Aid effectiveness

European governments have signed up to global declarations on aid effectiveness and committed to additional targets in an EU action plan on harmonisation. Yet too much aid money does not respond to the needs of poor people in developing countries or is delivered in an inefficient way. European countries channel their aid through multiple development agencies, often in an uncoordinated manner. Their reluctance to use recipient countries’ procurement systems hinders rather than enhances recipient governments’ ability to manage revenues. Technical assistance projects frequently employ high-paid consultants from Europe, even when a qualified and unemployed workforce exists in the specific developing country.

Aid money is subject to conditionalities imposed on recipients by donor countries or international institutions, in many cases these conditionalities are designed to pursue Northern countries’ political and economic interests rather than the needs of poor countries and their people. Therefore, a considerable part of aid fails to achieve a development impact in recipient countries.

Eurodad focuses on the responsibilities of European governments to provide aid, both directly and through international institutions. Eurodad works with other NGOs to monitor and campaign for EU Governments to live up to their existing commitments to ensure better aid - and to go beyond these commitments in critical areas, to ensure sustainable development and poverty eradication.