DP #4: Challenges with the evaluation of development aid projects

In 2010 the EU spent 53.8 billion Euros on Official Development Assistance (EU2011). What did it change? Lives, mindsets, behaviors? Laws, access to resources or education? A correct answer to this question is impossible because in many development aid projects the people know only the inputs and not the real impacts it had. Reviewing the project appraisals of the World Bank in 2000 shows that only 10% contain «planned impact evaluations» (Rawlings 2005). But evaluation is important for future learning and accountability (DAC 1991) to allocate the assigned money into projects with a high impact. The importance of evaluation increased further due to the claims that many years of development aid did not contribute positively to the development of a country.

To standardize the understanding of evaluation the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD designed already in 1982 five evaluation criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Many international organizations use them to analyze the impact of their development aid projects.

However there might be evaluation, but too much data gained or not the right data, hence no proper result can be found for future learning. What makes the evaluation difficult is the asymmetry of the interests. Usually the donor wants to evaluate the development aid project in order to know that the money was used in the correct way. The recipient is only interested if the evaluation «lead(s) to future project possibilities» (Nagao 2006). Another asymmetry is the time horizon. The donors are spending a finite time with the project and want visible results within this horizon. The developing country is more interested in the long term impact of the project on its development (Nagao 2006). This asymmetry could lead to projects which are designed to have tangible outputs within 2-3 years and do not necessarily contribute to a sustainable development of the country.

The change of development aid projects and its complexity add further challenges on the evaluation. The Millennium Development Goals and multi-donor relationships in projects ask for enhanced accountability and increase complexity. These international expectations on aid increase the pressure even further and stress the tension between meeting the short term needs and addressing sustainable development in the long term.

Another consideration is the tension between standardized processes and the local conditions. One the one hand it should be simple and easy to apply and give a certain standard to be comparable as well. On the other hand the project should serve the community and be appropriate on the local level. This might not be easy to balance every time. Additionally it is difficult to measure the real impact because we cannot always determine cause and consequence – there are years lying in between.

However I believe that evaluation is an important topic which should be seriously addressed and added from the beginning in every project. Just if we know the outcomes we know how to go on further and which measures have  actually the biggest impact (and not the one we think might have the biggest impact). Watch this movie about a talk from Esther Duflo where she finds answers to some urgent question with the help of  randomized studies (16:47 min). I know that randomized studies raise new questions and ethical concerns, but isn’t it not worse to spend money on the measure where the impact is lower just because we don’t know?

Resources, last accessed 11.01.2012:

Development Assistance Committee (1991) Principles for evaluation of development assistance, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/12/2755284.pdf

EU2011 (2011) Development aid: additional efforts needed, http://www.eu2011.hu/news/janos-martonyi-eu-acp

Nagao M (2006) Challenging times for evaluation of international development assistance, http://www.aes.asn.au/publications/Vol6No2/Challenging_times_for_evaluation_of_international_development_assistance.pdf

Rawlings L (2005) Operational reflections on evaluating development programs, page 200, http://books.google.es/books?hl=de&lr=&id=W65uReMt5XAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA193&dq=Rawlings+Operational+reflections+on+evaluating+development+programs&ots=tClfUViija&sig=AA4IdD8myhUZ_H-9dI2PZMcsheo&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

3 comentarios / 11 Ene 2012 por Marie Glück
IMSD /

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