Let's DevTalk about Country Ownership

This post is adapted from a DevTalk given by Casey Dunning during Global Partnerships Week, a collaboration of the US State Department, USAID, Concordia, and PeaceTech Lab. Watch the full talk:

I want to discuss country ownership in US development activities.

Let’s take the case of El Salvador. As you may have heard, El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the world right now. But what you may not know is that El Salvador is also home to the largest locally-led public-private partnership in USAID’s history.

This partnership, SolucionES, is focused on crime and violence prevention in El Salvador, as are many other US programs in this country. However, unlike many other programs, this partnership is entirely funded through, and implemented by, local organizations.

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This allows USAID to tap into a network of organizations with more than 100 years of collective experience working on development issues in El Salvador.

Even more impactful, this partnership requires that every USAID dollar be matched by a dollar from the private sector through these local organizations. That means USAID is able to take its relatively scarce resources and use them to leverage significant levels of Salvadoran public and private resources

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This is what country ownership is all about. It’s the ability of local governments, local private sector, and local civil society to define, implement, and invest in their own development activities, hopefully leading to one of the ultimate goals of development: self-sufficiency.  

Through SolucionES, you can start to see the rewards of a country ownership approach:

• Local knowledge brings much-needed context in the design and implementation of the program;
• USAID maximizes its resources, taking $21 million of USAID funds and transforming it into a $42 million program; and
• USAID focuses on sustainability. These organizations were working on development issues in El Salvador long before USAID decided to directly partner with them, and will continue to work on these issues long after USAID has left.

Because while the US government would like to see lower crime rates in El Salvador, no one cares more about the security of El Salvador than Salvadorans themselves.

However, there are also risks with a country ownership approach. New actors working with USAID mean new layers of oversight, new lines of accountability, and potentially longer timelines. It falls to USAID to carefully weigh the risks and rewards of a country ownership approach in a given program.  

So what is the value of this partnership, and of country ownership in general?

As with any development program in the world, these five organizations are required to measure and report on their progress toward achieving program objectives. We’ll have hard data on that.

What we won’t know – and don’t even measure – are the soft results of a country ownership approach. How has local knowledge increased and local capacity been built as a result of this partnership? Is it more cost-effective for a local organization to implement this program? Do the methods and interventions of local organizations lead to longer-term sustained outcomes?

These are the questions we’re answering through new research at the Center for Global Development. We’re building the evidence base on country ownership and working on new ways to measure these soft results.

Because in the long run, good development is about more than a dollar spent. It’s about the impact of that dollar long after a program ends. In the case of El Salvador and this partnership, it’s about keeping people safe now, and ensuring their safety long into the future.