The Huffington Post today features an article from Bob Geldof on the DATA Report launch and key findings. In the piece, Geldof has strong words for Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi stating, “Let us watch to see if the Italian Prime Minister understands his global responsibility. Let us see if Italy keeps faith with the world’s poor.”

Key excerpts below, full piece here

Poverty must go. Without removing it, we will not have a stable world. The global financial architecture collapsed and now must be rebuilt. One of the reasons this was a failure of the system rather than simply within it was because 50% of the planet, those who live on less than $2 per day, were excluded from it. You cannot live on less than $2 a day. What is more, by excluding them from the world economy, we excluded their creativity, their dynamism, their intellect, their ideas and their productivity. We did great damage to ourselves in doing so.

We mustn’t make the same mistake again as we rebuild a newer world economy. We must include the peripheral peoples in the marginal economies, we must include Africa and Africans if only so that they can buy our stuff and we can buy theirs. And then, as happens anywhere else, the aid question disappears.

We are not there yet. So, for now, aid stabilizes the poor of this world at a base level. It manages sometimes to get to some people so that they get to stay alive with a little bit of food, so they get to stay alive with a little bit of medicine, and so they get a little bit of education. Then with a coherent state they can begin to get going. And to help with that, we look primarily to the G7 — the world’s richest economies, the countries of plenty.

-Chris Scott

Yesterday, as you know, ONE launched the 2009 DATA Report in London and CNN was there to cover the event. They sat down with panelist Bill Gates to discuss the Report and the state of global development this year.

Check it out:

You can read more from CNN here.

-Chris Scott

Thanks to the handy work of our Weldon and Kimberly, we now have videos from this morning’s launch of the ONE DATA Report 2009 in London.

Here’s a 6 minute highlight reel of all of the speakers.

[Panelists: Bill Gates, co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob Geldof anti-poverty activist and ONE adviser, Dr. Francoise Ndayishimiye, Senior Gender Adviser, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Arunma Oteh, Vice President for Corporate Services, African Development Bank, Archbishop Desmund Tutu, ONE's International Patron and Jamie Drummond, ONE's Executive Director]

And below, a video of the whole event.

The 2009 edition of the DATA Report, ONE’s annual assessment of the G8’s progress on their commitments to global development, is  launching this morning in London at a special kick-off event featuring Bill Gates, co-Chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob Geldof, anti-poverty activist and ONE principal, Dr Francoise Ndayishimiye, of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria; Arunma Oteh, of the African Development Bank, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Visit the DATA Report website to watch the event live beginning at 10:30a.m. GMT.

-Aaron Banks

Each year, ONE publishes a DATA Report, an annual assessment of the extent to which the G8 are following through on their commitments to global development. Tomorrow we will be launching ONE’s 2009 DATA Report, with a special kick-off event in London.

We have an amazing panel to help launch this report: Bill Gates, co-Chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob Geldof, anti-poverty activist and ONE principal, Dr Francoise Ndayishimiye, of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria; Arunma Oteh, of the African Development Bank, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

In Germany, we’re planning a press briefing with Tobias Kahler, Andreas Hueber (both ONE staff) and Elizabeth Missokia from HakiElimu in Tansania. Tobias will outline the 2009 DATA Report while Andreas will focus specifically on aid effectiveness. Ms Missokia will offer insight into how donors and partners cooperate in Tanzania to scale up education, and what the Tanzanian civil society is doing to make sure that all funds by donors and government are used in the most effective way possible.

In Rome, we will be briefing journalists at around the same time as London, and telling the story of how this year’s G8 hosts are faring worst on living up to their aid commitments. We will also be highlighting that as the only existing member of the G8 who signed the G8 communiqué in 2005 in Gleneagles, Berlusconi has a personal obligation, as well as a national one to deliver on his promises.

In Washington DC, ONE will be meeting with policy makers throughout Washington to inform them of the findings in the Report.

In the coming days and weeks we’ll have much more on the 2009 DATA Report including an interactive website, a blog series detailing numerous features in the Report, and much more. So be sure to check back often!

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

This Thursday, we’re releasing the 2009 DATA Report, our annual report on the G8’s delivery on their promises to Africa. At that launch the panelists will answer questions, including one submitted and voted on by ONE members, and Bob Geldof is here to explain why:

In just a short amount of time, ONE members all over the world sent in hundreds of thoughtful questions to be asked at the launch of our 2009 DATA Report. We narrowed down the options and picked out five of the most important questions, and now you get to have the final say on which question will be asked.

Check out the questions and vote for which ONE will be answered on Thursday. Act quickly though, voting closes at 7:00a.m. EST and noon GMT on Wednesday.

-Weldon Kennedy

The effort to eradicate polio received an influx of $635 million today to intensify vaccination campaigns in India and Nigeria over the next five years. Rotary International, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the governments of Germany and Britain provided this new money for the two countries that account for more than 80 percent of the remaining 1,633 polio cases. This is good news for the polio eradication effort, which has suffered setbacks, but could help polio to join smallpox on the list of eradicated diseases.

Polio has proved to be a challenging disease to eradicate. Polio often lies ‘silent’ in the body, which means that people may not show signs of illness and thus may not know they are infected. The virus can spread widely through a community during this time. Since polio causes paralysis in only 1 of 200 people, public health authorities may not be aware of the infection until it has spread extensively. Also, to successfully eradicate polio, all three strains of the virus must be eliminated. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) uses a vaccine that contains weakened forms of all three strains. This vaccine can successfully immunize people against future exposure to the polio virus and eventually lead to eradication.

