Succeeding in the snakes and ladders game of development in Mozambique: The role of collaborative approaches

This seminar will share insights from the POTENCIAR programme about brokering dialogue in adaptive programmes, examining what incentivises collaboration in highly centralised authoritarian contexts and what we are learning about collaborative practices – including why they operate like ‘ladders’ (some small, some big) to skip over the ‘snakes’ of contextual disabling factors.

POTENCIAR is a programme which has been working to strengthen accountability and responsiveness for improvements in the quality of maternal health services in Northern Mozambique, as part of the FCDO-funded Transparency and Accountability for Inclusive Development (TAcID) initiative.

The programme is implemented by a consortium led by Chemonics International which includes FHI 360 UK, Austral and CESC, with IDS leading the research, evidence and learning function. From its inception in 2020, the programme has developed an innovative approach to evidence-led adaptive programming. This has increasingly come to focus on the importance of collaborative approaches to securing accountability in contexts marked by conflict, political polarisation, closing civic space and/or a growing tendency towards authoritarianism and centralisation of political decision-making.

POTENCIAR has used Political Economy Analysis (PEA) in conjunction with participatory and ethnographic research approaches to identify entry points for tackling the priority issues affecting the quality of maternal health services provided to poor and marginalised women in a conflict-affected region of Mozambique. In this seminar, the team that has been working on a PEA and learning review of the ways in which POTENCIAR has engaged with the political economy of collaboration in Mozambique and will share emerging insights from the study.

The team will then discuss the wider relevance of these insights to current debates on ‘thinking and working politically’ in authoritarian and conflict-affected contexts, in dialogue with leading PEA expert Neil McCulloch.

Speakers

• Karin Alexander, POTENCIAR PEA lead, FHI 360 UK
• Ludo Alcorta, IDS post-doctoral researcher and POTENCIAR Research and Evidence Lead

Discussant

• Neil McCulloch, Executive Director, The Policy Practice

Chair

• Alex Shankland, Fellow in the Power and Popular Politics Cluster and IDS lead for POTENCIAR