Finland supports the right things in its bilateral development cooperation

Press release 125/2016
21 June 2016

Finland's bilateral country strategies for development cooperation are mainly relevant and effective. This is revealed from an external evaluation, which reviewed the success of country strategies implemented in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nepal, Zambia, Tanzania and Vietnam.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs introduced results-based country strategies in 2012 as a means to steer development cooperation activities in the long-term partner countries. Based on the findings of the evaluation of Finland's country strategies, Finland's bilateral development cooperation is targeted to matters that are relevant from the perspective of the partner countries and their citizens. Finland has managed to select targets of cooperation that are important from the beneficiaries' point of view also in situations where the partner country's own policy has not prioritized these needs.

Finland has reached good results in its development cooperation in the education sector, private sector development, job creation, development of legislation, promotion of human rights, and strengthening of women's position. The results are slightly poorer in, for example, the promotion of agriculture and rural development and in projects and programmes related to land use and the forest sector. The sustainability of Finland's development policy also poses challenges: Enough information about the long-term development impacts of support is not available.

The evaluation served as a basis for conclusions and recommendations for Finland's future development cooperation. Several difficulties related to efficiency were identified. Some of these concern the operating environment of development cooperation and the risks involved, others are related to, for example, lack of skills and low absorption rate of funds. Especially projects implemented by international organisations and projects outsourced to consultancies were found to have been ineffective.

Based on the results of the evaluation, Finland can further improve the efficiency and impacts of its development cooperation, for example, through policy influencing and cooperation between donors as well as by means of better coordination of its own forms of development funding.

The evaluation therefore recommends further development of the country strategy modality. Bilateral country strategies for development cooperation are mainly too narrow and the modality should be expanded to cover other development policy instruments. This is particularly important in countries in which development cooperation will be gradually replaced by commercial and economic cooperation.

Inquiries: Jyrki Pulkkinen, Director, Development Evaluation, tel. +358 295 350 987.

The Foreign Ministry's email addresses are of the format [email protected]