Development Assistance

The Challenge

In 2000, 189 nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight goals designed to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015. If achieved, the MDGs could transform the lives of millions in the world's poorest countries, but many impoverished nations can't reach these ambitious targets alone. In signing on to the MDGs, world leaders acknowledged that progress towards the first seven goals (an end to extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, reduced child mortality, improved maternal health, progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases, and environmental sustainability) would largely depend on leadership in developing countries. But by committing to goal eight-a global partnership for development-wealthy nations around the globe clearly affirmed the importance of donor support in the fight against extreme poverty and disease. 

The spirit of this commitment has been captured in several agreements since the 2000 Summit. In 2002 at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, wealthy countries committed to spending 0.7% of their gross national product on development. At the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, the G8 agreed to deliver an additional $50 billion in global development assistance by 2010, half of which (an additional $25 billion) would be designated to sub-Saharan Africa. 

In its annually published DATA Report, ONE monitors the extent to which donors are on track to deliver their 2005 Gleneagles commitments to sub-Saharan Africa. In the 2011 Report, ONE found that the G7 had delivered 61% of the increases promised to Africa by 2010. Some countries are more to blame for the shortfall than others. Canada and Japan met or beat relatively modest targets, while the United Kingdom nearly met 86% of its much more ambitious target. The United States also made historic increases, meeting 121% of their commitment. France met 45% of their ambitious commitment, while Germany fell short, meeting only 23% of their target: Italy remains in a category of its own, as the only G7 country to have cut development assistance compared with 2004 levels.

As poor countries struggle to cope with the effects of the food, climate and global financial crises, the successes and progress in Africa-supported by donor assistance-is at risk.

The Opportunity

In the past, some donors have used "aid" for geopolitical purposes, rather than allocating it for economic growth and progress towards achieving the MDGs. This has led some to believe that "aid" or development assistance is ineffective. But recent successes have shown that high quality development assistance does work; across the globe, development investments are producing lifesaving results (Please see aid effectiveness page). There are currently more than 5 million HIV-positive Africans on antiretroviral treatment and 230 million bed nets have been delivered by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria alone to help protect families from malaria, substantially reducing malaria deaths in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya. Targeted development assistance and savings from debt relief has also allowed 46.5 million African children to enroll in primary school for the first time between 1999 and 2008. These results were achieved with only a portion of the assistance promised to poor countries, suggesting that fulfilled commitments delivered effectively could have an enormous impact. Final estimates published in ONE's 2001 DATA Report indicate that in 2010, G7 countries provided $86.8 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA). $28.7 billion of this was specifically for sub-Saharan Africa.

Donors are also developing inventive new tools to provide sustained development funding through innovative financing mechanisms. These mechanisms raised an estimated $57 billion for development between 2000 and 2008, using creative approaches ranging from the International Finance Facility for Immunization's issuing of bonds to purchase vaccines, using an Advanced Market Commitment to spur the creation of a new pneumococcal vaccine, to mobilizing resources from consumers to finance Global Fund programs (via Product (RED)).