Aid Effectiveness
Read the original post on the ONE Africa Blog
My experience of nearly two decades working for and with development agencies in sub-Saharan Africa has led me to join the rapidly growing campaign for greater aid effectiveness. The more than $100 billion spent annually on overseas development assistance, with over 80,000 on-going projects around the world, armies of “fly-in/fly-out” consultants, aid workers and service providers deployed in every conceivable sector, is clearly not delivering the intended results.
In my country, Nigeria, aside from DFID’s Infrastructure Advisory Facility and some useful donor interventions in health and education, it really is difficult to identify projects that can be said to have been either a good return on investment or ostensibly to have done much to reduce incidences of poverty. In a climate of global fiscal austerity, taxpayers the world over are understandably questioning the value of continuing to fund an industry that rarely provides value for money.
The evolving aid effectiveness movement, which seeks to rationalize aid and make it more transparent, is encouraging and has gone far in promoting dialogue on transparency. But the 2005 Paris Declaration, where governments and aid agencies committed to improved aid effectiveness, remains a donor-centric initiative with little input, let alone ownership, from either the developing world or the actual aid beneficiaries. And it is likely that we may just see more of the same donor-centric talk at the next High Level forum on Aid Effectiveness taking place in South Korea later this year.
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On Wednesday in Paris, a group of international donors agreed to a new standard for publishing their aid flows, in a common language and format, to make the information easier to access and compare. Although this may not seem particularly exciting at the outset, it is a huge victory in terms of making aid to developing countries more effective and more accountable.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)—which is a coalition of donor countries and multilateral organizations, recipient countries, and civil society organizations—aims to improve and increase transparent reporting on aid flows and activities. At present, individual donors largely decide themselves what and how much information they want to make public regarding money they spend on international development. What they do publish isn’t always easily comparable to what other donors make available, and that makes it very difficult to track aid flows at the international level, or even within specific recipient countries. With IATI’s help, and with the new standard developed by their steering committee on Wednesday, more and more donors will be encouraged to publish their information in a common format on their registry.
At ONE’s sister organization, Publish What You Fund, Director Karin Christiansen has been working with IATI to push for greater transparency among donors in the international system. Following the developments, she noted:
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If you caught the president’s State of the Union address a couple of nights ago, you’d know a big part of his vision for America was focused on innovation and competitiveness. “Our success in this new and changing world,” Obama said, “will require reform, responsibility, and innovation.” He presented a bold plan to create jobs and grow our economy through reformed education, more efficient government and investment in science and technology. It was an inspiring speech that called upon Americans to “do big things.”
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
But this talk isn’t new. Throughout government, we’ve been seeing a lot of these principles put in practice by many agencies and programs, including those working on foreign assistance. The State Department, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have all put a premium on becoming more efficient, effective and transparent in their support for poor nations and are embracing innovative ideas to save money and make a bigger impact.
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Is Obama willing to fight AIDS? AIDS activist and Yale College student, Gregg Gonsalves, calls for Obama to champion the fight against AIDS, arguing that the administration is “pitting AIDS against other diseases by making investments in new areas of global health contingent on flat funding for efforts to fight the HIV epidemic.” Gonsalves maintains that AIDS activists have long been global health activists too, but do not support Obama’s either/or approach, echoing arguments by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others that “we can build on the successes against AIDS” without having to choose one priority over another.
Delivering effective, accountable aid: In times of financial difficulties and decreasing government budgets, Millennium Challenge Corp. CEO Daniel Yohannes is working to help deliver effective and accountable aid by focusing on “selectivity of partner nations to ensure that only sound projects are funded and nations with robust governance and economic policies are supported.” Yohannes argues that sharing the complete outcomes of achieved projects and promoting gender equality are also crucial to improving the delivery of aid.
The price of separation: Northern Sudanese activist, Nisrin Elamin, argues that “the referendum represents not only a failure by the Sudanese government to make unity a viable option, but also the complicity and silence of the people of northern Sudan around policies that, if left unchallenged, could ultimately lead to the further fracturing of the nation.” According to Elamin, the liberation struggle represents “the Sudan many of us in the North want: A nation in which wealth and power is more equitably distributed and where everyone, regardless of ethnicity, faith, or gender is treated with respect and dignity.”
The latest on a malaria vaccine: An experimental malaria vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline provides African children with long-lasting protection, though its effectiveness declines slightly over time, according to new trial data. Scientists conducting the mid-stage trial in Kenya said that the vaccine held “promise as a potential public health intervention against childhood malaria in malaria endemic countries” with a possible roll out as soon as 2015 if the data shows the vaccine is effective.
