Knowledge in a time of crisis. Annual Report 2020/2021

The Evaluation Department in Norad releases an annual report every year. The report summarises the knowledge from the evaluations of Norwegian development cooperation that are carried out over the past year, and draws lessons across the different reports.

The annual report for 2020/2021 is titled “Konwledge in a time of crisis”, and raises the importance of using and collecting relevant knowledge in the planning and implementation of development assistance initiatives, also in crisis. Several of the past year’s evaluations looked at humanitarian assistance, as well as issues of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three lessons learned summarise the main findings across the Evaluation Department’s work in this period:

• First, a better decision-making basis is needed in Norwegian development assistance. Norwegian development cooperation is risk-tolerant and flexible, which is positive, but it also entails important challenges in relation to how knowledge can be applied.
• Second, Norwegian development cooperation must strengthen its ability to collect data and perform analyses and evaluations as part of and during ongoing initiatives in order to improve results management. As of today, we often lack sufficient knowledge about whether interventions achieve expected results and goals.
• Third, we do not work systematically enough with countries that advance from low-income to middle-income status.