The purpose of this study (also available in Swedish with the title Målbild och mekanism: Vad säger utvärderingar om svenska biståndsinsatsers måluppfyllelse?) is to examine what recent evaluations say – and can say – about effectiveness of Sida’s aid interventions, and therefore about Swedish aid. This is done of the basis of the definition of effectiveness used by Sida with reference to the OECD/DAC criteria for the evaluation of development assistance.
Main conclusions:
- The Sida evaluations of Swedish aid usually draw the conclusion that the intervention (mainly) achieves its objectives.
- In general, their conclusions about effectiveness are probably not reliable.
- For the future, Sida should for example:
– Considerably strenghten the quality of the decentralised evaluations regarding evaluation design and methodology for analysing effectiveness and expected results.
– Evaluate more Swedish development interventions against overall, long-term goals.
– Have evaluations focus more on unexpected results and possible side effects of interventions. - In the future the evaluations should focus more on goal attainment and expected outcomes, and on trying to understand how and why interventions do (not) reach their objectives.