SUPPORT TO ADVISORS
theIDLgroup has a long track record of providing professional support to advisors, whether those advisors are within government or in aid partners and donor agencies. Typically we are asked to provide some combination of:
- Analyses of policy and programme options
- Assistance with decision-making processes
- Facilitation of workshops and meetings
- Drafting and editorial work of consultation and communications messages
- Programme management assistance.
We’ve called this type of work “advising the advisors”. Examples include:
- AusAid: our consultants are members of an advisory panel providing policy and programming advice for Australia’s changing aid programme
- DFID: providing in house support to DFID over six year period, through a Livestock and Wildlife Advisory Group (LWAG) staffed and supported by consultants from theIDLgroup
- Ethiopia: helping government and the donor community to shape Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), which is now Africa’s largest such programme. This involved facilitation and process support for:
- Developing the concept and overall programme design
- Resolving disagreements over options options (scale, conditionality, earmarking)
- Gaining consensus on the final shape of the PSNP
- Ghana: monitoring progress of the multi-donor funded Land Administration Project on behalf of DFID, as well as representation for DFID on Joint Implementation Support Missions and Mid-Term Reviews
- Malawi: assisting the Privatisation Commission of Malawi, in the development of a private sector participation strategy and the transaction processes for the concessioning of the government’s industrial forest plantations
- South Sudan: working for the multi-donor team, we helped donors to review the five-year programming and financing framework, and prepare for their discussions with government on the sequencing and mix of future aid instruments.
For more information on our work supporting advisers, please contact Steve Ashley.