Andrea Costafreda is a consultant and lecturer in international development cooperation in the area of democratic governance and aid effectiveness. As a consultant, she has worked for such organisations as the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD), the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) and International IDEA. She was also the head of Planning of the Catalan Directorate-General for Development Cooperation. She is currently the technical advisor for the Head of International Relations and Cooperation at the Barcelona City Council. She has published articles, book chapters and working papers and has given talks about the impact of democratisation processes and political institutions on development, especially in Latin America. More recently she has focused on the challenges of aid effectiveness agendas, with particular emphasis on decentralised cooperation.