No need for umbrellas since the rain is over
Jul 28, 2008
IT looks like the Education Summit we held in Gulu bringing together key leaders from the 40 PRDP districts is having a ripple effect. The period before the peace talks started in Juba was characterised by clouded vision. We were all focused on mere survival.
Letter from Gulu - Nobert Mao
IT looks like the Education Summit we held in Gulu bringing together key leaders from the 40 PRDP districts is having a ripple effect. The period before the peace talks started in Juba was characterised by clouded vision. We were all focused on mere survival.
The bar was low. With hundreds of thousands of our people concentrated in IDP camps, interventions were basic—give the displaced people food and some household items, sink boreholes, provide basic medication build shelters to house schools.
Two years down the road, the majority of the people have left the camps. For all intents and purposes there is peace, however tentative. The needs of the people have also changed.
Health centres and schools long abandoned have to be rehabilitated. Roads and bridges have to be rebuilt. The implements and inputs needed for agricultural activities have to be provided. The state structures laid waste by the prolonged war have to be boosted. In short, the rain is over. Umbrellas will not cause much excitement.
Temporary shelters will not suffice. We must now move beyond first aid. These were the discussions that flowed during the meeting of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) held in Gulu from July 17 – 18.
The symbolic significance of the meeting was not lost on me. You cannot fight a fire by remote control. You have to be where the conflagration is raging. Above all, it is good that the heads of the UN agencies hold such high profile meetings in places outside Kampala.
My message to the big cigars was simple. The exit strategy of every intervention is a capable state. This capability should be in terms of restored social infrastructure, competent people, effective and transparent governance systems and sufficient resources to power progress.
The agencies and organisations that offer vital services are merely standing in the gap. They are comparable to midwives—playing a vital role but nevertheless a role that must have an inbuilt exit plan however prolonged the labour is! They are like the scaffolding on a building under construction. A builder that invests a disproportionately high amount into the scaffolding surely does not want to get the job done.
During the emergency period at the height of the armed conflict, northern Uganda was like a patient in a coma. With peace returning, we have regained consciousness. The doctors (aid agencies) can no longer go about their business without scrutiny from the patients. A healthy dialogue has to start to avoid acrimony leading to a dysfunctional relationship. The operational principle should be partnership, not patronage. Participation and ownership should be encouraged. Prefabricated projects should be discouraged.
In an environment of patronage devoid of frank exchanges, there will be mutual deception. The needy people will pretend to be happy. They will dance and ululate but inwardly they will be weeping. The aid agencies will also join the hypocrisy, crafting reports that gloss over weaknesses.
The reports will not be outright lies, but they will be extremely economical with the truth! That is why the UNDP Resident Representative Theo Nikyema and the heads of the UN Agencies in Uganda deserve praise for offering local governments an opportunity to tell their story and propose things that can be done to ensure better impact and coordination of aid interventions. The next day my colleagues from Amuru and Pader to meet the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) joined me. Our message was uniform.
The agenda should be set by the needs of our people assessed jointly by the government and partners. There should be mutual transparency and accountability. In particular, accountability by the filed based staff should be not only look upwards to the bosses in Kampala and the headquarters but also downwards to the beneficiaries of the interventions.
There is a place for upward bureaucratic accountability but this should not be at the expense of downward democratic accountability!
We urged the UN agencies to ensure that there is a ‘buy-in’ by local governments towards all projects that they fund through intermediaries.
We also announced the formation of the Acholi Local Government Forum bringing together the local governments of Acholiland. This forum can help in improving the coordination, overseeing and supervision of projects thus improving delivery. It can also be a useful forum for dialogue between the local governments and the partners thus minimising conflict and misunderstandings.
On our relationships with NGOs, we assured the meeting that the majority of NGOs are doing a great job. But there are a few bad eggs. We have no vendetta against NGOs generally and where we have a concern with any NGO we base our actions on independent technical advice. Above all we treat every case on its merits based on the facts.
On the whole, we have found that many NGOs are having a problem adjusting from the era of relief operations to the era of reconstruction and development. There are still minor relief operations required but the main focus should now be on recovery.
Obviously, as state capacity improves, the core partner of the major funders will be the state rather than non-state actors. Back to the analogy of the scaffolding, the test of success is how much scaffolding is still on site! We explained that our tough stance on NGO operations is in good faith intended to avoid the moral hazard of wasted resources and under-delivery.
I believe in Gresham’s Law which states that with no regulation, debased coinage drives pure coinage out of circulation. For example, if a ‘silver florin’ which is 50% base metal and 50% silver is accepted as tender, then all florins with more than 50% silver will be driven out of circulation; they will be melted down and recast as debased florins!
