Building and supporting PRSPs in Africa: What has worked well so far? What needs changing?

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative came out of the 1999 Cologne annual meeting of the G-7 governments, when the leaders of the industrialised countries announced the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC II).(1) The joint Boards of the IMF and the World Bank officially approved the PRSP in December 1999 as a new approach to the challenge of reducing poverty in low-income countries and as a framework for development assistance. The PRSP approach is supposed to represent a major departure from previous development strategies whereby the World Bank and the IMF dictated the directions of economic policies in poor countries. Implementation of the PRSP approach is now in its sixth year and the purpose of this article is to critically examine the challenges that African governments are confronted with in preparing and implementing credible, nationally owned poverty reduction strategy plans. The article further examines the degree to which the PRSP approach has transformed donor - recipient country relations, thus allowing African governments the policy space to develop home-grown policies.