What do the developing countries get out of the money Denmark spends on development cooperation?What does Denmark get out of it? In short: Is aid effective?
What do the researchers say? In spite of decades of development assistance, it is often difficult to give a clear answer to the question of what in general works best in development assistance interventions. Therefore in recent years there has been sharp focus on the results of development assistance and research to uncover the factors that must be taken into account in the effort to create successful development assistance projects.
Organisations such as USAID, the World Bank, DFID in the United Kingdom and SIDA in Sweden have increased their efforts to identify the conditions for good development assistance and how these conditions are transferred to development assistance interventions.
In 2010 the Minister for Development Assistance launched a new international research programme with Danish support which is to show what works in development cooperation. The research programme is to result in more than 100 studies of the effects of development assistance, and the studies will qualify the results on which development cooperation rests.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of DenmarkDanidaAsiatisk Plads 2 DK-1448 Copenhagen K Tel. +45 33 92 00 00Fax +45 32 54 05 33um@um.dk
A research programme is to show what works in development cooperation
To what extent can growth be created with the help of development assistance? What instruments work in development cooperation? And under what circumstances? At the initiative of Denmark, a new international research project is to study this.
The research project is to result in more than 100 studies of the effects of development assistance. The studies are to qualify the results on which development cooperation rests. As part of the project, researchers, political actors and the general public are to enter into dialogue about the results of development assistance.
The project will run from 2011 to 2013 with an overall budget of DKK 60 million. The work is to be coordinated by the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), an institute under the United Nations University (UNU), located in Helsinki. www.wider.unu.edu