In recent years, the international development community has increased its focus on measuring and improving results. Donors and developing countries alike want to know that aid is being used as effectively as possible, and they want to be able to measure results. The aim is to ensure that development work leads to tangible and sustained improvements in people’s lives.
This aim is implicit in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were adopted by 189 countries in 2000, and the Monterrey Consensus of 2002, which stressed the need to mobilize financial resources more efficiently. The Joint Marrakesh Memorandum in 2004 signalled a renewed emphasis on making aid effective. This was reinforced by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005. In 2008, government ministers from developing and donor countries, along with heads of multi-lateral and bi-lateral development institutions, endorsed the Accra Agenda for Action to accelerate and deepen implementation of the Paris Declaration.

Today, IFAD is working in many ways to improve its development effectiveness.