Development Assistance

Transparency will help the aid debate grow up, and help aid grow old and die

Nov 29th, 2011 12:01 AM UTC
By Jamie Drummond

A life and death debate will rage this week over the crucial – but excruciatingly technical – issue of aid effectiveness. This issue is too important for the public not to know what’s at stake, because after all it’s how their money is being used to save lives that is being discussed. But beyond the policy details, the politics of aid requires some attention too.

Some critics of aid peddle the myths that aid accounts for both a vast portion of national budgets (untrue) and that it achieves nothing (also untrue). In fact, it averages around 1% of national budgets and saves millions of lives a year. For example, vaccines alone have saved at least 5.4m lives over the last decade. But the critiques survive and thrive in part because there’s a weakness at the heart of the pro-aid arguments. This squishiness is largely the product of insufficient transparency.

So the central challenge, and the central opportunity, is around the need for a radical aid transparency agenda. Transparency is the vaccine against corruption and waste, and new technology enables us to dig deeper into aid accounts in real time, and follow national budgets all the way from the top level decisions right the way through to how each penny cent or shilling is delivered.

But conventional wisdom says the aid community should not embrace transparency too much because it reveals problems which its critics will shout about from the rooftops.  It also says that governments in developing countries don’t like too much transparency either. Put these factors together and the aid world gets downright shy and sheepish. Both fears may have some validity, but this logic needs to be turned on its head.

Two trends define our time: on the one hand, the demands for transparency and accountability emanating from the Arab street; and on the other, the fears over deficits and spending cuts. By doing more to embrace transparency and accountability, the aid community will make a much better case for why it should be sustained and increased, not cut.

So here’s a three part plan to improve the policy and politics around aid:

First, all aid budgets must be made transparent and as soon as possible.  To be crystal clear, I don’t mean simply reporting top-line spending each year.  That’s just not good enough.  We need to see real information about specific projects and programmes – including what’s been spent, who received it, what impact it has had, and what’s in the pipeline.

Secondly, all national budgets, including payments from extractive companies, should be transparent all the way through. It’s a bit of a scandal that all of this isn’t happening already. That’s a first order priority. If it doesn’t happen soon progressive nations should stop aid to developing country governments that hide or obscure their budgets from their people. But all this data needs to be crunched for citizens so that they can really hold their leaders accountable. It’s no good just rocketing reams of statistics into the ether if there isn’t the capacity to analyse and digest it.  That’s why we also need much more investment in think tanks, universities, and civil society groups in developing countries to play this critical role.  And we need to make the information accessible to the poorest people in the street or village – those citizens in whose name we busy ourselves. To achieve this, we need a major new catalytic fund to make dry aid and budget statistics come alive in ways that drive action and accountability. In many places, this also will require stepping up smart aid investments in developing country governments’ ability to better collect and deliver data.   For those that demonstrate an unwavering commitment to openness and accountability, this is something that we should do with vigour and haste.

Thirdly, we need those players in the debate about aid to grow up and acknowledge the reality of risk. Sometimes the best uses of aid are the most risky – like when it is directed to projects in fragile states or seed investment for innovative pilot programmes. While we should design programs to minimise risk, this must be balanced with the need to design them to maximise returns for the poorest.  Let me explain by analogy:  ONE’s board is a colourful cast with characters like John Doerr, one of Silicon Valley’s most distinguished venture capitalists. Many of his investments don’t deliver.  He’s proud of this because these investments were part of a broader portfolio strategy that wasn’t frightened of risk, but instead embraced it.  Each decision is based upon extensive due diligence, the establishment of appropriate governance controls, and a careful analysis of upside and downside potential.  With the occasional losers, John has also made calculated investments in fabulously successful start-ups like Google.  These are the ones that have changed the world.  If development aid is to support innovative solutions for our common future, it needs to constantly test new and different approaches. In other words, it needs to be highly entrepreneurial.  That shouldn’t make us scared.  It should make us bold.  And, while we should have zero tolerance of fraud and abuse, we will have to admit that sometimes things will go awry, with lacklustre results or even some of the money going missing. But over time, you learn lessons, scale up what works, and continuously search for solutions for under-performing approaches.  If the people who are in charge of aid budgets are no longer scared of being open, then ultimately they can collectively minimize the amount that misses the target over time because enhanced transparency improves the feedback loops which improve policy outcomes.

