Foreword

In 2008, Africa was able to attract US$43 billion in private capital, US$40 billion in remittances and US$38 billion in aid. While this may look significant, Africa still faces a serious resource gap to complement its own efforts at mobilising domestic resources to bring about social and economic development. It is precisely due to the size of the resource gap that citizens need to know the extent to which specific pledges and commitments made by African governments and their international partners are being kept, and the extent to which the utilisation of those available resources actually delivers tangible results to communities, particularly poor and marginalised youth, women, people with disabilities, the elderly and minorities.

When there is not enough to go round, the powerful in society have a tendency to serve themselves first and the less powerful and marginalised are relegated to the back of the queue. The list of what the poor and marginalised are excluded from is a long one and includes livelihoods, secure, decent and permanent employment, credit, land, housing, education, skills, health, participation in governance and so on.

Since African Monitor released the first Development Support Monitor (DSM) in 2007, we have visited a number of communities to hear what they feel they are excluded from and what their priorities are for the utilisation of the country’s available resources. In 2008 we undertook, in collaboration with partners, Poverty Hearings in South Africa, Liberia, The Gambia, Kenya and Cameroon. Prior to that, we had conducted public expenditure tracking surveys in Ghana, Rwanda, Mozambique and Chad. We have also undertaken agriculture-specific resource tracking in Uganda and Ethiopia. We found terrible disparities between those who have and those who do not. During the hearings, we listened to people living in poverty tell their stories with dignity; we saw the face of poverty through the eyes of far too many men, women, children and the elderly and especially people with disabilities. Interestingly, their message was “we do not want hand-outs, we have hands, we have brains – give us the capacity”. People are ready to take responsibility for improving their own situation if they are given the means.

In line with these demands and requests, we have prepared the 2008/9 Development Support Monitor with a special focus on the priorities and agenda set by grassroots communities. The lead chapter, “Grassroots Poverty, Food Security and Agricultural Development in Africa”, reflects the most pressing issue of the day – food security and hunger – which has repeatedly topped the list of priorities among the concerns of the poor. The recent near-collapse of the global financial architecture makes this issue even more pressing. In this DSM, we attempt to establish the extent to which people’s voices on food security and hunger are heard in the commitment and allocation of resources by donors and African governments. The findings are mixed. There are countries that allocate more than 10% of their national budgets to agriculture. But they number only six. We have tried to follow the resources into the communities and found that the trail is not well documented, and it is therefore not always easy to articulate the link between prioritisation of agriculture, allocation of resources and delivery at the grassroots. This must be addressed urgently. Soon African Monitor will publish a Grassroots Focus Index to further investigate this matter.

This DSM does the same for education, health, water and sanitation and the findings are pretty similar to the challenges faced in agriculture. The DSM also includes major sections on financing for grassroots development and regional integration and trade in Africa. Under development financing, the DSM looks at five instruments for increasing external resource flow to Africa. In most of these – capital flows, remittances, South-to-South cooperation, ODA and debt relief – there has been a gradual increase. However, it is anticipated that most of these would be adversely impacted by the current global financial crisis, and they remain grossly inadequate especially when compared to other regions. But we are pleased to note that remittances are increasingly becoming an important source of external finance. This is gratifying particularly because the bulk of this pool of resources actually goes directly to grassroots communities and is therefore a big factor in promoting socio-economic development. Greater attention should be paid by African governments to facilitating the flow of these resources and for attracting greater Diaspora investment in other productive sectors.

Because of the potential benefit of regional integration and international trade to grassroots development, the DSM has paid attention to how these aspects are performing. Of course regional integration plays a substantial role in increasing opportunities for trade within Africa and beyond, and expanded markets provide grassroots communities with opportunities of greater market access. Progressively, many economic agreements are being concluded at regional level and, sadly, a lot of the issues that African countries fought for in the DOHA Round have since been negotiated away in bilateral agreements, such as the economic partnership agreements. African countries are called upon to strive to ensure that bilateral agreements do not undercut gains secured at higher levels.

In conclusion, I wish to commend this DSM to you as a mirror to development role players, particularly African governments and their development partners, in respect of their responsiveness to the priorities set by the grassroots. As a constructive friend, the aim of this exercise is to highlight the gaps, provoke discussion and engender reforms and improvements in the delivery on commitments and implementation of policies and programmes. African Monitor is available to facilitate processes that would lead to the desired improvements.

I wish to express my gratitude to our partners who have provided us with resources, data, solidarity and advice. Accolades also go to the different structures within African Monitor – the researchers, the rest of the staff, the board and Togona.

Archbishop Njongo Ndungane
PRESIDENT & FOUNDER
May 2009