Evaluation of Budget Support in Zambia

This project - commissioned by the German Ministry for International Cooperation and Development - evaluated inputs and induced outputs of Budget Support in Zambia.

Context:
During the past decade donors and recipient countries have shifted increasingly from a project approach to a programme based approach and general and sector budget support. It was felt that budget support, by contributing to the overall national development strategy and sector strategies would enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of development cooperation.

The growth of budget support created the need to evaluate their effectiveness and contribution to the realisation of the recipient country's strategies. There is a demand from parliaments to show the results of this support. Proponents and opponents seem to hold strong views about the effectiveness of budget support, but these views are not necessarily supported by (rigorous) evidence. Recent evaluations of budget support focused on the political economy and policy processes, but did not analyse the impact on the objectives of budget support.

Several cooperating partners have developed a methodology for the evaluation of budget support. The methodology group is an initiative of the Evaluation Unit of the Europe Aid Co-operation Office of the European Commission. The Steering Group on budget support further includes the evaluation departments of Belgium, Canada (CIDA), Denmark (DANIDA), Finland, France (AFD), Germany (BMZ), Ireland (Irish Aid), the Netherlands (IOB), Norway (NORAD), Sweden (Sida), The United Kingdom (DFID) and the OECD/DAC secretariat.

Based on a methodological approach suggested by Caputo, E., A. Lawson and M. van der Linde (2008), under the authority of the Unit of the Europe Aid Co-operation Office of the European Commission, a round of evaluations of budget support has been initiated in a number of countries. In every country, a number of donors take the lead in the evaluation, preferably in close cooperation with the government of the recipient country. At the same time, these evaluations are supported by all members of the steering group. Therefore, while not every evaluation department of a donor is involved in the day to day management of the evaluation, the evaluations are joint evaluations, in accordance with the principles and characteristics of budget support.
One of the first countries, where the new approach to evaluate budget support is to be applied and refined is Zambia. For the cooperating partners, the evaluation for Zambia is be led by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IOB), Evaluation and Audit Department of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ-E) and the Secretariat for Evaluation of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

Project:
This project - commissioned by the German Ministry for International Cooperation and Development - evaluates inputs and induced outputs of Budget Support in Zambia. The evaluation is embedded in the specific country context of Zambia and is based upon the instrument’s intervention logic covering financial and non-financial contributions of Budget Support. As such, the evaluation focuses upon strategies of cooperating partners to provide Budget Support, the process and structure of donor harmonization and alignment to government policies and systems as well as the effects of Budget Support on induced outputs such as institutional performance, public financial management and budget allocations.

This evaluation is part of an initiative of the Evaluation Unit of the EU (Directorate-General for Development, External Relations and EuropeAid) assessing the effectiveness of Budget Support and improving the methodology for evaluating this complex instrument of development cooperation. Guided by the principles of the Paris-Declaration, evaluation units of bilateral EU member states and the EC have set up a management group in 2008 to accompany the overall evaluation process. Based upon an EC-commissioned “issue paper” two preliminary papers on methodology were drafted and different evaluation teams were set up to asses the effectiveness of BS in three African countries: Mali, Zambia and Tanzania.
In cooperation with the Government of the Republic of Zambia, the present evaluation on Budget Support is a joint effort of the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IOB), the Evaluation and Audit Department of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ-E) and the Secretariat for Evaluation of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Different elements of the overall evaluation are undertaken by the Amsterdam Institute for International Development (AIID), the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), IOB, the evaluation unit of the KfW Development Bank and Oxford Policy Management.

Hence, the undertaken study, which is basically focused on the inputs and induced outputs of BS in Zambia, is part of a larger set of assessments, which also focus upon the outcome and impact level in different sectors; namely agriculture, education, health and infrastructure. The division of labour among the above mentioned evaluation and research organizations is related to the ambitious goal of providing a comprehensive assessment of Budget Support’s effectiveness in Zambia, ranging from the input level to the outcome and impact level in several sectors. To achieve this goal and to advance the methodological knowledge on how to best evaluate Budget Support, the overall evaluation relies on different - qualitative and quantitative - comparative methods. These methods were selected according to their appropriateness for answering the evaluation questions with their varying focus on different aspects of BS’s intervention logic.