'Developing-country governments desperately need more long-term and predictable aid, given through their budgets, to finance the expansion of health care, education, and other vital social services. The European Commission (EC) is one of the biggest donors providing this kind of essential budget support, and has innovative plans to further improve and increase this aid. European Union (EU) member states must support these ambitious plans. The EC in turn must do more to improve on this good start more...

'This document was produced by the DAC Network on Gender Equality and is intended to complement the existing DAC guidelines on gender equality. It takes the five principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness as entry points to make recommendations to donors and partner country governments in meeting their commitments to achieving gender equality and women's empowerment - and the overall goal of poverty reduction. The five Paris Declaration principles are: Ownership, Alignment, Harmoni more...

The paper aims to inform the current debate on improving aid effectiveness in the context of the commitments made at the September 2008 High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra (Accra HLF) based on the issues of alignment and harmonization of aid that were high on the agenda in Accra, specifically the use of country systems and division of labor. While the views of aid agency representatives are very useful given the focus of the paper on donor behavior. It hones in on how the United State more...

The new approach to assisting developing countries inspired by the Paris Declaration emphasises greater recipient control over the funds provided, thus confining donors'influence to upstream points in the policy process, where political aspects of development co-operation become more important. Understanding better the role that power plays in the aid relationship will be critical to the implementation of the Declaration. This article shows how the political science literature can inform this se more...

'This case study, on the making of policy in Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD), is the first in a series of studies by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) looking at policymaking processes in Afghanistan since 2002. There are particular reasons why there should be an interest in policymaking. It is linked to whether or not, and how, Afghanistan’s government is able to exercise control and direction over its own policies, given its dependence on aid and the way in which ai more...

'The concept of mutual accountability refers to the establishment of working relations based on respect, fulfilling commitments, being transparent about development objectives, and accounting for decisions, actions and results. This paper focusses on how mutual accountability in development aid is understood and how it works in practice in Afghanistan, while also examining the challenges involved in achieving mutual accountability in aid relationships. The paper concludes that mutual accountabil more...

The U.S. undertook a major effort to reform the respective development aid programs and incorporated principles present in the AAA. To what extent have these reform efforts succeeded?'

After the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, an African delegate suggested to Germany’s development minister that now might be a good time to sort out the agencies working on her behalf. Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul burst into a friendly laugh, saying she knew that something had to be done. She promised that before next September’s German elections, a new institutional structure would spare recipient countries of Germany’s development aid the confusion of having to deal with more...

Why has harmonization among donor-countries been elusive? The article discusses attempts by the DAC of the OECD to get donors aligned and sustain the alignment.

New research from Eurodad member organization ActionAid concludes that countries “that opened their doors to global finance have seen huge increases in their vulnerability to shocks like the one we are living through now, but little more in the way of improved human development than countries which took a more cautious approach”. ActionAid calculates that “Africa will suffer a real drop in income that is predicted to reach US$49 billion between the start of the crisis in 2007 and the end o more...