Case stories on capacity development and sustainable results

10 Capacity: ResultsETHIOPIA – Building capacityfor aid managementContextAt the 2003 High-Level Forum on AidEffectiveness in Rome, the Governmentof Ethiopia highlighted its challenges inmanaging information on official developmentassistance. Ethiopia’s Ministryof Finance and Economic Developmentlacked a mechanism for coordinatingthe collection and standardization ofinformation on donor-funded activities,which limited the government’s capacityto plan, target, and monitor developmentprojects. Due to its experience applyinginformation technology solutionsto issues in development and foreignaid, Development Gateway was identifiedas a partner in Ethiopia’s missionto streamline aid information management.ResultsAccess to timely and reliable information hasimproved.Aid taxonomy and reporting methodologies havebeen harmonized.Donor coordination and aid effectiveness havebeen improved.20 other countries have implemented the aidmanagement system, following Ethiopia’sexperience.Development resultsThe Ministry of Finance and EconomicDevelopment’s capacity to manage aidinformation had been limited in the pastby a lack of coordination between donorpartners. For example, differences betweenthe Ethiopian calendar and donorfiscal years made it difficult to reconcilereports. The Ministry sought to rectifythis problem by developing software toprovide access to timely, reliable information,to harmonize aid taxonomy and reportingmethodologies, to enable and improvedonor coordination, and ultimatelyto boost aid effectiveness.Working with local and internationalpartners, the Ministry and DevelopmentGateway designed and piloted the aidmanagement platform, a software applicationused to collect, monitor, and reporton aid information. Six years later, theplatform is embedded in Ethiopia’s aid effectivenessaction plan. The Ministry hasmade the platform the official governmentsystem for capturing and reporting informationon aid activities, and the Ministry’sstaff can now locate information andproduce reports much more quickly. By2011, Ethiopia had 624 completed or ongoingdevelopment assistance projects carriedout between 1998 and 2011, totalingnearly $18 billion in aid flows financed by46 donor agencies.