The African Development Fund (ADF) was ranked second among 49 international agencies for the quality of its development assistance, according to the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA)report.
The ADF is the concessional arm of the African Development Bank Group (ADB).
QuODA is a tool developed by the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Brookings Institution to measure which donors are providing “better aid” and how they can improve.
It also provides an assessment of the efforts made to meet development commitments.
It assesses the bilateral programs of 29 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the 20 largest multilateral agencies that provide official development assistance (ODA).
The QuODA was by Ian Mitchell, Co-Director of Development Cooperation in Europe and Senior Policy Researcher; Rachael Calleja, Senior Research Associate; and Sam Hughe, research assistant, all with CGD.
According to the fifth edition of the QuODA report, the AfDF is serving its constituency well by focusing on poverty and the least-assisted countries.
According to the report, QuODA measures and compares supplier ODA on quantitative indicators that matter most to development effectiveness and quality.
It also aims to encourage improvement in the quality of ODA by highlighting and evaluating the performance of providers.
QuODA consists of 17 indicators that are comparable across agencies, organized into four dimensions which are prioritization, ownership, transparency, and untying and evaluation.
The 2021 report singled out the AfDF and its peers for their ability to ensure that development reaches its intended recipients.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) ranked first overall in QuODA.
The AfDF finished second overall, continuing its strong performance from previous QuODA iterations, achieving good results in prioritization, with a strong focus on poverty and least-assisted countries.
However, the report noted that the ADF had room for improvement in the evaluation dimension.
In addition, the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) ranked third, with high scores in all four dimensions.
In addition, the Global Fund and GAVI completed the top five.
The report also noted that multilateral agencies have outperformed bilateral agencies in prioritization, with the top five ranks being respectively held by the Global Fund, GAVI, AfDF, IDA and the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP).
Three of the top six ownership positions were taken by regional development banks, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in first, AfDB in second and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in seventh.
For each of them, more than 80% of beneficiaries said they were aligned with their goals.
In addition, according to the report, transparency in ODA enables providers and partners to understand and plan effectively, and it facilitates the review of ODA expenditures, to the benefit of taxpayers and partner governments.
He noted that this dimension also covered the issue of aid linkage, i.e. whether providers required ODA to be provided by entrepreneurs in their own country or by shareholders. .
IFAD ranked first for transparency and untying, WHO second, Canada third, and GAVI and the EU completing the top five.
In addition, the report identified four main recommendations for providers to improve the quality of ODA in the years to come.
“For country providers and policy makers, there is a clear and consistent message: using the multilateral system can support development effectiveness.
“Providers must strengthen ownership by partners of development commitments. QuODA 2021 shows that much remains to be done to implement (and measure) the principle of ownership.
“In addition, providers and the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) should work together to achieve better response rates and better metrics, through GPEDC surveys.
“ODA transparency is partial, and all providers should systematically report to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) or establish some other common platform that recipients can access. High quality and timely reporting on ODA is necessary to support partnership and mutual accountability. “
In an AfDB statement, Mr. Simon Mizrahi, the bank’s director of delivery, performance and results, said the timing of the report could not have been better.
Mizrahi added that the CGD’s assessment would help the bank guide its interventions as it strives to support regional member countries through health and economic challenges.
“This report confirms that the bank is on the right track by focusing on producing timely development assistance data and ensuring to strengthen the learning loop to continually improve our offering to regional Bank member countries. .
“Every day we get better, and every day we go further to help the countries of the continent increase their resilience and provide a better quality of life for their people,” he said.
The ADF is made up of 32 contributing states and benefits 37 countries. (NOPE)
(NAN)
