​The overall objective of Swedish development aid is poverty alleviation. In spite of this, many interventions are either less relevant for poverty reduction or outright inefficient. What is then the poverty profile of Swedish aid programmes in its partner countries?

This event launches a report which analyses interventions in 12 Swedish partner country programs. The cases chosen are countries where Sweden engages in “long term development cooperation”. Hence, the likelihood of finding strong poverty profiles should be comparatively higher in these country programs. The interventions are assessed against established knowledge about effective poverty reduction, mainly drawing on the Chronic Poverty Report 2014-2015 and other research.

The author and speaker at this event, Mats Hårsmar, currently serves as programme manager for the newly established Swedish Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA). He has previously worked as researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, and prior to that as chief analyst for development issues at the Swedish ministry for Foreign Affairs.