ABSTRACT
At least one-fifth of all overseas development assistance is spent on technical cooperation (TC), much of it on expert, i.e., ‘expatriate’, aid (Cassen, 1994). In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion reaches one-quarter, and it costs on average US $300,000 per annum to fund a single expatriate (Dore, 1994). With this kind of money being invested, donors would want to be absolutely sure that, as a form of aid, TC is proving relatively effective. That is especially so since some aid agencies pay their expatriate employees a local salary. Yet evaluations tend to be short term in focus as well as in-house, and often left to the expatriates themselves. As a result, as Cassen observes, they may not get done, or run the risk of containing success rates that are artificially (and self-servingly) inflated.
