OPEC Fund Quarterly : Why should “we” focus on improving development effectiveness? Ulrike Haarsager: The ultimate goal of any development institution is to deliver impact – our strategic objective calls on us to maximize it. Everything that the OPEC Fund does, including its mandates to strengthen financial sustainability, enhance operations and deliver growth, has to be viewed through that lens. Development effectiveness is there to refocus the conversation toward that lens and help provide the information and data needed to make that conversation meaningful.
OFQ : To justify what we’re doing? UH: To tell a convincing story about what we are doing, and why, but also to be able to adjust if something is not working or having the desired effect. Or to tweak an approach to focus on certain areas over others because of impact – which, as a development institution, is our most important return on investment. Development effectiveness helps to sharpen those considerations by creating a more robust information-base for decisions. That is the learning part, which to me is even more important than the accountability aspect.
OFQ : What do you mean by the accountability aspect of development effectiveness? UH: We’re accountable to our member countries, but also to external stakeholders and the general public. We’re based on the capital that our member countries contributed and we’re funded by investors through the SDG bond, so we’re accountable to them. They give us money to generate development results, and if we do not deliver they will direct their money elsewhere. OFQ : Where are we now in terms of progress? UH: With the OPEC Fund Results Framework, we have created a framework to start gathering more consistently the information that we need. The OPEC Fund has done a lot of amazing development work for decades. However, a review that we did for our first Development Effectiveness Report shows that about a third of our completed projects lack the required data to confirm that the results have actually been delivered. That has nothing to do with the success or failure of the project; it is about standards and quality of information covering our operations. We have to improve that.
With newer technologies, data collection can be less resource intensive and more straightforward, even in the developing world.
Ulrike Haarsager, OPEC Fund, head of Development Effectiveness
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