ABSTRACT
The late 1990s saw the introduction of several important changes in the orientation of Dutch development assistance. General discussions in the international policy community about the effectiveness of aid – fuelled, in particular, by the persistence of poverty in large parts of the world – gave rise to renewed attention among politicians and policy makers for the modalities of assistance (cf. Minister for Development Cooperation 1995: 39-40). The Dutch orientation to development assistance was changed considerably with the adoption of the socalled sectoral approach (modelled on the Sector-Wide Approach or SWAp applied by other donors during the 1990s and advocated through the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); see Section 2.3). The main objective of the sectoral approach was to support development within a social or economic sector by ‘making contributions towards a single sector policy and expenditure programme, under leadership of the recipient government, with the use of common management and reporting procedures to disburse and account for all funds’ (Policy and Operations Evaluation Department 2006: 16).2
