UNU-WIDER Monitoring and Evaluation Reform under Changing Aid Modalities: Seeking the Middle Ground in Aid-Dependent Low-Income Countries

This paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that most of the crucial accounting tasks must be swiftly abandoned by donors and left to recipient governments. This paper does not question the underlying rationale for shifting towards recipient-led priority setting and control over implementation of aid resources, but argues that donors cannot let themselves off the hook so easily with respect to the accountability part of the equation. We argue that in most low-income countries such trust in recipient systems may be dubbed as over-alignment, and that it is neither necessary nor useful. Our argument is however not that old style donor-managed monitoring and evaluation is the only or the best solution. For we are equally puzzled by the stubbornness with which some other donors stick to their old monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in ways that contradict the new insights in aid effectiveness and hamper the emergence of...