This paper gives a broad overview of the evolution of Belgian aid policies throughout the 1990s. It documents changes in stated motives and objectives, aid volumes, poverty orientation of aid, the structure and main components of the aid programme, the use of new types of aid instruments, the...

Over the last few years a remarkable shift has taken place in the aid instruments advocated for low-income countries, characterised by a conversion from project to more programme oriented aid and by the inclusion of 'broad-based civil society participation' as a form of new aid conditionality....

Le Sénégal est un des pays les plus démocratiques de l’Afrique, très pauvre, et fortement dépendant de l’aide extérieure. A priori, on pourrait s’attendre à ce qu’il soit un des premiers bénéficiaires de la nouvelle approche de l’aide initiée par les donateurs bilatéraux et...

The participation conditionality linked to the PRSP creates a wide range of problems. It is too ambitious to be workable, too vague to be monitored. The pragmatic way out has been for the Breton Woods institutions to be uncommonly lenient in the verification of this conditionality. Governments...

The new aid approach (NAA) pays particular attention to the politico-institutional dimension of development. It is largely centred around a reform-driven governance agenda. Donors must facilitate and support reform, and this implies that they move away from micro-managed and donor-driven...

The mandatory participation of civil society in the PRSP is hardly ever questioned. It is on the contrary generally applauded by the experts inside and outside of the aid business. If only there could be more of it, things would even be better than they already are, but any start, however...

Over the last five years a new enthusiasm has emerged among donors. Aid volumes have gone up and new modalities and instruments are feverishly experimented with. A new aid paradigm seems to have emerged. Breaking with the bad habits of the past, donors are working on harmonisation, alignment,...

In the mid-1990s, an initiative was launched to provide special debt relief from public creditors to more than forty Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). In 1999, this initiative was further refined and widened in what has been hailed as a new approach to development co-operation. The...

This paper presents findings from a study testing the alternative of an institutional approach to model intrahousehold allocative behavior. It argues that the income-pooling test and the conventional neoclassical household models only capture part of allocative behavior as they start from the...

This paper assesses the gender sensitiveness of Belgian aid at the turn of the century by looking at gender policy discourse and practice. It is shown that declarations regarding the integration of gender issues into development interventions largely live up to standards set at the Beijing...