The Future of Development Agency Effectiveness
This project explores what effectiveness means for development agencies today, how it is implemented in practice, and how it may need to evolve in the years ahead.
About the Project
As the development landscape shifts, agencies must rethink how they operate to stay effective and relevant. This project examines how changing conditions are prompting agencies to redefine effectiveness in practice, as they adapt their tools, capacities, and ways of working to remain resilient in the years ahead.

Featured Work

What Will It Mean for Development Agencies to Be Effective in the Years Ahead?
Rachael Calleja et al.
What Does It Mean for Agencies to Be Effective in a Changing Development Landscape?
Rachael Calleja et al.
Effectiveness In Practice
Beata Cichocka et al.

Featured Work


Image credit for social media/web: Adobe Stock

Blogs

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  • What Will It Take for Development Agencies to Stay Effective in a Changing Landscape?
    Rachael Calleja et al.
    Development cooperation is entering a period of profound disruption. Rapid declines in official development assistance (ODA) have ...
  • How Can Development Agencies Leverage Their Comparative Advantage?
    Rachael Calleja et al.
    We’ve asked officials about how their agencies understand their own effectiveness and what it means to be an effective agency in t...
  • Development Agencies on What Being Effective Means to Them
    Beata Cichocka et al.
    In an era of budget constraints and growing populist challenges to traditional development narratives, it is more important than e...
  • Development Agencies Must Clarify Their Roles to Work Better Together
    Beata Cichocka
    and
    Mikaela Gavas
    This blog draws on recent CGD research as well as forthcoming work on agency effectiveness, to outline three practical pathways to...
  • What Does It Mean for Bilateral Development Agencies to Be Effective in a Changing Development Landscape?
    Sara Casadevall Bellés et al.
    In this blog we introduce the findings from our new policy paper, in which we examine the mounting pressures on development agenci...

Publications

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  • What Will It Mean for Development Agencies to Be Effective in the Years Ahead?
    Rachael Calleja et al.
    As development agencies face expanding mandates and tighter budgets, their effectiveness increasingly depends on strengthening int...
  • Effectiveness In Practice
    Beata Cichocka et al.
    We explore how development agencies understand their own effectiveness. Drawing on interviews with 48 individuals across Agence Fr...
  • What Does It Mean for Agencies to Be Effective in a Changing Development Landscape?
    Rachael Calleja et al.
    For official bilateral development agencies, the realities of providing effective development cooperation are increasingly complex...

Contact

For more information, contact Sara Casadevall Belles.

Contact

For more information, contact Sara Casadevall Belles.

Experts

Beata Cichocka
Beata Cichocka joined CGD’s European Development Policy and Leadership Programme in November 2019. Her main areas of interest include the future of development agencies, the role o...
Rachael Calleja
Rachael Calleja is a Research Fellow in CGD’s UK and European Development Leadership programme. Prior to joining CGD, she gained several years of experience conducting policy-relev...
Sara Casadevall Bellés
Sara Casadevall Bellés is a Research Associate for the Europe Program at the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, Sara worked at Results for Development on Scaling ...

Experts

  • Beata Cichocka
    Beata Cichocka joined CGD’s European Development Policy and Leadership Programme in November 2019. Her main areas of interest include the future of development agencies, the role o...
  • Rachael Calleja
    Rachael Calleja is a Research Fellow in CGD’s UK and European Development Leadership programme. Prior to joining CGD, she gained several years of experience conducting policy-relev...
  • Sara Casadevall Bellés
    Sara Casadevall Bellés is a Research Associate for the Europe Program at the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, Sara worked at Results for Development on Scaling ...

Acknowledgments

The Center for Global Development is grateful for contributions from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in support of this work.