Relationship building - the overlooked ingredient of effective aid?

by Anna Lauridsen

IDS researcher, Rosalind Eyben recently responded to the call from the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Debt, Aid and Trade for evidence on aid effectiveness. Her response focuses on the importance of relationships.

Eyben argues that effective aid requires as much investment in relationships as in managing money. Hence, development organisations need to change the way they work in order to better manage the multiple partnerships that the Accra Agenda for Action recognises as the core of the aid business.

Part of the problem is the way aid is measured. Currently, the approach assumes that we are in control and that change is predictable. If you do X, Y will follow. Although this approach may be useful for programmes involving mass immunisation campaigns and impregnated bed-nets, in many aid cases change is not predictable or controllable.

In fact, Eyben’s inquiry reveals some effects are simply not reported by development staff because they were not predicted or did not fit the initial logical framework. Eyben points to cases of relationship building on the local level in conflict ridden countries as some of the most effective initiatives. Eyben states that there is no evidence that spending more money with less staff will deliver better results. This observation is due to the fact that achieving impact requires investing in relationships, which requires the support of development organisations.

Staff can understand the specific context in which they are working through investing time in building relationships with different individuals, organisations, and networks. Similarly, the organization’s staff needs to engage with diverse citizen’s groups (in the capital and in the countryside) as well as with government officials, including front-line workers, in order to get a better picture of what is happening and to identify drivers and blockers of change.

Read the full report: Evidence Submission to the APPG Inquiry on Aid Effectiveness