Technical Assistance: Too Much of the Wrong Thing?

In war-torn Afghanistan, technical assistance has been the standard recipe for getting quick results in a situation with limited government capacity. It has at best been a double edged sword according to a recent learning event on technical cooperation in the capital, Kabul. On the other hand, they find that the TC reform is highly relevant even in this most fragile of situations.

Despite continuing conflict, there has been progress on the civilian front in Afghanistan over the past seven years. In health, for example, basic services are delivered in most of the country, mainly by NGOs – but in accordance with a basic health package defined by the health authorities. Maternal and infant mortality have dropped significantly over the last years – but remain among the highest in the world.

Some basic protection is also offered to the most vulnerable, those who have been left without the family networks that have been uprooted after thirty years of war – widows, people with disabilities and street children, for example. And in agriculture, some basic veterinary services are again available; good quality nurseries are helping farmers boost production of almonds and raisins, traditional Afghan export products.

The EC has, among others, projects in health, agriculture and social protection, totalling around 232 million EUR. Like all other donors in Afghanistan, the EC has contracted a significant number of technical assistants to help implement projects. And civil servants working closely with these projects receive various special salary supplements and incentives, either funded directly from the programmes or through a government mechanism underwritten by a number of donors, including the EC.

This is in no way unique for the EC: Formal public salaries are at the level of 70-300 EUR monthly, but key high level staff can earn between 1,500 and 4,000 EUR a month, while international consultants command much higher fees. The OECD/DAC estimated that, in 2004 alone, more than 300 million EUR was spent on TA. In Afghanistan, a higher paid “second civil service” consisting of TA and “quasi-TA” in different shades of grey has thus emerged, of course much to the resentment of those who try to make ends meet from their formal public salary.

Chasing results and undermining capacity development

The intensive use of TA has been justified by the need to quickly show results that would enhance the legitimacy of the government installed after the defeat of Taleban in 2002. This was – and is – a government with limited capacity, and with increasing problems of corruption and a thriving illicit drug economy that is estimated to stand for 30-35% of GDP.

The TA – largely driven by supply – was tasked to implement projects and ensure proper use of funds with scant attention to capacity development and long term sustainability. And though results have been delivered, they have not succeeded in boosting the credentials of the government with its citizens.

Worse, the frantic demand for skills has completely distorted the public sector labour market, pushing up the price of, for example, professionals with some years of experience to levels that are clearly not fiscally sustainable in the medium and long term - when donors are likely to lower their support. Donors and government have, despite various attempts, not succeeded in tackling this nettle in a coordinated manner – the jungle of the market reigns unfettered between sectors and donors.

Despite these difficulties, the government has recently sought the support of donors for an additional “civilian surge” - implying even more TA - as a complement to the US-led military surge.

This situation – which is well described and well-known, (see the links below) - was the backdrop for the learning event on TC held in Kabul from 18-22 October 2009. Through a series of sector workshops and two joint events, the EC’s TC reform was tested against the harsh realities of Afghanistan, in an attempt to help stakeholders on the ground find ways forward.

A highly relevant reform

Is the TC reform at all relevant in a country like Afghanistan? "Yes," says a representative of the EC delegation in Kabul.

"There is a lot of discussion in the donor community about the very high numbers of TA working here, and also that they are substituting and not allowing the Afghans to do the work themselves,” he said. “The TC reform proposed by the Commission is of very high relevance and offers us a basis for improving the situation here." 

In the different workshops, participants from the EC delegation, the government, NGOs, TA, and other donors identified options for improving the situation. This is not an easy task: It is plain to see that the present approach is unsatisfactory and does not lead to sustainable results; it is also easy to see that it would be good to have better coordination and regulation of the overheated segment of the labour market that the TA and topping-up practices affect. It is much harder to make different stakeholders subscribe to an operational agenda that would effectively address these problems and pursue sensible solutions: Both government and donors in Afghanistan are fragmented, with few effective incentives to cooperate and coordinate effectively.

Progress is feasible – but it will take time and effort

Despite this difficult situation, participants identified several concrete steps that could be taken in the short, medium and long term.

- Firstly, in the short term, a lot can be done at project and programme level to help TAs take a step back - and their Afghan partners a step forward. Doing so may slow down implementation in some cases, but in others it is also ingrained habits – bad habits – that make TA take the lead and Afghan officials accept that. More attention to “practical ownership” in daily work relations may help. In the agriculture sector, for example, discussions focused on how to work with broadly composed internal task forces instead of TA working in isolation on “their” deliverables, delivering English-language drafts that only few had a chance to understand and appreciate. Overall, there was keen awareness that TA need to understand the context they work in – and that local stakeholders have an important role to ensure that this happens.

- Secondly, in the medium term, there is room to address the intensity of TA usage at sector level, and to rationalise how TC is used so that capacity development gets a more prominent place. The health sector is, at the initiative of the EC, about to conduct a joint review of TC effectiveness - in itself an indication that the sector is moving towards a proper sector wide approach.

- Thirdly – and most difficult – development practitioners who clearly see the destructive effect of too much and too supply-driven TA can raise the issue upwards in their system so that it can come onto the “big” political agenda that is shaped by generals and diplomats. Encouragingly, the largest donors in Afghanistan – the US, the EC/EU and the World Bank – all agreed that it was now timely, necessary, and possible, to push in this direction.

Dilemmas galore

There are no easy fixes in Afghanistan, including for getting TA right. Focusing on short-term results undermines long-term fiscal and capacity sustainability, and erodes the feeble public sector that aid is supposed to strengthen. “Rightsizing” ambitions for service delivery and regulatory effectiveness to fit the absorptive capacity of the country is politically difficult because development funding is seen in itself as a sign of the commitment of Western donors, also if it is less than effective. And there is indeed a huge need for well-targeted and “clean” service and security delivery that will contribute to convincing Afghans – particularly in rural areas – that it is in their best interests to support the government rather than the armed opposition.

The problem is that the current model – based on intensive use of TA – has not delivered. In some aspects it has undermined efforts to stabilise and strengthen a responsive government. The EC’s TC reform cannot provide ready-made answers to such dilemmas, but the learning event in Afghanistan showed that the directions of the reform are applicable also here – even if it will take a long and arduous journey to get from the current unsatisfactory situation to one that balances supply of aid and TA with a capacity to use it meaningfully.

For a more comprehensive analysis of the use of Technical Assistance in Afghanistan, click here.

For a very interesting discussion on the use of conditionalities in fragile states, follow this link http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2006/20060800_cru_goodhand_sedra…

For an in-depth political economy study, go here http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/poli/prdu/pub.Understanding%20Afghanistan%2…