Defining Sector Wide Approaches (SWA)
Different forms of financing instruments
Project aid and SWA
Programme aid and SWA
SWA models
SWA: Other sector comparisons
SWA and the private sector
Enabling broader community development SWA
SWA: Perceived advantages
The current movement towards SWA arose in response to a new development agenda and strategy, in part derived from features already perceived within policy-based programme lending and project assistance. Previously, development practice focused mainly on economic growth. Today there is growing recognition that better incomes need to be linked to improved quality of life, including reduced poverty, better education, improved health and more effective institutions.
Cassels (1997), writing about the health sector, identifies properties of SWA that apply equally to other social sectors, particularly education [Box 5].
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BOX 5 A SECTOR WIDE APPROACH Þ A sustained partnership, led by national authorities, involving different arms of Government, groups in civil society and one or more funding agencies Þ With the goal of achieving improvements in people's health and contributing to national human development objectives Þ In the context of a coherent sector, defined by an appropriate institutional structure and national financing programme Þ Through a collaborative programme of work focusing on: · the development of sectoral policies and strategies, which define the roles of the public and private sector in relation to the financing and provision of services and to provide a basis for prioritising public expenditures · the preparation of medium-term projections of resource availability and sector financing and spending plans, consistent with a sound public expenditure framework · the establishment of management systems, by national Governments and funding agencies, which will facilitate the introduction of common arrangements for the disbursement and accounting of funds; procurement of goods and services and monitoring sectoral performance · institutional reform and capacity building in line with sectoral policy and the need for systems development Þ with established structures and processes for negotiating strategic and management issues and reviewing sectoral performance against jointly agreed milestones and targets. |
Source: Cassels, 1997
The International Working Group on Health SWA (1997) has attempted to analyse the theme of sustained partnership through SWA. An analysis by Asamoa-Baah and Nabarro (1998) observes that development patterns reveal three different views of SWA and its processes:
a) SWA as a new way of working together, in order to improve working relationships, to enhance the efficiency of development assistance and, ideally, to improve relations with national authorities;b) SWA as a new framework for development assistance, including a process for funding agencies and national authorities to establish agreed plans of action rather than following separate agendas;
c) SWA as a new instrument for development assistance, promoting sector reforms through specific, commonly agreed operational commitments (e.g. a SIP - Sector Investment Programme) and devolving greater authority to national Governments in resource decisions.
In practice, there is no right or wrong SWA. What is clear, however, is that the process is currently evolving in different ways in different places and has to account to different circumstances (EU Horizon 2000, October 1996 and November 1997). Type (a) above represents a jumping off-point, based on partnership principles, with evolution to type (c) dependent on in-country dialogue between development partners. Any evolution to type (c) will only take place effectively if there is openness and trust on all sides with no hidden agendas, developing into an operationally useful assistance instrument.
In a study commissioned in 1997 by the UK Overseas Development Administration (now DFID), the Oxford Policy Management Group defined the elements of a Sector Investment Programme as:
· a strategy for the sector;
· a Government expenditure programme;
· a management framework providing for common implementation procedures;
· funding commitments from funding agencies and recipients.
This definition emphasises another major attribute of a SWA: the need for an agreed financing and budgeting framework. For most practical purposes this manifests itself in a projection of how support will be absorbed within the national budget through a Medium Term Budget Framework (Penrose, 1998). Moreover, since the budget belongs to Government, "the recipient is in the proverbial driver's seat" (Gould, Takala and Nokkala, 1998).
As mentioned in Chapter 2, a prime impetus behind SWA is a general dissatisfaction with existing project and programme assistance modalities. Previously, Government-funding agency dialogue predominantly focused on macro-economic issues and/or narrow education sectoral concerns with little linkage between the two. Discussions now centre upon improved public expenditure management and the role of Government in service provision (including education), rather than structural adjustment. Alongside, there is growing recognition that the effectiveness of individual projects and programme support is constrained by the political, economic and institutional environment.
The limitations of stand-alone, discrete project assistance are well documented. A proliferation of projects can lead to policy and strategy fragmentation, duplicated approaches leading to waste, Government-funding agency disagreements over spending priorities and weak sustainability of outcomes. Additional arguments against project assistance include lack of national ownership, managerial overload through servicing funding agency missions, creation of non-typical and not-easily-replicated 'islands of excellence' and uncertain, often slow, disbursement of aid. The tradition of Project Implementation Units (PIU) contribute to distortions in staff incentive packages and tendencies for over-centralised planning, management and implementation processes, often inconsistent with broader public service and local Government reform polices, plans and pay norms.
