'The Betteraid.blog is the place to find gossip, inside stories and interesting tit-bits on how rich country governments and multilateral institutions are spending their aid money. Many public commitments to improve the way aid money is delivered to poor people are not being implemented. At the same time some changes are underway and good precedents being set.

This collaborative blog was launched in September 2007, by a group of concerned civil society activists (see links in right hand col more...

'Betteraid.org is a campaign website that aims to provide information and updates on aid effectiveness issues, especially related to the CSO parallel process towards the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra September 2008 reviewing the Paris Declaration.'

Winner of Choice magazine's Outstanding Academic Title award: "...This relatively honest evaluation of the success and failures of donor assistance is a valuable contribution to understanding the complex issue of aid assessment...This volume is strongly recommended for those interested in case studies concerning aid in Africa." -- J. M. Warner, College of Wooster, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, December 2001.

Foreign assistance is a fundamental component of the international affairs
budget and is viewed by many as an essential instrument of U.S. foreign policy.
Since the end of the Cold War, many have proposed significant changes in the size,
composition, and purpose of the program, several of which have been adopted. The
focus of U.S. foreign aid policy has also been transformed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This report provides an overview of the U.S. foreign aid program, b more...

Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. Some experts charge that aid has enlarged government bureaucracies, perpetuated bad governments, enriched the elite in poor countries, or just been wasted. Others argue that although aid has sometimes failed, it has supported poverty reduction and growth in some countries and prevented worse performance in others.

In February 2003, leaders of the major multilateral development banks and international and bilateral organizations, and donor and recipient country representatives gathered in Rome for the first High-Level Forum on Harmonization (HLF-Rome). They committed to take action to improve the management and effectiveness of aid and to take stock of concrete progress, before meeting again in early 2005. The program set out in the Rome Declaration presented general guidelines for donor harmonization.

This website focuses on improving efficiency and effectiveness of the web of development projects by promoting their harmonization. Tools for such harmonization are provided. The website notes that "donors fund more than 60,000 development aid projects around the world. The demands on recipient capacity are overwhelming: some developing countries receive as many as 800 new projects a year, host more than 1,000 missions to monitor the work, and have to present 2,400 quarterly reports on progress. more...

Officials from 26 developing nations and representatives of dozens of bilateral and multilateral aid agencies met in Rome on February 24-25 to look at ways to streamline the policies and procedures that guide aid delivery worldwide. Accelerated work to define what changes should be made has been energized, in large part by the consensus around the Millennium Development Goals and the Monterrey Consensus of 2001. The Rome meeting launched the implementation phase, which focuses on voluntary appli more...