In the next few videos, we'll be looking at, firstly, where does Results-Based Management come from? What's the history? What's the story behind it?

After that, we're going to ask the question, what are results? And we'll be looking at results and the results chain.

In the third video, we'll talk about what we mean by Results-Based Management. What is it? What is the concept? What are the features of results-based management?

In the fourth short video, we'll be looking at the RBM process - the major steps - and how that fits together with the project cycle.

And we'll wrap up by looking at RBM in practice. What are the benefits of using RBM, and what are some of the challenges that we might face when we try to implement it in our own working area?

So, the story of RBM. It began in Paris, back in 2005, with the Paris Declaration on Aid and Effectiveness. This is when more than 100 donors and recipient countries all came together to question, why is aid not getting the results that it should? Why were we not meeting millennium development goals? Why is so much time, effort, and resources and goodwill not actually making a real change on the ground?

Out of the Paris Declaration came five main principles. Four and five concern us, but let's run through all of them just very, very quickly.

The first is ownership. All countries are unique, they have their own political, cultural history, they have their own development challenges, and they should be allowed to set their own strategies for development.

Alignment, the second point, says that donors have to get behind the country's own strategic plans.

And harmonisation says that the donor community has to coordinate better, to make things smoother, simpler. That information is shared, that there are no gaps, and duplication is avoided.

It is on points four and five, or rather principles four and five, that results were made extremely specific.

Number four is that developing countries and the donors must shift their focus towards development results and, and this is very important, that those results are measured.

And mutual accountability. Results are not purely the responsibility of the implementing NGO, or the donors, or the government partners, but this is a shared responsibility for delivering these results.

Three years later, in Ghana, the ACRA Agenda for Action came out from the third high-level forum on aid effectiveness. This time, there were four points, and they are very, very similar.

Again, we see ownership. Again, we see inclusive partnership, the harmonization and alignment. And again, we see that clear statement about delivering results, that aid is focused on real and, again, measurable impact on development.

So, that is where RBM comes from. In the next video, we are going to ask the question, what are results?