Sida is a government agency working on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government, with the mission to reduce poverty in the world. Through our work and in cooperation with others, we contribute to implementing Sweden’s Policy for Global Development (PGU).

We work in order to implement the Swedish development policy that will enable poor people to improve their lives. Another part of our mission is conducting reform cooperation with Eastern Europe, which is financed through a specific appropriation. The third part of our assignment is to distribute humanitarian aid to people in need of assistance.

We carry out enhanced development cooperation with a total of 33 countries  in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Our selection of cooperation countries are based on political decisions made by the Swedish government.

Sida’s mission is to allocate aid and other funding. Our operations are managed by the government’s guidelines, describing the goals for each year’s operations and the size of the development aid budget.

Our staff members and their expertise assist the government with the assessments and the information it needs, in order to decide and implement its development assistance policy. We participate in the advocacy work for Sweden’s prioritised issues within the international development cooperation field, and we are in constant dialogue with other countries and international organisations. Part of our assignment is also to report statistics and disseminate information about our operations.

Our work is financed by tax money and we administer approximately half of Sweden’s total development aid budget. The other part is channelled through the ministry for Foreign Affairs. All our work should be performed in a cost-effective way with a strong focus on results.

Sida has more than 700 employees, located in our three offices  in Sweden as well as abroad in our cooperation countries.