Effective development co-operation is a prerequisite for sustainable progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This report is the product of a global monitoring exercise designed to generate evidence on progress in making development co-operation more effective. This second edition since the establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation in Busan in 2011 aims to build political momentum for change, ensuring that we are able to identify remaining challenges and learn from each other about ways to improve the effectiveness of development co-operation at the country and global levels.

The Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation sustains political commitment and upholds accountability for improving the effectiveness of development co-operation. It does this by regularly monitoring progress on the implementation of agreed development effectiveness principles and related commitments at the country level; and by facilitating dialogue and encouraging the sharing of experiences among governments, multilateral organisations, civil society, parliamentarians and the private sector. The Global Partnership drives change in the way development co-operation is provided by generating evidence to highlight where attention is needed, and by encouraging members to respond to the evidence by agreeing on individual and collective action to accelerate progress.

This chapter provides an overview of the results of the 2016 monitoring round of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation. It offers a summary of progress in aligning development co-operation with the development effectiveness principles agreed at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, 2011. It identifies approaches that have driven change in specific countries or among key stakeholders, as well as signalling areas that demand further attention.

This chapter looks at how – and how much – development partners are using country-led results frameworks to plan and design new interventions, to set objectives for expected results, and to monitor and track progress (Indicator 1a). In addition, it assesses to what extent results frameworks exist in participating countries and examines their characteristics in each (Indicator 1b). The chapter draws on insights provided for close to 3 000 major projects and programmes approved in 2015, equivalent to USD 72 billion in development co-operation, as well as a review of government strategic planning documents for the 81 countries participating in the 2016 monitoring round. It also draws on regional assessments of countries’ progress with managing for development results, as well as other complementary sources of evidence, to inform the interpretation of the findings of the monitoring survey.

The Busan Partnership agreement is founded on the commitment to promote ownership by countries of their own development agenda. Ownership requires that a country has sufficient support among stakeholders within and outside of the government to build the institutional capacity required for defining and implementing a national development strategy. This chapter reviews the state of implementation of this commitment, as well as the challenges encountered in putting it into practice. Specifically, it focuses on findings from the 2016 monitoring round related to: country efforts to strengthen budgetary and public financial management systems (Indicator 9a); development partner reliance on country systems and processes to deliver funding (Indicator 9b); progress in untying aid (Indicator 10); and efforts by development partners to make the delivery of development co-operation more predictable (Indicator 5).

Delivering on the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will require mobilising all available financing, knowledge, skills and technology. To make this possible, it is essential to build inclusive partnerships for effective development that can create synergies and capitalise on diverse and complementary contributions. This in turn requires an enabling policy, legal and regulatory environment. Many development partners will need to change and adapt the way they work. This chapter looks at the existing environment for inclusive development partnerships. In particular, it reviews the current level of civil society engagement in development as well as the quality of public-private dialogue, focusing on: current efforts to create an environment that maximises the contribution of civil society organisations to development (Indicator 2); and whether essential conditions for good dialogue between the public and private sectors are in place (Indicator 3). It also explores how multi-stakeholder partnerships work in practice. The chapter concludes by proposing key elements for building more inclusive partnerships for development.

Transparency and accountability are vital to enhancing the impact of development co-operation and enabling the participation of citizens in the long-term development of their respective countries. This chapter reviews progress in implementing the Busan principles of transparency and accountability, including mutual accountability among partners, as well as accountability to beneficiaries of development co-operation and to all other stakeholders. It does so by measuring the public availability of information on development co-operation (Indicator 4); the extent to which governments and development partners work together to include development co-operation flows in budgets subjected to parliamentary scrutiny (Indicator 6); the share of participating countries able to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment (Indicator 8), which is fundamental to enable transparency and accountability of policies towards women; and the implementation of inclusive review processes that strengthen mutual accountability among co-operation partners (Indicator 7).