Aid Effectiveness
The Australian Government is committed to strengthening the performance of Australia's aid program. This is even more important in the light of its plan to significantly increase aid by 2015. Aid is going to be bigger, but it also needs to be better.
To ensure that these increased funds reduce poverty and contribute to progress against the Millennium Development Goals, it is important that there is increased focus on the effectiveness of aid.
The Office of Development Effectiveness monitors the quality and evaluates the impact of Australian government aid to ensure its effectiveness continues to improve.
Why measure aid effectiveness?
There are three reasons for measuring the performance of Australia's aid program – management, learning and accountability.
Management
Measuring aid effectiveness helps program managers and partners focus on results and improve quality. Collecting reliable performance information helps managers deliver against objectives and provides a basis for program and budget decisions.
Learning
Reviewing the effectiveness of the aid program helps staff and partners learn more about what does and doesn't work well.
Accountability
Reporting on the effectiveness of the aid program provides the Australian public and aid partners with information on the results achieved with Australian taxpayer funds.
Reporting contributes to the Annual Review of Development Effectiveness and is used to meet Parliamentary reporting requirements.
Reporting also contributes to Australian Government audit processes and to Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD-DAC) peer reviews and reporting against the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness.
Challenges
Assessing aid effectiveness is difficult. It is defined by results, such as educating more children, fewer infants and mothers dying, and lifting more people out of poverty. But the links between aid interventions and better outcomes are seldom direct, not least because aid is only one part of international development.
The policies and actions of developing countries themselves are the main drivers of sustainable change, as are external causes such as global economic conditions.
It is also difficult to determine what would have happened without aid so before and after comparisons can be made.
Paris Declaration
In 2005 Australia signed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The insights and implications of the Declaration are becoming more important as donors across the world increase their funding for development.
The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was recently hosted in Accra by the Government of Ghana (2-4 September 2008) and resulted in the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). The primary intention of the forum was to take stock and review global progress made in implementing the Paris Declaration as well as accelerate action."
For more on aid effectiveness see: