Reference
cc Mr Porter
Mr Kirkness
Mr Browning Mr Rae
Mr Beattie
Mr Turner
Mr Kcleanl
Mr Manieco
Mr D Williams (o.r.)
AID POLICY AND MANAGEMENT REVIEWS
Your minute of 4 February.
2. I am reluctant to come out against proposals which seen to offer a more rational, systematic method of the management of our bilateral programmes then does the present system, und I certainly see cone advantages in the proposed regime of a triennial aid policy review paper and discussion and an annual aid management review:-
3.
(i) it would servo to give me, as Head of Division, a regular
opportunity to take a view of developments in our wholo programme in individual countries and, in consultation with other interested parties, to introduce changes in direction where these appeared necessery;
(ii) it would afford Heads of Department and desk officers the
opportunity to concentrate their minds annually on the overall progress (or otherwise) of programmes in their countries rather better than do the present quarterly progress reports, which tend to be diffuse and to contain a lot of detail;
}
(iii) it might well help desk officers and Heads of Department
to submit their bids for the Aid Framework on a surer basis than they can do at present.
Nevertheless, I think that we must recognise certain considerable obstacles to the introduction generally of Mr Beattie's proposals. I hope he will not think it impertinent of wo to suggest that his minute to you of 31 January appears to have been written from the standpoint of someone who is managing our programmes in dcpendent territories. In those the UK is always the major, and often the only, donor and we have ultimate political and administrative control. Although violent political disturbances have certainly not been unknown in colonies in the past, the constant succession of revolutions, coups d'etat, pronunciamentos, military interventions, dictatorships, cabals, rigged elections, tribal animosities, executions, closure of borders - all the catalogue of political upheavals which have become everyday occurrences in one part of Africa or another either do not occur in cremaining colonies or, if they did, could somehow be controlled. To put it slightly less picturesque nay, wo are in a position at least to try, and to try unilaterally, to remove any constraints to development which might exist in dependent territories, and consequently aid management of the regular and rather intensive kind which Er Beattie proposes is a practical proposition. There is an analogy here in some elements of our bilateral programmes in independent countries; for example, in those to which we supply Jarge numbers or supplemented staff, we have annual manpower reviews which are becoming, in my view, extremely effective; but they are effective because in that particular sector vo are the sole, or overwhelmingly
/major