By Dan Honig, Assistant Professor of International Development, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Sarah Louise Cramer, UN-World Bank Aid Coordination Officer for Somalia

“The credibility of the Somali Government hinges largely on its ability to deliver for the Somali People.” International partners clearly recognise the importance of using country systems to achieve broader statebuilding goals, as this line, taken from the May 2017 Communiqué of the London Conference on Somalia, indicates. Yet, international partners continue to deliver aid primarily through parallel systems, as the Government struggles to raise sufficient domestic revenue to deliver tangible results for its people.

Of an estimated USD 1.75 billion in official development assistance (ODA) for Somalia in 2017, only USD 103.9 million was delivered on budget (approximately 6% of total ODA). Excluding humanitarian aid from this calculation, the proportion of on budget aid rises to 14%, which still lags significantly behind the use of country systems in other fragile states. For example, donors delivered between 28-44% of development-focused aid on budget in the Central African Republic, Mali and Liberia in 2015.[1]

Continue reading “Statebuilding without the State: Getting beyond “chicken and egg” in Somalia”