The Swarm Principle? A Sub-national Spatial Analysis of Donor Coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa

In light of greater attention to donor coordination and harmonization, this paper considers whether foreign aid donors suffer from a lack of coordination in the spatial placement of foreign aid projects. We present a framework for assessing the level of donor coordination subnationally. If donors cluster projects in areas with concentrated need, or spread out projects in areas of diffuse need, then we conclude that donors are coordinating well. Because co-financing may be one mechanism by which donors coordinate their efforts, as a second step we examine whether the frequency of donor co-financing increases the quality of coordination. For the first time, subnational geo-referenced foreign aid data for the World Bank (WB) and African Development Bank (AfDB) are available, making it possible to map the coordination of foreign aid along with subnational poverty levels. Results indicate that coordination problems and inaccurate targeting of needs abound. There is little evidence that countries with higher frequency of co-financed activities achieve better overall donor coordination.