Value-for-money assessment of social spending in developing countries: lessons from Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This practice note combines key theoretical principles of value-for-money (VfM) assessment with the authors’ experiences of conducting these studies in the health and agriculture sectors in Ethiopia. It documents an innovative approach to VfM analysis in contexts where data is limited. The approach combines quantitative and qualitative methods, can be easily applied to policy-relevant questions, and is simple and easily reproducible in developing countries. This practice note is useful to policymakers interested in VfM assessments of social spending in developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Monitoring and evaluation
• capacity development
• region: sub-Saharan Africa
• governance and public policy

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Building Resilience in Ethiopia (BRE) program (managed by Oxford Policy Management (OPM)) for funding the health and PSNP VfM studies, respectively. The authors also wish to thank colleagues in Ethiopia who worked alongside us to conduct the VfM studies, and Tsegay Tekleselassie for commenting on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Building Resilience in Ethiopia (BRE) programme (managed by Oxford Policy Management).

Notes on contributors

Jamelia Harris

Jamelia Harris is a Research Economist at Fiscus Ltd and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She holds a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford.

Andrew Lawson

Andrew Lawson is co-founder and Technical Director of Fiscus Ltd. He is an economist with extensive experience of the design and implementation of PFM reforms, PFM diagnostics, and project/programme evaluation.