Priority-setting power is most strongly tied to whoever has financial control

As mapped in figure 1, we found a pattern in which financial control is closely tied to donor-driven agendas. Those speaking from the perspective of the Liberian government often said that plans were given to them by donors and partners rather than developed in consultation with them. While some noted that this process is getting more equitable with time, respondents consistently reported that external funders had a strong say in the direction of what was given attention, so priority-setting power sits primarily with those who have financial control.

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Figure 1

Cyclical process of priority setting.

Most of the time the international partners come with what they want to do. So they prioritize what they want to do in a particular environment, or in a particular area. And in many instances, you either accept it, or it is pushed into your throat. […] It is a bad process. Because when you are building a system, if you want to help, it is good to work with the people that you want to help, [for them] to tell you what their priorities are. And you can work around it so that at the end of the day, they have an ownership to it. But if you decide on what you want to do for [the recipient], there is no ownership. So it’s just thrown at them. (KII 108, Liberian government)

While some respondents spoke of more collaborative partnerships, respondents often noted that there was a hesitancy to say no to donors. As noted by a respondent representing an NGO and implementing partner, this all “comes from a place of fear because of the power dynamic, because these donors. You’re at the whim of these donors, and it’s true: if you do somehow rub one or two personalities the wrong way, that could equal less funding in your country” (KII 202). Another respondent representing an NGO and implementing partner discussed the tension between a foreign university and a Liberian academic partner, noting that while the Liberian academic had specific needs for their university lab to function, the foreign university had its own set of restrictions based on the overall donor funding. This can dilute communication, leading to what one respondent described as ‘misaligned priorities’:

But at the end of the day, the funding is still coming from a third party that you have to negotiate, and that triangle always creates opportunities for miscommunication, misunderstanding, misaligned priorities. Like unless the money is directly [controlled by] the people who are supposed to be benefiting from it, there’s always a risk. And relying on goodwill can only go so far. (KII 207, NGO and implementing partner)

Some respondents, even those in the Liberian government, noted increased efforts in collaboration and agenda-setting during collaboration. However, these increased efforts were often voluntary actions by willing donors. One respondent representing the perspective of a foreign donor detailed the donor engaging in an annual portfolio review with the Liberian government, although also saying that it is ‘not a formal requirement’ (KII 111). However, the same underlying power dynamics still seemed to drive the collaboration, causing recipients to adapt to the priorities of the donors.

A lot of times, the donors already have their priorities, and it’s sometimes difficult to align their priorities with yours, and then you have to adapt to meet the funding requirements. And sometimes it might not end up within the direct alignment that you would have hoped for; that is, the initial benefits that you hope you would accrue from the funding that’s available. You don’t achieve that, because the priority, the end result, has been modified somewhat. So that can be a problem. Some donors tend to be more flexible than others, some are not at all. And unless you can stick to what their position is, you lose the funding. (KII 203 and 204, Liberian academics)

Another perspective indicated that gestures made towards equity during collaboration were more intended to ‘check the box’ of collaborative actions:

I think there’s the power dynamic where funders have a lot of power in designing partnerships and they’re not fully consultative the way that they should be, and even if they’re consultative—I’ve learned to really sort of despise the word consult, consultation—just meeting with someone and shaking their hand doesn’t actually empower that individual. It just means that you’re checking the box. (KII 202 NGO and implementing partner)

Implementation plans are driven mostly by donor priorities, with outputs that often reflect donor measures and metrics

Most of those speaking on behalf of the Liberian government were fully aware that donors had obligations to their own organisations. Some respondents representing foreign donors acknowledged this tension, noting that in the end, the final decisions of how money was spent in Liberia was not controlled by the government of Liberia:

So we have to find the balance of what we think here, from our perspective, is the right thing to do, and what also meets [foreign donor’s] priorities and expectations. But the approval is not… it’s not the government of Liberia that gets to decide what we do. This is [foreign] taxpayer money. And the [foreign donor] is the one ultimately we have to work within that constraint. (KII 111, Foreign donor)

This approach often leads to outcomes being defined to meet the priorities of the donor, which results in outcome metrics centred on the donor framework of achievement.

