Summary

• The Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF), the primary development agreement between donors and the Afghan government, provides political guidelines for Afghan reform and continued donor support.
• With a new administration inaugurated in the fall of 2014, donors and Afghan officials are looking to refresh the three-year-old agreement. President Ashraf Ghani set out his vision for reform in “Realizing Self-Reliance,” a policy document released in conjunction with the December 2014 conference in London, and reiterated some of these goals in his March 2015 state visit to Washington, DC.
• The TMAF has proven useful as a coordinating mechanism among and between donors and the Afghan government, but various factors—political, social, financial, and bureaucratic— have limited results.
• Addressing the policy trade-offs requires a clearer vision of TMAF’s ultimate purpose. Is the document intended to organize policy-level cooperation on all development efforts or is it a targeted and sequenced blueprint for enabling Afghan financial independence?
• A shift in overall emphasis toward economic growth and revenue generation will be key to lasting gains for individual Afghans.
• Narrow focus and an inherently political nature inhibited progress on rule of law, gender, and anticorruption. Future indicators should give space for policy discussion on health, education, jobs, agriculture, and infrastructure.
• On-budget and alignment efforts should maximize use of existing engagement forums and project design mechanisms to help shift aid reforms away from contentious debate and toward more reciprocal and productive dialogue.
• The TMAF has implied conditionality built in. Donor use of incentive mechanisms should help drive policy dialogue but may arise from a breakdown of trust. Incentives require a calculated strategy that features clear, objective metrics. Pragmatic and collective use of monitoring may support the data for such metrics.

About the Report

This report explores the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF) for Afghanistan, which, after three years of implementation, donors and Afghan officials will refresh in 2015. Based on fieldwork and interviews and funded by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the report looks into the dynamics shaping the agreement and discusses its background, how this has limited reform progress, and how political, economic, and cultural factors constrain the policy options for those seeking to adjust it.

About the Author

Trent Ruder is an economic growth specialist who has worked in and on Afghanistan since 2011, advising Afghan firms in Wardak Province and serving as lead donor coordinator for USAID in Kabul.