Country ownership has become both a buzzword and a battle cry since it was enshrined as one of the four guiding principles for development cooperation at the 2011 high-level forum on aid effectiveness in Busan, South Korea. While progress toward loosening donors’ grip on aid efforts has been meager at best, the general sentiment seems to be that recipient countries will have increased involvement in deciding on their own development in the medium to long term.
Some studies have already pointed toward this shift in decision-making.
One of the findings of a 2013 study by the Overseas Development Institute, which explored what the evolution of the aid landscape meant for developing countries, showed that the rise of emerging donors seems to be accompanied by greater influence of recipient governments on how aid money is spent.