It’s like not just priorities, but even the results are like, who decides what success looks like? […] Part of the problem is the way that the funders define success. The way that a lot of donor-funded projects are measured, their success is measured by performance-based indicators. And I think, you know, an important measure of success is contribution towards building systems and a lot of long-term things that are difficult to measure within funding cycle of even five years. That also distorts what how things are planned and how success is defined, and that’s a cycle. (KII 305, NGO and implementing partner)

Often, those speaking from the perspective of the Liberian government and NGO and implementing partners described wanting to impact long-term systems, as noted in the quote above. While long-term systems interventions were not discussed as directly by those representing the perspective of foreign donors, one respondent did note that ‘time and relationships dominate as indicators of the success of a project’ (KII 104). However, shorter timelines for measuring success benefited those working for foreign donors more than the recipients, as these timelines can allow for individuals to meet personal milestones that advance their own career. Foreign nationals are rarely in one foreign officer role for >5 years, for example, and there is a pressure to meet certain metrics for career advancement.

If you’re a kind of new donor agent in the field, what you want to do is have something that’s your own, right, you want to change something. If nothing changes, and you just implement your predecessor’s plan, well, that’s not really going to help you get promoted. So there’s an HR dynamics problem on top of this kind of general credible commitment problem. (KII 304, implementing partner and NGO)

Underlying structures influencing collaborative inequities

After identifying the cyclical connections between financial control, priority-setting power, the implementation of a plan and the determination of success, we then aimed to explore factors that influenced collaborations between donors and recipients.

We rotated the cyclical process of priority setting (figure 1) to demonstrate our findings that explore how additional factors influence and drive the ‘surface level’ cycle of collaboration (figure 2). How donors determined which projects or programmes would be funded, and how those projects or programmes would be implemented within their priority agenda in Liberia was described by respondents as a unidirectional, inequitable process. We aimed to understand what embedded, obscure forces continue to allow for such inequity in collaborations, especially considering global calls for equity. We found interplay between three underlying factors in our data that were associated with driving collaborative inequity: history of prior of engagement, level of transparency and patterns of accountability. While each are described independently below, we acknowledge many points of overlap among them.

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Figure 2

Underlying structures influencing collaborative inequity.

History of prior engagement

The history of prior engagement refers to the ways in which prior engagement in Liberia has informed current collaborations. Many respondents speaking from the perspective of the Liberian government noted that the history of engagement with Liberia as a postconflict country still influences the ways that incoming partners engage, often with an approach that reflects decision making in times of crisis. Most Liberian respondents from both the government perspective and those in academia did talk about wanting to change patterns that were established in a previous, more crisis-focused time, but have encountered several barriers. As one Liberian academic noted, there was “no room to change the dynamics. People wanted to do what they wanted to do, I guess it made it easier for them, or they felt that this is something everybody else was doing so we do it” (KII 307).

On the other hand, respondents speaking from the perspective of foreign donors noted that a history of ‘corruption, mismanagement and poor prioritisation’ (KII 105, Foreign donor) in Liberia drives them to behave in certain ways with disbursing funds: “We don’t turn money over to a country that has a big history of corruption” (KII 113, Foreign donor). Most respondents, both Liberian and foreign, were not dismissive of the issue of corruption in the Liberian government. However, one NGO and implementing partner speculated that the fear of corruption prevents trust in local partnerships:

Because of this innate fear of corruption in African countries, people hide behind that to say, ‘Well, these are taxpayer dollars, so we have to have all these controls and mechanisms’. So we’ve created these systems of layers of staff within a donor agency and working through [donor country] partners to implement a program as opposed to what we do in the [donor country]: do we trust this institution to run this project? Is the leadership behind this project good? [Then they] give the money directly to the institution, and then just monitor it, lightly, and trust that the work is going to get done. That isn’t done for most of the partnerships that I work with in East and West Africa, and I think the root of it is this fear around corruption. (KII 202, NGO and implementing partner)

As a result of broad distrust of the government, there was a general view that donors would avoid giving funds directly to the Liberian government. A respondent representing the perspective of NGOs and implementing partners noted that the fiduciary risk makes donors hesitant to engage until a recipient country is deemed functional, therefore impeding the ability of a government to achieve its own trajectory of growth:

