The international community plays an important role in providing technical and financial support to developing countries. From 1998 to 2003, official development assistance increased by more than one-third, to US$76 billion (World Bank 2005). There has been a concerted effort by donors in the last decade to focus more on poverty reduction in the broadest sense, and most aid agencies are now actively working to support the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Accompanying this move towards a greater poverty focus has been a shift by donors away from funding individual projects and toward more programmatic support. While this is a welcome development, many countries still formally
