The report was released in January 2008, and it explores the ways in which international aid is distributed and accounted for in Sierra Leone.  There are three main channels of foreign aid coming into Sierra Leone, and they generally mirror the aid structure in other developing countries.  The first channel is direct budget support.  In Sierra Leone, the World Bank, Department for International Development (UK), African Development Bank (ADB) and the European Union provide more than a quarter of their aid to the Government of Sierra Leone as direct budget support.  The second channel is program support.  This aid is included in the Government's budget but is not paid into the Government's general account.  This money is tied to a specific program that is administered through a government Ministry, though the direct implementer can be the ministry or another partner like a donor.  The third channel is donor assistance to NGOs like CARE, IRC, PLAN, etc, which does not go through the government but is still recorded as aid to Sierra Leone. 

Any country receiving direct budget support from donors has to meet a number of preconditions to even be considered.  First, the country must have sound macroeconomic policies, meaning that they are completing an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program successfully.  Second they must have basic respect for democracy and human rights, as defined by the various donor governments.  They must also be able to assure the donor that they have an effective fiscal policy in place and that their financial system is rigorous and accountable in its use of funds.  Finally, the country must be implementing a poverty reduction strategy.  Each of these requirements is reasonable given how weak government institutions can be in countries like Sierra Leone.  

At the same time, the system can pose major challenges to the recipient government.  In any given year, the Government of Sierra Leone does not know how much budget support they will receive from donors.  Each year, the Government and donors agree on a Progress Assessment Framework that measures the government's progress against a range of benchmarks.  Based on an assessment of the government's progress toward these benchmarks, the donors then decide how much budget support to provide for the closing fiscal year.  In 2007, concerns with Sierra Leone's macroeconomic situation led the donors to withhold all of their budget support--placing the government budget in a huge bind because they had been working off a budget that anticipated support from these donors. 

This is just one of the many issues with aid and accountability that are explored in EURODAD's report.  EURODAD is also working on similar reports in a range of other countries, which should provide a great picture of how international aid works globally.  These reports should be available in the next few months so check their website for updates.