Fostering South-South Connections at the AMP Good Practices Workshop

We at Development Gateway have had the privilege of working in 25 different countries through our Aid Management Program (AMP). These countries are spread throughout so many different regions – West Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Balkans, the Caribbean, and Central America; their experiences vary widely, yet they often encounter similar difficulties and share many of the same goals and aspirations. Concerns range from trying to gain more political buy-in to support their AMP work, to getting development partners to provide timely data consistently and reliably, improving the quality of the data, finding new and better ways to report and analyze the data they have, and going public with their data.

To offer our partner countries the opportunity to share their own experiences and good practices, DG has held an AMP workshop every year since 2008. At the workshop, countries engage in South-South sharing of ideas and practices, and participate in discussions focused on future goals and how the AMP should progress. Everyone has the opportunity to present on what their country has been doing, and in-depth sessions are led by country representatives.

Every year we get feedback about how valuable it is to learn from other countries who are implementing the program. One of the participants from Cote d’Ivoire last year said the workshop “was a good opportunity to learn how other countries such as Ethiopia use [AMP].” It’s also a great opportunity for countries to attend who are not currently using the AMP, but want to learn about the experiences of those who are.

This year’s workshop will be held in Kathmandu, Nepal on December 10-12. We look forward to see the relationships that will be built and the lessons that our partners will share. Every year a general theme runs through the workshop, and this year the theme is: “Meeting the Challenge of Open Data.” While many sessions will be structured around this topic and include some hands-on learning, the workshop is designed to be flexible to adapt to topics into which attendees want to dig deeper. Led by the country participants the workshop gives them an opportunity to share, lead, dictate, create, discuss, and hopefully, plan for the productive use of the AMP to promote the most efficient use of resources, increase transparency and accountability, and allow citizens to know and see where the money goes.