News
Brookings paper: Taking development activities to scale in fragile and low capacity environments
The Brookings Institution has just released a paper on taking development activities to scale in fragile and low capacity environments (external website). The Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) partners with Brookings, and AusAID senior managers were consulted to ensure the paper was relevant to the Australian aid program.
The paper finds that:
- scaling up is highly relevant to fragile settings, both as an objective in its own right and as a strategic approach for promoting development
- contrary to expectations, many donors are succeeding at scaling up in fragile states, but successes in fragile states almost certainly occur less often than is possible
- donors need to adopt greater selectivity in determining in which areas or sectors scaling up is justified; more investment and time is required in upfront analysis
- donors require longer time horizons to achieve scale, and donors that were most successful were engaged early and then remained engaged.
Look out for the next phase of this study, a set of case studies prepared by ODE looking at successful AusAID approaches to taking activities to scale. Fieldwork for the Cambodia Agricultural Value Chain (CAVAC) case study will begin in September.
More information
- Brookings paper on taking development activities to scale in fragile and low capacity environments (external website)
- Brookings partnership
- Taking activities to scale
Last reviewed: 6 October, 2011