The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are now central to the policy objectives of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). DFID uses Country Assistance Plans (CAPS) while planning for these goals and developing practical initiatives. Analysis of the CAPs however, highlights the mismatch between stated policy objectives and DFID’s actual plans.

An article from the Institute of Development Studies and the Overseas Development Institute analyses 13 CAPs that DFID has drawn up for setting country-level priorities. Reviewing DFID’s analyses of poverty in these countries and its approach to partnership, the authors assess how this informs DFID’s proposed activities in each country.

The CAPs emphasise the economic aspects of poverty. Income poverty is a measure that is commonly used to assess poverty but the extent to which other aspects of poverty are assessed – such as rates of participation and the current status of the MDGs, for instance – varies widely between countries. The results are that the causes of poverty and their links to the nature and rate of poverty in a country are inadequately explored in these papers.

DFID’s partnership with a government depends on the seriousness of the government’s policies towards poverty alleviation. A systematic assessment of the extent to which a government’s policies benefit the poor may be difficult but the researchers also note that the CAPs also fall short of expectations due to:

• the lack of a precisely stated proposal to address poverty and its causes
• a failure to explain why the planned activities comprise the best approach to poverty reduction in each of the countries
• the want for elaboration on the different partnership arrangements that are appropriate in different circumstances
• missing progress reports - on meeting the MDGs - for more than half the countries.

DFID’s country strategies can be effective provided:

• sound criteria are used for selecting partners to work with, particularly based on assessments of the partners’ commitments to achieving the MDGs
• a logical framework approach is adopted to map the chain of connections between the policy objectives and the proposed activities
• poverty reduction activities are based on both general and country-specific causes of poverty and explicit links are established between the causes and activities
• definite pathways are created through which government can be influenced to make its economic policies productive - particularly in attracting debt relief and in making structural reforms benefit the poor.

The shortcomings of the CAPs go beyond being merely technical deficiencies to the heart of what it means to be more strategic about reducing poverty and meeting the central objectives DFID has set for itself. This ‘missing middle’ – between stated objectives for poverty reduction and planned spending – has to be bridged if the goals are to be achieved.

Source(s):
‘Using Development Goals to Design Country  Strategies’ by Howard White and David Booth in Richard Black and Howard White (eds) Targeting Development: Critical Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals Routledge: London, 2004.

id21 Research Highlight: 26 May 2004

Further Information:
Howard White
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: 44 (0) 1273 606261
Fax: 44 (0) 1273 621202/691647
Contact the contributor: h.white@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

David Booth
Overseas Development Institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JD

Tel: 44 (0) 20 79220300
Fax: 44 (0) 20 79220399
Contact the contributor: d.booth@odi.org.uk

Overseas Development Institute, UK

Other related links:
'IMF/World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy: effective, participatory and locally owned?'

Department for International Development, UK