This groundbreaking study, commissioned and published by WACSI, tackled donor fatigue and advocates for community-led development solutions. Through an emphasis on participatory approaches, the findings encouraged donors and civil society to collaborate more effectively, fostering trust and shared ownership in development initiatives, which is crucial for developing sustainable solutions.

The growing economic gap between countries in the global south and global north has dominated international relations and diplomacy for a long time. This gap has led to constant capital inflows and investment from the global north to the global south, including Africa, intended to Reduce the gap. However, there is evidence that over the last 50 years, development aid has done little in changing the destinies of many African states, only very few Least Developed Countries (LDC) have graduated out of the status. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been given to African governments in the form of grants. In addition, Even more billions were lent to these same governments. Yet the state of development in Africa is not significantly better today. Per capita incomes, for most African countries, is either stagnant or declining. This suggests some extent that there is more to the African challenge than just responding with money as this is not likely to Turn things around. Therefore, the global community is challenged to try something different to produce different results.

In general, opponents of the way that development aid programmes have operated argue that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer and growth slower. This insidious aid culture has left African countries debt-laden, inflation, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and unattractive to higher-quality investment. Therefore, any attempt to improve the effectiveness of aid thus lies in a complete rethinking of not just the policy agendas associated with aid but in the nature of the relationship between donors and recipients .

The ineffectiveness of development aid (Omotola, and Saliu, 2009) has also led to a sense of development fatigue where funders, beneficiary, and intermediary organisations, civil society organisations (CSOs) especially, are largely dissatisfied with the outcomes and impact of development interventions. In response to this, there continues to be attempts to improve the impact and effectiveness of development aid, with a specific focus on design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programs.

A recurring challenge that continues to be amplified over time is the asymmetry of power between donor, beneficiaries’ communities and implementing civil society organizations. These issues have been a key driver of the failure or low effectiveness of development interventions, which have spurred debates, and ideas about innovative ways to shift power to communities. There are common principles which transcend all the approaches towards a power shift: flexibility, inclusivity, diversity, respect, and participation.

Participatory approaches in various development sectors – health, education, philanthropy, governance, among others—have increasingly been explored and tested by various civil society organisations in the global south and there are instances of failures and successes (O’Cathain et al., 2019). From the existing participatory methods , community development supported by the deliberate measures to cultivate local philanthropy appears to be the more holistic one, grounded in principles of empowerment, human rights, inclusion, social justice, self-determination, and collective action (Kenny, 2007).

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