To sum up, I see the period ahead with optimism. There may not be full agreement with the partners but there is full understanding about where we stand and where they stand, about where there is consensus and where there is contention.
The author is Gulu district chairman
IT looks like the Education Summit we held in Gulu bringing together key leaders from the 40 PRDP districts is having a ripple effect. The period before the peace talks started in Juba was characterised by clouded vision. We were all focused on mere survival.
The bar was low. With hundreds of thousands of our people concentrated in IDP camps, interventions were basic—give the displaced people food and some household items, sink boreholes, provide basic medication build shelters to house schools.
Two years down the road, the majority of the people have left the camps. For all intents and purposes there is peace, however tentative. The needs of the people have also changed.
Health centres and schools long abandoned have to be rehabilitated. Roads and bridges have to be rebuilt. The implements and inputs needed for agricultural activities have to be provided. The state structures laid waste by the prolonged war have to be boosted. In short, the rain is over. Umbrellas will not cause much excitement.
Temporary shelters will not suffice. We must now move beyond first aid. These were the discussions that flowed during the meeting of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) held in Gulu from July 17 – 18.
The symbolic significance of the meeting was not lost on me. You cannot fight a fire by remote control. You have to be where the conflagration is raging. Above all, it is good that the heads of the UN agencies hold such high profile meetings in places outside Kampala.
My message to the big cigars was simple. The exit strategy of every intervention is a capable state. This capability should be in terms of restored social infrastructure, competent people, effective and transparent governance systems and sufficient resources to power progress.
The agencies and organisations that offer vital services are merely standing in the gap. They are comparable to midwives—playing a vital role but nevertheless a role that must have an inbuilt exit plan however prolonged the labour is! They are like the scaffolding on a building under construction. A builder that invests a disproportionately high amount into the scaffolding surely does not want to get the job done.
During the emergency period at the height of the armed conflict, northern Uganda was like a patient in a coma. With peace returning, we have regained consciousness. The doctors (aid agencies) can no longer go about their business without scrutiny from the patients. A healthy dialogue has to start to avoid acrimony leading to a dysfunctional relationship. The operational principle should be partnership, not patronage. Participation and ownership should be encouraged. Prefabricated projects should be discouraged.
In an environment of patronage devoid of frank exchanges, there will be mutual deception. The needy people will pretend to be happy. They will dance and ululate but inwardly they will be weeping. The aid agencies will also join the hypocrisy, crafting reports that gloss over weaknesses.
The reports will not be outright lies, but they will be extremely economical with the truth! That is why the UNDP Resident Representative Theo Nikyema and the heads of the UN Agencies in Uganda deserve praise for offering local governments an opportunity to tell their story and propose things that can be done to ensure better impact and coordination of aid interventions. The next day my colleagues from Amuru and Pader to meet the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) joined me. Our message was uniform.
The agenda should be set by the needs of our people assessed jointly by the government and partners. There should be mutual transparency and accountability. In particular, accountability by the filed based staff should be not only look upwards to the bosses in Kampala and the headquarters but also downwards to the beneficiaries of the interventions.
There is a place for upward bureaucratic accountability but this should not be at the expense of downward democratic accountability!
We urged the UN agencies to ensure that there is a ‘buy-in’ by local governments towards all projects that they fund through intermediaries.
We also announced the formation of the Acholi Local Government Forum bringing together the local governments of Acholiland. This forum can help in improving the coordination, overseeing and supervision of projects thus improving delivery. It can also be a useful forum for dialogue between the local governments and the partners thus minimising conflict and misunderstandings.
On our relationships with NGOs, we assured the meeting that the majority of NGOs are doing a great job. But there are a few bad eggs. We have no vendetta against NGOs generally and where we have a concern with any NGO we base our actions on independent technical advice. Above all we treat every case on its merits based on the facts.
On the whole, we have found that many NGOs are having a problem adjusting from the era of relief operations to the era of reconstruction and development. There are still minor relief operations required but the main focus should now be on recovery.
Obviously, as state capacity improves, the core partner of the major funders will be the state rather than non-state actors. Back to the analogy of the scaffolding, the test of success is how much scaffolding is still on site! We explained that our tough stance on NGO operations is in good faith intended to avoid the moral hazard of wasted resources and under-delivery.
I believe in Gresham’s Law which states that with no regulation, debased coinage drives pure coinage out of circulation. For example, if a ‘silver florin’ which is 50% base metal and 50% silver is accepted as tender, then all florins with more than 50% silver will be driven out of circulation; they will be melted down and recast as debased florins!
To sum up, I see the period ahead with optimism. There may not be full agreement with the partners but there is full understanding about where we stand and where they stand, about where there is consensus and where there is contention.
The author is Gulu district chairman