How to sum up the last three days in Europe?

Stamina.

Not mine, but Bill Gates’… It’s unreal. He flew in overnight on Sunday, and in just two and a half days travelled to three cities, delivered three powerful Living Proof presentations, lobbied Presidents, Chancellors, and Ministers, gave numerous media interviews and rallied activists. He is a testament to the ability of a committed person to change the world. Of course, he has a few more resources at his disposal than most – but all the more impressive to think he could just be sat on a yacht sipping down piña coladas.

As I expect he himself would say however, Bill Gates isn’t what the trip should be about. What’s important is the impact, did we make a difference? Well, there have already been impressive outcomes from this visit, including Germany and the European Commission pledging to increase their funding for vital vaccines. This extra support will save thousands of children’s lives and free up health systems in developing countries to build healthier, more productive communities.

However, the news yesterday on broken promises shows us how fragile our gains can be and reminds me why this is just the start of our Living Proof campaign…

So, if there is one thing you do today please pass on some Living Proof to a friend, colleague, politician, or loved one (you can find plenty of food for thought on our new website), or simply use the widget below, and encourage them to do the same.

As my grandmother always said you catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar…

ONE Youth Messengers

The Youth Messengers are a truly inspiring group – many have traveled to Africa and seen first-hand the impact smart aid is having on the ground – and Bill encouraged them to use their long-term vision, to be creative and to get the word out. I can’t wait to see how they get on in the days and weeks ahead.

I also want to continue on a theme I began last night, about the unexpected. This morning I was reminded that there are people who work in politics who care just as passionately as any of us about the injustices of extreme poverty. Take Georg Schmidt, the German President’s Head Africa Development Policy. Now, at this point I have to admit that my German is a little sketchy, but he really was extremely compelling – sharing his own experience of Africa, having lived in Mali for three years, and the positive progress he had seen on the ground. He wasn’t jaded and he still had the fire in his belly (in a buttoned up way), which we hope he will continue to use to fight on behalf of the world’s poorest people.

Bill Gates and ONE members in Berlin

After the meeting it was on to Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate for the unveiling of my favorite Living Proof artwork yet. It was great to see such an important message flanked by ONE members who will ensure other people get involved and that together we share the proof.

Last week ONE Germany joined our partners at 1GOAL to organize a soccer match to raise awareness for what we hope will be the lasting legacy and real goal of this year’s Soccer World Cup: Education for all! A team of artists including musician Rea Garvey and actors Axel Pape, Timmi Trinks and Timon Wloka faced a student selection from Berlin Sophie Scholl School. During half time and after the game singer Judy Bailey performed her 1GOAL anthem “Spirit of Freedom” and other songs. And as our photos show, spirits were good both off and on the field even though the students won by a little more than a margin: 17:4 was the final score.

Prof. Helmut Reisen, head of research of the OECD Development Centre, took a look at the G8 commitments altogether and alerted the audience to the so called “new donors”. Prof. Dr. Robert Kappel, President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) highlighted the economic prospects and challenges of African countries.

Germany’s final report card is not outstanding, as ONE’s Germany director Tobias Kahler pointed out. Only 25% of its Gleneagles promise was kept, especially since Berlin did not direct as much of its ODA raises to Africa as committed.

We also had a DATA Report launch in Ottawa, Canada that just wrapped up. We’ll have a report from that event soon. And we’ll have lots more on the 2010 DATA Report in coming days.

First we invited experts from the German government, our NGO partners and multilateral institutions such as the OECD-DAC to discuss in two workshops what the Accra Agenda and the G8 are doing (or could be doing) to improve aid transparency.

African governments need information on what kind of donor support will be delivered by when. Donors need information to better coordinate their efforts. And civil society in North and South needs information – this is for example how ONE is finding out whether rich countries are keeping their promises, information that is then published in the annual DATA Report.

One of the panelists in the workshops was Bashiru Jumah from the Ghanaian Social Enterprise Development Foundation (SEND). SEND is increasing transparency in Ghana by gathering information on aid flows: they find out which funds are supposed to go where and then go to the recipients – in the villages – and assemble data on which funds arrived and what they were used for. This is quite a tedious job which requires lots of patience and hard work from volunteers all over the country. But it delivers great results: when the parliament learnt in April that money for school feeding programs did not make it to the schools as planned they immediately replaced the national coordinator for the program. Bashiru said about the role of his civil society in Ghana: “Civil society participates in implementing and controlling poverty alleviation efforts. And our government understands that they profit from that.”

In the evening we welcomed the development spokespersons from the 5 parties in the German parliament to a panel discussion.

Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz, Deputy Minister in the Development Ministry, opened the evening by confirming that while the German government was concentrating on improving aid effectiveness they would not forget their promises, one of which was to increase the ODA/GNI ratio to 0.7% by 2015.

What followed was a lively discussion among the development spokespersons about whether the new government’s efforts to reform the implementing organizations were sufficient, whether multilateral aid should be reduced in favor of bilateral aid, and which sectors were critical to development.

Development spokespersons in the German parliament: Ute Koczy (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), Sascha Raabe (SPD), Harald Leibrecht (FDP), Holger Haibach (CDU/CSU), Heike Hänsel (Die Linke)

We closed out the day with a reception which allowed panelists and listeners to continue to exchange their views in more intimate conversations. And looking at the discussions we were confirmed: development assistance is reducing extreme poverty. But to make it most efficient and most effective it needs input from everyone concerned – and the first step on that path is to distribute information transparently.

The first ONE volunteer workshop for volunteers from Berlin and the surrounding area took place last Saturday. Let it be said that we not only applaud the volunteers’ courage for attending this first-ever event, but also greatly appreciate their willingness to spend a sunny Saturday with us!

