The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). Its vision is to achieve results in the fight against poverty. Its mission is ensuring the quality of development assistance, and its values are respect, integrity and creativity. It published a new strategy, Towards 2030, in March 2021.
Private sector development (PSD), Job Creation, Technical and Vocational Education and Training
Norad has three funding schemes to support PSD and related areas:
- Enterprise Development for Jobs aims to contribute to job creation in developing countries by stimulating the establishment of new business enterprises or expansion of existing ones
- Building Skills for Jobs – Technical and Vocational Education and Training. The overall objective of the programme is that people have job relevant skills. In the long term this is expected to lead to more people finding employment in the local job market.
- Cooperation on Framework Conditions for PSD in the South. The grant scheme aims to stimulate a business climate that promotes PSD in developing countries.
Transparency, effectiveness and results in PSD
Norway is committed to aid transparency and effectiveness. Norad’s Evaluation Departmentsystematizes findings and evidence so as to continuously improve the quality of Norad’s initiatives by means of good learning processes. The Evaluation Department also works to map knowledge gaps and assess the underlying assumptions on which Norwegian development cooperation is based. Furthermore, evaluations are used to assess whether resource application is reasonably commensurate with results achieved. In the spirit of achieving transparency Norad provides information to allocating authorities and to the public at large.
- The Norad Evaluation Programme 2018-2020 focusing partly on Private Sector Development and Job Creation
- Norwegian Aid Statistics
- Evaluations Database