Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark Danida Follow-Up Study of the Evaluation of the Danish Development Assistance to Bangladesh

This report has been prepared by Development Associates A/S. The findings, conclusions and interpretations expressed in this report are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Bangladesh, or the organisations and institutions involved. Executive Summary Introduction The present follow-up study is a follow-up on the country programme evaluation of Danish assistance to Bangladesh. The evaluation was undertaken in 1998/1999 and the evaluation report, " Evaluation of Danish Development Assistance to Bangladesh " , was published in 1999 (1999/3). The main report contains 11 specific recommendations concerning the planned revision of the country strategy paper from 1995. In accordance with the Terms of Reference, the study has assessed the actions taken on the (by Danida accepted) recommendations and the effects that these actions have had. The study has also made assessments of factors, which have prevented actions on or effects of the recommendations and identified some missed opportunities from insufficient follow-up. Further actions needed and possible have also been considered on the basis of the follow-up assessments. Finally, lessons learnt on country programme evaluations and on follow-up studies are extracted from the findings. The follow-up study is concentrated on the revision of the country strategy paper, which was initiated in 1999 and completed early in 2001. This version of the revised strategy, the Strategy-2001, was, however, never implemented due to some interruption of the Bangladeshi-Danish cooperation later in 2001. Work on the revision started again in 2002, but finalisation was delayed to enable the new strategy to be aligned with the PRSP process. A new strategy paper, Strategy-2005, was published in 2005. Though the focus is on the Strategy-2001, findings of the follow-up study include issues of the cooperation today, reflected in Strategy-2005, which relate to the original evaluation recommendations. Main Conclusions The general response by Danida to the recommendations were that they were either unnecessary or already being implemented. Some of the recommendations were also unrealistic or too vaguely formulated. Other recommendations have turned out, however, to be both relevant and useful recommendations at the time. Also, though none of the recommendations are relevant today in their specific wording, some of the issues, which were behind the recommendations, are still there. It proved difficult to find clear and specific " fingerprints " of the recommendations on the Strategy-2001, though the strategy revision process started right after …