AFGHANISTAN

PUBLIC POLICY
POLICY
AFGHANISTAN
PUBLIC
RESEARCH
ORGANIZATION
RESEARCH
ORGANIZATION
www.appro.org.af

Policy Brief
October 2016

www.appro.org.af

Renew Approach to
Development

About APPRO:

Background

Afghanistan Public Policy Research

Organization (APPRO) is an independent social research organization with
a mandate to promote social and
policy learning to benefit development and reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan and other less developed countries through conducting
applied research, monitoring and
evaluation, and training and mentoring. APPRO is registered with the
Ministry of Economy in Afghanistan
as a non-profit, non-government organization. APPRO is headquartered
in Kabul, Afghanistan, with offices in
Mazar-e Shrif (north), Herat (west),
Kandahar (south), Jalalabad (east),
and Bamyan (center). APPRO is also
the founding organization of APPROEurope, registered in Belgium.

Without a doubt, development aid in

Afghanistan since 2001 has led to major
improvements in the citizens rights and
access to basic services, despite the fact
that in many instances aid programming
has focused on relatively immediate impact and has thus yielded few sustainable outcomes. The enormous and consistent flows of funding that followed
the fall of the Taliban have also led to
a proliferation of local and national
non-government organizations (NGOs),
playing important roles in state-civil society interactions and providing a wide
range of services, from humanitarian
assistance to awareness-raising on
basic rights (primarily womens rights),
peace building, capacity building, and
research.

Contact us:

The protracted conflict, along with

multiple challenges in governance at all
levels and throughout all sectors, calls
for new approaches to development
assistance in Afghanistans Transformation Decade, 2015 - 2024. The two
key characteristics of the Transformation Decade are the volatility in social,
political, and economic arenas and the
burgeoning civil society and its many
organizations ranging from service
implementers to humanitarian aid
providers, womens and human rights
organizations, research and training
organizations, youth organizations, and
numerous associations representing
interests and aspirations of private and
public actors.

www.appro.org.af
Email: mail@appro.org.af
Tel: +93 700 053 081
www.appro-europe.net
Email: mail@appro-europe.net
Tel: +32 2 895 36 01
Fax: +32 2 895 36 02
This and other publications by APPRO
may be downloaded from:
http://appro.org.af/briefs/

Interventions in this period need

to be flexible, inclusive, and oriented toward longer term and
sustainable development outcomes.

The large NGO sector is a necessary

but insufficient institutional pre-requisite for a vibrant civil society, democracy, and good governance in Afghanistan. With some exceptions there has
been a pattern among NGOs of quickly
adapting to donor vocabulary in proposals for funding without fully understanding the implications of the terms
used by donors in and for development
programming. These terms include
gender mainstreaming, rule of law,
human rights, capacity building,
sustainability, theory of change,
and anti-corruption. The meanings
and full implications of these terms
are no clearer for most funding agencies, all of whom insist that any and all
proposals by NGOs must have specific
statements on (particularly) the gender
approach, sustainability, anti-corruption, and theory of change.
The general lack of knowledge, or
agreement, on the key development
terms and what they imply in terms of
tools development among the donors
and NGOs is a serious impediment to
attempts to work toward grounded
interventions based on evidence and
shared meanings and development
goals.
Planning and implementing responsible, effective, and sustainable interventions in Afghanistan requires project
and program design grounded in the
local context, with specific attention
to conflict risks, empirical evidence,
capacity of funders, and capacity of
the program funding recipients. In
addition, building the knowledge base,
particularly on strengths and weaknesses of interventions and their im-

The large NGO sector

in Afghanistan is a
necessary but insufficient institutional
pre-requisite for a
vibrant civil society,
democracy, and good
governance.

pact, will require explicit and fully articulated

provisions for implementation monitoring,
periodic evaluations, and documentation of
lessons learnt for other or future program
phases. Without these elements in place,
development aid will consistently fall short of
achieving its objectives.

