Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition, however, is a major challenge. This series of policy briefs is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the experience to date and the lessons for the future.

There are many examples of successful scaling up. The Green Revolution dramatically raised the productivity of farmers in many parts of the world; the microcredit schemes of Grameen Bank and (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) BRAC in Bangladesh helped millions of poor improve their livelihoods; the multidonor River Blindness Eradication Program controlled a debilitating disease affecting millions of people in Western Africa; and the conditional cash transfer program Progresa-Oportunidades improved the lives of millions of poor households in Mexico by offering them cash payments in exchange for sending their children to school and health clinics—a success story that has been replicated in many other developing countries.

More typically, however, development interventions are limited in scale and short-lived. Incoming political leaders tend to promote their own new initiatives rather than build on the success of their predecessors. Bureaucracies are plagued by a lack of continuity in leadership, a focus on the new and different, and a lack of effective evaluation of what works and what doesn’t. External assistance reinforces these tendencies. The number of governmental aid agencies and NGOs continues to expand, the number of projects supported by donors becomes ever larger, their average size ever smaller, and donors compete for the attention of recipient organizations with newer initiatives. To better manage the growing complexity of aid, donor and recipient countries have agreed on important principles at the High Level Forums on Aid Effectiveness in Paris, Accra, and Busan. This has undoubtedly helped, but what is still missing is a concerted effort to support a systematic scaling-up agenda on the ground.