ABSTRACT
Wordsworth, above and as amended, has it absolutely right: poverty planning is on a roll. This is because a new construction has been put in place that locks together five elements of new thinking about the subject. The five elements are:
• the Millennium Development Goals, with poverty reduction at their heart;
• international consensus on how to reduce poverty, best summarised in the World Bank’s World Development Report for 2000/2001, ‘Attacking Poverty’;
• a mechanism for operationalising the strategy at country level, in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers;
• technologies for delivering aid in support of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, notably Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks, sectorwide approaches and Poverty Reduction Strategy Credits;
• underpinning the other four, a commitment to results-based management.
