Ambassador Kristina Svensson Shares Her Memoirs on ACBF Senior Policymakers’ Knowledge Sharing Program

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Ms Emmie Wade, ACBF Knowledge Management Officer held working sessions with Ambassador Kristina Svensson from October 8th to October 12th 2007, in order to launch a process under the ACBF Senior Policymakers and Development Managers’ Knowledge Sharing Program to capture the Ambassador’s wealth of experience guided by her views on bilateral donors development assistance to Africa. Currently retired and living in Sweden and South Africa, Mrs. Kristina Svensson was Sweden’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mauritius in 2001-2005, after serving as Sweden’s Ambassador to Zambia and Malawi from 1996-2001. In 1995-96 Mrs. Svensson worked as an international civil servant at UNDP in the capacity of Senior Program Officer in Burundi. Prior to that, Mrs. Svensson was Member of Parliament in the Swedish Government in 1985-1995, serving in various parliamentary portfolios as Member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs; Member of the Security Council; and Member of the Swedish Delegation to the UN, inter alia. Before then, Mrs. Svensson worked as Principal at the College for Adult Education in Sweden. In Zimbabwe, Mrs. Svensson presided over the Swedish Embassy quite at the onset of the current low spate in the country’s external relations with donors. At a time when Zimbabwe suffered a massive exodus of (European) development agencies, Mrs. Svensson was advising the Swedish Government on the future of Swedish development assistance to Zimbabwe, in particular the nature of Sweden’s future relationship with the Government of Zimbabwe. One of the key messages from Ambassador Svensson’s views on the specific theme on The Future of Bilateral Aid in Africa – Components, Size, Flow, Conditionalities and Relative Importance is the need to ground development assistance in good governance, as the corner stone of donors’ technical cooperation and development assistance, and the importance of democratic political, social and economic institutions for effective development results.