Author: Arrey Mbongaya Ivo The article focuses on donor conditionalities and the impacts on development interventions. ©2010 African Centre for Community and Development. All Rights Reserved.

1. A tortoise cannot encircle a giant baobab with his short
arms. Are Donor Conditionalities, ironies in
development management?
Author: Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
August 2008-08-10
©2008 African Centre for Community and Development. All
rights reserved.
P.O.Box 181, Limbe, Cameroon.
46 Ascot Parade, BD7 4NJ, Bradford, UK.
http://www.africancentreforcommunity.com
ivo@africancentreforcommunity.com

2. Summary: This paper explores the ironies of development management in relation
to donor interaction with less developed countries. It outlines their illusions about
capacities which arguably they know they don’t exist in these countries. It proposes
better understanding of contexts and capacity building as instruments to sustainable
development in poor countries.
Any connoisseur of the anatomy of a tortoise or simply any one looking at the picture of
this animal especially many African dwarf species will consider it wishful thinking if it
were recommended to encircle the trunk of a huge baobab tree. Its arms are simply too
short to go round. As illusory is this metaphor so too is the fact that poor countries of the
South might be overstretched to meet some overzealous donor conditionalities. Their
short hands are lack of capacities which are enhanced by the following factors:
• Firstly, less developed countries are entrenched in poverty (Bhagavan, 1999) and
thus usually strive to reduce embedded poverty rather than concentrate on
democratic reforms or other institutional reforms. Take privatisation for instance,
that led to poor governments investing huge sums in preparing sectors and
institutions for privatisation at the detriment of basic utilities like water and
electricity (Bayliss and Fine, 2007; Arrey, 2008).
• More so, donor conditionalities are even more ironic as donors are aware of the
lack of capacities in poor countries. They lack capacities in the areas of trained
officials and institutions or effective line ministries to handle Foreign Direct
Investments. Appointments to line ministries in these countries are political while
capacity building of local officials is sometimes marred by favouritism or political
affiliation (Arrey, 2008).
• Besides the true political state of certain governments of the South is known by
donors. They are aware of the fact that these governments concentrate on
investments in cities to contain possible socio-political strife than in remote
fragile rural areas (Hall and Midgley, 2004). How then for instance can they
depend on data from these governments on such remote areas as entry points to
the design of holistic and sustainable interventions?
• Donor conditionalities lead to donor appeasement or deception. Poor countries
thus generally prepare positive progress reports as in the case with PRSP and

3. HIPC processes in order to access more funds despite the fact that many of these
governments are corrupt oligarchies or military regimes (Arrey, 2008). This is
also seen when poorly organised or unfair elections in some of these corrupt
countries are considered by donors as democratic hence giving access to funds to
countries that lack good governance.
• Embedded poverty also translates itself as embedded diseases in poor countries.
Access to health care is usually limited to the rich and powerful while poor
segments are cut-off from important facilities like education, reproductive health,
HIV/AIDS management schemes as well as affordable malaria treatment. How
then can donors ask these tortoises of data about HIV/AIDS or malaria when
sufferers do not go to the hospital or when data can be home made? How then can
they be expected to create links between sectors and sub sectors under SWAPS
for instance when sectors are separated by technologies, geography and
infrastructure and political fighting among politicians, line ministries and
provincial departments? (Thomas, 1985).
• More so development aid is also mediated by donor interests and when it has been
imperative donors have delivered it to countries which have not met their
conditionalities. How then can touching of the baobab trunk be considered
encircling in certain circumstances when it is not? Therefore poor countries may
have the will to reform or may even reform but access to donor aid and
management remains the premise of donors (Cusworth and Franks, 1993).
• More so conditionalities for better road networks to enhance enabling
environments for development aid are ironic when one considers the trade
limitations faced by some countries in selling their products abroad or in reaching
international certification standards. Limited trade leads to limited profitability
and affordability hence the impossibility to invest in new sectors or to repair old
sectors. This does not in any way though mitigate the corruption of many poor
governments of the South and also the irony that many of their officials still bank
diverted development aid in the banks of donor countries.
• Also donor interventions are mostly time-bound and usually done to meet up with
the lifespan of the politicians who initiate them (Cusworth and Franks, 1993).

