Working together for small enterprise development

Abstract

Better co-ordination can improve the effectiveness of aid, but it is only the first step on a long and difficult road and it is not itself without problems. Formal arrangements can only be successful if they are the result of a process which has its roots in a growing consensus regarding the issues and topics at stake. In actual practice this implies that practical working arrangements form both the beginning and the end of co-ordination and that formal co-ordination will prove at best to be the outcome of such growing common understanding; at its worst attempts to impose coo-rdination may prove to be yet another obstacle. The real victim of such co-ordination mismanagement will prove to be the host country for which the whole exercise was set up in the first place and without which no co-ordination can hope to succeed in the long run!This paper reviews co-ordination for SSE development between donors. The effectiveness of such co-ordination presupposes a degree of harmony within the recipient country and between donor and recipient. Donor co-ordination is reviewed here in terms of its scope, level and type. This should help to increase (formal and informal) donor co-ordination for SSE development. Some tentative suggestions along these lines are given in the final section of this paper.