Toward Country-Led Development: A multi-partner evaluation of the comprehensive development framework

The Comprehensive Development Framework--launched by World Bank President James D. Wolfenson in early 1999--has become an important influence in the global development agenda. Il provided conceptual underpinnings for the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and fed into such initiatives as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Monterey Consensus. The core Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) principles have gained widespread endorsement. They are not new individually, but bringing them together as a unified concept and championing the package within the global developpement community has been an important innovation. This report concludes an extended multi-partner effort to evaluate the implementation of the CDF principles, to identify the factors that have facilitated and hindered it, and to assess the extent to which CDF implementation has affected behaviors and outcomes. The breadth of the evaluation's multi-partner approach and governance structure has been virtually unprecedented, and the process itself generated valuable experience on collaborative ways to evaluate issues of broad mutual interest to the development community. The evaluation has its origins in a December 1999 request by the Bank's Board Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) to the Operations Evaluation Department (OED) to assess CDF implementation. OED and the Bank's Development Economics Research Group (DECRG) joined forces and launched the evaluation by hosting a conference with representatives from CDF pilot countries, donors, nongovernmental and private sector organizations, and academia. This group recommended that the evaluation should be a multi-stake-holder partnership. Accordingly, a 30-member Steering Committee and 5-member Management Group were established in January 2001 to guide the evaluation. Multi-disciplinary evaluation teams with members from developed and developing countries conducted six country studies and five thematic studies. Nie bilateral and multilateral donors provided financial and in-kind support, amounting to about 60 percent of the evaluation's total cost. The evaluation shows that both donors and recipients have made progress in implementing the CDF principles, particularly in countries where one or more of the principles have been applied over a number of years. These positive changes are fragile and could be stalled or reversed. Implementing the principles requires changes in entrenched behaviors and institutional practices--not easily or quickly done. Thus, dedicated and consistent attention is needed by top donor leadership and recipient countries to ensure that momentum is sustained.