Toward Country Led Development

Toward Country Led Development is the report of a multi-donor evaluation of the "Comprehensive Development Framework."

Launched by the World Bank in 1999, the CDF is based on four key principles: a long-term, holistic development framework; results orientation; country ownership; and country-led partnership. The CDF was intended to be a new way of doing business in international development. To grossly oversimplify, countries would take the lead in making national development plans that went beyond annual budget exercises. Donors would work with the host country stakeholders, and would collaboratively support the plans so created.

This study in five countries which experimented with CDF and one which did not, looks at the success of the process. The website gives a very nice 45 minute streaming video, as well as the report and a precis.

This is a very interesting effort! As one might expect, it is too early to fully evaluation the CDF approach, but it is clear that it has not been fully implemented in any of the countries, but in any case there seems to be evidence of some value for development.

The evaluation effort itself was very large, and unprecedented in its willingness to subject many donor agencies to the outside scrutiny of an independent group.