This paper focuses on the international aid effectiveness agenda under the Paris Declaration and more specifically on its core principle of ‘ownership’ of development by developing countries. Focusing on Rwanda as a study case, it proposes to discuss how national social actors understand ‘ownership’ and what underlies such a conception. Rather than assuming the consensual premise of the aid effectiveness agenda, I reverse this approach by confronting this consensus on the ground, through the narratives and practices of national social actors. Instead of taking ‘ownership’ as a normative principle consensually agreed upon a priori, that only needs to be operationalized through a program of actions, this paper addresses ‘ownership’ as a question, an issue and an intervention that should be linked to the ways national actors conceive of the trajectory of their country, the ways to materialize it and the context within which this materialization takes place.
