In its evaluation of the Dutch Africa policy the IOB presents some interesting findings, which in turn raise a number of critical questions.

The summary of the IOB report offers a set of familiar considerations, criticisms and conclusions. There are hardly any surprises. Maybe the full report will be more interesting. It is also rather disappointing that the conclusions remain limited...

The IOB report shows the limits of foreign aid. It points to a number of well known and thoroughly analyzed problems associated with aid giving, including: the lack of a relationship between budget support on the one hand and structural improveme...

Even in summary form, the IOB’s assessment of Dutch Africa policy 1998–2006 provides plenty of reasons to sit up and pay attention. In our public forums on aid, its findings might help bring into public view what have until now been merely rumbli...

I have gone through the IOB evaluation report and have one comment. A perusal of poverty and development strategies of many, if not all, African governments will show that there are no explicit strategies for growth. Many have focused on the soci...

The IOB evaluation confirms the widespread problem of donors changing policy too often. Hence, whey they look back, it is sometimes hard to assess impact given the broken chain of policy decisions (too many new initiatives, so that nothing is giv...

On reading through the IOB evaluation report I’m particularly struck by the emphasis on the sectoral approach to aid. It is as if normal life is lived in disconnected segments, and as though the successes scored in one sector cannot be cancelled...

We have argued that politicians are the ultimate arbiters of the success of foreign assistance, and that development has always been intimately related to political interests, the distribution of resources and unequal access to power and informat...

A role for the (inter)national private sector in development and the importance of results-oriented accountabilityThese two issues are problematic and their juxtaposition even more so. Supporting private sector development in recipient countries i...

The report (summary) mentions the reorganization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and emphasizes the decentralization of the budgets. But what about the integration of Development Cooperation in Foreign Affairs – has this affected (positively o...