Aid Effectiveness:                        

Ensuring Value for Money

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness puts forward the principles of ownership, alignment, harmonisation, transparency and mutual accountability due to the lessons learned on how to ensure better development results.

Scanteam has wide experience in operationalizing these principles under differing circumstances. We have carried out aid coordination studies, reviewed large donor portfolios against Paris Agenda criteria, and looked at how new aid modalities and the Paris principles can be mutually reinforcing.

Scanteam contributed to the UN Development Group's Position Paper, Response to the Changing Aid Environment and carried out several studies on the role of the UN system in a changing aid environment. This included a review of the UN and World Bank relations in the field, which was used as an input to the "UN High Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence".

CSOs and Aid Effectiveness

Scanteam carried out a study of donor financing for civil society organisations for a consortium of six donors. Field work was carried out in six countries. The findings were presented at an international seminar in Sweden, as part of the preparatory work for the international NGO community's participation in the Accra Conference.

The study showed how donor policies for increasing aid effectiveness could improve harmonisation and coordination regarding NGO funding. But it also pointed to the danger of pursuing an alignment agenda that could undermine civil society independence, and in particular watchdog and advocacy functions. It also noted the weaknesses of donors' CSO support in fragile states and how to re-think this.