As a senior policy manager, Nora works with the global policy director to ensure progress towards ONE’s annual policy priorities and provides support on issues outside ONE’s core portfolio. Nora also leads the writing and editing process for the DATA Report. Before joining ONE, Nora worked for Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Dignitas International. She has also worked for the Amy Biehl Foundation in South Africa. Nora graduated with a B.A. in international development and history from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
ONE is proud to introduce our exclusive handmade scarf made with fashionABLE, a company based in Ethiopia. ONE’s Nora Coghlan recently visited the fashionABLE factory and gave us this inside look into the production of our scarves. To buy a fashionABLE scarf, visit our ONE Store here.
Two weeks ago, I got to meet some of the women behind the fashionABLE scarves here in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
At first glance, the fashionABLE factory is pretty modest. Tucked deep into the neighborhood of Mekanisa, it sits on an unpaved road about five minutes from the highway. Inside, five women are quietly working at looms and sewing machines, while another three are washing and dying fabric outside. As I walk around snapping photos, a couple women shoot me shy smiles but most stay focused on their work.
A one-time visitor might not realize that these women –- and this factory -– have an unbelievable story to tell. Most of the women who work at fashionABLE are former prostitutes who have been able to turn their lives around thanks to jobs at the factory. Women like Bezuayhu, who was forced into prostitution as a teenager, are now able to come to work in the morning with dignity and to invest in a better future for their children.
For those of us that grew up in the 1980s, the word “famine” is almost synonymous with Ethiopia. In 1984 to 1985, images of crowded feeding centers and emaciated babies from Ethiopia’s Tigray province were burned into the public memory.
Nora Coghlan reports live from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nefisa used to struggle to feed her family in July and August, two of the driest months in the highlands of Ethiopia’s Oramia region. They were usually able to borrow from neighbours, but Nefisa says her five children were often sick. Their farmland dry, she and her husband would travel from town to town looking for day labour.
July and August are still difficult for Nefisa and her family, but thanks to Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (known as the PSNP) they have now have a reliable supply of food during the months that used to be known as the “food gap.”
Ethiopia launched the PSNP in 2005 to help “chronically food insecure” people build resilience to the country’s recurring drought.
Each month for six months, families like Nefisa’s now receive either food transfers (15kg of wheat per person) or cash. This extra support means that those families don’t have to sell assets like livestock to make it through the dry months.
African governments and institutions committed nearly $350 million for famine relief yesterday at the African Union’s first-ever pledging conference. Coming together under the banner “One Africa – One Voice Against Hunger,” panelists and participants called for African solidarity and united action to respond to the Horn’s worst drought in 60 years.
The collective effort demonstrated by the AU is a solid first step that should be applauded. The African Development Bank accounted for the vast majority of the pledge, committing $300 million for programs over a five-year period. Notable individual contributions were made by Algeria (pledging $10 million), South Africa ($10 million), Egypt ($5 million), Angola ($5 million) and the Democratic Republic of Congo ($5 million). Another nine countries made $1 to 3 million pledges (including Africa’s newest country of South Sudan), and a handful more made smaller cash and in-kind donations.
This week, ministers and officials from more than 50 countries and international organizations are gathering in Paris, France to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Under the theme “Better Policies for Better Lives,” this year’s annual OECD Ministerial Meeting and Forum will focus on sharing policies “to build a resilient and balanced world economy, supported by new sources of growth and jobs in developed and developing countries.”
Earlier today, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) released preliminary data for donor spending in 2010. ONE’s analysis of the new data (which focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and excludes bilateral debt relief) reveals that donors increased development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa by 12 percent in 2010, a sizable boost considering that global development assistance increased by only 7 percent.
All G8 members (excluding Russia, which does not report to the DAC) increased their spending in 2010, with large increases coming from France, Japan and the UK and smaller boosts from Canada and Italy.
Historic increases in development assistance have supported incredible progress in the world’s poorest countries over the past decade (a message that Bill and Melinda Gates are sharing across European capitals this week as part of ONE’s Living Proof Campaign). However, early indications suggest that increases from most donors will not be enough to meet the targets they set in 2005 to achieve by 2010.
Last week, the World Bank launched a strategy to replace the 2005 Africa Action Plan (AAP) as a blueprint for its engagement with African countries over the next ten years. The strategy, called “Africa’s Future and the World Banks Support For It,” rests on three pillars: competitiveness and employment; vulnerability and resilience (specifically to economic and health-related shocks, natural disasters and conflict); and governance and public sector capacity.
In my mind, the following goals are the most important highlights of the new strategy:
Prioritizing impact: The strategy unveils the Bank’s ten-year “vision” for Africa, which includes ambitious targets for the region like middle-income status for five new countries, a doubling of the continent’s share of global trade and per capita income increases of 20% in 20 countries. Along with a new strategic monitoring framework, through which the Bank will track Africa’s progress and evaluate its own role in meeting the targets, this focus on impact – instead of inputs or outputs – is a welcome step toward ensuring that investments are delivering results.
Applying lessons learned: The strategy calls for the Bank to innovate and learn from the AAP’s shortcomings – a promise that it has already started to make good on. To help prevent the strategy from becoming a “top-down exercise” like the AAP, the Bank vetted it through an aggressive consultation process that included meetings in 30 countries and an online forum to gather feedback from the public. Taking stock of lessons learned is a trend across donor agencies right now (take a look at USAID FORWARD and the recent aid reviews by the UK government, for example). Hopefully the Bank’s engagement on this agenda is a sign that the multilateral agencies are getting on board as well.
Leveraging partnerships: The Bank identifies partnerships as the most critical instrument for implementing its new strategy – at the global level with the African Diaspora, the private sector and emerging economies, and at the country-level by playing to its comparative advantage and coordinating with partners to fill gaps. In the health sector, for example, the Bank says it will stay focused on building and sustaining systems, while looking to others to finance antiretroviral therapy and other vertical programs. Though this “division of labor” may cause alarm in some quarters (and indeed, we need details on where the Bank intends to “step back” to ensure others step in), it shows that the Bank is committed to leveraging its unique ability to convene partners and provide the “glue” in-country that enables vertical programs to succeed.
Supporting governance and growth: Although the Bank will maintain its support for priority sectors like health and agriculture, the new strategy explicitly shifts from a stove-piped, sectoral approach to prioritize two broader engines of development –governance and economic growth. Some intriguing new initiatives in these areas include a “Growth Poles Project” to invest in industries and locations with the highest economic potential; a renewed emphasis on infrastructure; a commitment to promote social accountability through technology and public expenditure tracking projects; and a Civil Society Fund to support citizen groups focused on improving governance and transparency.
All in all, some pretty praiseworthy goals. Yet a lot of questions remain on the implementation side, especially exactly how the Bank plans to engage African governments, the private sector and emerging donors as partners (especially to help meet resource gaps) and how the new approach will be rolled out in individual countries. More than ever before, Africa is proving itself to be continent of 48 very different countries, some making great economic and political strides and others locked in cycles of conflict and poverty. Defining the Bank’s strategy in individual countries – what it will prioritize, where it will be pulling back, and how it intends to mobilize new partners – is no doubt a big question for African governments and citizens right now. So let’s hope that the implementation process is as inclusive as the strategy-setting one.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
African governments and institutions committed nearly $350 million for famine relief yesterday at the African Union’s first-ever pledging conference. Coming together under the banner “
