Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are supposed to be nationally owned programmes for poverty reduction that are developed through a participatory process.

According to donors, PRSPs have replaced earlier 'structural adjustment' lending, whereby donors made their aid conditional on policies such as deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation and reducing government spending.

Preparation of a PRSP is a condition for receiving debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, and also for concessional lending from the IMF and World Bank. Increasingly, other donors such as the UK are also linking their aid to PRSPs.

Despite the change in rhetoric, however, the evidence so far is that PRSPs have not succeeded in giving aid recipients more freedom to choose their own policies or in opening up government policies to public discussion. Instead, most PRSPs still include all the old elements of ‘structural adjustment policies’ and in most countries local Civil Society organisations do not feel they have had the chance to fully participate in the preparation of the document.

ActionAid is a member of the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) in Brussels.