Norad’s Strategy towards 2015: Results in the fight against poverty

Norad – The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation – is a specialised directorate under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Norad’s functions are laid down in the agency’s terms of reference and annual letters of allocation issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The majority of Norwegian development assistance is administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norwegian foreign missions.

In the case of aid funds that are not administered by Norad, the agency provides advice on what is required to achieve results, communicates results and contributes to debate on the effects of development assistance. Quality assurance is defined as one of Norad’s five main tasks, but is also an aspect common to all its main tasks.

Norad assures the quality of Norwegian development assistance by means of:

• technical advisory services: advice on development and development assistance issues and results and risk assessments in every area of Norwegian development cooperation
• quality assurance and monitoring of development assistance administration: monitoring of development assistance administration, advice on and assessment of efforts to deal with corruption, legal counselling in connection with agreements and contracts.
• grant administration: the administration of grants to Norwegian and international organisations, Norwegian companies engaged in development cooperation and Norwegian higher education and research institutions that produce new knowledge in the field of development and development assistance
• communication: dissemination of results achieved through the entire range of development assistance channels and facilitation of arenas for public debate on Norwegian development policy and the results of development assistance.
• evaluation: independent evaluation produces knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and helps to keep Norwegian development policy actors administratively accountable

This strategy replaces the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation Strategy towards 2010. In the years up to 2015, Norad will:

• help to empower recipient countries to achieve their own development goals
• concentrate most resources on following up on the main priority areas of Norwegian development policy
• help to promote a focus on and communicate the results of theentire range of Norwegian development assistance activities
• produce and apply knowledge of what works and what doesn’t in order to improve development assistance
• be an instigator of public debate on development assistance and development
• develop expertise, working methods and leadership that enable Norad to solve complex tasks effectively