Nevertheless, these negatives do not constitute an argument that projects have no place in a sector wide approach. The key issue is whether and when traditional project assistance is most appropriate. Equally, it is vital that any project assistance is consistent with broad education policy and budget frameworks and does not conflict with agreed Government policies and strategies. In particular, projects should not be used to avoid dealing with central issues such as weak Government, budget and management systems, including funding agency co-ordination.
In particular, projects should not be used to allow individual funding agencies to follow their own agendas, nor should secondary and higher education projects be used by Government to avoid hard sectoral financing decisions. In such cases, the acid test for a Government embarking on a SWA is, "Would you say 'no' to a project?" (Tuomas Takala, in discussion, 1998).
While programme aid has the potential advantages of more flexibility, rapid disbursement and less distortion of annual budgets, it does have limitations in a sector context. Experience points to the difficulty in correlating general budget support with achievement of education sector performance targets due in part to problems of fungibility - the movement of money within budgets - and tracking. Linking programme support only to macro-economic targets (rather than sectoral ones) can create difficulties arising from uneven, stop-start financing of education reform plans. Such budgetary uncertainties can undermine the confidence of sector planners and managers in undertaking continuous longer-term planning, can interfere with programme implementation and distort forward education budget plans.
These limitations have led to a new generation of financing instruments, which recognise the need for less distortion in forward budget planning, provide longer-term assurances of support and acknowledge the need for selective recurrent budget support. Such instruments include World Bank sector investment programmes (SIP), Danish and Swedish sector support programmes (SSP), UK and Netherlands sector budget support (SBS), counterpart funds from European Union structural adjustment support programmes (SASP) and Asian Development Bank sector development loans (SDL). While these developments facilitate implementation of the broad features of a sector wide approach, they still remain largely independent of broader sector policy and strategy frameworks, institutional considerations and the much more comprehensive working arrangements needed for a SWA.
It is possible to identify emerging models for education SWA. The first model is best characterised as a Sector Investment Programme (SIP). A SIP essentially treats the sector as a large-scale project with pre-defined activities over a limited lifetime (often five years) linked to a project-style management blueprint that is adopted by all stakeholders. The advantages of this approach are broad familiarity (a project writ large), limited need for management change and continued use of traditional financing instruments (a tool that satisfies lenders).
The primary disadvantages of the SIP model are:
· a danger that the weaknesses of a project approach could be reinvented;
· limited opportunities for continual strategic review and/or negotiation;
· little incentive for regular monitoring/review.
Moreover, since SIPs, like all SWA approaches, are relatively untried, experience with them 'is quite limited' (Bhatia and Okidegbe, 1997).
The second model can be characterised as education sector and budget support: the Sector Development Programme (SDP) model. The main features of a SDP are: less pre-defined activities, a greater focus on outcomes and broad strategic frameworks with less earmarking of funding agency support programmes. The advantages of this model are more flexibility in responding to changes in the financing outlook, facilitation of regular strategic reviews, reduction in funding agency attribution and consequent opportunities for greater Government leadership.
The disadvantages and potential risks are:
· uncertain Government leadership capability;
· the need for new financial management and tracking systems;
· unpredictable disbursement patterns allied to weak absorptive capacity;
· resistance by vested interests (e.g. project unit staff) and, as with SIPs,
· Government and funding agency uncertainty arising out of unfamiliarity and lack of experience of the process.
A potential for tension between these two models is emerging in several countries, especially those accommodating budget support programmes within a SIP. For example, in Ethiopia there is a debate over the pragmatic arrangements of having a 'three-track model' of financial support (budget support, project support through Government, project support outside Government) set in place to accommodate funding agency reluctance to support financial tracking systems that they themselves have not designed. In the Nepal and Ghana education SDPs/SIPs, the debate focuses on splitting funding agency assistance between budgetary and project support. In Tanzania's ESDP and Uganda's ESIP, the point at issue is how much detailing of programmes is required in advance of support. A cross-cutting issue is the uncertainty over the capability of Government financial management and audit systems to handle non-earmarked funding agency support. This is not to say that these tensions cannot be resolved [Box 6]. The challenge will be to design transitional arrangements towards complete use of Government systems, alongside mutual trust in their use and effectiveness.
