On Monday 26th May 2025, the NDB Independent Evaluation Office and the Economic Relations Division (ERD) of the Ministry of Finance of Bangladesh joined up to organise a day-long seminar titled, “Transforming Development: Building a culture of accountability through evaluation, auditing and ethics”.
The event was held in Dhaka and close to 150 participants attended, including senior level policymakers from Bangladesh, development practitioners and experts, private sector leaders and others— to hear and share experiences in embedding accountability, evaluation, and integrity at the heart of development projects and how these could be applicable to Bangladesh and in other NDB member countries as they chart their development trajectory.
Amongst the high-level speakers at the event were His Excellency Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed, the Honorable Adviser of the Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Laureate (2019), Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who gave a keynote lecture on the role of impact evaluation in economics transformation, and Honourable Minister Dr. Rania A. Al-Mashat, Minister of Planning, Economic Development, and International Cooperation, Egypt.
Senior officials from NDB shared lessons taken from independent evaluations on the role of private sector engagement in development interventions, improving risk and governance oversight and control through the “combined assurance” approach, and how Uniform Principles and Guidelines for Investigations can streamline and provide consistency in conducting investigative activities by participating organisations. The event was enriched by perspectives from international partners such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of South Africa, the Ministry of Finance, Brazil, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Download: Agenda with Biographies | Concept Note | Seminar Communiqué