Country or Region: Worldwide
Sector: Joint Programming
Client: European Commission
This ongoing project aims to provide technical assistance and in-country support to the European Union (DEVCO and EEAS) and EU Delegations in order to improve aid effectiveness and aid impact on the ground, following the commitments made by world leaders at the past Aid Effectiveness High Level meetings. Technical experts mainly provide support in the area of division of labour, reduction of aid fragmentation, drafting (joint) strategy papers and response strategies, programming EU and Member States’ aid jointly with a view to establishing a single EU programming document per partner country.
To date, 14 out of the 58 countries that have been identified as potential candidates for joint programming, have already agreed Joint Programming documents. 4 more have adopted joint analyses and joint responses whereas at least 6 more countries will deliver EU Joint Strategy documents by 2017.
Experts are providing in-country support through missions in partner countries as well as ‘remote support’ for a number of other countries such as Libya and Yemen. Specific assignments focused on ad hoc, demand-driven services on how to introduce joint programming in the global development agenda, the implementation of agreed policies per se, inclusion of the policies in the partner country, operationalization of joint programming both at the level of the EU and of the partner country.
The contract has also provided inputs to the EU’s own institutional learning and capacity development. A guidance package on Joint Programming has been published based on practical experience and shared in English and French versions with EU and EU MS staff in the field as well as with EU HQ. It has been widely disseminated to increase the knowledge on the concept and its implementation also in partner countries that have not yet started to prepare for Joint Programming. Moreover, a Joint Programming “Tracker” database has been developed and provides up to date information on the state of advancement of Joint Programming processes worldwide. Finally, assistance has also been provided in the form of support to technical seminars in various parts of the world: South and Central America, South East and Central Africa, West Africa, Asia, EU Neighbourhood Region.
So far, EU joint programming documents and processes had been set up in almost fifty partner countries. While not all of those countries have been directly supported, sharing lessons learned (including through capacity4dev) and providing support at and through the regional seminars has facilitated joint programming on a larger scale.
This project has been implemented by HTSPE (now DAI) between May 2012 and December 2014. It is currently implemented by EPRD.
