Respectful national partnerships key to achieving impact and efficiency in international development

International development faces a funding crisis and an effectiveness crisis in catalysing inclusive economic growth. To address this, the highest priority for development partners – from foundations to multilateral development banks – should be helping drive cost-effective results that matter for emerging markets.

The Better Than Cash Alliance is a UN-based partnership of governments, companies and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to digital payments to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The alliance has been providing its members with demand-based bespoke technical expertise, coalition building and human resources on inclusive digital payments – support that is based on individual countries’ needs and their specific requests.

This work has successfully contributed to its members launching more than 70 national strategies, regulations, laws and decrees, resulting in billions of dollars in cost savings, greater transparency and greater access to digital payments.

The alliance’s work has also resulted in major companies such as Gap, H&M and Unilever making their supply chain more inclusive by prioritizing digital payments for their employees and the communities they source from.

These results of the Better Than Cash Alliance over the last 10 years can be credited to its focus on putting representative governments’ priorities front and centre throughout a transition, highlighting how it can be a cost-effective way of driving inclusive development that works for citizens.

You may not have heard of this organization because its regional teams based in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East focus on results for members, not themselves. The alliance does not take credit for the results achieved by its members, but rather advertises the success achieved by its members.

This approach entails following the lead of governments and other parties who dedicate their lives to their countries’ improvement and generating outcomes that benefit their fellow citizens.

The alliance’s approach can be summarized into the following five actions, which can inspire others working in international development.

Begin with understanding the national, political and local priorities of each country, its immediate and long-term needs and any gaps that need to be filled. Ministers of emerging economies often reflect that the many asks or suggestions they receive do not recognize national priorities or local context.

As Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation, Ato Ahmed Shide, reflects on its country’s partnership: “After Ethiopia became a member of the Better Than Cash Alliance, the team asked what we needed on responsible payment digitization, which no-one else was providing.

“Our priority was an inclusive national digital payment strategy which brought all relevant actors together to agree a national vision consistent with Ethiopia's Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda, Digital Ethiopia strategy and Public Financial Management Reform plan. With the alliance working behind us, we achieved this goal and the Council of Ministers approved Ethiopia's National Digital Payments Strategy in June 2021.”

This is a good example of why donors and development partners should always ask what they can do to help local officials achieve their national and local goals. The alliance’s experience driving payment digitization shows that every trajectory is different, even in rich countries.

In Europe, the Estonian digitalization experience is very different to the German one due to differences in history, culture, government architecture and population size, for example, and the same applies to emerging economies. Kenya’s digital payment ecosystem is very different to India’s national payment platform and digital public infrastructure. This why the first step in every partnership should begin with understanding the national and local priorities of the country.

Find the champions inside the government who are already carrying the work forward. An initiative developed outside of the country which then looks for a champion will often fail, while initiatives co-created with champions on the ground have a greater likelihood of success – for they are the decision-makers on strategy or budget or national prioritization.

Key to success is working both with those at most senior level (minister, central bank governor) and with those at the technical level by having open dialogues with both levels of government.

National governments in emerging economies often have incredible talent working for them and this should be recognized for effective implementation.

The Better Than Cash Alliance team has worked with many brilliant, committed people – dedicated highly-educated officials, who speak multiple languages and are experts in their field.

Many have given up lucrative careers in the private sector, work long-hours, aligning national policies with technical solutions and many also fought internally to ensure digitization remained a high priority in the face of other priorities.

Internal champions are often under-resourced and don’t have capacity or budget to stay up to date with the latest innovations. Therefore, one of the alliance’s roles is to provide them with the expertise they identified as missing to fill their knowledge gaps, including on infrastructure, regulation, innovation and how to ensure women benefit from digitization.

This approach is in contrast with simply parachuting in international “experts” and instead ensures national leaders can address the skills gaps they need to achieve their goals.

“Data and skilled analysis are crucial for effective decision-making and stakeholder communication,” says Eli M. Remolona, Governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines, reflecting on his country’s partnership with the Better Than Cash Alliance. “They help us convey complex policies simply and transparently, ensuring our messages resonate, empower and inspire stakeholders to act. We value partners like the Better Than Cash Alliance, who work with us to amplify our data-driven communication.”

The alliance’s path to success has involved creating safe spaces for governments to learn from each other through peer-based learnings. Peer-to-peer learning allows members to honestly share what works and what doesn’t, it enables sharing successes and not repeating mistakes their peers have made. The alliance has organized multiple peer exchanges all over the world and brought more than 50 countries to India to learn from its inclusive digital payments ecosystem.

The Better Than Cash Alliance lauds the results made public by its members – governments, companies and international organizations – instead of taking credit for the work. This is important to ensure that those who really drove the reforms get credit for their work – the national or company leaders – rather than the international partners.

For example, Finance Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno showcased the Philippines’ digitalization progress from 1% to 30% at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), as an example for the global community of how rapidly digitalizing payments can be a means to accelerate climate action.

We found this communication approach the most respectful of the alliance’s members’ achievements and most effective in building momentum for the members’ agenda.

At a pivotal moment where donors, multilateral development banks and development partners are looking to scale in a context of re-shifting resources, the best ways to achieve impactful economic development in low- and middle-income countries is to build respectful national partnerships that are cognizant of the national and local context.

For international partners to succeed in their mission, they must work together with the leadership of the countries at the recipient end: they must start by understanding the context, find champions inside the governments to work with, recognize the political leadership and the incredible human capital inside the administrations.

To achieve impact and scale, international partners need to move away from coming with pre-defined recipes to, instead, co-create solutions that are based on countries context and are responding to countries knowledge gaps and needs. This will not only help achieve scale but ensure that transition is sustainable as it ensures ownership by the national government.