Introduction etc

Bilateral and multilateral development cooperation agencies are to an increasing extent promoting and adopting a sector-wide approach (SWAp) in their development cooperation. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), for example, joined their first sector-wide approach cooperation in the late 90s, and today they are involved in SWAps in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and they are in the planning phase for collaborating in setting up SWAps in an additional number of other countries. Many other development agencies are also moving in the same direction. The idea of a sector-wide approach has so far been most frequently adopted in health sector development but the approach is spreading to other sectors, like education and infrastructure development, as well.