Portals for Development Information

Of course every donor agency has its own website with a wealth of information produced by that agency and its clients. The importance of the agency does not unfailingly predict the importance of its website as a source of information. Thus, the UNESCO website ranks higher than the World Bank website according to Google's Page Rank Checker although I think most informed people would think the World Bank and the UNDP were the more significant development agencies. (Alexa ranks the World Bank above UNESCO, and that difference in rankings may also serve as a warning about the use of these tools.)

There are several sites that that provide a wide range of information on development problems, not limited to a single agency. The following are the ones I find useful:

• The Development Gateway (in which I contribute, with tens of thousands of community members and tens of thousands of online resources)
• Eldis (The British site, with good summaries and resources you can download.)
• Dev-Zone (from down under, with a very liberal orientation.)
• The Development Directory (which is in fact a directory of relevant organizations.)
  

You might also be interested in The Communications Initiative, a widely used portal filled with information specific to the role of communications in social and economic development programs and projects.

MandE News, also from the United Kingdom, contrary to its name, has lots of online resources relevant to the monitoring and evaluation of social and economic development projects and programs.