ARD-DFID Partnership

The ARD-DfID partnership on the Analysis of Public Expenditures in Agriculture had its origins in discussions in 2005 between the ARD anchor, the World Bank regions, and DfID on the importance of improving APEA in order to:

a)  improve the impact of existing agricultural public expenditures on desirable outcomes in client countries;

b)  to provide a basis for increased attention to agriculture by a facilitating public sector committed to delivery of desirable outcomes, and

c) to build capacity in both World Bank and DfID country offices and their client country counterparts to undertake APEA for these purposes. 

“Desirable outcomes” in this context refers to sustainable poverty reduction in rural areas through increased sustainable growth and participation of the poor.

The partnership has three "Modules" of collaboration

Module 1 synthesizes in a series of papers and notes available evidence on trends and impact of public expenditures in agriculture from existing studies. 

IFPRI input: 

• How Can Government Promote Pro Poor Agricultural Growth
• Public Spending in Developing Countries: Trends, Determination, and Impact
• Growth and Poverty Impacts of Agriculture Related Public Expenditures

OPM input: 

• Review of Public Spending to Agriculture
• The Decline in Public Spending to Agriculture – does it Matter?

Module 2  consists of 6 country case studies on agriculture public expenditure reviews that are being conducted with support from the DfID-ARD partnership.These studies were selected by the Steering Committee for the DfID-ARD partnership from 14 applications by World Bank Country offices following a Bank-wide competition that evaluated not just the intrinsic merit of proposals but also scope for impact and buy-in from stakeholders in the form of co-funding.  The country cases selected were (in alphabetical order): Ethiopia, Honduras, Lao PDR, Nepal, Nigeria, and Uganda. Funding for the operational costs of the Honduras study was kindly contributed by the DfID country office in Honduras.

Module 3 will consist of a series of lesson-learning, capacity-building activities, and dissemination.  The lesson-learning will consist of both the synthesis of insights across country cases and assessment of desirable tools for use by clients and country offices.  Capacity-building will consist of the elaboration of training materials and the holding of workshops for World Bank and DfID staff and regional activities for national clients and collaborators.  In addition to the workshop activity, dissemination will consist of use of various media to bring all of the above to the attention of a wider audience of relevant parties in client countries and donor investors