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 More examples are needed of aid programming that works by being responsive to country realities: politically smart, problem-driven and locally led  DFID’s SAVI programme has revealed a hitherto untapped potential for change leading to better development results at state level in Nigeria  SAVI provides low-profile support to state-level organisations and partnerships, building their capacity to engage constructively with government  It avoid the pitfalls of a donor-driven approach by ‘taking the money off the table’  This illustrates the power of facilitated multi-stakeholder engagement and the disadvantages of seeing this in terms of ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’ governance  The set-up of the DFID suite of state-level programmes, with separately managed sector support and ‘governance’ initiatives, has limited realisation of the potential  Key enabling conditions were that DFID provided space for an experience-based design process and permitted tangible results to be judged retrospectively, not pre-programmed