4. How then can donors ask for conditionalities when they must discharge the funds
within a specific period of time and account to their local tax payers of money
which may not have impacted on the lives of many poor people on donor exit?
How can they tie the hands and arms of tortoises by design of interventions and
expect them to encircle the baobab?
• Mix messages as to success and failure of interventions by donors and other
stakeholders have also led to mix messages about conditionalities hence making a
difficult tool to use even when it is imperative to use them. How then will the
tortoise not just touch the baobab and be contented when donor or beneficiary
success or empowerments respectively are relative? (Pinto and Slevin, 1987)
However conditionalities are far from over in development management and still
constitute major features of popular contemporary instruments like General Budget
Support, projects or SWAPS (Ruffer and Lawson, 2002). Despite their limitations, it
would be wrong to suggest that the tool is not helpful in certain areas. The reasons for
this assertion include the following points:
• The possibility that development management is mediated by environments and
contexts (Bryant and white, 1982). There are indeed many poor but corrupt
countries with leaders who will use donor funds for their personal or political
ends (Arrey, 2008) hence the need for the establishment of transparent institutions
or good governance as conditionalities for donor aid. Also there are countries with
already established track records for not delivering hence the need for stronger
conditionalities that is if they are not conditioned by overzealous donor interests
too.
• Conditionalities might help reduce cronyism in line ministries and better local
capacities when it insists on capacity building before delivery of funds. Capacity
building will reduce dependency on foreign technical assistants (Honadle, 1982)
and ensure management and continuity of investments on donor exit.
• Conditionalities also build a notion that development aid is not free money hence
it should be managed diligently.
• It may help to justify to donor tax payers that their money will be spent for the
right purposes and impact on the most needy of the developing or less developed

5. world. It must be stated though that knowledge about how donor countries spend
tax payer’s money are ironically not widespread among donor tax payers hence
the reason why some of these countries may have worked with corrupt regimes in
some cases without domestic questioning.
Despite the forthright arguments for conditionalities, it may mean little when one
considers contemporary widespread failures of classical projects (Gow and Morss, 1988)
which have included conditionalities as a feature. To impact more on the poor of the less
developed world interventions must thus be modelled to be more inclusive and with the
following dimensions:
• Be learning instruments (Rondinelli, 1993) for donor organisations, countries and
for beneficiaries and other stakeholders as in the diagram below. Conditionalities
will thus not be imposed without a thorough knowledge of local environments or
without authenticating local governments’ data. Learning as stipulated in the
diagram below, will lead to competition, efficiency and proficiency in discharge
and management of products on donor exit. It will lead to the possibility of
replicating tested successful practices in other countries and the achievement of
donor and beneficiary goals.

6. • Conditionalities should be used when appropriate and exclusive of donor political
agenda. They must not be overzealous that is have benchmarks that are
unattainable by countries in embedded poverty like Sub-Saharan African
countries for instance. The inference from this is that when the set bench marks
are unattainable it may lead to inefficiency or mismanagement or diversion of
funds or deception by local governments who want to access funds desperately
due to their precarious domestic socioeconomic and political situations. Better
feasibility studies or pre-feasibility studies will reveal the precarious station of
countries hence the need for interventions to be more flexible and to take time in
identifying need and best areas for design and implementation. Besides if
feasibility studies are void of donor political meddling or local governments
politics (Thomas, 1985) interventions will be more precise and target the most
vulnerable while businesses will be more reactive and proactive towards socio-
economic wellbeing and sustainable development as they will be based on
informed data and designed to meet specific goals not generalities of political
propaganda.
• Donor conditionalities should be accompanied with funds to build up the
capacities (Grindle, 1980; Honadle, 1982) lacking in less developed countries.
This calls therefore for holism in the design and implementation of development
aid. For instance, the hypothesis that aid to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS will
mean little with no trained health workers or hospitals or sensitisation campaigns
on prevention is invaluable here just like Direct Budget Support intended to boost
health in these countries will impact little without data on urban migration or the
spreading pattern of the disease or with infighting between line ministries and
regional departments on access to funds. Donor conditionalities are thus
conditioned by local capacities of poor countries and by the available funds for
investments. When capacities are low funding for development interventions must
include funding for capacity building. When capacities are high in recipient
countries it may be illogical to think funding for capacity building will be higher.
• Donors must also consider the state of poverty and time before demanding certain
conditionalities. When poor countries cannot meet with conditionalities, chronic

7. or relative poverty can with time be transformed into embedded poverty. This is
very serious as vertical inequalities over time translate as horizontal inequalities
among sub-populations and may need much more funds to reduce or eradicate.
Conditionalities hence may have contributed to the failure of classical projects
(Gow and Morss, 1988) especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cusworth and Franks,
1993) hence the embedding of poverty there. The above points are not to intimate
that learning processes are a deterrent to conditionalities. They enforce
conditionalities designed from informed data and knowledge about environments
because they may lead to precision and efficiency in achieving goals.
This paper has thus demonstrated that conditionalities must be appropriate in appropriate
circumstances to better development aid or management. When they are far reaching they
mar tangible efforts towards the access of development funds or towards the use of these
funds for targeted goals. They must be based on holistic understanding of contexts and
environments and must be safe of political agendas of stakeholders to be effective. The
kite cannot fly with its wings clipped like the tortoise cannot encircle the huge baobab
with his short arms. Poor countries might be too poor to respect conditionalities.
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