Archive for September, 2010

The Big Push Back (and push forward)

Monday, September 27th, 2010

"On the 22nd September, Rosalind Eyben organised a meeting of some seventy development practitioners and researchers worried about the current trend for funding organisations to support only those programmes designed to deliver easily measurable results, although these may not support transformative processes of positive and sustainable changes in people’s lives. Following ...

INTRAC workshop: Accountability without Impact?

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Date: Date: 23 November 2010 Venue: Venue: St Anne's College, Oxford, UK There are many debates about the ‘So what?’ question, in terms of concerns about the actual impact of international cooperation. What is the development sector actually achieving in terms of improving the lives of the poor? Have we focused on ...

“Instruments, Randomization and Learning about Development”

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

Angus Deaton,  Research Program in Development Studies, Center for Health and Wellbeing, Princeton University, March, 2010 Full text as pdf ABSTRACT There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to ...

WEBINAR SERIES: EMERGING PRACTICES IN DEVELOPMENT EVALUATION

Friday, September 17th, 2010

UNICEF, the Rockefeller Foundation and Claremont Graduate University (CGU), in partnership with IOCE and DevInfo, are pleased to announce a series of live webinars on “Emerging Practices in Development Evaluation”. This series has allowed CGU to expand greatly on our previous online offerings, and includes a range of guest speakers ...

Do Less Transparent Donors Allocate Aid Differently?

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Jörg Faust , German Development Institute D-I-E, 2010, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper. Available as pdf Abstract: "Foreign aid is said to be more effective for development if it is allocated to relatively poor recipient countries’ with relatively sound political institutions. This allocation rule also meets the preferences ...

Reflexive Monitoring in Action: A guide for monitoring system innovation projects

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

"Researchers at Wageningen University and the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, have been working together on a type of monitoring that they have called reflexive monitoring in action (RMA).  RMA has been developed especially for projects that aim to contribute to the sustainable development of ...

DfID Seeks Suggestions for Implementing Aid Transparency Initiative

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

on Devex, By Eliza Villarino on 06 September 2010 "The U.K. Department for International Development launches an online discussion to seek input on how it should implement the UKaid Transparency Guarantee. The U.K. Department for International Development has opened an online discussion to help it decide how to implement its ...

“Britons think development aid for poor countries is wasted”

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Mark Tran, Guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 September 2010 11.40 BST "More than half of Britons think development aid is wasted and do not support the coalition government's policy of ring-fencing assistance for poor countries, a survey shows. Aid ...

Stories from Aidland: Dancing to the Tune

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

(From The Broker) Dancing to the tune, by Nancy Okail, July 2010 This story chronicles my involvement in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) monitoring survey on aid effectiveness in a North African country in 2006. The OECD monitoring survey was a tool designed to assess how ...

DFID Draft Structural Reform Plan July 2010

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Available  on the DFID website and as a pdf. "Structural Reform Plans are the key tool of the Coalition Government for making departments accountable for the implementation of the reforms set out in the Coalition Agreement. They replace the old, top-down systems of targets and central micromanagement. The reforms set out in ...