Smart aid investments have delivered fantastic returns in the last decade, and this should be grounds for the aid industry to be more confident and open about admitting mistakes. Fear of admitting failures makes the great stories and statistics of success, when they are told, appear like mere PR. The sooner we embrace this radical transparency agenda, the sooner the politics around aid can grow up, the sooner the policy can improve to such a point that the poorest really will be able to drive and determine their own fate with dignity, and the sooner developing countries will be able to graduate from aid altogether.

This article first appeared on the Huffington Post UK website.

Europeans give thumbs up to increasing EU development aid

Nov 24th, 2011 5:14 PM UTC
By Isabelle De Lichtervelde

Despite the current economic turmoil, 84% of European citizens “strongly support” development aid to help people in developing countries out of poverty, according to a Eurobarometer poll launched yesterday. 62% of those asked were in favour increasing aid to at least 0.7% of Gross National Income by 2015, as European leaders have promised.

Currently, many European countries are off track on this commitment, along with the promise to double aid to Africa by 2010 – the region to which 70% of respondents felt to be the part of the world most in need of increased support.

As European leaders start negotiating the next 7-year EU budget, of which €51 billion is proposed to be spent on development aid, ONE will be working hard to ensure Europeans’ voices are heard and promises to help those most in need are kept.

26,856 Europeans of the age 15 and above were asked 10 questions on aid and development cooperation in September 2011 in face-to-face interviews, about 1000 face-to-face interviews per country. Interestingly among all respondents young people were the most supportive of keeping the 0.7% commitment with 9 out of 10 believing it is important to help the world’s poor.

Ahead of the High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness those questioned thought the two best ways to improve effectiveness of EU aid would be common policies at EU level and more transparency.

For more information on the Eurobarometer poll click here.

Cameron Places Aid at Heart of UK Foreign Policy

Nov 15th, 2011 11:26 AM UTC
By Joseph Powell

Last night UK Prime Minister David Cameron issued a strong defence of UK aid and development policy during his Mansion House speech on foreign policy. In a wide-ranging address on ‘Foreign Policy in the National Interest’ Cameron took on the “pessimists” who have called for Britain to pull back from its aid commitments:

“I believe in the moral argument for aid…that we have obligations to the poorest in the world but I also believe that it is in our national interest. Isn’t it better to help stop countries disintegrating – rather than end up dealing with the consequences for our own country: immigration, asylum, terrorism? Aid can help us avoid crises before they explode into violence, requiring immense military spending. And the answer to the legitimate concern that too much aid money gets wasted – isn’t to walk away. It’s to change the way we do development. By 2015 UK aid will secure schooling for more children than we educate in the UK but at one-fortieth of the cost. And we will help vaccinate more children against preventable diseases than there are people in the whole of England. That’s the kind of aid I believe in…”

ONE Europe Director Adrian Lovett welcomed the speech last night. He said:

“The Prime Minister is right to place aid at the heart of modern British foreign policy. Aid costs just over a penny in each pound of government spending – a tiny proportion of what is spent on things like the NHS and benefits. Well spent aid is obviously in the interests of people living in extreme poverty, but it’s very much in Britain’s national interest too. The UK is a world leader on international development. Now it needs to use its muscle to bring other countries up to the mark too.”

21st Century Development: Innovation with Impact

Nov 3rd, 2011 4:36 PM UTC
By Peter Taylor

While leaders meet at the G20 summit in Cannes, Bill Gates was invited to speak about financing for development.

In his report, he makes the case for why we must continue investing in the livelihoods of poor people—and he suggests some innovative ways to do it.

In the report, Bill Gates says:

“Leadership from the G20 is critically important right now. The global economic situation is as fragile as it has been at any time in the past 50 years. As leaders of the G20, you face a difficult challenge: How do you resolve the immediate crisis while continuing to make smart investments in long-term growth and improved living conditions?

In the past 50 years, a billion people were saved from starvation by advances in agriculture. Health has improved in stunning ways, thanks to innovations like vaccines. In 1960, 20 million children under the age of 5 died. In 2010, fewer than 8 million children under 5 died. The world population more than doubled during this time, which means the rate of death has been cut by over 80 percent. Aid generosity has played an important role in these successes

Despite the current economic crisis, I am optimistic that we can build on the generosity and innovations that worked in the past. The group of countries able to contribute resources to development is larger than ever before. The number of people who can spur innovations is much greater than in the past. For these reasons, I am convinced we can create a new era in development.”