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BOX 6 RESOLVING SIP/SDP TENSIONS: BUILDING MUTUAL TRUST · Open exchange of views on concerns over Government's management systems (e.g. through Joint Steering Committees and annual review exercises) · Gradual dovetailing of existing project assistance within agreed policy/strategy frameworks and targets · Agreed timetables for phasing out of multi-track financing mechanisms, including funding agencies with greatest current uncertainties (e.g. GTZ, JICA, CIDA) · Early institutional assessments and capacity building strategies for ESIPs/ESDPs, including agreed capacity building outcomes and targets · Possible use of pre-investment capacity building strategies and activities, focusing on financial tracking and management systems · Selective, limited support programmes alongside capacity building to maintain Government confidence in ESDP approach, with jointly agreed risk management strategies |
Source: Bhatia and Okidegbe, 1997
It would be misleading to leave readers with the impression that education SWA can be neatly categorised within one of the above models or another. In practice, it would be more accurate to say that each country develops its own Expediency Model that contains elements of SIPs and SDPs, not to mention traditional projects, especially during inception.
Gould, Takala and Nokkala (1998) note that SWA are found predominantly in the social and infrastructure sectors. Their study shows that in Africa, the spread of SDPs/SIPs is in social sectors (48%), infrastructure (38%) and agriculture (14%). This pattern is similar for Asian Development Bank support programmes in Asia, where the majority of SWA are in the health, education and energy sectors.
Several issues arise from these patterns. Firstly, SDPs/SIPs are predominantly in those sectors where the public sector role is dominant. There is a danger that, without adequate involvement of the private sector, NGOs and local communities, SDPs will reinforce centralisation and Government administrative structures when the objective is the reverse. A recent analysis in Indo China (Asian Development Bank, 1999) also suggests that the channelling of external assistance through the central Government budget is reinforcing centralisation and acting as a barrier to decentralisation.
A second issue is that there is a tendency to overlook private contributions to social sector development and financing, when, for example, the private financing of health and education services can be as high as 70% - 80% in certain subsectors and regions. The marginalisation of the private sector and local communities in education is in danger of being exacerbated by an international inclination to focus on basic education, i.e. subsectoral SIPs/SDPs (e.g. Zambia BESIP, Nepal BESIP). There is a danger that the growing frequency of BESIPs reflects Governmental unwillingness to address key financing and institutional reforms associated with secondary, technical and higher education, an unwillingness often fuelled by external agencies who regard these subsectors as being of less importance. The dangers in the health sector are similar where resolving institutional and financing issues associated with curative services are vital to sustainable reforms. Cassels and Janovsky (1998) note the growing school of thought that in developing a health SWA one of the main issues is to 'broadly decide the kinds of services that should be privately financed'. A lesson that should not be lost on education.
Recent evaluations of agriculture SDPs/SIPs highlight the importance of involving the private sector, NGOs and community groups in the planning and delivery of reforms. A review conducted in Zambia (Agriculture SIP Workshop, 1997) points to the critical importance of developing private sector and NGO capacity in planning and delivering sector reforms. If capacity building efforts are restricted to the public sector, there is a distinct danger that public sector reform efforts will be undermined, especially if there is a central focus on policy/monitoring with management delegated to lower levels. A later study, also involving Zambia's ASIP, proposes that one essential milestone to be covered is the development of 'clear roles and responsibilities of and between the private and public sector' (SPM Consultants, October 1998).
There is a similar danger that education SIPs/SDPs could become a vehicle for reinforcing central control. To avoid this, planners need to take account of a number of strategic considerations. Firstly, BESIPs/BESDPs could be formulated within a broader sectoral framework, including clear financing policies and plans, for post-primary provision. In essence, BESIPs might be seen as a first phase in a sequenced sectoral programme rather than stand-alone initiatives. Clear policy targets for secondary/technical/higher education reform need to be built into the initial SDP framework rather than be put to one side because they may otherwise be difficult to resolve. Ongoing dialogue on such issues needs to be part of the initial work programme.
Secondly, institutional assessments and capacity building needs of the private sector and NGOs should be incorporated early into any education sector programmes. This should include early consultation with these groups about reform planning processes. Most of the ESIPs/ESDPs tend to show the reverse (e.g. Uganda ESIP, Mozambique ESSP, Zambia ESIP). In contrast, the Tanzania ESDP process has attempted to generate an ESDP/NGO Partnership Paper. Useful lessons could be learnt from health SIPs/SDPs (e.g. Uganda, Niger, and Zambia), where the role of the NGOs and communities in service delivery were specified at the inception stage.
