In Dutch museums are stately paintings of the Boards of Directors of orphanages and other charitable activities of 17th century Holland. These were donors of that era. Their portraits leave no room for doubt about their high social status, their moral earnestness, and especially their supreme self-assurance: for they controlled the money.

Today long chains of bureaucracies and donor boards manage funding in ways undreamt of in the 17th century. Yet perhaps the most striking difference today is the call on donors to share or even give up control. A chorus of voices is saying: Let go!

From its beginning in 2000, those running NIZA’s Media Sector programme committed themselves to doing just that. Half way through the programme’s four-year plan they asked two seasoned observers based in the Netherlands – the development consultant Chudi Ukpabi and journalist Inge Ruigrok – to assemble a progress report. NIZA has now published it as a brochure, the better to engage itself and others in a wider discussion meant to shift thinking about who makes key decisions and how.

Talk is cheap

The authors note that donor talk has been changing. Terms like ‘participation’ and ‘ownership’ have circulated in the aid industry for a decade already. How sincere is this? Talk, after all, is cheap. The authors rightly assume that no one, including NIZA, has found the right answer, and therefore take an open, inquisitive approach to the topic. They stay away from aid policy papers and conference reports saturated with all the earnest talk about ownership. Instead they focus on what NIZA’s partners and associates in southern Africa have to say about it.

The authors heard a great many things. Here is a sample, summarised:

ß Genuine local ownership will not take root where grant-seekers, merely to get funding, draw up proposals that fit donor priorities, neither will it flourish where donors merely keep talking, or devise empty rituals, about ownership as ways of masking their continued control.

ß Ownership is mainly about taking responsibility, and about developing expertise to the point where the main point is to share resources, not claim them to the exclusion of others.

ß Commitment and acceptance of responsibility will take place where people own an organisation and its processes. In the face of violence and bribery (such as in today’s Zimbabwe) local initiatives will easily break without that kind of commitment.

ß Involvement of end users, such as members of radio audiences, can help anchor a sense of ownership by NIZA’s partner organisations.

ß To get the most from experts and other ‘capacity building’ measures, NIZA partner organisations have to learn how to set the tasks and manage the outsiders.

ß NIZA’s intention to move decision-making ‘further southwards’ is a good idea, but needs further thought. For NIZA to say to its current partners, "You tell us what NIZA should do", isn’t necessarily the best way forward. It creates risks by raising expectations which, if later not met, would expose NIZA to accusations of bad faith. Besides, NIZA media staff has valid viewpoints and know-how to share.

ß Financial self-reliance is perhaps the most decisive measure of genuine ownership.

SAMTRAN

Ownership issues crop up not only between NIZA and its counterparts, but also among counterparts themselves. The authors look at the case of a NIZA-inspired body, the Southern African Media Trainers’ Network, SAMTRAN, launched in late 2001. They note doubts expressed about the network’s local ownership where voluntary time and effort to make it work are uneven.

They also bring out a paradox: network members are expected to share knowledge, yet many face incentives to hold on to their intellectual property (curriculum materials, &c.) to retain competitive advantages. Partners too have to learn about letting go.

Faddish

This accessible and thoughtful report should help advance debate about the aid encounter at the middle-lower ends of the aid chain. Yet we know that aid system priorities – sometimes well chosen, sometimes faddish, sometimes just plain destructive – are determined higher on that chain.

NIZA’s Media Programme, and therefore its partners, often have to twist and bend their ideas so that their proposals fit funding authorities’ priorities of the day – and then claim "ownership" of ideas they may have doubts about. Might NIZA’s next published report tackle such issues?

Taking over the Driver’s Seat. Experiences with and ideas about ownership in the NIZA Media Sector Plan - by Chudi Ukpabi and Inge Ruigrok

Review by David Sogge, whose latest book is Give and Take – What’s the Matter with Foreign Aid? (Zed Books, London 2002) [/I]