DFID’s bilateral support to growth and livelihoods in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of the most difficult places to deliver aid and DFID’s staff work hard under demanding conditions. We looked in depth at 5 programmes worth £97.7 million between 2006 and 2018.

Score: Amber/Red
  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 7 March 2014
  3. Type: Other
  4. Subject: Country focus, Livelihoods and social protection, Trade and economic development
  5. Assessment: Amber/Red
  6. Location: Afghanistan
  7. Lead commissioner: Mark Foster

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Review

We found the Department for International Development’s (DFID) staff worked hard under demanding conditions. Although the projects we reviewed were delivered well on the whole, we found mixed results. We awarded an amber-red score and made three recommendations.

Findings

Our fieldwork provides evidence that a positive difference is being made to the livelihoods of intended beneficiaries in the areas we surveyed. It is not clear, however, how positive impacts will be sustained in the long term. DFID faces a challenge to ensure that its future growth and livelihoods portfolio is sufficiently coherent and flexible, given an increasingly uncertain future. The ongoing international military draw-down is both an important challenge and an opportunity for DFID to focus its future strategy solely on poverty reduction and to re-position itself as the ‘lead operator’ of the UK’s presence in Afghanistan.

Recommendations

  1. DFID should formally review current and future projects to focus its portfolio more firmly on reducing poverty using evidence-based interventions. This should be completed within six months, using a consultative and evidence-led process.
  2. DFID should ensure that intended beneficiaries are, as far as practicable, directly consulted when new projects are being designed, so that their needs are clearly addressed and their ownership is enhanced.
  3. DFID should enhance its approach and commitment to independent monitoring in order to assess current and future project performance and to allow it to assess the impact of its programme.

 

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Timeline

Review publication

Published 7 March 2014

Government response

Published 28 March 2014

ICAI follow-up

Published 18 June 2015