It has already been 5 years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020. With the passing of time, there has been a call for an objective analysis of the impact of the crisis on populations as well as an accurate assessment of the relevance and effectiveness of policy responses.
Notably a number of evaluations have focused on how bilateral and multilateral donors have responded to the COVID-19 crisis in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Emerging Countries to support populations and governments in the health sector (e.g. vaccines) and private sector. These include, to name a few: the COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition (OECD)1, the European Commission (DG INTPA2), the World Bank3, the German development cooperation agency (BMZ)4, the French Development Agency (AFD)5, and the French Treasury (DGT6).
Based on this evaluation work, as well as Technopolis Group’s experience in global health and international cooperation more generally, we have come up with 6 lessons learnt for improved crisis response.
Lesson 1: Use financial, human, managerial and physical structures from pre-pandemic projects to rapidly deploy funds
Drawing on what ‘already exists’ – whether it be completed projects or previous/existing donor partnerships – is one of the key success factors to quickly deliver funding and technical expertise on the ground.
Looking closer at a concrete example, the French Development Agency (AFD) was able to commit a bit less than €1 billion extra-funding within 4 months (from March to June 2020) by deploying funds to existing projects and trustee partners, notably governments, financial institutions and to a relative extent NGOs. Conversely, responses that did not build on pre-existing frameworks usually failed to reach their target or deploy funds quickly enough to the right target audience.
Lesson 2: Strike a balance between the needs of the health emergency and the needs of the beneficiary countries
This tension was perceived by most donors during the crisis. For example, the evaluation overseen by DG INTPA, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships, concludes that the allocation of financing did not always fully address the actual needs of the beneficiary communities. This can be explained due to lack of information, political or cultural biases, or previous commitments. The evaluation, in particular, advises against linking budgets to geographical areas in advance, and instead recommends maintaining more flexibility in the allocation of funds.
The evaluation of the intervention of the German Federal Foreign Office (BMZ) reveals that allocations were not always made on the basis of a preliminary study on the pre-crisis vulnerabilities of countries, or an estimation of the health and socio-economic weaknesses of people during the pandemic. In the case of the Health in Common 2020 initiative, the evaluation shows how difficult it can be to adapt national plans to local needs in LDCs, as these plans are drawn up, all too often, based on examples in Europe and Asia.
It is, therefore, important to consider how to manage this tension between the emergency response and the response based on an objective and unbiased analysis of the needs of countries. This calls for a more participatory approach to shaping funding decisions, a deeper dialogue with national public authorities and the rapid use of research and knowledge into the policy design of the response.
Lesson 3: Reconcile emergency and development
It is important to remember that, for most development aid donors, ‘emergency response’ is not their main job. Yet, amidst the pandemic, many donors tried to combine an emergency response with a long-term response to the COVID-19 crisis in order to consolidate national public health systems in LDCs.
To take an example, AFD’s response to the emergency was not sufficiently linked to a long-term response to strengthen national health systems. A parallel can be drawn with the action of DG INTPA, whose evaluation concludes that from a programme perspective, the EU gave priority to the immediate COVID-19 crisis, rather than supporting longer-term resilience to future crises, and in all sectors. Germany, for its part, would appear to have developed a comprehensive crisis management programme coordinated by BMZ, involving KfW development bank and the national development agency (GIZ). This programme integrated a full-fledged ‘crisis recovery’ pillar, mobilising substantial financial resources. The German example demonstrates an effort to coordinate the response between bilateral action (KFW and GIZ) and multilateral action (German contributions to the World Health Organization and in multilateral partnerships) structured around 3 common pillars: strengthening health system response capabilities; ensuring food and social security and protection of the economy (emergency response); and supporting public finance recovery, including borrowing capacity of aid recipient countries, and crisis management (crisis recovery).
One of the possible ways to overcome this difficulty at the onset of crisis, could be to systematically plan (i) work with the contracting authorities at the appraisal phase of the response, then at the project implementation phase, on defining the crisis recovery and on the sustainability of the outcomes, with associated activities; (ii) the allocation of a non-earmarked budget line at the start of the response to support the crisis strategy defined or redefined in the course of the implementation. This would enable the financing plan to be adapted to developments in the crisis situation and would introduce more flexibility.