Recognizing this potential, in 2005 the G8 committed to contribute $829 million between 2006 and 2008 to the polio eradication effort. Since then, donors have begun to close the financing gap. ONE’s 2008 Data Report describes this progress, and notes that the United States, followed by the UK and Japan have been the largest G8 donors to the GPEI. Hopefully, with this new $635 million donation to the fight against polio, eradication can become a reality.

-Lisa Fleisher

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll remember back in June that ONE released the 2008 DATA Report (and blog posts). The DATA report is ONE’s chance each year to publish progress on keeping the promises that the G8 countries made to Africa back in 2005. Promises are great, but when they don’t lead to action, we can’t let this go unnoticed.

The DATA Report is published in June each year to make the data available before the G8 Summit which usually happens in early July. Though this can help us achieve maximum impact with the report, there is a disadvantage to this. The OECD’s DAC (Development Assistance Committee), who collects the data from governments, publishes only preliminary figures in April; we don’t get the final, and more thoroughly reviewed data, until December. This year’s final review uncovered some significant differences in country progress so ONE has released an update to the 2008 DATA Report.

Before I get into the numbers, a quick note about what these numbers are and what they are not. For those of you in the United States, we often write about authorizations, budgets and appropriations – we come to you often to use your voice to impact these things. What the DAC measures is disbursement, or how much money actually left the US government’s treasury in a given year. This is true for other donor nations as well – this is not the budget or the CSR (in the UK), this is how much was actually spent. Though primarily we do need to get a big enough appropriation/budget to enable disbursements, we also need to make sure that it is being sent to promote African development and not just sitting in a bank account in the donor country. Using the DAC’s figures gives advocates a universal measure across OECD donor nations and is the way the Gleneagles commitments are monitored.

So, what are the final numbers?

The final figures reveal that in total, donors provided (more…)

Another video and post from ONE’s Tom Gavin from last week’s trip to Rwanda.

Monday, July 21:

The U.S. launched PEPFAR – the American global AIDS strategy – at the Masaka Clinic in 2004, so it made for a good place for the ONE delegation to visit and assess how things are going. Our delegation met with doctors, nurses, local officials, and patients seeking treatment and counsel from the clinic’s staff. We heard, time and again, the difference that America’s partnership in health care was making in Rwanda and throughout Africa.

The DATA Report, which ONE released earlier this year, shows the progress being made. It points out that, across Africa, nearly 2.12 million people were on antiretroviral therapy by last December, a huge jump from the 50,000 people on treatment in 2002. That means 30 percent of Africans in need of treatment are receiving it. But there remains a major challenge ahead. An additional 1.7 million Africans became infected with the HIV virus in 2007.

After touring the Masaka Clinic, some of the ONE delegation discussed the site visit and the overall trip with reporters.

-Tom Gavin

Last week, ONE launched the DATA Report in France. I posted a few blogs entries covering the overall findings, the launch itself and a more detailed look at the United States’ performance.

But, we launched the report in France for a few reasons. First, the 4 EU G8 (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom) make up more than 75% of the promised increases in aid from the G8. France takes over the presidency of the EU on July 1 and alone makes up 23% of the promised increases. And, though France has been a strong supporter of the Global Fund, they have only delivered 6.7% of their promised increases so far. In short, France made a huge promise, but delivery has been weak. This story is true across the EU G8.

France cut aid to Africa in 2007. Wrong direction. France has committed to increase aid to Africa by $4.986 billion by 2010. Of that promised increase, they have only delivered $334 million. In order to get back on a linear track towards their 2010 target, France would have to increase aid to Africa by over $1.5 billion dollars next year. Though a sizeable amount, this number is so big because France has been so slow in increasing aid so far. France is really important for Africa, both historically and now. As France becomes the President of the EU and decides its internal budget, President Sarkozy and the French people need to demonstrate that they are going to meet their commitment Africa.

Germany was last year’s host of the G8 and promised to get on track to meet their commitments after a very slow start. Chancellor Merkel and Germany increased aid to Africa by $311 million last year. Though not enough to get back on track, it was a big step in the right direction. Next year, we expect Germany to increase aid by $634 million – again moving closer to being on track. Germany hosted a strong Global Fund replenishment conference in Berlin late last year and has made strong progress, but there is still a long way to go towards accomplishing Germany’s promised increases of $3.969 billion by 2010.

Italy is a tricky story. Italy’s aid to Africa has actually decreased below the level it was at in 2004. But, Italy posted the largest increase in 2007: $417 million. As Prime Minister Berlusconi returns to office this year, it is our hope that he will push Italy to make this large increase the start of sustained progress rather than just a one year anomaly.

All of these commitments were started in 2005 at the Gleneagles Summit hosted by the United Kingdom. Though Tony Blair was then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has always been a strong supporter of Africa and global development generally. We were surprised to see that UK aid to Africa this year only increased by $48 million. Despite this small increase, the UK has accomplished more of its promised increases than any other country – 26%, and looking at the UK’s three year budget, called the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), ONE is fairly sure that the UK will meet their commitment to increase aid to Africa by $3.908 billion over 2004 levels. Our colleagues and fellow advocates in the UK will hold the government accountable to these commitments until they are met.

Following through on the G8 promises to Africa will be a test of the EU G8’s ability to keep to their word as we continue this transition to a globalized business and political world. It is essential both for Africa’s development and for the G8’s ability to act as global leaders that they keep these commitments.

The next two blog posts on the DATA Report will be about Japan, this year’s G8 host, and Canada.

-Josh Lozman