They [donors] resist channeling their money to a recipient country government until it’s running as well as their own. You know, like at that point, they don’t need your money, you know, the country’s already running really well. So, it’s, you know, you want to wait for the country be perfect before you take any risk. […] And what that does, a preoccupation with fiduciary risk, ends up becoming a strategic risk that your programs can fail. You're not helping the country to achieve its development goals and progress. (KII 101, NGO and implementing partner)

Beyond a crisis-oriented approach, postconflict patterns and government corruption, some Liberian respondents described foreign partners (donors, NGOS, academics, etc) operating in Liberia in ethically questionable ways that reflect ongoing, historical patterns. This included foreign partners practising extractive research or operating projects in ways that would typically not be accepted in other settings.

Most of us professionals are timid, and we realize because we are too poor, that we don’t have a right to question somebody when he comes to say, ‘I’m bringing money to help you’. I don’t believe that. Poverty is not a reason to shut up. [NGO] is conducting research I don’t know, and I can almost guarantee they have never reported to anybody in this country. Nobody knows what [NGO] is doing. Nobody. Is that right, or wrong? That happens only in Liberia. And perhaps only in certain conditions in Africa. That’s grossly wrong. (KII 308, Liberian academic)

The NGO and implementing partners did tend to have an awareness of the tension of working in a country that is not their own, especially coming from western training or practice. This spoke mostly to a colonial history of engagement where blatant saviorism and emphasis on western knowledge drove partnerships. As put from the perspective of an NGO and implementing partner:

If you want to really serve, if you want to be useful to them, the first thing is to forget about your expertise. You bring some technology, bring knowledge, but you are not an expert in people’s suffering. You are not the expert in the context in which you are here to work: people on the ground are. Therefore, if you really want to make good use of what you know, let the experts actually teach you what you need to learn how to be useful. In my words: learn how to be useful, and they will be the one to teach you. (KII 209, NGO and implementing partner)

Level of transparency

The level of transparency refers to what information regarding resource availability that partners are willing to reveal to one another. Respondents noted a pattern of donors’ contracting with NGOs to implement work as opposed to the government, often creating a gap in knowledge for the government regarding what is happening on the ground. Foreign donors were aware of this pattern as well. One such example, noted below, discussed that while engagement with the Liberian government could inform the redacted national document, this process was not obligated to involve the government:

We should definitely, where we can, build our work plan side by side with [the Liberian government] so that what we put down as our activities is approved by them. But some of the money flows, not to the government, some of the money flows to implementing partners and our work plans are developed with the implementing partner, and the government may not even have any visibility into what they’re supposed to be doing. Like I said, we inform what the partners do based on [national document.] But the process isn’t obliged to take [the government’s] opinion. (KII 105, Foreign donor)

Disparities in overhead costs furthered this issue. Overhead costs, also called indirect costs or management fees, are the operational costs (such as rent, utilities, facilities management, administrative costs, etc) that are incurred by the institution(s) that house a project. Indirect costs are often calculated as a percentage of the overall award amount, but the actual percentages charged for indirect costs vary among donor institutions and recipients. When indirect costs were not disclosed or discussed, Liberian government representatives were unsure of how much money was coming into the country.

One thing that was of concern was the NGOs, not the donors, because, you know, the donors will channel funding through the international NGOs. The concern was that they [NGOs] will come and give the narrative of what needs to be done, you know, but the actual financial display was kept secret. […] And I always told them we know that you write proposals, we know that a certain percentage of that money is there for your administrative cost, you know, we know but we also want to know how much is there for service delivery. You cannot get up and tell Liberia, ‘Oh we channel $2 million through [external organization], you know’, and then you come and you use 50% of that money on administrative costs. It is wrong. (KII 103, Liberian government)

Another example highlighted how such lack of disclosure can cause poor public perception of the government. Yet again, when foreign donors make public announcements of the amount of an investment but do not publicly disclose what percentage goes to overhead or indirect costs, it creates an illusion that some portion of the money has been lost by the Liberian government. A few respondents from the perspective of the Liberian government spoke of this communication divide.

