Vijayendra Rao shares insights into how to improve effectiveness of foreign aid

In The Globe and Mail, CIFAR’s Vijayendra Rao shares his view that foreign aid agencies can enhance the effectiveness of their aid by making efforts to learn from their mistakes. Rao, a lead economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, says that the benefits of foreign aid depend on the design of an aid project, properly selecting a target population and then how the project is implemented. While efforts are being made to improve the design of projects and how to better target the poor, he believes that not enough attention is paid to evaluating and improving project implementation. If foreign aid agencies put more effort into monitoring the performance and outcomes of their projects, managers will better understand where they are succeeding and failing and be able to make the appropriate shifts and fixes to their project. Foreign aid will have a greater impact if agencies use awareness of their failures to make positive changes.Read more