Aid Effectiveness

The parties are over and many of us start the new year with reviews of last year's achievements and and good intentions for the future. Stock-taking has also been high on the agenda in Germany's development cooperation in the last months. The Center for Global Development (CDG) published two different assessments related to governmental development cooperation at the end of last year. The Commitment for Development Index ranks donor countries overall behaviour related to developing nations. Criteria for this ranking are trade, security and migration policies, investment in environment, aid and technology transfer as well as policies promoting investment in developing countries.

The same US-based think tank also offers a more detailed analysis of the quality of aid given by bilateral and multilateral donors on their QuODA (quality of aid) website. The four main criteria of the QuODA assessment are 1) Maximising Efficiency, 2) Fostering Institutions, 3) Reducing Burden and 4) Transparency and Learning. The study of PublishWhatYouFund, a British NGO, focusses exclusively on this last aspect of the QuODA ranking, the transparency of international donors. Finally, the OECD DAC peer review of Germany at the end of last year has analysed German development cooperation in detail and offered recommendations for the coming years. So how well is Germany doing in all these assessments? Read more »