Senegal is a Rome Frontier Country and a harmonization pilot for the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA). The social indicators of the country compare poorly with the average for Sub-Saharan Africa and with countries of similar income level. During 2001-02, the main ODA partners in Senegal were the EC, France and IDA. In that period, the share of bilateral partners in gross ODA averaged about 53%. Over 40% of bilateral ODA was used for the social sectors, of which approximately 20% went to education and about 12% was used in the health sector. In December 2001, the Government of Senegal (GoS) completed a full Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in which the pillars are: (i) wealth creation; (ii) capacity building and development of social services; (iii) improvements in the living conditions of the poor; and (iv) implementation of the strategy and monitoring of its outcomes.

The PRSP presents an opportunity for development cooperation partners to streamline their practices and procedures and notably their reporting requirements. The first SPA harmonization mission to Senegal in November 2002 has articulated recommendations on alignment of sector strategies, Plan Decenal (10 year Plan), PRSP, and related monitoring and evaluating indicators that would need to be implemented to facilitate harmonization of development cooperation partners’ assistance around the PRSP. The mission with the aid of fiduciary diagnostics, found that public expenditure links to program objectives need strengthening and also that improvements were needed in expenditure monitoring. The recommendations of the SPA mission were welcomed by the GoS and partners.

At the request of the Government, an initial World Bank exploratory harmonization mission was carried out prior to the Rome High Level Forum. However, the development of the harmonization program is currently on hold pending further confirmation of the GoS on its readiness to lead the process.

The first Consultative Group (CG) meeting since the publication of the PRSP, was held in June 2003.

The World Bank and other development partners completed a Country Financial Accountability Assessment (CFAA) and a Country Procurement Assessment Review (CPAR) in the first half of 2003. Work on these two reports was undertaken in conjunction with a Public Expenditure Review (PER).

Senegal was one of the thirteen partner countries attending the meeting of the Task Team (TT) on Harmonization and Alignment in Paris (2/23/04 – 2/25/04).

OECD/DAC Working Party has developed indicators to monitor progress on harmonization and alignment. These indicators were being field-tested in fourteen countries (including Senegal). This exercise coincided with the annual survey on Budget Support Alignment done by the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA). Six Sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia) of the eighteen countries in the SPA survey, were also included in the OECD/DAC survey. SPA has worked with DAC to avoid duplication, so the SPA questionnaire was included within the (more comprehensive) DAC questionnaire (part D) for these six countries. A draft OECD/DAC survey report has been prepared.

The annual SPA Plenary Meeting took place on January 19-20, 2005 in South Africa. Working Groups and other technical meetings were held on January 16-18, scheduled sequentially for example, the Budget Support Working Group (co-chaired by EC and DFID) and the Sector Support Working Group (co-chaired by Germany and the US).