The 1997 White Paper: powerful poverty commitment, imprecise operational strategy

The White Paper signals a clear, strong and comprehensive commitment by the British government to use its aid and influence to help poor people. It spells out a range of specific aims to benefit and empower the poor and especially women. It endorses a new powerful concept of partnership with its own commitments to partners and it specifies the implications of any lack of commitment by them to poverty reduction. Unfortunately there is no systematic exposition of the changes in policies required to achieve pro-poor growth; there are ambiguities about targeting and no lessons are drawn about what has worked well in its own past interventions. DFID appears to want to 'go it alone' with little indication of the collective efforts (including other donors) required to achieve these ambitious goals. Nevertheless, the agency has organizational strengths to achieve its new strategy which gives confidence that more precise operational strategies will be devised and pursued with conviction in the coming years. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.