By Haruna Gimba
The African Development Fund (ADF) was ranked second among 49 international agencies for the quality of its development assistance, according to the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) report.
The ADF is the concessional arm of the African Development Bank Group (ADB).
QuODA is a tool developed by the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Brookings Institution to measure which donors are providing “better aid” and how they can improve.
It also provides an assessment of the efforts made to meet development commitments.
It assesses the bilateral programs of 29 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the 20 largest multilateral agencies that provide official development assistance (ODA).
The QuODA was lead by Ian Mitchell, Co-Director of Development Cooperation in Europe and Senior Policy Researcher; Rachael Calleja, Senior Research Associate; and Sam Hughe, research assistant, all with CGD.
According to the fifth edition of the QuODA report, the AfDF is serving its constituency well by focusing on poverty and the least-assisted countries.
According to the report, QuODA measures and compares supplier ODA on quantitative indicators that matter most to development effectiveness and quality.
It also aims to encourage improvement in the quality of ODA by highlighting and evaluating the performance of providers.
QuODA consists of 17 indicators that are comparable across agencies, organized into four dimensions which are prioritization, ownership, transparency, and untying and evaluation.
The 2021 report singled out the AfDF and its peers for their ability to ensure that development reaches its intended recipients.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) ranked first overall in QuODA.
The AfDF finished second overall, continuing its strong performance from previous QuODA iterations, achieving good results in prioritization, with a strong focus on poverty and least-assisted countries.
However, the report noted that the ADF had room for improvement in the evaluation dimension.
In addition, the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) ranked third, with high scores in all four dimensions. While the Global Fund and GAVI completed the top five.
The report also noted that multilateral agencies have outperformed bilateral agencies in prioritization, with the top five ranks being respectively held by the Global Fund, GAVI, AfDF, IDA and the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP).
Three of the top six ownership positions were taken by regional development banks, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in first, AfDB in second and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in seventh.
For each of them, more than 80 percent of beneficiaries said they were aligned with their goals.
