ABSTRACT
The promotion of stronger national ownership of development strategies by aid donors has become a dominant theme within the now ubiquitous Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). It was inaugurated in 1999. By June 2005, 49 countries had prepared PRSs, a further 11 had prepared interim PRSs, and another 10 had begun the process towards adoption of the PRS – in total 71 countries, or about a third of all the countries in the world. The ‘country ownership’ policies promoted by aid donors today stand in stark contrast to the donors’ previous approach, the now infamous structural adjustment programme (SAPs). Comprising macroeconomic stabilization, fiscal and monetary austerity, structural adjustment was epitomized by conditionality – that is, legal clauses in loan agreements that insisted on detailed economic reforms, from public expenditure cuts to privatization, as preconditions for the release of loan finance.
