The Micro Efficiency of Danish Development Aid

Danish development aid is analyzed by visiting a sample of projects five years after their completion. The sample is stratified to nine countries chosen to be main, peaceful recipients in the main regions. The criterion of success is if the projects do what it is meant to. If we think the project would not have been accepted by Danida given present knowledge, it gets 0 to 2 points, and vice versa from 2 to 4 points. The average project obtains 2.16 points, but as our selection process has a couple of small upward biases, it is dubious if the true average is above 2. Projects in Africa, agriculture and parastatals are negative outliers with 3/4 to 1 point, while projects in East Asia get 1 point more. There are some indications that Danida is more successful with small projects and NGO-projects. The soft, informal, multi-goal decision process used by Danida is discussed