Governance together with gender, environment, HIV/AIDS, human rights and democracy are in general treated as cross-cutting issues in Country Strategy Papers. As cross-cutting issues,  they are expected to be considered in every phase of the programming process.

In 2007, the European Commission introduced the governance incentive tranche which depending on the EC´s assessment, recipient countries may received more aid by as much as 35%. The EC has developed the Governance Profiles (GP) as a programming tool in order to assess recipient country´s core governance issues and respond accordingly. The The GP has nine (9) areas of concern:

(1) Political /democratic governance
(2) Political governance/rule of law
(3) Control of corruption
(4) Government effectiveness
(5) Economic governance
(6) Internal and external security
(7) Social governance
(8) International and regional context
(9) Quality of partnership

A detailed description of the GP is shown in the Explanatory Note.

The Governance Profiles of the following countries are now available: Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia.

Other country-related documents can be accessed under Country Updates.