The Socio-cultural Conditions of Relevance to Development assistance : An evaluation of their incorperation in Norwegian Development assistance to Africa

Since its inception, Norwegian development assistance (NDA) has been guided by a cardinal policy objective that it should be recipient-oriented and poverty-focussed. Over the years new NDA objectives and policy concerns were added. These include the women-indevelopment (WID) orientation, the focus on the environment, the concern with sustainability, the search to promote self-reliance and the ideal of community participation One of these restively new NDA policy concerns is the incorporation of the socio-cultural conditions (SCC) of the target populations into NDA-funded programmes and projects.

In the spring of 1987, the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Development Cooperation commissioned a study on the issue of incorporation of SCC into NDA, which resulted in Klausen's (1987) Preliminary Report.

The present evaluation study was commissioned on the basis of the Klausen Report and had the following task:

• To supplement, and if necessary correct the impressions and conclusions presented in the preliminary report as regards the Socio-cultural conditions of relevance to development assistance;
• Based on a study of how specific projects in Africa have developed over time, collect data which can be used to suggest improvements in the methods employed for preliminary studies which focus on the Socio-cultural conditions of the target groups;
• Based on the above study, expose the consequences for projects when the Sociocultural aspects have been/have not been given proper consideration, and;
• Based on the above - and on a review of the problems discussed in the preliminary report - help to improve the general planning, implementation and evaluation of development assistance activities.