ICAI follow-up review of 2020-21 reports

Summary

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

It covers 12 ICAI reviews in total: we follow up on seven reviews published in the last annual review cycle from July 2020 to July 2021 (the two reviews on the government’s official development assistance spending target are followed up together), and we return again to four reviews published in previous cycles 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 Part 2
• Tackling fraud in UK aid
• UK aid’s approach to youth employment in the Middle East and North Africa

We also looked 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