Lesson 4: Prior to crises, consider mechanisms allowing flexibility in the organisation and management of human resources
The urgency of the COVID-19 crisis obviously meant that development aid organisations and their staff had to be mobilised quickly and extensively, and decision-making procedures had to be adapted. The agility of the organisation was a key factor in the success of the donors’ response. However, the resulting negative externalities (high stress levels, burn-out, disorganisation, …) suggest that these organisations need to think about a framework for managing the reallocation of human and technical resources more effectively, and sensibly.
In the event of a crisis, an organisation can ‘requisition’ project managers from one thematic department to another or put a freeze on staff transfers. Prior to crises, a sort of emergency operational reserve can be created to mobilise retired or former officers, and so on.
Lesson 5: Document the simplification of procedures and management
The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the need to simplify donors’ procedures for project commitments, management and monitoring. This simplification was instrumental in the response to the emergency. It involves fast tracking the processes, a lower level of ex-ante control points and verification systems, and a simplified and shortened decision-making process.
For instance, the AFD simplified the appraisal process of projects and reallocations: shortening response time for the supervisory administrations; accelerating the frequence of selection committee meetings (weekly organisation of Grant Committees and Credit Committees for clusters of projects dedicated to the COVID-19 initiative); Standardization and adaptation of project presentation sheets; Thresholds increased to allow financial reallocations without going through committees again (change in the amounts and levels of signature for agreements); Delegation from the Board of Directors to the Chief Executive Officer of AFD of the authority to approve the amending resolutions required to formalise reallocations for existing projects with grants or loans, up to 30% of the project amount, irrespective of the body that approved the allocation of the original project. Simplifications were also introduced for the contractual arrangements and implementation monitoring aspect.
These adjustments now need to be documented and set out in ‘a handbook’ to be used in the event of crisis. This would avoid having to reconsider all the emergency protocols during future crises (health or otherwise).
Lesson 6: No exemption for the monitoring and accountability framework, but be more flexible and adapt the timeframe
Some donors have had difficulties reporting on their response to the COVID-19 crisis – for example, updating data on the number of projects, the funds committed, etc., not to mention outputs and outcomes indicators. The challenges faced by AFD in maintaining data on HiC 2020 projects, and the subsequent difficulties evaluators encountered in consolidating monitoring, outputs and outcomes data for projects firstly, then the initiative as whole, raise significant questions about the accountability framework. AFD is not the only donor to have experienced difficulties in reconciling emergency and accountability. The evaluation of the EU intervention (INTPA) highlights gaps in the monitoring of expenditures for numerous operations. This is especially the case for budgetary allocations through fast-track procedures based on lax indicator matrices.
These difficulties highlight points that seem important to bear in mind for future crises: (i) the importance of clearly defining the scope of the emergency mechanism from the beginning; (ii) a need to explicitly designate responsibilities for the monitoring of financial commitments, and ensure they are maintained ; (iii) defining a logical framework for interventions, combined with a limited number of aggregated indicators; (iv) changing the accountability timeframe, taking the emergency situation into account, i.e., provide for an accountability obligation for beneficiaries, but at a later stage, when the emergency is over.
[1] The COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition, What can evaluation tell us about the pandemic response?, April 2023
[2] European Commission – Evaluation of EU External Action – EU initial response to the Covid-19 crisis in partner countries and regions, 2022 (ADE)
[3] Jenny Gold, Stephen Porter, “What the COVID-19 response reveals about the future of public health surveillance systems: the good, the not yet known and the absent”, March 2023; International Evaluation Group – World Bank Group – The World Bank’s Early Support to Addressing Covid-19, an early-stage evaluation, 2022
[4] DEval, Relevance and Efficiency of the Emergency Covid-19 Support Programme: BMZ prioritized rapid disbursement to partner countries, DEval Policy Brief 5/2023
[5] Evaluation of the Health in Common 2020 Initiative (HIC 2020), ExPost n°14, September 2024 (Technopolis Group)
[6] Evaluation of the Choose Resilience Guarantee, Ministry of Finance, Treasury Directorate (DGT), June 2024 (not published) (Technopolis Group)