This rapid literature review has been commissioned as an update to a previous report on technical assistance produced by the K4D programme in 2018 by Hannah Timmis. This report concentrates on technical assistance or capacity building in North Africa. This review found only one comprehensive study on technical assistance published after Timmis (2018) and a few recent examples ...» more
Technical assistance
Community-based disaster risk management in Pakistan
Disaster risk management (DRM), including disaster risk reduction (DRR), has received increased attention - particularly community-based DRM (CBDRM). Despite limited implementation and very limited evidence, some findings emerge: Factors of success have included: - Work that is multi-sectoral, integrated and multi-hazard. - Good programming, with high-quality analysis, ...» more
Regional development programmes and poverty reduction
This report looks into the actual performance, and possibly impact, of regional development programmes on national-level poverty reduction and associated factors such as ‘good governance’. The evidence base presents some strengths, such as the availability of diverse and rigorous evaluations, but also significant difficulties, most notably the lack of clear data on impact, ...» more
International aid to Lebanon
Key findings: Solid data from the OECD and OCHA makes mapping the official aid to Lebanon possible. However, official data is only part of the story: major aid flows have remained unrecorded, for example from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Information on macro-level aid also seems largely gender-blind. Lebanon has received large volumes of international donor aid since the 1970s. ...» more
Current thinking on capacity development
Capacity development (CD) emerged in the 1990s from a reassessment of earlier approaches to technical cooperation. (Pearson 2011b, p. 10) It is now “gaining greater prominence in international discussions on the performance and future of development cooperation” (Keijzer et al. 2011, p. 7) and continues to be identified as key constraint in development analysis and political ...» more