So in other words, if you come in with 9 million dollars and you go public that this entity is coming with 9 million dollars, you stand there as a government representative of the country. The typical Liberians are not looking at that entity; you are the one they are looking at. So after a couple of months, or a couple of years, and they do not see anything tangible, is alluded to you that, ‘oh the people said they had $9 million, it seems that you have eaten the $9 million, and this, this’. And so forth. They won’t understand that the $9 million has an overhead that has to go back, that expatriates and other people will have to come, their salaries and everything going to come from it and other things and so forth. (KII 108, Liberian government)

Finally, most Liberian academics spoke of how their funding typically comes filtered through a partner determined by the donor: “The funding usually goes directly to a [foreign] based organization or institution, and then we collaborate with them. So they then dictate how the processes are in line with whatever agreement you have with them” (KII 203 and 204). This dynamic highlighted that even if foreign donors dedicated money to Liberian academic institutions, the Liberian recipients still had to work within the expectations of the middle party. The same respondents also noted that principal investigators who spend limited time in Liberia are often unaware of the complexity these issues can create for the Liberian institution.

Patterns of accountability

The donor, who holds the priority-setting power, is also able to create structures to hold the recipient accountable while often overlooking their own accountability back to the Liberian government.

There aren’t really any systems for accountability in the other direction; that is, for a funder to be even really questioned for maybe withdrawing funding or changing their priorities, or not providing the amount of funding originally promised or, you know, any number of things, the decisions they make about what can be paid for and what can’t. [The] extent that they’re being held accountable, that’s internal itself. They’re self-regulated really. (KII 305, NGO and implementing partner)

Many respondents spoke of accountability as forms of auditing and reporting. Often, this was a one-way street in which the Liberian government was held accountable by foreign donors. Meanwhile, there were very few discussions and concrete examples as to how foreign donors were held accountable to the Liberian government.

While the interview guide did not specifically ask about auditing, auditing was often spoken about from the perspective of those working in the Liberian government, although respondents representing the perspectives of foreign donors never discussed audits as a means for accountability. Many members of the Liberian government noted the importance of auditing for “recognizing the limitations in your system and [that] building it over time really does help to strengthen your partnership” (KII 110). However, it was noted that “you can audit on both sides but again I’m saying to audit NGOs and international partners is difficult. They will audit themselves and what they give you, that’s it” (Liberian government, KII 302). Auditing of the Liberian government was discussed as being conducted in two ways: internal and external auditing. Internal audits reflected the government’s ability to manage projects and financing on their own, ‘to determine what are some of the gains and pitfalls identified in implementation’ (KII 119). External audits reflected those being implemented by external sources, such as foreign funders sending in outside auditors to monitor the progress of projects. A respondent from the perspective of NGOs and implementing partners noted that when they worked with the Liberian government, “they were audited 17 times by international audit firms and passed all of them” (KII 101).

In contrast, when asked about forms of accountability, respondents representing the foreign donor perspective spoke more often about reporting back to their own organisations or home countries as opposed to any binding auditing or accountability requirements to the Liberian government. When there were systems of accountability in place to the Liberian government, they were still directed by the foreign donor. One respondent noted that they voluntarily delivered reports to the Liberian government even though the government never asked for them. On the other hand, another respondent representing the perspective of foreign donors noted the development of formal measures of accountability with the government such as joint agreements, quarterly expenditure reports, annual portfolio reviews and work planning processes, highlighting inconsistency regarding how foreign donors worked with the government. When asking for more joint accountability and oversight, one respondent from the perspective of the Liberian government noted that this was often a time-consuming battle:

Next, another example, and one thing I always try to push for, I’ve been very unsuccessful in getting there, is, to ensure that no implementing partner, regardless of who you are, should submit any report for implementation on any activity in Liberia, without it being sanctioned by the agency of government or the institution that you work with over time. That is not always the case. That is not always the case. I’ve tried, I’ve been successful on few occasions, especially when I was [title], but again, it takes too much time, energy and effort getting some of these international groups to understand this. If you work a lot of programs, organizations that implement particular tasks, the report should be done jointly, so that everyone agrees on what goes into that report before it is shared. That is technical accountability. (KII 112, Liberian government)