Tonight, Esther Duflo, an award-winning development economist, will be giving a talk at the Center for Global Development’s Sixth Annual Richard H. Sabot Lecture. We’re really excited about her presentation because to be perfectly honest, she’s kind of a big deal. She knows how to take economics out of the lab and into the field to discover the causes of poverty and the ways to eradicate it — and that’s a very special gift indeed.
Antimicrobial resistance, or drug resistance, can be a tricky topic to wrap your head around, so we thought we’d highlight a a very cool new interactive map from the Center for Global Development (CGD). It shows drug resistance data relating to selected infectious diseases across the world, including HIV, pneumonia, shigella, MDR-TB, malaria and MRSA.
Nancy Birdsall, the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) founding president, talks about a new approach to help improve the impact of foreign aid in developing countries: cash on delivery aid. Read her original post on CGD’s Views from the Center blog.
“Experimentation on foreign aid is valuable — and rare.” This is the single most important line in Tina Rosenberg’s excellent description of Cash on Delivery Aid in her recent NYTimes opinion piece.
Tina fleshes out an important point we have made but not emphasized enough: COD Aid will make sense to Americans. It will appeal to Americans’ instinct to be generous with aid as long as aid is targeted toward improving people’s lives -– more girls in school, fewer babies dying. Those are short-term goals that everyone, even skeptics of foreign aid, can understand — and a good value at just $20 per child! It is also true that by giving recipient governments some space to address their own bureaucratic and political problems, COD Aid creates some risks. But the potential return in terms of more accountable and responsible government is also something that Americans want — in Malawi (Tina’s example), Pakistan, El Salvador, Ghana, and in all countries around the world where better government is the strongest medicine against extremism abroad (and other bad borderless ills) and the best investment in greater security and prosperity here at home.
There are some good comments on Tina’s column — both about aid in general and COD Aid in particular. None about COD Aid are new to us. We hope newcomers will explore our FAQ and read the preface to the second edition of the book by Bill Savedoff and me here.
To those with questions and complaints about foreign aid in general, we say: encourage the official donors to try COD Aid anyway. Because at least then they won’t be putting your tax dollars at risk — with COD Aid if a government doesn’t produce independently verified results, your money is not spent!
Feel like there’s just no hope for the world these days? Well, it might be time to change your outlook. While the income per capita around the world has not increased, people are exponentially happier than ever before. And life expectancy has even increased by 10 years, despite economies facing monetary crises.
Intrigued? I was. Last week, I went to Kenny’s book launch to find out more. Kenny’s book sheds an extremely underrated light on the positive aspects of global development and how the 21st century is ushering in the best of times in terms of health, education, political freedoms and access to infrastructure and new technologies, benefiting even the poorest in the world.
For instance, thanks to technological advancements, we are able to make vaccines extraordinarily affordable and available to the masses, vastly improving the quality of life for countless communities. Kenny addressed aid skeptics by stating that there are enough cases to confidently say that where there was aid, there was effect -– the greatest example being the eradication of smallpox. Additionally, with education, attitudes can be changed, resulting in bigger movements such as encouraging female education (which helps to increase economic growth while decreasing fertility rates) and simple practices like washing your hands (which helps to control the spread of germs and disease).
Global health has made huge strides, and is perhaps the most exciting advancement that we’ve seen. As Kenny told us, “The story is positive and needs to be told. Many people think that aid doesn’t work, and it’s just not true.”
He went on to comment on the foreign aid budget and had a special message for the Senate: “Reform aid. Don’t cut it. Move aid dollars toward something that works.” Certainly, with tens of millions of fewer parents seeing their children die, aid has made an enormous impact, proving its effectiveness.
We love good news, and Kenny certainly delivers. To learn more about the positive aspects of global development, be sure to check out Kenny’s new book –- it’s a great read.
Also, the Center for Global Development is holding a Twitter contest until March 18. Simply mention @CGDev in a tweet and tell them what in the world is #gettingbetter, and you could win a signed copy of “Getting Better: Why Global Development is succeeding. And How We Can Improve the World Even More.”
As you’ve probably figured out by now, we’re big fans of data visualizations and poverty statistics. This new report from the Brookings Institution (PDF) has some exciting new data on global poverty levels.
According to the report’s authors, the Millennium Development Goal to halve the rate of global poverty by 2015 was met sometime in 2007. The report states that poverty reduction is currently taking place in all regions of the world, and predicts that by 2015, we will not only have halved the global poverty rate, but will have halved it again to under 10 percent, or less than 600 million people.
In the world of international development, it can be a challenge to look on the bright side when it comes to poverty, governance and corruption –- but not for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A fierce optimist, he believes that Africa’s time is now. By supporting visionary leaders who are tackling poverty in Africa, we can bring prosperity to the continent.
He outlined this notion during a major speech yesterday at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. Almost 200 influential members of the international development community gathered to hear his proposition for a “new partnership with Africa,” one that offers practical support in delivering on their priorities — and quite simply — gets them to “do the right thing.”
After the speech, I was able to speak with Mr. Blair for a couple of minutes, featured in the video interview above. He offered words of encouragement to our ONE members and explained why he was so “happy” about Africa. “We’re seeing an emerging group of young people from Africa who are smart, who are capable and who are determined to make change,” he responded. “There is change happening.”
This award honors individuals or organizations that have made a significant contribution to changing the attitudes, policies and practices of the rich world toward the developing world. Past winners include former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign and ONE for our efforts to put global poverty at the forefront of the presidential candidates’ minds during the 2008 election season.
CDG is honoring Publish What You Pay this year for their work in facilitating the Cardin-Lugar Transparency Provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This piece of legislation will help increase transparency in the oil, gas and mining industries, protect investors from risks associated with corrupt or unstable governments, and require extractive companies listed on the US stock exchanges to disclose government payoffs.
Congratulations, Publish What You Pay, and good luck in the fight against corruption. We’re with you every step of the way. Be sure to check out the organization’s site, too — they do some incredible work in countries across the world.
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.
