Ownership and Results in Swedish General Budget Support to Mozambique

Abstract

Partner country ownership and the, so-called, results agenda are two issues that have dominated international development cooperation in the 2000s. However, there are contradictions between these two issues. While partner country ownership involves partner countries playing a more active role in their own development processes and donors respecting and strengthening this role, the results agenda is mainly donor driven with a strong emphasis on accountability. With Swedish General Budget Support to Mozambique as an example, this study explores how the results agenda has influenced the issue of ownership. Sweden is one of the donor countries that have embraced the results agenda, and a strong advocate of partner country ownership. The findings suggest that, even though the results agenda should imply a focus on achieved results, rather than on how the results are achieved, the Government of Mozambique are still required to report activities and output in order to prove accountability. This is argued to affect the development partner’s possibility to control development processes and how development cooperation is being implemented, and thus limit the partner country’s ownership.