SPA, the Strategic Partnership with Africa, was established in 1987 to mobilize the financing required to enable African countries to implement economic reforms. For the first ten years of its existence, the SPA was called the Special Program of Assistance to Africa, and it was focused on helping low-income, debt-distressed reforming countries, by assuring that there was sufficient quick disbursing assistance (QDA) to enable these countries to implement critically needed reform programs with as little pain and disruption as possible. For its first fifteen years membership was restricted to the major bilateral and multilateral donors providing assistance to Africa, including the IMF and the UNDP, representing the UN system, and beginning in 2000, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The SPA is divided into three year phases, SPA1 (1988 to 1990), SPA2 (1991 to 1993), etc. SPA has just launched its sixth phase covering the years 2003-2005.

As the issues facing Africa changed, so has SPA. It recently agreed to expand its membership to include the Secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and a number of African governments. It has also decided to partner with all sub-Saharan African countries, not merely those classified as low-income, debt-distressed and reforming. Its structure has changed as well, and it now consists of a Plenary (which meets once a year) and two Working Groups, one engaged in aligning budget support to national strategies, and the other engaged in aligning sector and other forms of support. In addition there is a Coordinating Forum which is responsible for linking the work of the two groups and being a locus where emerging issues can be discussed. Finally, all the work of the SPA is supported by a Secretariat which is housed at the World Bank.

The goal of SPA is "to support poverty reduction in Africa by increasing the quality and quantity of aid." SPA aims to increase the quantity of aid by encouraging donors to meet the pledges to increase development assistance to Africa that were made at the Monterrey Financing for Development Conference in March 2002 and by monitoring their performance in doing so. SPA will support improvements in the quality of aid by seeking to align that aid, and in particular budget and sector-wide support, to national poverty reduction strategies as articulated in the PRSP or similar documents.

This process is aimed at improving the effectiveness of aid through increasing ownership and reducing transactions costs. The alignment process first seeks to increase national ownership of development projects. It is a widely accepted idea that development programs that are owned, that are in some sense home-grown, will be more successful than those that are imposed from outside. SPA is, therefore, seeking mechanisms for developing processes that will enable the implementation of poverty reduction strategies in ways that maximize ownership. Secondly, it has been clear for some time, that donor programs impose huge costs on African governments in design, negotiation, reporting, procurement and other aspects of implementation. SPA aims at reducing these transaction costs by encouraging donors to align their processes with national processes.

In these efforts, SPA is part of a rich institutional environment of organizations and alliances to improve aid effectiveness. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has been working at harmonizing donor procedures and has published Guidelines on Donor practices. The DAC, together with the multilateral banks, held a high-level conference in Rome in February 2003 to promote aid effectiveness through harmonization and alignment. NEPAD, the UNECA and the DAC are joining together to develop a process of mutual accountability wherein African governments commit themselves to certain standards of political and economic governance, and developed countries commit themselves to increased aid, improved aid effectiveness, open markets and a program to deal with debt issues. SPA?s monitoring of donor practices in the areas of aid quantity, and alignment of budget and sector support is a key component of this accountability framework.

Finally, SPA will create a community of knowledge, through its web-site and other mechanisms, on issues relevant to African development, with particular emphasis on the new partnership characterized by African ownership and increased coherence of donor policies.