Planning and evaluation in aid organizations [UNDP, United Nations Development Programme, SIDA, Swedish International Development Authority]

The success (or failure) of aid programmes in developing countries is difficult to measure in terms of results. In fact international cooperation in development programmes seems to have reached few of its objectives. World recessions and wildly fluctuating commodity prices have hit many developing countries hard, while an ecological doomsday looms in the background. What went wrong with development cooperation through aid? What can be done better? What should the objectives of development programmes be? These questions imply that we need to study not only the impact of development projects but also initiation, implementation and evaluation processes for aid programmes. Aid organizations need to emphasize the efficiency of these processes if development programmes are to succeed. This book deals with structures and processes in aid organiztions. It shows how planning and evaluation work in practice in a comparative study of two organizations, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA). Several examples of industrial development projects in Tazania are used - some successful, some failures, with others somewhere in between. The aim is to learn from this experience - whether successful or not - and to delineate the potential for more effective development cooperation.