ajor aid donor and we can make our views prevail. In certain countries, whore we are no longer the major donor but have close aid relations long standing, we are able to make provision for periodic reviews of progress of our whole programmes at stated intervals; this is the case in the three Southern African countries and in Kenya.
4. I am far from persuaded that such systematic management would be appropriate, or even possible, in the greater number of independent African countries. In many, even if our programme is large from our own standpoint, we are not a major donor; situations change very rapidly and our operations in these circumstances have to be managed with great flexibility. Modifications in policy could not be left to the next annual management review but have to be made in the normal course of our business, which is, of course, a continuous process of aid management. In such circumstances, it is difficult to see the advantage of neatly setting out anally on a single pieco of paper statements of how far we have succeeded in achieving the objectives formulated in the policy review paper; the review would simply tell us what we know already.
5.
You
I would like to mention two further considerations which might militato against the usefulness of aid policy and management reviews. The policy review would obviously be interdepartmental, just as the production and consideration of Country Policy Papers is at present. But if the annual aid management review were also interdepartmental, I feel that the meetings would be unwieldy, would give other departments opportunities for irrelevant interference and that, as a consequence, the aid management objective would be lost. Secondly, Development Divisions would obviously have to participate in the management reviews on those countries in which they operate. know how stringently the Development Divisions are staffed, and I cannot imagine that their Heads could really comfortably spare the time to make several journeys to London each year to take part in the discussions.
If one tried to get round this difficulty by arranging for the management reviews of several countries to take place concurrently, this would lead to a bunching of several roviews within a period of, say, two weeks, during which time other operations would have to come to a standstill. (I estimate that in Africa Division the system would have to apply to a total of 15 countries, all but 4 of which are covered by DevDivs.)
6. Finally, should the new system be brought into effect, it would be essential, in order that the additional burden on loads of Department and desk officers should not be too great, that the aiù policy roview should supersede the present Country Policy Paper and that the annual aid management review should supersede the present quarterly reports.
MPJL.
M PJ Lynch
24 February 1977