Rethinking Budget Support for Africa:Enhancing Country Ownership or Fueling the Patronage Machine?

Budget support has been strongly embraced by some donors as one possible approach to making aid more effective and to increase country ownership. At the same time, other donors have resisted moving to budget support and have preferred, for a range of reasons, to stick with the project or sector models. In this CGD seminar, Joel Barkan will bring a political economy analysis to this debate by drawing on his extensive experience in Uganda and other parts of East Africa. His work highlights some of the dilemmas facing donors, especially in light of the potential linkages between aid and systems of patronage that dominate governance in certain countries.