We have released a new episode in our podcast series A Decade of Building State Capability.
Our second episode of the series features Andrew Lawson who did an independent evaluation of PDIA during our work with CABRI in Africa in 2018, commissioned by the Gates Foundation. He published a related piece in the World Development Perspectives in September 2023.
In this episode, Andrew discusses how he started his PDIA journey as a skeptic of the approach, but his opinion changed as he saw PDIA in practice during his evaluation of CABRI’s Building PFM Capabilities in Africa. He details how he and his team conducted their evaluation process, the key takeaways and impact of the program, and offers suggestions for future program iterations.
Andrew is an economist and public finance specialist, who has spent his career working in Developing and Transition countries, helping to improve public policies and public finance management (PFM) systems. He is Technical Director of Fiscus, UK – a consultancy and research company focused on public finance issues, and was previously the Director of the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE) at ODI, London. He has worked for 47 governments across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and has also undertaken a range of evaluations of capacity building programmes for international organisations, including the EU, the World Bank, the IMF and, more recently the Gates Foundation. Andrew has a BA (Honours) in Economics from Cambridge University and a Master’s Degree in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia, UK.