Mid-Term Review of the AGIR Programme - Sida

2 F I N D I N G S
2.5 IMPACT OF AGIR
2.5.1 Progress Towards First ’Outcomes’ Emerging from AGIR
The programme is in its third year. For the intermediary SCC, this is its second year
of implementation. Some CSOs joined the programme in 2011. The likelihood of the
programme to produce the expected impacts depends on factors both inside and outside
the scope of the programme. Inside the programme, the ability of CSO partners
to absorb the given capacity strengthening and the internalising of the approach of the
programme are key points for its success. Outside the scope of the programme is the
changing environment of development aid that has been heavily affected by the financial
crisis and the challenges posed in the national Mozambican context, with the
natural resources boom and the risks and opportunities it represents for civil society
capacity building.
Capacity strengthening within the AGIR programme of the CSO partners is on-going
and training in areas such as administrative, financial and human management, results-based
management, gender, human rights and fund raising are contributing to
improve organisations’ internal capacities and to address important issues like gender,
human rights, HIV/AIDS. Although there are some challenges, such as adjusting the
gender training approach to the conditions of the partners, improving and consolidating
internal governance, and adopting results-based management, the programme has
good potential to succeed in attaining the objective of strengthening organisations’
internal capacity and eventually in creating the conditions for self-sustainability.
Most of the contacted CSO partners have expressed their concern about the dramatic
reduction of sources and opportunities of funding for civil society. The push of the
intermediaries to convince donors to join common funds in the context of good donorship
- although a consistent and adequate approach to improve alignment and
harmonisation - will also contribute to reduce the number of available sources of
funding. This implies that either the idea of diversification of sources of funding has
to be redefined – in terms of development partners/donors and non-donors sources –
or additional ways of defining access to funding should be adopted. Alternatives to
this range from a definition of a percentage of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to
fund civil society, which in the current natural resources boom could be viable to
some extent, to the identification of non-traditional or new donors, for example, private
companies. The training on fund-raising provided to partner organisations can
help them to devise ways of diversifying their sources of funding; but the success of
this endeavour also depends on a strategic and creative vision and the management of
civil society organisations.
Although the intermediaries have been very active in lobbying for core funding, in
general, under the current globalised financial crisis it seems unlikely to expect overall
improvement in funding or overall diversification in funding. The AGIR programme
is contributing to foster the adoption of mechanisms for common funding for
CSO partners. In some cases, this stems froms the initiative of intermediaries (e.g.
IBIS and MASC), in others from the initiative of well-established CSO partners in
supporting common pool funding mechanisms for strategic plans (eg. Nwety, WLSA
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