Over the last few years a remarkable shift has taken place in the aid instruments advocated for low-income countries, characterised by a conversion from project to more programme oriented aid and by the inclusion of 'broad-based civil society participation' as a form of new aid conditionality....

This paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that most of the crucial accounting tasks must be...

This paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that most of the crucial accounting tasks must be...

Le Sénégal est un des pays les plus démocratiques de l’Afrique, très pauvre, et fortement dépendant de l’aide extérieure. A priori, on pourrait s’attendre à ce qu’il soit un des premiers bénéficiaires de la nouvelle approche de l’aide initiée par les donateurs bilatéraux et...

The participation conditionality linked to the PRSP creates a wide range of problems. It is too ambitious to be workable, too vague to be monitored. The pragmatic way out has been for the Breton Woods institutions to be uncommonly lenient in the verification of this conditionality. Governments...

This paper consists of a comparative study of public financing of NGO development cooperation in selected European countries. The study encompasses the Nordic+ group (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland) and Switzerland. Its main objective is to find...

The new aid approach (NAA) pays particular attention to the politico-institutional dimension of development. It is largely centred around a reform-driven governance agenda. Donors must facilitate and support reform, and this implies that they move away from micro-managed and donor-driven...

The mandatory participation of civil society in the PRSP is hardly ever questioned. It is on the contrary generally applauded by the experts inside and outside of the aid business. If only there could be more of it, things would even be better than they already are, but any start, however...

Over the last five years a new enthusiasm has emerged among donors. Aid volumes have gone up and new modalities and instruments are feverishly experimented with. A new aid paradigm seems to have emerged. Breaking with the bad habits of the past, donors are working on harmonisation, alignment,...