Recommendations
Ground Interventions in Applied,
Contextual Research: In fast changing
environments such as Afghanistan, no
assessment or study should be viewed as
the final, definitive take on the situation
being targeted for programming intervention. Also because of the rapid pace
of change, focus should be divided between monitoring (based on carefully defined and tested indicators) and in-depth
research. Monitoring findings should
guide all in-depth research to ensure that
research findings have practical implications for development programming.
General lack of
knowledge, or agreement, on the key development terms and
what they imply in
terms of tools development among the
donors and NGOs is a
serious impediment
to attempts to work
toward grounded
interventions based
on evidence, shared
meanings, and development goals.

Planning and implementing responsible, effective, and

sustainable interventions in Afghanistan
requires project
and program design
grounded in the local
context, with specific
attention to conflict risks, empirical
evidence, capacity of
funders, and capacity
of the program funding recipients.

Monitor Outcomes: There is an urgent

need to develop robust monitoring and
evaluation mechanisms, incorporating
both quantitative and qualitative techniques, by international donors to ensure
the effectiveness of their interventions.
The vast majority of the relatively few
evaluations of donor programs in Afghanistan have been carried out by
professional international businesses
with little or no knowledge of the context
of Afghanistan or, perhaps, development aid programming. Inevitably, these
evaluations have focused on inputs and
outputs, since the evaluators have had
little or no access to reliable outcome
information. More systematic use should
be made of working with local partners
with capacity to evaluate and monitor.
Strengthen Local Implementing Partners: The bulk of development aid
funds are channelled through large
inter- and multi-national development
aid businesses. Relatively very little of
these funds are granted directly to local
partners because local partners do not
offer turn-key solutions to the large,
multi-faceted problems international
donors wish to address. There is reasonably widespread awareness among the
donors that the large development businesses have to rely on local partners to
implement the many large, multi-faceted
programs the receive funding for. Local
partners receive a fraction of these funds
and little or no other support since the
large development businesses are fully
focused on the bottom line and minimization of costs. Granting larger funds to a
2

large number of suitably qualified local

partners does increase the workload of
the donors in terms of oversight, administration, and management. However, if
the intent is leave something behind in
terms of capacity and increase longer
term sustainability of interventions,
ways must be found by the donors to
work directly with reliable and tested
local partners.
Conduct Full, Rather Than Symbolic,
Consultation with Relevant Local Stakeholders: Carefully managed consultation
to draw out intervention opportunities would go a long way in ensuring
practical program designs and positive
intervention outcomes. Successful
development interventions are often
products of in-depth contextual knowledge and close collaboration with local
civil society organizations, both of which
could be realized through co-thinking
development plans with local partners.
This approach is likely to result in better
program designs while increasing the
technical capacity and stake of local civil
society organizations.
Couple Training With Mentoring: Onetime training sessions, a popular form
of input in numerous funded proposals,
yield little or no result when delivered
by context insensitive experts no matter how qualified and not followed up
with ongoing mentoring to ensure that
learning from training is being applied
by the trained. All future awareness and
technical capacity training interventions
should consider incorporating mentoring as an integrated component of
capacity building.
Learn By Doing: In a context where
political realities and conflict dynamics are constantly changing, programs
need to be flexible enough to allow for
the incorporation of new learning into
planning for the implementation of the
remainder of an ongoing program.
Pilot First, Implement Later: To avoid
unforeseen risks, and ensure intervention effectiveness, thought should be
given to piloting of project / program
ideas as standard practice.
Reduce Paperwork, Focus on Delivery
and impact: Many international development businesses have dedicated specialists for filling in complicated proposal
forms. Very few local civil society organizations in Afghanistan have this skill
and cannot compete with a fully salaried
professional who has limitless time and
resources to learn about completing

complicated proposals. To remove this

barrier to free and fair competition,
thought should be given to simplifying
formal procedures and reporting requirements. Rigid, and badly designed,
funding application forms are excruciatingly difficult to fill out for countless
national CSOs, sometimes resulting in a
good proposal not being considered on
the account of failing to follow through
the myriad of procedures, sections and

sub-sections that need to be filled out.

Maximize Synergy: All efforts should
be made not to create silos among
CSOs in Afghanistan. Consultations on
womens issues should include other
CSOs whose primary focus is not womens issues. The same argument applies
to including health or education or justice CSOs in discussions of corruption.