Africa:
The Work of the Development Assistance Committee
During the last quarter-century the number of democratic nations has grown from 40 in 1974 to 118 today.
- Half of the world's people now live in democracy or democratic transition.
- During the last decade alone, the number of democracies in Africa has quadrupled from five to twenty.
These successes should not hide the fact that a number of these democracies are still very fragile and will need nurturing and support, including from the international community, for years to come.
The Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the DAC) has supported the trend toward democratic governance with the identification of orientations and best practices capturing the most current thinking as guidance to the development community. An Ad Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance (PD/GG) was established in December 1993. It produced a detailed concept for in-country processes through which governments and their people could identify and work on their governance agendas, supported by the donor community. The Ad Hoc Working Group launched in-country co-ordination exercises in seven pilot countries: Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania and Uganda.
The Bamako Workshop
To give impetus to the pilot exercise the DAC organised a Workshop on Partnerships for Participatory Development and Good Governance in Bamako in May 1998. Hosted by the Government of Mali, the Workshop was co-organised by the Global Coalition for Africa with the assistance of the UNDP. The Governments of France, the United Kingdom and the United States sponsored this unprecedented event attended by 150 participants from 25 countries. Conclusions from the Workshop were fed into the meeting of the G8 Foreign Ministers held in Birmingham, also in May.
The Workshop endorsed the principle of partnership among governments, civil society and donors for promoting democracy and good governance. It provided a forum for debating a number of governance-related themes such as:
- The role of civil society in decision making:
- political participation and representation;
- the role of the media;
- decentralisation and democratic local government;
- effective strategies for combating corruption; and
- the rule of law.
Concrete recommendations in each of these areas emerged in the context of the pilot countries and a number of follow-up actions were generated:
- The lead donors in each pilot country will carry forward the progress toward more systematic and co-ordinated support by the donor community on the basis of the partnership principle. An important step is to compile inventories of relevant donor projects and programmes so that all actors, including civil society, can better share information and ideas.
- Participants from pilot countries will carry back actions plans for reinforcing and expanding processes in their countries for more systematic discussion and agreement on priorities for improving participation and governance in their societies.
- DAC Members will monitor and report to the Senior Level Meeting in December 1998. The Government of Switzerland will host a stock-taking meeting in 1999 that will include representatives of the pilot countries and the DAC.
Indicators for Good Governance
Concurrently with these efforts in the pilot countries, the OECD is playing a catalytic role in bringing together staff from bilateral and multilateral agencies as well as individuals from partner countries, to develop a common approach for assessing and monitoring good governance. This small informal group of international experts is expected to share approaches and methodologies already available on this topic, and to elaborate a common operational framework that could be used at the country level. The final output will be presented to the international community in line with a recommendation made at the OECD/UN/World Bank Joint Meeting on Agreed Indicators of Development Progress held in Paris in February 1998.
| For further information, please contact OECD Secretariat, Ms. Elisabeth Thiolén Tel: no. (33-1)45.24.19.96
E-mail: Elisabeth.Thioleron@OECD.org
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