A related issue is the tendency within education SWA to focus on centrally planned, supply-side and top-down programming. In order to capture private sector and community participation, programme designs need to stimulate the bottom-up demand side. There are several useful examples of this approach, including community-based primary school facilities programmes, whereby communities identify their own needs [Box 7]. A variation is the use of demand-driven community education funds in Indonesia's ESDP with ADB/World Bank support and in Kenya SPRED II with DFID support. The challenge will be to use these specific programmes as both a vehicle and catalyst for promoting and implementing broader education management decentralisation policies and plans.
DFID's Social Development Division offer a timely warning that development cooperation policies 'have tended to focus on the delivery of "aid" to "sectors" rather than enabling people to take greater control of their lives', (Social Development Division, DFID, 1998). In support of this view, there is growing evidence that improved education provision and participation correlate strongly with broader poverty reduction, family health, nutrition and family planning gains. Likewise, improved education participation (especially literacy improvement) is a pivotal feature of community empowerment and enabling decentralisation of the planning and management of social services and rural income generation schemes. Another key consideration is that wide dissemination of information to communities on education standards and school effectiveness is critical in capturing community involvement and stimulating improved community governance of school systems.
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BOX 7 MEETING COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DEMANDS Primary School Facilities (PRISFAC) Programmes Several ESDP/ESIPs incorporate community-driven schools facilities programmes whereby classrooms, school furniture and sanitation are provided to meet expanded primary enrolment (e.g. Cambodia, Lao PDR, Tanzania, Uganda). One model is outlined below. PRISFAC is a DFID-supported primary school facilities building programme in Uganda. It forms a template for the national provision of classrooms as part of UPE expansion under ESIP. It provides management and financing systems to enable communities to access funding and undertake construction using local contractors. The overall framework of PRISFAC responsibilities Is: a) MoES is responsible for setting policy, monitoring performance and audit, b) Districts are responsible for controlling and supervising PRISFAC activities, c) School Communities and contractors are responsible for identifying needs and implementing project activities. A Schools Facilities Grants (SFG) utilises the following process: 1) School communities (at local, county, district levels) and/or NGO/other relevant groupings apply for a grant; 2) Applications are processed by the DEO and screened according to national criteria; 3) Applications are then ranked, costed and appraised and presented to the District Committee for approval; 4) Contract work is undertaken, supervised by engineers appointed by the district. SFG is financed through a MoF account to which DFID provides budget support, with disbursements following procedures used for Conditional Grants. These programmes are viewed as a key component of broader decentralisation plans within SWA. At present there are few reliable mechanisms for translating education decentralisation policies into practice. |
In practice, few of the current ESIPs/ESDPs focus on these issues. A number of strategies could be considered to set ESDPs within a broader community development setting. One approach is to formulate cross social sector programmes (e.g. the Pakistan Social Action Programme and Thailand Social Sector Programme), where the links between education and other social sectors are clearly defined [Box 8]. The benefits of the social-sector approach arise from the opportunities afforded for integration of hitherto apparently disparate activities, such as linking education and health in a more productive way.
In conclusion, the process and outcomes of a SWA offer two broad advantages. Firstly, a SWA focuses greater attention on education sector performance, outcomes and service quality through a greater emphasis on policy, budgetary and institutional concerns and arrangements. Secondly, the intention of a SWA is to provide an opportunity for more effective relationships between national Governments and funding agencies, including increased national leadership, ownership of reform plans, revised mechanisms for joint Government-funding agency strategic negotiations and performance review.
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BOX 8 CROSS SECTORAL PROGRAMMES 1 Pakistan: The Social Action Programme (SAP) "The SAP Project (SAPP) is probably the purest example of operations meant to assist entire programs across all four major social sectors (elementary education, primary health, population welfare and RWSS [rural water supplies and sanitation]). Rather than 'cherry picking' - financing only the attractive parts of, say, elementary education - they assist elementary education as a whole. Moreover, having one operation that covers all four social sectors permits addressing problems that cut across the sectors [...] SAPP takes on the policy framework, the financing arrangements and the implementation system as a whole for all four social sectors. [...]- financial aid under SAPP is a financing item in the Government budget." 2 Thailand: The Social Sector Program Loan (SSPL) [The SSPL will] "provide opportunities for accelerating decentralisation in the planning, management and delivery of social services. A greater emphasis as community-based, demand-driven assistance programs (e.g. social funds, community water/sanitation programs) and integrated primary health/education initiatives (e.g. using schools to deliver mother/child health programs) could underpin Government's decentralisation efforts." |
Source: (1) Morris, 1998, (2) Asian Development Bank, 1999
The next chapter will discuss the extent to which current funding agency policies and practices incorporate the perceived positive features of SWA.
