How well do you know your development partner?

Development partners consisting of international nongovernmental, multilateral and bilateral organisations partner with local nongovernmental and grassroot organisations based within the target communities. They also partner with public sector entities including government ministries and agencies. This approach is very important in ensuring interventions are tied to both national priorities and community needs. These partnerships are normally long term and are based on the premise that each party will deliver in line with the signed agreement. However, a number of these partnerships do not achieve their intended objectives due to different reasons. Some of the reasons may include the appropriateness of the planned interventions, challenges in programme implementation, and other external factors that may have affected the success of the project or programme. These are all issues that a good implementing partner should identify in advance and develop solutions to ensure the project is implemented as planned. There, the success of a project or programme is largely dependent on the ability or capacity of the implementing partner to deliver as agreed. It is now becoming very common for funds to be disbursed to an implementing partner for a number of years with little results. An example is where the implementing partner hires a consultant to prepare an impressive project proposal which is approved and a project agreement signed. Once funds are disbursed, everything goes quiet. Concerned about the silence, the development partner attempts to contact the key persons who are not easily available and continue to promise reports on the project achievements, while hesitant for a physical meeting to discuss the progress of the project. Bearing in mind the impressive project proposal that was submitted, the development partner continues to follow up reports on phone but still, no progress. After several promises and emails, a physical visit is made to the implementing partner only to find their office premises closed and the key contact persons are unreachable both on phone and email. A further attempt to trace the key contact persons confirm that indeed they cannot be traced and maybe out of the country. It is at this point that you realise your funds may not have been put to good use. How well do you know your implementing partner? One of the tools used to monitor the performance of the implementing partners is evaluations which can take place during the middle of the project term or at the end. These evaluations mainly examine whether the project reached the planned objectives and targets. Another tool is financial audits which are conducted annually or at the end of the project. These audits review whether funds were utilised for the intended purposes. However, evaluations and audits are conducted after several disbursements of funds and sometimes, they are too late to uncover issues that should have been identified at the beginning of the project. It is important to invest in a capacity assessment before partnering with an organisation. This assessment should cover both financial and programmatic aspects of the organisation. In particular, it is important to understand the legal status, governance structure, organisation structure, long term strategy, human resource, programme management and reporting systems, monitoring and evaluations systems and the success of the organisation in implementing similar projects/programmes in the past. The financial management system should be strong with adequate segregation of duties and internal controls to ensure proper utilisation of funds. The organisation should also have adequate procurement policies and procedures that ensure transparent and competitive procurement. The author is a Senior Manager, PwC Rwanda.Email: florence.w.gatome@rw.pwc.com