DFID’s approach to anti-corruption and its impact on the poor

Corruption is a fundamental issue that affects the everyday lives of the very poorest and hinders efforts to lift countries out of poverty. This report focuses on DFID’s efforts to reduce corruption as experienced by the poor.

Score: Amber/Red
  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 31 October 2014
  3. Type: Other
  4. Subject: Anti-corruption, tax avoidance and fiduciary risk
  5. Assessment: Amber/Red
  6. Location: Nepal, Nigeria
  7. Lead commissioner: Mark Foster

Read the inception report

Read the terms of reference

Our approach

This review considers whether the Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) anticorruption activities are reducing the negative effects of corruption, in particular as experienced by the poorest in society. It is the second of our reviews of DFID’s approach to anti-corruption. The first, DFID’s Approach to Anti-Corruption published in 2011, focused primarily on the effectiveness of DFID’s efforts to protect UK taxpayers’ money from the losses arising from the mismanagement of funds invested in programmes, which is termed as ‘fraud’. The term ‘corruption’ can encompass those issues of fraud but, as used in this report, is intended to refer more particularly to the abuse of power for private gain.

This is a thematic report which sets out to assess the coherence and effectiveness of DFID’s approach to tackling corruption at the international, national and sub-national levels. While our review was informed by DFID programming from around the world, our principal sources of evidence for DFID’s country-level efforts are the programmes in Nigeria and Nepal. We chose these countries because DFID engages in representative anticorruption activities in them and because they offered contrasting but complementary contexts in which to review anti-corruption efforts.

Timeline

Review publication

Published 31 October 2014

Government response

Published 28 November 2014

ICAI follow-up

Published 30 June 2016