International
Development Assistance
21st Century Development: Innovation with Impact
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.”
World leaders guilty of neglecting promises to fight hunger in poorest countries
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?
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.
Make Aid Transparent
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
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
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
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:
A standing ovation or a slow hand clap: what do the UK aid reviews mean for the poorest?
Today Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development, announced the results of reviews of the UK’s bilateral and multilateral aid programmes to the House of Commons. These are the result of many months of work by officials at the Department for International Development (DfID), who have been carrying out assessments of the effectiveness of the aid the department gives directly to poor countries and what it gives to international institutions like UNICEF and the World Health Organisation.
The reviews were designed to identify how to increase the impact of UK aid for the world’s poorest people, achieve results and demonstrate value for money. This has become even more important following the Government’s commitment to spend 0.7% of the country’s income on overseas aid by 2013 while most other government departments are facing cuts.
Andrew Mitchell outlined where Britain’s aid money will be spent. He said that, over the next 5 years, the number of countries receiving UK aid will fall from 44 to 27. In Africa, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon and Niger will see their aid flows stop, however of the 27 countries remaining 18 are in Africa. A number of Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan will see their aid from the UK increase in line with the Government’s stated priority of giving aid to fragile and conflict-affected states. This has been dubbed the ‘securitisation of aid’, and has been criticised in some quarters. ONE shares some of these concerns, so we were reassured to hear Mitchell saying that the focus on the poorest would remain with funding being directed towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Let’s hope his deeds are as good as his words.
The multilateral review assessed the organisations’ effectiveness and its contribution to UK development objectives. Using this formula, organisations that ONE has championed like GAVI and the Global Fund come out very well, as does UNICEF. However, a number of organisations that have not done well have been placed in ‘special measures’. This means they need to improve performance or within two years or they will lose funding. These include the Commonwealth Secretariat, Unesco and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). While the FAO has long been regarded as in need of reform, the UK should take an active role in helping to improve its performance because agriculture and food security are central to poverty reduction – particularly in Africa. A more efficient effective FAO could play a critical role in helping address high global food prices.
ONE’s overall view of the reviews is a cautious welcome. We support the focus on reducing poverty and helping meet the Millennium Development Goals and the push to demonstrate value for money. Channeling money thorough organisations like GAVI and the Global Fund that have been shown to be highly effective in saving lives also makes real sense. It is estimated that GAVI has prevented 5 million deaths since it was established in 2000 by providing routine vaccinations to children, while the Global Fund has saved 6.5 million lives since 2002. We hope that the government will now follow through the logic of its approach by announcing a significant increase in funding for the Global Fund and GAVI in the coming months.
However, we think there is a worrying lack of concrete investments in agriculture. More than 1 billion people, or 1 in 6, suffer from hunger. Global food prices are at an all time high and it is absolutely essential that DFID provide supports to help people increase the productivity of their farms, allowing them to feed their families and generate a sustainable income. Funding agricultural development, particularly in Africa where about 70% of the population live in rural areas, is crucial if we are to create wealth and reduce poverty in the long term.
Big win for accountability in aid transparency
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:
“For the first time, a standard exists which means more aid information will actually be better aid information. And that is what we need to make aid transparent; not only to other governments, and aid agencies, but to the public in all of our countries too.”
Not only will governments be more accountable to their citizens and those they are helping in developing countries, but they will also be better able to coordinate their giving with other governments, which can lead to better planning, more efficient use of resources, and the opportunity to make a bigger impact.
So while IATI has done the hard work of laying the foundation, the even harder job remains still in getting donor governments to sign on to the initiative, publish their information in the registry, or at the very least adhere to the common principles of making aid information more public and in a more timely fashion. Currently there are 18 donors who have signed on to the IATI Accra Statement and are committed to its principles, and the UK Department for International Development (which is also part of IATI’s Secretariat) is the first donor to publish its information in the registry. Numerous recipient countries have also come out in support of the initiative. But for it to really be effective, IATI needs to garner much broader cooperation from the donor community. Only 3 of the G8 members have signed on (in fact, countries like Italy and Japan that are not part of IATI have ranked as some of the worst countries in terms of transparency), not to mention the tens of other large bilateral donors, multilateral donors, and emerging donors who have also yet to agree to the standards. The United States (who spends the biggest amount of money on foreign aid) has not formally signed on to IATI’s statement; although they have moved towards greater adherence to transparency principles, such as the recent release of the new USAID dashboard that publishes US foreign assistance flows in an accessible format.
When governments are more transparent, everyone wins. So let’s keep encouraging our governments to be more forthcoming with how our taxes are being spent so we can hold them accountable for investments they are making to help those in developing countries. Making this information available can also help the citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and so they can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.
ONE’s work praised by UK Shadow Secretary for International Development
Yesterday the UK Shadow Secretary for International Development, Harriet Harman, spoke at the London School of Economics and ONE was not only sitting in the audience, but also mentioned in the speech. The talk entitled “Growing the aid budget at a time of deficit reduction: moral imperative and political challenge” addressed the UK Government’s commitment to spending 0.7% of Gross Nation Product (GNP) by 2013.
In last October’s spending review the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) was one of only 2 budgets ring fenced from large-scale austerity budget cuts outlined. This means that while other government departments will see their spending decrease over the next few years, overseas development aid spending will be rising to the UK government’s commitment of 0.7% of GNP spending, something that was agreed upon by the 3 major UK Political Parties at the last election.
While not the current UK Development Minister, Ms Harman spoke about the importance of continuing to provide aid overseas.
“The financial crisis, rising food and fuel prices are hitting the developing world hard. We must not let our recovery from the global financial crisis be the justification to precipitate a crisis of even greater need in the developing world.”
She also stated in these austere times it was very important for people in the UK to be aware of the benefits of aid spending. Ms Harman highlighted the work of ONE and the Living Proof campaign in showing how aid can work, why it is important and why we should all care:
“It is not the case that ‘aid doesn’t work’. Bill and Melinda Gates’s campaign ‘Living Proof’ and organisations like ONE have shown that aid helped African countries put 34 million children through school between 1999 and 2006 and helped halve malarial death rates in countries like Rwanda and Ethiopia.”
Indeed UK aid spending makes a significant difference to improving the lives of millions of people around the world and with many countries’ aid budgets dwindling, the UK’s continued bipartisan commitment to overseas aid spending must be applauded. However for the sake of those in extreme poverty who will benefit radically from the UK’s aid increase, the work of Shadow Ministers, such as Ms Harman, will be increasingly important in ensuring that the current UK Coalition Government does not retract its 0.7% of GDP commitment.
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TAGS: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Development Assistance, G20