Partner country selection is one of the key elements of development policy. It lies at the centre of the development policy decision-making of donor countries and institutions, and plays a significant role in shaping the patterns of official development assistance (ODA) allocation. The existing...

This paper uses the development policy system as an entry point assuming that various fundamental changes along three dimensions – narratives (why?), strategies (what?) and operational approaches (how?) – can be observed over recent years. Changes are diverse, ranging from new narratives...

The development cooperation (DC) of the United Nations (UN) at the end of the 1990s can be described and assessed as follows: • The UN is an important pillar of multilateral DC. The organization is endowed with some fundamental presuppositions (universality, a high level of legitimation, good...

For sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) the year 2005 offers a number of important opportunities for political action (G8 summit; debate on the report on the Commission for Africa – CFA; review of the progress made on achieving the Millennium Development Goals – MDGs). On the one hand, this is a chance...

Sub-Saharan Africa comprises 48 states at various stages of social, economic and political development. Despite the heterogeneity of these countries, the following general developments relating to statehood and governance in the past 15 years can at least be identified: Such pan-African...

How does reforming public financial management (PFM) help to improve governance in developing countries? In both industrialised and developing countriesPFM reforms affect fundamental interests of state andgovernance. Although PFM has steadily grown in importancein development cooperation in...

In the current development debate, so called results based approaches play an important part. There are two aspects to this debate: On the one hand, further improving the effectiveness of development cooperation (aid) is important to the specialists, whereas on the other hand many donors...

The situation of the 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa has become even more varied in the past few years. The changes are highly relevant to aid (official development assistance / ODA) and other forms of development financing. The question is what contribution aid can make in the future in an...

Current discussions about the post-2015 global development framework provide an opportunity to reconsider the European Union’s potential role as a development actor for the coming decades. The EU should aspire to fulfil a post-2015 role that is only partly based on traditional support to...