Final Report Summary - PARTNERSHIP (Donor-Government Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa) Research for the project “Donor-Government Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa” was carried out between September 2012 and August 2015. During this time period, the project has made considerable progress in advancing the state of the art in regards to our understanding of donor-government relations and institutional change in foreign aid. It has also served to accelerate the PI’s integration into her new host environment: the Centre for Conflict Analysis and Management (CICAM) at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Over the course of the research period, the PI conducted substantial fieldwork in three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Uganda, Ghana and Tanzania. In a period of two years, the PI conducted more than 100 interviews with high-level policy makers on both the donor and recipient-country sides, resulting in a wealth of interview data on donor-government relations in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, in each of these country contexts, the PI established a large network of contacts, including several institutional affiliations. During the research period, she also traveled back to Rwanda, where she had previously conducted research to follow up with respondents.In addition to her in-country fieldwork, the PI has also completed the first survey of high-level donor officials working at the recipient country-level across multiple countries. In total, 114 individuals from twenty-three different donor agencies in twenty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa completed the survey, which asked a series of questions about how development cooperation works in recipient countries. Data from the survey provides a wealth of cross-national data on donor-government relations not previously available and adds a mixed-methods dimension to the project. During the final year of the project, the PI has made substantial progress on disseminating the results of the study. Most significantly, the PI has written a book manuscript entitled, The Development Dance: Bargaining and Institutional Innovation in Foreign Aid, which aims to make a substantial contribution to our understanding of why and how institutions of foreign aid change and evolve over time. In addition, the PI is working on several, stand-alone papers, which are at various stages of development (published, under review, and in progress). She will continue to work on publishing her results over the coming year. The PI has also sought to disseminate her research to development practitioners by producing a policy brief, which was disseminated to respondents that participated in her survey, and by conducting in-country workshops in the places where she conducted fieldwork. She also has written her book to be broadly accessible to practitioners, as well as academics. The CIG has enabled the PI to conduct an extensive amount of research, helping to accelerate her academic career and integration with her host. It has helped to establish the PI as a thought leader on donor-government relations and the political economy of foreign aid in both the Netherlands and Europe more broadly. More information about the PI and the project is available at: www.haleyswedlund.com. She can be reached at h.swedlund@fm.ru.nl.
