President Paul Kagame on Monday joined other leaders in Geneva, Switzerland to attend the 2022 Effective Development Co-operation Summit. The Summit is a hybrid event from 12 to 14 December 2022.
According to organisers, this summit seeks to put a spotlight on how better co-operation strengthens trust and transforms the way we work together.
The summit has brought together key global decision-makers—including governments, CSOs, philanthropists and businesses—for exactly these purposes.
According to a report by Global Partnership Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) delivered December 2022, the development co-operation landscape has seen substantial changes since the international community agreed to the Busan Partnership in 2011.
Official finance providers, implementing entities and partnerships have proliferated, leading to a more complex, fragmented global aid architecture.
Multiple overlapping crises are jeopardizing progress across the 2030 Agenda and driving up countries’ financing needs.
Development actors have only made limited progress towards their development effectiveness commitments, which erodes trust and mutual accountability and undermines capacities to forge better partnerships in a constantly evolving development landscape.
Organisers say that this summit is an opportunity to rethink how, ‘we can work together, with the ambition to move from commitment to action and to engage more effectively at the country level.’
“Focusing on the effectiveness of development co-operation is urgent as we tackle pressing development challenges and regain traction to achieve the 2030 Agenda,” according to the report.
Accordingly, the GPEDC says it has worked with partner countries and other development stakeholders to conduct Action Dialogues to draw on evidence, learnings and data gathered through the monitoring of effective development co-operation and the four effectiveness principles.
“To strengthen country ownership (principle 1) and hence provide a strong foundation for effective development co-operation, stakeholders converged on the need for the right combination of policies, strategies and systems.”
For instance, both Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire pledged to enhance ownership by engaging different levels of government more systematically on development planning and implementation.
The report adds that aspart of the focus on results (principle 2), countries are strengthening their data systems, monitoring and evaluation processes, reporting on and integration of the SDGs.
For example, during its Action Dialogue, Honduras decided to adapt its national development framework to SDG targets.
Additionally, the report says that partner countries are committed to building more inclusive partnerships (principle 3). Here, nationally led reporting and dialogue mechanisms were highlighted as key to building trust.
The effectiveness principles provide valuable guidance on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and promote action to advance these.
Given the principle of national ownership, official development assistance and other forms of financing should be fully aligned with national gender equality priorities.
Similarly, transparency in financing among all stakeholders fosters collective accountability, a foundation for trust-based, inclusive partnerships that include women’s voices in a meaningful manner.
This report also observes, today’s global challenges are interlinked and require scaled-up international, multilateral, multistakeholder co-operation in the interests of global stability, including through development co-operation and good multilateral donorship.