Good luck for Goodluck: President Goodluck Jonathan, who became leader of oil-rich Nigeria only after the death of its elected president, won the endorsement of the country’s ruling party Friday, making him the overwhelming favorite to win April’s presidential election. Jonathan cast himself as the leader able to change Africa’s most populous nation, which has blessed by rich oil reserves but cursed by years of military dictatorships.
Written with Brooke Riley:
Last Thursday marked the end of a 14-month wait for the release of the State Department and USAID’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the first-ever comprehensive review of US development and diplomatic policy. The document is a draft and still requires inter-agency review and comment — the final QDDR will be released in December. Nevertheless, with this and the Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development (which was outlined by President Obama at the MDG Summit in September ), we are starting to get a much better sense of how the Administration intends to modernize and elevate US development policy in order to maximize results for the world’s poorest people.
Among a number of promising signs in the draft QDDR is a clear effort to strengthen the role of USAID in America’s development efforts around the globe. This includes increasing the agency’s control over its budgeting and policy planning processes and ensuring that USAID plays a leadership role in creating country-specific development strategies and implementing Feed the Future and eventually the Global Health Initiative, the Obama Administration’s two signature development programs. The QDDR also continues recent efforts to build human capacity within USAID, including a new plan to triple the number of mid-career development officer hires, something that will place more experienced USAID development experts in the field to drive better results. The Review proposes changes within the State Department as well, with the establishment of several new offices including an Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights as well as a new Bureau for Crisis and Conflict Operations and a Special Coordinator for Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
The QDDR highlights the need for joint strategic planning between the State Department and USAID and an increased emphasis on the need for diplomacy and development to be mutually reinforcing. Both good goals. However, the draft QDDR opens the door for more questions since it does not address the inherent contradictions that exist between calling for an elevated role for USAID when overall policy planning and budgetary authority remains with the State Department. Let’s hope this is clarified in the final QDDR.
Another inherent shortcoming of the QDDR is that it addresses issues relative only to the State Department and USAID. With so many other government actors and policies that make up the US global development agenda, broad policy coherency will remain a challenge. Hopefully the effort put in place by the PPD will help shape a greater all-of-government approach within which the QDDR will operate.
It is also unclear whether the QDDR will require legislative changes in order to move forward. Engaging Congress as a partner in the broad effort to strengthen and elevate US global development is long overdue and the QDDR would be a great starting point to establish a collaborative relationship between the two branches and to codify some of these important initiatives.
Two other challenges remain. We now begin the implementation stage of the PPD and QDDR, the most important part of the effort. It will be critical over the next two years to ensure that these reforms are firmly in place so that they will endure beyond this Administration and current leadership. We are also arguably entering the most difficult budget environments in decades. Any retrenchment on funding resources, especially those that build capacity of both the State Department and USAID, will jeopardize success.
It has been nearly 50 years – since the early days of the Kennedy Administration – that such bold initiatives related to US global development policy have been put forward. Now the hard work begins, making the policy a reality.
Screenshot courtesy of GOOD magazine
I know that infographics are all the rage these days (I just posted a piece on “The true true size of Africa” yesterday, remember?), but I couldn’t help but share another awesome graphic, “Pakistan vs. Haiti: Which got more money?” from GOOD magazine. The beautifully designed chart compares donations from countries and organizations around the world after both natural disasters, and the results aren’t pretty.
According to GOOD, Haiti got twice the amount of aid than Pakistan did, about $3.3 billion versus $1.5 billion. It’s also surprising to see that the average American donated almost triple the amount to Haiti per person than they did to Pakistan. Eesh!
But then again, Haiti’s earthquake happened in January of this year, while Pakistan’s flood happened eight months later. So, the time frame of this comparison may not be totally accurate. Maybe donors need a bit of time — and some nudging from advocacy groups — to get their act together.
Take a look at the big version of the chart, and be on the lookout for more infographics like this one on GOOD’s website.
ONE’s policy team played with QuODA — a new tool developed by the Center for Global Development and Brookings — all day yesterday.
For the first time, QuODA lets you measure the effectiveness of aid to developing countries across donors by looking at a wide range of quantifiable indicators on aid quality (such as measurements of aid transparency, the use of country systems and donor coordination). It lets you compare 23 different countries and 150 agencies, which means you can even see how different parts of the U.S. government stack up against each other. Check out the comparison of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, USAID and the Department of the Defense in the screen shot above -– pretty interesting!
QuODA is a critical first step to helping track whether donors are meeting their commitments to improve aid effectiveness and -– most importantly — ensuring that development assistance is being delivered in a way that can achieve maximum results in countries around the world. Check it out and listen to the “Wonkcast.”
