OECD Development Co‑operation Peer Reviews: Slovak Republic 2025

How can a maturing development co-operation system consolidate its strengths to achieve more visible, long-term development impact? This question underpinned the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) peer review of the Slovak Republic, conducted by Greece and Lithuania. The peer review assesses the progress made since the Slovak Republic’s first peer review in 2019, highlighting achievements, identifying challenges and offering recommendations for the future. The peer review acknowledges key strengths of the Slovak Republic’s development co-operation system, including a clear legal and policy framework, a strong track record of sharing expertise in areas such as public financial management based on its own transition experience, strengthened internal managements systems and significant humanitarian assistance following the war of aggression against Ukraine. The Medium-Term Strategy for Development Cooperation of the Slovak Republic for 2025-2030 presents an opportunity to build on these foundations and reinforce the coherence, focus and overall impact of the Slovak Republic’s development co-operation.

Meeting the Slovak Republic’s international development commitments will require a sustained increase in official development assistance (ODA). While ODA volumes have grown in absolute terms since 2019, reaching USD 191 million in 2024, they average 0.14% of gross national income (GNI), significantly below the Slovak Republic’s commitment of reaching 0.33% by 2030. Fiscal consolidation efforts, including a 2024 plan to reduce the deficit, led to a 26% cut in bilateral ODA. The Slovak Republic has yet to set out a clear strategy for meeting the 0.33% ODA/GNI commitment.

Improving the strategic allocation of ODA resources could strengthen visibility and impact. Bilateral ODA is spread across a relatively large number of countries, with nearly half of bilateral ODA directed to non-priority countries between 2019-23. On average, about USD 1 million reached each of the Slovak Republic’s three key priority countries every year during that period, limiting the potential for visible impact. The recent move towards forward-looking budget planning provides an opportunity to strengthen multi-year, country-focused programming of ODA. The piloting of multi-year strategic partnerships in Kenya and Moldova in 2022 and 2023 provide useful experiences to draw on. There is also room to leverage multilateral partnerships to advance specific development and foreign policy goals, for example, building on the Ministry of Finance’s collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme and International Financial Institutions.

A more strategic, focused, and results-oriented approach to development co-operation would help the Slovak Republic better leverage its expertise and resources. The Slovak Republic is regarded as a credible and engaged development co‑operation partner. However, its contributions remain small in scale. The new 2025‑30 medium-term strategy, developed through a consultative process, narrows the geographic focus of the Slovak Republic’s activities. Nevertheless, defined priorities remain relatively broad given the scale of the Slovak Republic’s development co‑operation programme. Moving towards fewer, larger and more programmatic interventions will be critical to amplifying the impact and visibility of its efforts. This, in turn, can help foster broader political engagement and secure sustained political support for the Slovak Republic’s development co‑operation activities. A focused dialogue to build consensus on where the Slovak Republic can add the most value could help focus the resources of different actors for greater impact.

The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MFEA) is well placed to lead a more strategic approach to development co‑operation, provided it is given a stronger political mandate. While the MFEA currently plays an important convening role – chairing the inter-ministerial Coordination Committee and aggregating the ODA spending of other ministries – it is not mandated to offer strategic direction for all Slovak institutions that provide ODA. Empowering the MFEA to steer cross-government development co-operation efforts would promote greater coherence and synergies across activities. This shift would likely require additional institutional capacity within the Ministry as well as political support. Moreover, considering the lack of diplomats tasked with overseeing development co-operation (i.e. development diplomats) in many partner countries, the Slovak Republic would benefit from strengthening its broader diplomatic capacity to support and oversee its development co-operation.

Granting the Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation (SAIDC) more operational autonomy would allow the MFEA to increase focus on strategic functions. SAIDC has grown into a more professional agency with the recent completion of the EU Pillar Assessment opening up new opportunities to expand its operational capacity and presence in partner countries. EU delegated co‑operation is emerging as a key area for further growth. However, SAIDC’s current model – focused on managing small grants on behalf of the MFEA – strains staff resources in both institutions due to the agency’s limited decision-making authority. Going forward, streamlining grant management and clarifying institutional roles – by enabling SAIDC to operate with greater autonomy and the MFEA to concentrate on strategic steering – will be essential to improving efficiency and impact.

In response to the COVID‑19 pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the Slovak Republic has expanded its humanitarian assistance, particularly through rapid financial support, in-kind aid and logistical co‑ordination. The Slovak Republic is recognised for its ability to partner effectively with local actors for humanitarian activities. While its response mechanisms have demonstrated agility during COVID‑19, challenges remain due to reliance on lengthy proposal processes and ad hoc co‑ordination. To ensure faster and more effective crisis intervention, the Slovak Republic is encouraged to modernise its partnership modalities and formalise a new humanitarian strategy with regular co‑ordination mechanisms. Strengthening policy coherence within the foreign policy context can help the Slovak Republic in ensuring predictable and effective humanitarian and development support to Ukraine.

The Slovak Republic is working to improve how it measures the success of its development co‑operation efforts. The MFEA’s regular, independent evaluations of programmes and projects are a valuable practice and should continue. Until now, results management has mainly focused on tracking project outputs. However, new efforts to develop a system to manage for results reflect a promising shift towards a more strategic, outcome-driven approach, although this remains challenging due to the small scale of projects. Improving the ability to measure and communicate results will be key to increasing the visibility and credibility of SlovakAid. Slovak citizens are generally supportive of development co‑operation and humanitarian efforts. However, the spread of disinformation can undermine this support, highlighting the importance of effective communication and sustained global citizenship education to build public understanding.

SlovakAid has a strong tradition of co‑operation with civil society, which remains a central partner in delivering development co‑operation. However, the reliance on mostly short-term calls for proposals, combined with constrained and fluctuating budgets, limits the ability of civil society organisations to plan strategically and invest in their long-term capacity. To sustain and strengthen this partnership, there is scope to explore more flexible and multi-year funding arrangements, strategic partnerships or framework agreements that would enhance predictability, drive innovation and align better with the critical role of civil society in supporting development co‑operation activities.

The Slovak Republic has the clear ambition to engage the private sector in its development co‑operation. However, existing support mechanisms have seen limited, although rising, uptake by the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises. To ensure that private sector involvement delivers meaningful and sustainable development outcomes, it will be important to establish common principles and criteria to guide and assess long-term impact. Promoting knowledge exchange across the many institutions that engage with the private sector through various instruments and aligning private sector initiatives with broader development policies – including responsible business conduct and policy coherence for sustainable development – will be essential to building a coherent and credible approach.