Donor Coordination and Project Monitoring Practices--A Foreign Economic Assistance Project Study

An indepth case study of the multidonor Maternal Child Health/Family Planning Project in Kenya was performed to learn more about trends in the Agency for International Development (AID) project management and donor coordination process. This project was selected for study because it was part of a long-range, multidonor effort containing several of the types of assistance usually offered by AID and it was nearing completion. AID assistance was to be in four major areas: technical assistance, participant training, commodities procurement, and recurring cost financing.

GAO found that there was no formal arrangement among the donors to coordinate throughout the term of the project. The absence of donor coordination resulted in specific and overall program goals not being achieved in some assistance areas. Division of assistance responsibilities exacerbated the coordination problem in that the donors never compared for whom each was paying, and donors were not able to determine if the government was paying its share of the recurring costs. Planned objectives were not met, partly due to the absence of a monitoring plan and the lack of required evaluations. The assistance promised in the project agreements generally bore little resemblance to the planned output for the specific years. There were major changes in the technical assistance and participant training areas that were not directed toward project goals.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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