Donors should put evidence before politics and diplomacy

Didier Schmitt, the scientific advisor and foresight coordinator in the Chief Scientific Adviser’s Office and in the bureau of European policy advisors to the president of the European Commission drafted a very interesting article on Aid and Evidence based decision making:

http://www.scidev.net/global/aid/opinion/donors-evidence-politics-diplomacy.html

"The Darwinian concept of trial and error, and expanding on what works best, is useful to consider in this context. In practice, this would work by starting a large number of small and short-term projects, with the most successful ones getting more funding at each review step. As things stand, a significant proportion of projects (not based on trial and error) have not rendered results proportionate to the investments — some people go as far as saying that, up to now, most development projects in Africa have failed."