The day began with a joint breakfast and a comprehensive introduction about how ONE came to be, how it operates and its goals. In light of the upcoming Millennium Development Review Summit in New York, we also introduced the volunteers to the development goals before they got the chance to develop and present a quick overview about one of the goals to the rest of the group. Of course, we also took the time to brainstorm about how the volunteers can join the fight against extreme poverty – with concrete results!

They decided to form a Berlin ONE group and get together every last Friday of the month in order to plan activities. In addition, the volunteers learned how to write advocacy letters – some delegates can expect to receive ONE mail within the next days! Last but not least, we practiced approaching and recruiting new ONE members via role playing. We all know role playing can be quite difficult. Still, the exercise was actually very well-received. As one participant put it: “Although role playing is always somewhat horrible – it’s always good practice! Therefore, do it again!”

We came to a similar conclusion, not just regarding the role playing but the workshop as a whole. We are planning to conduct further workshops with ONE volunteers in areas beyond Berlin. Working with these motivated individuals was a lot of fun and we look forward to the next time!

We were quite surprised to see that section 23 – the part of the budget that holds most of the funds going to development – foresees only €142m for the Global Fund. The development ministry was quick to clarify that the remaining €58m would come from funds that were not used throughout the year, and that those funds just wouldn’t show up in the budget proposal. But ONE and other NGOs are wondering: Why the hide-and-seek?

So ONE and 10 other NGOs, among them Oxfam and Medicines Sans Frontiers, published an open letter addressed to the five parliamentarians that report to the budget committee about section 23 of the budget in which we call on the Bundestag to include the full funds that were promised in the 2010 budget. We’ll keep you posted on further developments!

This week the German Development Minister Dirk Niebel returned from his first trip to Africa. Niebel has only been in office for ten weeks, and before he took the post he was most famous in the development world for demanding the development ministry be shut down. So you can imagine that there was quite a bit of criticism and skepticism from the development community before Niebel took off to Rwanda, DRC and Mozambique.

On his first stop in Rwanda Niebel met with President Kagame and they both agreed that trade is the only thing that can help develop a country in the long term.

In DRC, however, Niebel learned that it’s not all that easy. The minister went to war-torn East Congo to see a hospital that cares especially for women that have endured sexual violence. He also went to see what’s left of the country’s vast forests and visited with the MONUC troops. And he found that different places might need different approaches. In DRC that approach might be to strengthen civil society and international efforts.

While Rwanda is seen by many as a “donor darling” for all the progress the country has made after the 1994 genocide, and DRC as seen as a country with so much potential, Niebel’s third stop was Mozambique. Germany has a special relationship with the country: during the Cold War many young Mozambicans came to East Germany for an education. After the 16 year civil war in Mozambique ended in the early 1990s the country, though extremely poor, was considered one of the most democratic countries on the continent. Former President Chissanó was even awarded the Mo Ibrahim Award for his efforts. Lately governance has taken a turn for the worse after some alleged irregularities in the 2009 general elections and widespread corruption being an open secret. Minister Niebel led some discussions with the Mozambican government on aid in the form of budget support as being the most efficient way to support the country’s development efforts.

After his return Minister Niebel acknowledged that he had learned a lot about the potentials but also the problems of the African continent. He also found his ministry’s focus on Sub-Sahara Africa confirmed as a good and worthwhile strategy.

Niebel’s conclusion after one week “on the ground”: “Africa‘s diversity is mirrored in our different approaches to development cooperation in those three countries. I would hope that the diversity of our neighboring continent and its potentials were seen more clearly in Germany.”

This Tuesday, the Ministry of Development Cooperation reversed the cuts. The shortfall of 58 million Euro will now come from unspent 2009 money and the “planning reserve” (financial reserves for unexpected expenditures) in the 2010 budget, we and others were told by the Deputy Minister. This money will not be taken away from other budgeted programs as far as we know.

The Financial Times Deutschland on Wednesday reported on the protests against the cuts, using the headline: “Cuts of Anti-Aids-Support Causes Protests” / “Development Ministry back pedals after criticism”. The FTD mentions the organization ONE (“who is supported by Rockstar Bono”…) along with our NGO-friends DSW criticizing the Government for breaking its promises.

Angela Merkel has repeated this promise several times, and we expected her words to be matched by action even in difficult budgetary times and with a new German government in office. Thousands of German ONE supporters joined us to voice this expectation by signing our petition to the Chancellor. And many even phoned the government‘s hotline to personally stress the importance of living up to our commitments.

Unfortunately, it looks like this time our voices have not been heard. Last week, the government presented the draft budget and there is only one way to describe it: the budget proposal equals a breach of promise, as the following figures illustrate.

• 300 million Euros – the increase the new Development Minister, Dirk Niebel, had asked for before the start of the budget negotiations.
• 67 million Euros – the increase he was able to get. This equals an increase of the development budget of no more than 1.2%
• 13% – the growth of last year’s development budget when the ministry was still lead by Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.
• 3 billion Euros – what would have been necessary in addition to last year’s budget for Germany to reach its target for 2010. The fact that Germany is now missing this target means that from 2010 on, Germany will have to increase its development budget by 1.5 billion Euros every year to reach the target for 2015.

So as 2009 ends the news isn’t as great as we hoped here in Berlin. But we have to look forward. 2010 is going to be a very important year for Africa. It’s the year our promises are due, and it’s also the year of the football World Cup in South Africa. The whole world will be looking at the continent – at the challenges it is facing, but also at the amazing African success stories. We have to take advantage of the public attention and get the German government back on track towards the 0.7% goal.