The Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) is an initiative by the World Bank's President James D. Wolfensohn (1999), to enhance the effectiveness of the partners of development of the developing countries in bringing about desired development outcomes. According to the CDF Secretariat (2000) the CDF is 'an approach by which countries can achieve more effective poverty reduction. It emphasizes the interdependence of all elements of development, social, structural, human, governance, environmental, economic and financial.' The framework is articulated around four major principles: long-term, holistic development framework
country ownership of development programs and policies
country-led partnership among various stakeholders
and, results orientation. The remainder of this paper is organized in five sections. Section two offers an analytical framework suitable for the formulation of a holistic, long-term poverty reduction strategy. The framework is used as a benchmark against which the implementation of the CDF principle on the long-term holistic development framework (LTHDF) is evaluated. Section three provides a cursory and highly selective reading of the implementation of the CDF long-term holistic development framework in the six pilot countries. In this section it is assumed that the poverty reduction strategy papers provide the embodiment of the CDF principle irrespective of whether countries state this explicitly or not. Section four provides an evaluation of the implementation of the CDF principle while section five provides an evaluation of the response of donors to the CDF principle on the long-term holistic development framework. This section is based on a survey instrument that has been designed to elicit these responses. Section six offers a few concluding remarks and proposes a number of hypotheses that can be tested in future evaluation of the CDF.