Preface

Danish bilateral development assistance to Uganda resumed in 1987 after the National Resistance Movement took over power. Uganda was among the first Danish 12 programme cooperation countries identified in 1989, and in 1990 a Danish Embassy was established in Kampala. The Danish assistance (including NGO-support and technical assistance) has grown substantially from a modest level during the first year reaching a peak in 2001 of DKK 472 million. By the beginning of the 1990s Uganda was the second largest receiver of Danish bilateral assistance. The total Danish funded assistance during 1987-2004 has exceeded DKK 5 billion (or about USD 900 million at present exchange rates). The Danish aid contribution thus is at the level of 7 percent of all aid to Uganda during the last 17 years.

A Uganda Joint Assistance Strategy, UJAS, between key development partners and the Ugandan Government is currently being developed. Denmark has decided to participate in these efforts in view to support the harmonisation and alignment of the development assistance. A joint evaluation of this strategy will thus become relevant in the longer term. The current Danish Uganda Strategy for Development Cooperation covers the period 2004-2008, and although a number of sector and thematic evaluations of the long-term Danish development cooperation with Uganda has been undertaken, an evaluation of the substantial country programme in its entirety has so far not been carried out. As recommended by the Performance Review in 2003, and as stipulated in the Strategy, it was decided to conduct an overall evaluation of the Danish development programme in 2006. Thus, the current evaluation could be regarded as an appropriate end-assessment of the ’bilateral’ development assistance keeping the UJAS in perspective.

To further the partnership principles the evaluation has been undertaken as a joint collaborative exercise of Danida’s Evaluation Department, EVAL, and Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister, OPM, the latter being responsible for coordination and the strategy for monitoring and evaluation in Uganda. EVAL has taken a lead role as regards funding, contracting and implementation management. At the same time, participation in the evaluation has enhanced the evaluation capacity of OPM, and the joint experiences could be useful for future country programme assessment, in particular for future evaluation of the joint strategies.

The main purpose of the evaluation is to evaluate achievements against the overall development objective of poverty reduction in Uganda (as formulated in the Uganda PEAP of 1997 and 2004, and in the Danish Strategy ’Partnership 2000’). Still, the efforts and achievements have also been assessed against the contemporary context and standards prevailing at the time, when decisions were made. The approach of the Danish Uganda country programme evaluation has been inspired by the current debate among partners in the DAC Network on Development Evaluation. Thus, a four-level assessment has been made: 1. Evaluation of the impact of the combined support from development partners to Uganda and the country’s own efforts – an assessment of development outcomes; 2. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the development co-operation itself (total ODA contribution) focussing on questions concerning partnership, alignment of support, harmonisation, government revenues, possible negative effect of ODA, etc. 3. Evaluation of the contribution of Denmark as an individual development partner to the effectiveness of the larger development co-operation effort. And 4. Evaluation of the internal effectiveness of Danida, concerning the institutional effectiveness, and the efficiency of delivery of support. This is the first time this approach has been applied for a Danish country programme evaluation, the experiences of which may guide future similar evaluations.

The evaluation has been carried out by an external team from Mokoro Ltd., led by Principal Consultant, Mr. Stephen Lister. Following DAC’s evaluation guidelines and quality standards of independence of responsibility of implementation of programme activities, the team was commissioned after international tendering in March 2006. The field work, including a special perception study of the assessments of the Danish assistance was undertaken during April-July, followed by analysis, drafting of thematic papers, comments and discussions with the reference groups. The draft synthesis evaluation report was discussed at a workshop in Kampala on 18 October, contributing signifi-cantly to the assessments of the team.

We thank all stakeholders and evaluation participants for their valuable contributions without which it could not have been completed. The findings, lessons learned and recommendations of the evaluation reports are expected in general to contribute to the strengthening of the development efforts of Uganda, and specifically, to the enhancement of the Danish Uganda assistance programme. Moreover, it is found that the evaluation process itself has shown the usefulness of this country programme evaluation approach, and has provided interesting new learning lessons of how to go about it in a joint partnership.

This Synthesis Report (Vol.1) is the final Evaluation Report of the conclusions and recommendations of the Evaluation. The Perception Study (Vol.2) is published separately. The Appendixes A-G containing the details of the supporting data, thematic chronology, etc. are contained in the attached CD-Rom of Vol.1.

Danida’s Evaluation Department
Office of the Prime Minister