Mid-Term Review of the AGIR Programme - Sida

2 F I N D I N G S
political participation implies ensuring a basic human right; and finally, for ORAM,
land tenure is at the core of guaranteeing access to basic rights to many people in rural
areas. These arguments are all consistent, and tend to be used as a justification for
the absence of explicit mainstreaming of this issue in partner organisation interventions.
AGIR itself has not dedicated much time to the reflection of human rights
mainstreaming, which makes the overall weakness on the interventions in this area
more understandable, or even more critical to the understanding of the meaning of
human rights mainstreaming among partners.
2.6 SUSTAINABILITY – SUSTAINING AGIR
2.6.1 Reaching a Sustainable Level of Donor Participation in AGIR
AGIR support to identify opportunities for local, national and international funding is
critical. The programme is being implemented in a context of the financial crisis,
which has considerably impacted the availability of funding and the strategic priorities
of the donors. In this regard, some organisations have had their sources of funding
dramatically reduced; and in some cases AGIR is the sole source of funding or
accounts for a considerable part of the organisations’ core funding. In relation to the
AGIR programme, there is real danger of increasing donor dependence on partner
organisations that are selected and involved in the programme. The addition of more
donors in the AGIR programme could exacerbate this problem, with considerable
funding available to a select few partner organisations, while removing this funding
source from others outside of the programme.
Consequently, since the current funding of civil society in Mozambique is at a critical
juncture, there is space for additional donors to join the programme. From the perspective
of programme management, additional donors added to the AGIR programme
could potentially mean more transaction costs, unless principles of good donorship
are applied. The progress made in this area in the programme through the
focus on core funding, the facilitation and lobbying efforts of the intermediaries to
convince donors to join common funding mechanisms, and through supported reporting
mechanisms to reduce the burden for CSOs, has laid the ground for a more effective
management of a multiple donor funding mechanism. Perhaps key to the discussion
on the addition of new donors is the acceptance by them of the principle of good
donorship as it is implemented within the AGIR programme. While there can be (as
the review team observed within the AGIR programme) management problems that
are integral to its use (the difficulty of directed support), the AGIR intermediaries
have initiated a course of action that can be instrumental to promote good donorship
in support to civil society.
The selection process for partner organisations and its link to donor dependency is
also a potential concern. This is mainly dependency to the intermediaries, which can
be considered to extend to the (external/government) donors, the meaning here is
slightly different. As noted earlier, the selection of long-time CSO partners can help
perpetuate the dependency of these organisations on the intermediaries. While finan-
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