The venue of the 2014 Busan Global Partnership Workshop (6 -7 November, 2014 ) was the Ewha Womens University, in Seoul, the capital of South Korea.  Sponsored in part by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that country, and UNDP, the meetings aim was to offer an opportunity  jointly for participants to take stock of specific achievements and challenges from implementing the Busan Commitments since Busan HLF 4 and Mexico HLM and to share concrete action plans in addressing the challenges, with a view to set out “multi-stakeholder” actions to accelerate the progress of enhancing effective cooperation on the ground.

In addition, it was meant to review and discuss specific lessons learnt and initiatives running at country level on key priority areas related to the four shared principles – country ownership, focus on results, inclusive development partnerships, and transparency and accountability.

Historical Perspective of the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation

Shared principles to achieve common goals

• The Busan Partnership document specifically highlights a set of common principles for all development actors that are key to making development cooperation effective.
• Ownership of development priorities by developing counties: Countries should define the development model that they want to implement.
• A focus on results: Having a sustainable impact should be the driving force behind investments and efforts in development policy making
• Partnerships for development: Development depends on the participation of all actors, and recognises the diversity and complementarity of their functions.
• Transparency and shared responsibility: Development co-operation must be transparent and accountable to all citizens

These principles are recognised and accepted by all those involved in development co-operation, from donor and recipient country governments to providers of south-south cooperation, international organisations, civil society, parliamentarians and local government. The wide participation of a range of actors with differentiated responsibilities and shared goals is one of the notable characteristics of this partnership.

Workshop Outline – Synopsis of Each session with Key learnings

The Workshop was divided into 7 Plenary Sessions, with 3 working group sessions spread over the two day period. The sessions offered an opportunity for the participants to take stock of specific achievements and challenges from implementing the Busan commitments since the Busan HLF 4 and Mexico HLM and to share concrete action plans in addressing the challenges with the view to set out an overall tone of the workshop that is “multi-stakeholder actions” to accelerate the progress of enhancing effective cooperation on the ground. In this session, what was presented by the speakers included the key takeaways and vision on the implementation of the Busan Principles, and these included:

• A report that only 48 countries participated in the M&E framework report
• A meeting was held in April to take stock on how the Busan Principles were being implemented

In addition, the highlights of progress and challenges from the GPEDC Monitoring report were presented. Other issues that were presented included the specific achievements and challenges from implementing the Busan commitments since the Busan HLF 4 and Mexico HLM. Some of the issues pointed out included:

• How to approach the development effectiveness , taking into practice the 4 Busan Principles and bringing a broad range of partners and partnerships
• That despite progress having been made, there are still challenges (increasing poverty, increasing inequalities), therefore there is need to focus on translating the principles into behaviour change and impact that can be seen on the ground.

That voluntary Initiatives are a concrete representation of the inclusive outlook and voluntary engagement of the GPEDC

• Supporting Voluntary Initiatives and incorporating new ones is necessary
• Continue to strive to deliver concrete results

A report was also presented on the concrete actions needed in addressing the challenges and areas of priorities.  What was also highlighted was that Accountability being at the heart of GPEDC, this would support the implementation efforts in individual countries.  Also Accountability was a necessity if to gain donor trust. The issue of inclusiveness was looked at in terms of how can this be translated into stronger recognition of non state actors and commitments to ensure development effectiveness benefits both men and women. It was seen that more action is needed to make partnerships a full reality on the ground.  Engaging in Inclusive partnerships would mean moving towards a common understanding of an enabling environment for CSOs; promoting country level dialogue in existing accountability frameworks.  This would include expanding the approach to Public Private dialogue so as to fully understand the requisites needed to have meaningful dialogue.  How do we attain this? Through strengthening national capacities (forging multi-stakeholder partnerships). It was observed that partnerships and dialogues are the focus to deliver results, as dialoging would yield trust and understanding among the partners. This could be at three levels,

1. High political country level
2. Ministerial level( perhaps with a specific inference on reforms)
3. Technical level, with the technocrats.

Key to these partnerships would be the aspect of establishing networks and maintaining them, with the underlying approach that is results based. It would also be necessary to use program based approaches.

Brought to the attention of the participants was that the 2011

The Busan Meeting is a platform that seeks to pave way for private sector to participate in development effectiveness, and by so doing, would yield such results as job creation, increased incomes and wealth creation.  It was pointed out that SMEs are operating at micro levels due to such challenges as lack of finance, limited labour resource, limited technology, etc, and the challenge is on us to ensure that we promote capacity in them, attract labour that is going out country for greener pastures. Other interventions could be in attracting foreign investments, and have the private sector business rethinking their CSR policies from that of “project based” to sustainable empowerment.

The session from the Building Blocks ensued with the observation that support towards capacity development and knowledge sharing among countries.  It was felt that future focus on the Building Blocks could be to work on creating an Enabling Environment for CRF, with a buy-in on senior leadership support, results focused organizational culture, effective change management practices, multi stakeholder cooperation among government, private sector and CSOs; and lastly , get a buy-in from donors to partner in CRF

 ZBIDF presentation – “A platform for partnering”

The ZBIDF presentation was by Ms Sylvia Mutale, the Extractives Sector Broker, and mainly focused on the potential partnerships that were being forged in Zambia. It sought to offer a perspective of “action on the ground” with respect to the different partnership models in the three different sectors that the facility is currently engaged in, namely the Agriculture, Manufacturing and Extractive Sector. The presentation aimed at showcasing the role of partnership brokering, and the need to engage them if to have successful partnerships that are embedded in a culture of trust and understanding that has been built through dialogue. The proposed partnerships showcased included the ZAM skills building under the Manufacturing Sector, Freshmark / Farmer partnership, and the Life-Jacket.   As the forum was a multi stakeholder one, with donor agencies, the ZBIDF sought to advertise the M4P that will entail into donor support for the program.

Supportive comments were from the USAID representative who indicated that the facility was a very clear indication of what the Busan Partnering was all about in the sense of it showing the action and future impact in terms of poverty alleviation, job creation and increased incomes.