Organizations
Sliding in just before the holidays, the OECD-DAC released its final update to the 2010 data on official development assistance (ODA) flows. The DAC — or, Development Assistance Committee — is a grouping of the world’s wealthiest donor countries. It tracks donor spending on development finance and helps coordinate development policy globally to improve spending practices.
The adjusted numbers released in December 2011 reflect final spending by countries in 2010, updating the preliminary figures released in April, and what ONE used in the 2011 DATA Report monitoring the G7’s commitments to Africa. As such, we can look at these numbers as the final report for how the G7 countries met their 2005 Gleneagles commitments to increase development assistance to Africa.
Based on the preliminary figures, ONE’s DATA Report found that the G7 delivered 61 percent of the Gleneagles commitments for sub-Saharan Africa. The final figures show that in fact the G7 delivered 60 percent of their total promises. The difference was mostly due to Japan, Italy, the UK and the US all delivering lower amounts of ODA than they originally reported in April. However, despite the revised figures, there were no changes in whether or not a country met its Gleneagles commitments. Net of bilateral debt relief, the G7 delivered a total of $28.5 billion of ODA to sub-Saharan Africa in 2010.
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ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months. We look forward to hearing all his adventures!
Nadine is 14 years old and in the 7th grade. She wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to sweep the courtyard and house before her father wakes. Then she walks to the pump to fetch water for the entire family for the day. She then prepares breakfast, most likely a type of porridge made from millet. The younger children eat first and if there is any left, Nadine might get a little. She readies the children for their day at school or in the fields. After quickly washing up, she bikes the 20-minute ride to get to school. She usually arrives just in time.
Nadine doing chores with her sister. Photo credit: Brandon Green.
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This piece by Gregory Adams was originally published on Oxfam America’s Politics of Poverty blog.
Most people probably weren’t paying attention to the Washington Post business page on Dec 25. (Myself, I was trying to corral two toddlers and navigate a sea of Legos and torn paper). But for people in poor countries who are trying to lead their societies out of poverty, Christmas day brought good news: USAID is changing the way it works to get closer to the people it’s trying to help.
Dy Yong keeps the books for the rice Bank Committee so that everybody can see how it run and maintained at the Rice cooperative in Takom village, Battambang. The rice store committee has many members and they introduce villagers to the principles of trading rice to give them security at a much reduced rate than the market offers. Photo by Jim Holmes/Oxfam.
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ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months. We look forward to hearing about all his adventures!
Brandon Green in Burkina Faso
I was born in Texas but because my parents are missionaries, and as a result, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to travel the world. We actually spent a lot of time in Senegal when I was a child, but I don’t have many memories of living there. I do, however, remember falling out of a swing and having the wind knocked out of me. And I remember watching a lizard climb up a tree. But even with a lack of memories, I’ve always felt as if Africa was my true home. And after having been away for more than 17 years, I’m finally back.
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Lisa Schechtman, head of policy and advocacy at WaterAid in America, celebrates the Water for the World Act and its bipartisan commitment to saving lives.
These days, it seems Americans have come to expect partisan stalemates in Washington, and foreign aid certainly hasn’t been immune. But a bipartisan group of congressmen, led by Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Judge Ted Poe, R-Texas, has shown that there is still commitment to US leadership on global health and development.
This month, they introduced the Water for the World Act of 2012, a companion to the Senate version (championed by Senators Durbin, D-Ill., and Corker, R-Tenn., and reminded us that meeting basic human needs and saving lives is a fundamental value of Congress.
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Rachel Wilson, senior director of advocacy and public policy at PATH, explains why supporting foreign assistance not only saves and improves lives, but also improves morale here at home.
Rachel’s quilt patch
This year, I commemorated World AIDS Day at ONE and (RED)’s event in Washington, DC, where I listened to sitting and past presidents, members of Congress, corporate leaders, health workers from other countries, activists and even a few rockstars. At a time when every government cent is under scrutiny, I was reminded of just how far we have come in the fight against AIDS and many other diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world. I left the event feeling energized by the significant progress we have made and the leadership that has been shown by the US in addressing so many global health problems.
It wasn’t until I returned to my office and saw an email from a dear friend, who had chosen to stop taking the medication that is no longer protecting him against an ever-growing list of AIDS-related complications, that I was brought crashing back to reality. This juxtaposition between a community’s accomplishment and personal tragedy gave me pause. To be sure, we are winning the war against AIDS; but we also have a long way to go before we can declare victory.
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Anne Marson of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria catalogs stories of inspiration, strength and hope from a recent trip to Peru.
On a plot of land about the size of a football field sit two yellow-and-white structures. The small building (pictured at top) is a tuberculosis “clinic” responsible for serving the 2 million people who live in Huaycán, a township of Lima that has the second-highest TB prevalence rate in Peru.
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