The Australian Government’s development policy Australian aid: promoting prosperity, reducing poverty, enhancing stability and performance framework Making Performance Count: enhancing the accountability and effectiveness of Australian aid outline key aspects of our aid program.
Documents
Australia's development policy and performance framework are available in PDF and Word formats.
The need for change
The world has changed—and our aid program is changing too. Today, many developing countries are growing rapidly, with aid representing an increasingly small proportion of development finance. To be effective in this new context, our aid is becoming more innovative and catalytic, leveraging other drivers for development, such as private sector investment and domestic finance. We are recasting our aid program in light of this new development paradigm.
Where we work
The Australian aid program now focuses more clearly on our Indo-Pacific region. We have a sharper focus on our immediate neighbourhood—this is where we can make the most difference.
What we do: re-shaping the aid program
The purpose of the aid program is to promote Australia’s national interests by contributing to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. We will pursue this purpose by focusing on two development outcomes: supporting private sector development and strengthening human development.
A strategic framework will guide the re-shaping of Australia’s aid program over coming years.
Figure 1: The strategic framework for the aid program: promoting prosperity, reducing poverty, enhancing stability
More details on the priority areas:
How we deliver aid
Four tests guide strategic choices across the aid program, translating the strategic framework into practice. They ensure that Australian aid:
- pursues our national interest and extends Australia’s influence
- impacts on promoting growth and reducing poverty
- reflects Australia’s value-add and leverage
- makes performance count.
There have been significant improvements in the way we deliver aid, through:
- greater innovation
- strengthening our private sector focus
- enhancing aid for trade
- disability-inclusive development
- economic diplomacy
- working with the most effective partners
- consolidating the aid program
- responsibly engaging with risk and applying safeguards
- actively managing fraud and anti-corruption
- following value for money principles
- transparency.
Making performance count
To reinforce efforts to re-shape the aid program, DFAT’s performance framework, Making Performance Count: enhancing the accountability and effectiveness of Australian aid, operates at all levels of the aid program, with ten high level targets to assess progress against key goals. The performance framework ensures that funding is linked to performance at all levels of the aid program and that taxpayers’ money is achieving the greatest possible development impact.
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