Development agencies are increasingly providing assistance in the form of earmarked grants to specific programmes. These programmes are generally a component of a wider national or regional poverty reduction strategy and often include the provision of basic infrastructure and actions to create employment opportunities.

The role for technical assistance here may be to manage such programmes but more often it is to develop the capacity of national agencies to manage the programmes effectively.

The first requirement is that funds are spent according to recognised best procurement and grant management practice, generally following the rules of the donor agency itself. Beyond this is advice on initiatives that should receive support. To achieve this objective, the technical assistance has to reach out to recipient groups to help them to design effective and sustainable initiatives.

Preceding the crucial requirement that these programmes are well managed, is the obvious requirement that they are well designed. Moreover, in order to ensure that subsequent support is properly directed, there is a need for programme evaluation, as well as after programme implementation.

These needs arise for all technical collaboration activity. However, they acquire particular importance in this sector because of the scale of the proposed assistance and the often complex environment in which the programmes operate.