The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation wants to be less risk-averse this decade, its director general told Devex.
“The choice we’ve made now is to have a little bit more courage to do the things that we don’t know work,” Norad’s Bård Vegar Solhjell said in an interview last week. “We need to try things that can have a huge effect, in the hope that we are building something that can really be transformational — rather than thinking that every Norwegian krone that is being spent has to be proven in a results framework and with an exact theory of change.”
What’s new? Norad published its 2030 strategy last week, including the aim to “Be a champion of innovation within development cooperation.”
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As part of the move, which coincides with a similar effort in France, Solhjell said the agency is considering a dedicated financing mechanism to quickly trial new ideas. The alternative, he said, is that “you have to go to the ministry and then to the Parliament, and you go through a huge public report or something like that.” Instead, the idea is that “there is a faster way of getting to try out good ideas, small-scale first.”
Where? Asked which sectors were likely to win support, Solhjell cited digital public goods — such as digital learning materials, improved access to weather and health information, and cash transfers — as well as more transparent and efficient tax and fishing systems.
How much? Solhjell said it was too soon to say how much money would be devoted to the innovation mechanism. Norad’s budget has grown from about €400 million in 2015 to roughly €2 billion in 2020 — making up the majority of Norway’s long-term development cooperation.
About the author
Vince Chadwickvchadw
Vince Chadwick is a contributing reporter at Devex. A law graduate from Melbourne, Australia, he was social affairs reporter for The Age newspaper, before covering breaking news, the arts, and public policy across Europe, including as a reporter and editor at POLITICO Europe. He was long-listed for International Journalist of the Year at the 2023 One World Media Awards.