You can download a full copy of the report 21st Century Development: Innovation with impact from the Gates Foundation website.

World leaders guilty of neglecting promises to fight hunger in poorest countries

Jul 10th, 2011 12:04 PM UTC
By David Cole

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.

On the two-year anniversary of the L’Aquila commitments, which saw leaders promise to invest $22 billion in agriculture development, ONE’s new report ‘Agriculture Accountability‘ finds that donors have only delivered a fifth of the money promised with just one year to go until the deadline. As well as neglecting their financial commitments the report found countries are not demonstrating the political will needed to prevent future food crises.

The report’s key findings include:

• Overall donors have met only 22% of the financial pledges made at L’Aquila in 2009.
• Canada and Italy have delivered more than two-thirds of their pledges. France, the UK, Germany and the US need to substantial increase the funds they distribute in order to meet their commitments.
• Donors are not taking on the challenges of ensuring effective agriculture aid is delivered with the political will and momentum needed to tackle poverty and chronic hunger.

At the 2009 L’Aquila G8 Summit, the G8 and 5 other donors promised to: (1) deliver the funds within 3 years; (2) agree to a set of principles to guide how they would spend this money; and (3) remain transparent and accountable to their commitments. Twenty-seven countries and 15 international organisations signed a joint statement of commitment, bringing into existence the Aquila Food Security Initiative.

Yet two years on world leaders are guilty of letting slide their promises to fight the root causes of hunger, in particular very low agricultural productivity in regions like sub-Saharan Africa.  We should not need a food crisis to wake us up to the need to not just give food aid now, but also deliver on the promised partnership with African leaders, citizens and the private sector to boost yields across the region.

Fortunately with food security on the agenda of the G20 later this year there is a real opportunity for a new partnership to turn this around. With the right support Africans can both feed themselves and export to the world, helping them fight hunger and poverty and helping us all with lower food prices. The US Government has calculated for example that 40 million poor farming families across the world, most of them living on less than $2 per day, would be able to increase their incomes by 250% if the L’Aquila commitments are met. So delivering the L’Aquila promises and investing in food production is a win-win all round.

Find out more in the report Agriculture Accountability

How much does the UK spend on aid?

Jun 10th, 2011 10:14 AM UTC
By Peter Taylor

How much does the UK spend on aid? how many people does it help?

Recently there’s been a lot of press devoted to the issue of overseas aid in the UK, so as a little experiment we chatted to some members of the public and asked them how much they thought was spent on aid, and how effective they thought that aid was. When we told them the actual figures the results were quite interesting:

You can find out more about how the UK compares to other G8 countries in our DATA report, and as well as facts and figures on aid, you can read stories about how smart aid helps people at a personal level on our Living Proof website.

You can also join our call to world leaders to fund vaccines and help save 4 million lives in 5 years by signing our petition.

Make Aid Transparent

Jun 8th, 2011 2:25 PM UTC
By Laura Kelly

Today, our friends at Publish What You Fund launched the Make Aid Transparent Campaign, which calls on aid donors to publish information on what they are doing with their development aid. ONE has joined the coalition of more than 50 civil society groups from over 20 countries around the world to call on donors to be more transparent on where, when and how they spend their aid budgets.

ONE has been campaigning on improving the impacts of effectiveness through better transparency of aid data for some time. We believe aid money should be well spent, and any scope for corruption and inefficiency stamped out. One of the best ways to do this doesn’t cost a thing: transparency. This helps us know more about how our taxes are being spent, but more importantly making the information available can also help the citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.

This Make Aid Transparent Campaign targets all donors as they prepare for a major international conference on Aid effectiveness in Busan, South Korea in November. If you’d like to know more about why aid transparency is important visit the campaign website, where you’ll find the petition aimed at donor governments. So please register your support!

Interview: Brian Atwood reflects on 50 years of the OECD

May 25th, 2011 12:58 PM UTC
By Friederike Röder

Brian Atwood, chair of the DAC-OECD and former head of USAID, looks back at five decades of international development in honor of the OECD’s 50th anniversary in this exclusive interview with ONE.

What is the one thing with which the DAC has changed the face of development over the last 50 years?

