Aid Policy

Leader, Aid Policy

Consultants

Anne Thomson »
Katarina Kotoglou »
Deepayan Basu Ray »

Delivering Effective Aid

Over the last decade there has been progress in the planning and delivery of development assistance. There has been an increased focus on ownership and new aid instruments (from sector programmes to direct budget support and innovative financing mechanisms). This process has been given a strong emphasis and given a more coherent structure of objectives and accountability through international agreements culminating in the Paris Declaration of 2005. At the same time, there has been an increasing concern with achieving effective international engagement in fragile states and with addressing problems in the international aid architecture such as the overall pattern of aid allocation.

OPM has contributed to this international debate through reviewing international experience and in the practical implementation of improved aid arrangements. OPM brings to these issues a strong understanding of the implications of research on aid effectiveness, knowledge of sectoral and cross-cutting policy issues, and deep experience of the practical and political economy issues facing development agencies and governments receiving aid. This has been applied through policy research, strategic reviews and aid Evaluation.

Examples of recent OPM work include the following:

Support to the development of a national aid policy in Yemen.
Support to the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation framework for commitments under the Paris Declaration.
Contributions to the preparation of the 2006 DFID White Paper, focusing on the measurement of corruption, and on policy coherence within the UK government.
An assessment of the European Neighbourhood Policy as an instrument for bringing about political and economic change in the Mashreq region.
Studies for the OECD Development Assistance Committee Fragile States Group on Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and on aid allocation to fragile states.
Studies on the political economy of policy making processes, and their implications for the design of donor support to policy change.
Strategic reviews of DFID programmes in India, Uganda, and Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Moldova.
An influential study on approaches to the provision of technical assistance.