ICAI follow-up review of 2020-21 reports

Summary

This review presents the results of our 2020-21 follow-up exercise, which assesses progress made by aid-spending government departments and funds on addressing ICAI recommendations. This process is an important step in the accountability chain, providing the International Development Committee (IDC) and wider development stakeholders with evidence on whether the government has taken appropriate action in response to our recommendations.

This follow-up review covers 12 ICAI reviews in total. We follow up on seven reviews published between July 2020 to July 2021 (the two reviews assessing the government’s official development assistance (ODA) spending target are followed up together). We also return to four reviews published previously, to address outstanding issues from previous follow-up exercises.

The 2020-21 follow-up summarises our findings for the following seven reviews:

• The UK’s support to the African Development Bank Group
• Assessing DFID’s results in nutrition
• Sexual exploitation and abuse by international peacekeepers
• The UK’s approach to tackling modern slavery through the aid programme
• Management of the 0.7% ODA spending target (part 1) and Management of the 0.7% ODA spending target in 2020 (part 2)
• Tackling fraud in UK aid
• UK aid’s approach to youth employment in the Middle East and North Africa

It also looks again at four outstanding issues from previous follow-up exercises:

• Assessing DFID’s results in improving maternal health
• How UK aid learns
• The UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative
• The changing nature of UK aid in Ghana