The DAC has been a part of the evolution of development thinking over those fifty years and there have been many paradigm shifts during that period. One was the report “Shaping the 21st Century” written by the DAC in the 1990s. With that, the DAC moved from just exclusively looking at volume issues –- the 0.7 percent and other volume targets -– to goals. The development goals were then adopted by the G8 and eventually by the UN.

With the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Action Agenda, we have engraved in stone principles such as local ownership, being more predictable and transparent and trying to harmonize our activities. All of these principles define “development cooperation.” The DAC is no longer responsible for a one-dimensional relationship called aid, which in my mind smacks of charity and gives the impression that developing countries are the ailing partner and need help. We’re in this together.

The Millennium Development Goals are meant to be reached by 2015, but the G8 Gleneagles commitments ran out in 2010. What is going to happen between now and 2015?

A few weeks ago, we announced the largest ODA level of all time, $130 billion. Partially, this was the result of the Gleneagles commitment, but it was also the result of many countries establishing policies that put them on a path to achieve the 0.7 percent UN goal.

Today the projections are that aid from DAC countries are going to flatten out because of budget crises. That does not include the contributions made by the emerging economies and private donors. Some private donors are providing very large amounts — the Gates foundation, about $2.8 billion.

But the issue is not just the quantity, it is also the quality of the partnership. Increasingly, you see the developing countries taking on more responsibility for their own development and raising more tax revenues. So it is policies, institutions and human development that all add up to progress, it is not just volume that is necessary.

The DAC has developed a set of “pledging guidelines” –- can you tell us about them and how they might influence donors’ development commitments?

We have adopted them in March. They force the donors to abide by procedures for making pledges that are more predictable, more measurable, more comparable, more realistic and accountable and transparent. It is ironic, but we just had a controversy over the G8 who decided to ignore the OECD guidelines and not to include constant dollars in their estimate. I think that was a mistake on their part.

Some people criticize the OECD for being an elite members’ club. What do you respond?

It is fashionable to call us elite. Given what we have been doing in recent years in reaching out to the developing world –- creating the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness that is half made up of countries from the developing world — it is not a fair perception.

More than any other organization we want the views of developing countries. The last three meetings we held, including the senior level meeting, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Russia participated. We issued a statement that welcomed a dialogue with the new providers of assistance and basically said that a country could be a provider and a recipient of assistance at the same time. In DAC terms at least this was an historic statement that shows the direction we are heading.

These emerging economies like China, Brazil and India are becoming increasingly important development partners for Africa. If you had two minutes to convince the BRICS to start adhering to OECD principles, what would you say?

I wouldn’t try to convince them to join the OECD. They should decide that on their own. We have a common ground and a convergence of interests that should make it important to share more information, to understand each other better, and to understand how they see their obligation to the MDGs as we see ours. At least until we have a meeting of minds, it is not time to twist arms to convince people to join the DAC.

What are your objectives for the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan? How many more High Level Forums do you think we will need until aid is truly effective?

Busan is going to be much more important than its title suggests: the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. It has the potential to attract more than 150 countries. What we hope for is broader and deeper partnership and to contribute to rationalizing the international system.
If we are able to reach agreement with the BRICS, the private sector, the developing countries we’ll have something special, bigger than Paris or Accra.

Aid transparency is critical for developing countries’ ability to plan. What can the DAC do to make data more accessible to developing countries?
It’s a political will question. There has been some progress made, but there is no question that there are still problems like double counting. When a developing country sets up a coordination unit they have a hard time figuring out what everyone is doing in their country. We need to get at that problem and fix it. Civil society groups are having a good influence here.

How would you wish that the DAC looks like in 50 years?

My hope would be that there would be no need for a DAC in 50 years time.

G8 countries show mixed results in efforts to meet aid targets

May 16th, 2011 1:59 PM UTC
By Katie Martin

New analysis published by ONE today has given the final verdict on the aid promises that were made by world leaders at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005. The DATA Report 2011, also sets out the steps that need to be taken to make a renewed push towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. It suggests new innovative finance schemes and identifies other measures to support proven smart aid programmes that help the poorest people in the poorest nations build a path out of poverty.

