Coming to Terms with Reality. Evaluation of the Belgian Debt Relief ...

Annexes
Coming to Terms with Reality
Annex 1: Stages of the evaluation and list of
key informants
Complementary to the methodological chapter 1 of the main report, in which the logical
framework of the evaluation is described in detail, this annex provides a brief description
of the evaluation process. More particularly, it describes the different stages of the
evaluation, and the process of gathering information, including the indication of key
informants interviewed.
The evaluation has been conducted in three stages, a desk study, mainly in Belgium, a field
mission to Cameroon, and an analysis stage at ONDD in Brussels.
The desk study stage consisted of conducting a literature review on the international
literature on debt relief, as well as gathering key documents on the Belgian debt relief
practice and conducting a series of interviews with key informants in Belgium.
The literature review on the international debt relief focused on the theory and practice of
debt relief, both on the pre-evaluation period (i.e. before the HIPC initiative), as well as
during the period of investigation, i.e. on the HIPC/MDRI initiative itself. This literature
review was regularly updated during the evaluation, so the evaluation could finally span
the full recent decade, from 2000 to the end of 2009. During this period of evaluation, the
evaluation also benefitted from a member of the team attending two key international
conferences on debt relief, both co-organised by the World Bank (one in Washington DC in
October 2008 and one in Tunis at the end of March 2010), which were very instrumental in
gathering the most recent information and meeting key international actors and academics in
the debt relief field. Also a (written) interview was conducted with Mr. Kiekens on the role of
IMF in debt relief issues (as well as on the Belgian position); comparable information on the
World Bank position was gathered through Mr. Godts at the Ministry of Finance.
The process of information gathering on the Belgian practice and conducting interviews
with key Belgian actors started in the beginning of 2008, by conducting interviews with
key actors from the three main agencies involved, i.e. DGDC (Lutgarde De Groof), the
Ministry of Finance (Franciscus Godts and Eddy Boelens) and ONDD (Thibaut De Haene
and Anton De Doncker).On the one hand, the team could benefit from previous work on
this topic for Belgian development cooperation actors (e.g. within the framework of short
term and long-term policy-support contracts for DGDC within the Vl.I.R-intermediated
‘beleidsvoorbereidend onderzoek’, BVO, and ‘beleidsondersteunend steunpunt’, BOS),
for which it had already gathered a lot of the internal documents, but, on the other hand,
these interviews did not generate the minimally necessary information to conduct the
evaluation as planned in the inception, methodological report, mainly with respect to
information to be provided by ONDD. Part of this information was provided by ONDD in
November 2008.
Partly also on the basis of this additional ONDD information provided end of in 2008, the
second stage of the evaluation was a field mission to Cameroon to analyse the effects of
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