Budget Support is Not the Only Way

Funneling money into the coffers of partner countries is not the only way donors like the European Commission should offer their support. Finances should also be directed towards smaller bodies, like farmers groups, according to Mamadou Cissokho, a farmer’s representative from Senegal.

Donors are increasingly providing assistance to developing countries through budget support packages. Among other benefits, aid delivery through budget support is seen as a way of reducing donor spending costs while empowering partner countries by bolstering their own projects rather than setting up new ones outside the structures of government.

But some, including Mr Cissokho who is the Honorary President of the Network of West African Farmers and Producers Organisation, are concerned that donors are focusing on budget support at the expense of civil society groups that also do important work.

“You can’t give all your support to the state only, you have to help other groups also – the private sector, associations and peasants, too,” said Mr Cissokho.

To watch the full interview with Mr Cissokho, in French, click on the icon below.

According to Mr Cissokho the marginalisation of peasant groups in donor strategy is part of a wider problem of understanding and awareness. Donors need to appreciate the culture and history of the people in the countries where they operate. For Mr Cissokho, that means looking back to pre-colonial times to better know the societies that existed before the arrival of European influence.

While donor recipients, he said, need to have greater sensitivity of the value of rural communities, if they are to survive and blossom.

As a result, rural producers and communities have a problem of low-self worth. This, said Mr Cissokho, is contributing to rural-urban migration, which has rsulted in tremendous population shifts across Africa. The UN estimates that some 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africans lived in rural areas in 1950, compared to just over 60 percent in 2010.

“When our children leave the village, they don’t come back because everyone says there is nothing there. If you have nothing behind you, when you leave you have no reason to go back,” said Mr Cissokho.

Mr Cissokho’s views echo those of Jean Pierre Elong Mbassi, an expert on decentralisation also concerned with West Africa, interviewed for capacity4dev.eu earlier this year http://capacity4dev.ec.europa.eu/rethinking-support-local-governance.

“There is much talk of the battle against poverty, but they don’t ask why there is poverty [in the first place],” added Mr Cissokho. “We have to enable people to work and live, not develop mechanisms for delivery of [corrupt] gifts – that’s not sustainable.”

Mr Cissokho’s presentation from the Hot Topics in Agriculture Seminar at EuropeAid headquarters, delivered on the 13 July, is attached to this article.