Key points from the report are:

• Collectively the G7 delivered 61% of the increased aid they promised in 2005 to sub-Saharan Africa by 2010.
• The increases were largely a result of the UK making commendable progress towards its very ambitious target, and the US, Japan and Canada surpassing their relatively modest targets.
• Yet again Italy’s performance is condemnable, falling far short of its promises to the world’s poorest people.
• France and Germany have also failed to meet their ambitious targets.
• The failure of the G8 to keep their promises deprived the world’s poorest people of $7bn in financing for effective and life-changing programmes in 2010 alone.
• Despite the overall shortfall, there have been historic increases in aid to sub-Saharan Africa since 2000, and especially since 2005 and the promises of the Gleneagles G8 Summit which was a response to the global Make Poverty History campaign.
• Much of this smart aid went towards programmes that are delivering real results in sub-Saharan Africa. Together with African efforts, aid has helped to avert the deaths of 750,000 children from malaria; allowed 46.5 million children to enrol in school for the first time; provided 4 million Africans with anti-AIDS drugs; and helped boost agricultural productivity by 50% in 17 African countries.
• Emerging economies such as Brazil, India, China and Russia have been steadily increasing their aid to sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, along with increased trade and investment with African countries. However, because most of these new donors do not report their development assistance data to the DAC, the DATA Report does not compare them with traditional donors.

Launching the report Jamie Drummond, Executive Director of ONE, said:

“Unfortunately it comes as no surprise that Prime Minister Berlusconi has yet again abjectly failed to deliver on his promises – and we continue to call for Italy to be at least temporarily removed from the G8 for this reason. But it’s worrying that President Sarkozy and France are so far behind in a year when so much is expected of them as hosts of the G8 and G20, and at a time when African development, peace and democracy is at the top of the global agenda. It is also hugely disappointing that Germany – which has weathered the economic storm so well – has performed so badly on its development promises. These three nations must urgently get back on track by setting out clear timetables to meet the promises they made to give 0.7% of their national incomes as overseas aid by 2015. At the same time, non-European G8 countries like the US, Canada and Japan should set new, ambitious commitments for aid to sub-Saharan Africa.”

However, it is clear that even if G8 donors meet all their existing and future promises on aid, much more money needs to be invested in developing countries if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals and pull millions of people out of poverty.

That is why the DATA Report outlines 6 options for the G8 and G20 to generate innovative financing for development. These range from financial sector levies to African diaspora bonds, and could each help to raise billions of dollars to help fund smart aid programmes.

In this time of global austerity, the DATA Report also looks at how donors have performed against targets to improve the effectiveness of aid to ensure that their investments have the biggest possible impact, although a thorough analysis of progress was not possible due to a lack of available data. However the report did note that some donors, notably the UK, US and Canada, are increasingly emphasizing results by setting clear targets for the outcomes they intend to achieve with their aid. When countries meet for the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in South Korea later this year they should set clear standards for monitoring these results. They should also renew their efforts to improve aid and budget transparency and meet their commitments from previous aid effectiveness forums in Paris and Accra.

Check out the report, including interactive datasets, at one.org/data

New data shows boost in development assistance for Africa in 2010

Apr 6th, 2011 11:00 PM UTC
By Nora Coghlan

Earlier today, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) released preliminary data for donor spending in 2010. ONE’s analysis of the new data (which focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and excludes bilateral debt relief) reveals that donors increased development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa by 12 percent in 2010, a sizable boost considering that global development assistance increased by only 7 percent.

All G8 members (excluding Russia, which does not report to the DAC) increased their spending in 2010, with large increases coming from France, Japan and the UK and smaller boosts from Canada and Italy.

Historic increases in development assistance have supported incredible progress in the world’s poorest countries over the past decade (a message that Bill and Melinda Gates are sharing across European capitals this week as part of ONE’s Living Proof Campaign). However, early indications suggest that increases from most donors will not be enough to meet the targets they set in 2005 to achieve by 2010.

ONE will be releasing its final assessment of the 2005 commitments in our annual DATA Report before the G8 Summit in France. This year’s report will also assess donors’ efforts to improve the effectiveness of their aid and leverage additional resources through innovative financing mechanisms. In the current economic climate, a focus on impact and innovation are critical to ensuring that every dollar of development assistance is maximized. The 2011 DATA Report will also examine development assistance commitments beyond 2010 and the role of new donors like Brazil, India and China, who are not members of the DAC but are becoming increasingly important partners for Africa.

See ONE’s full analysis of the new DAC data here and read more about individual donors’ performance: