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January 19, 2010

Out of the Tranches

Posted by William Savedoff in Aid Effectiveness, Cash on Delivery Aid, Global Development Tags: ,

Proposition #1: Details matter

Proposition #2: People hear what they expect to hear

Lemma #1: People often misunderstand details

Theorem: Foreign aid agencies continue to use tranched operations even when a small modification would work better.

I leave the proof to the reader, but this theorem came to mind during recent discussions about Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid) as it would apply to financing primary education.

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December 17, 2009

Linking Aid to Results: Why Are Some Development Workers Anxious? (Guest post by Owen Barder)

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Aid Effectiveness, Cash on Delivery Aid, Education, Evaluation, Global Development Tags: , , , ,

I am pleased to share with our readers at Owen’s request this discussion of Cash on Delivery Aid, which appeared yesterday on his blog, Owen Abroad.

Linking Aid to Results: Why Are Some Development Workers Anxious?
By Owen Barder

The Center for Global Development is working on an idea which they call Cash on Delivery aid, in which donors make a binding commitment to developing country governments to provide aid according to the outputs that the government delivers. I think this is a good idea in principle, and hope that it can be tested to see whether and how it could work in practice.  The UK Conservative party have said in their Green Paper that if they are elected they will use Cash on Delivery to link aid to results.

Linking aid more closely to results is attractive from many different perspectives.  My own view is that linking aid directly to results will help to change the politics of aid for donors. Many of the most egregiously ineffective behaviours in aid are a direct result of donors’ (very proper) need to show to their taxpayers how money has been used.  Because traditional aid is not directly linked to results, donors end up focusing on inputs and micromanaging how aid is spent instead, with all the obvious consequences for transactions costs, poor alignment with developing countries systems and priorities and lack of harmonisation.  If we could link aid more directly to results, I think donors will be freed from many of the political pressures they currently face to deliver aid badly; and it would be politically easier to defend large increases in aid budgets.

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November 6, 2009

Major NGOs Comment on COD Aid

Posted by Ayah Mahgoub in Aid Effectiveness, Economic Development, Economic Growth, Global Development Tags:

This is a joint post with Nancy Birdsall and Bill Savedoff.

During a panel discussion we hosted at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Istanbul last month on mutual accountability and outcomes in aid, Max Lawson from Oxfam, in referring to COD Aid, said that CGD appears to have more effective publicity strategies and reach than the European Commission. While we do have a (small but) stellar communications team, our ideas spread far primarily because other organizations are seriously engaged in exploring and debating new ideas like the ones we have proposed (otherwise our tiny team would be sleepless, to say the least!).

One case in point is the recent COD Aid briefing paper issued by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) – a large international development organization based in the UK which raises about 75% of its funds from individual supporters. Read More…

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October 23, 2009

The Chicken or the Egg…Accountability and Outcomes in Aid Relationships

Posted by Ayah Mahgoub in Africa, Aid Effectiveness Tags: , ,

Earlier this week, Ruth Levine called for aid to be unbranded as a further step to rebrand America. Nancy Birdsall, Bill Savedoff and I have heard the same plea during conversations we’ve had with government officials about Cash on Delivery Aid. One particular story shared by a government official in a post-conflict country comes to mind:

“When we came to power after years of war, donors had become accustomed to providing services for our people within a power vacuum. They continued to provide invaluable assistance during our reconstruction years, but one particular aspect of their assistance had been very problematic. They displayed signs on schools, clinics, roads, etc attributing these structures and services to the assistance of their countries and agencies. Our people questioned our legitimacy when it appeared that basic services were being provided by foreign governments and agencies. We approached our donor partners and asked that they make a slight change – that they re-label their signs to read “A project of our government, supported by X agency”. This change, modest as it may seem, made a significant difference in the manner in which our citizens viewed our government.” Read More…

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October 14, 2009

Belated Reflections from WB-IMF Meetings in Istanbul — What the IFIs Could Learn from the IOC

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Aid Effectiveness, Capitol Flows/Financial Crisis, Cash on Delivery Aid, Financial Crisis Tags: , ,

Some impressions from the World Bank-IMF meetings, held last week in Istanbul, where the views of the mosques are magnificent and the traffic is truly terrible!

First off, congratulations to Liliana Rojas-Suárez, her co-chairs and members of the CGD Task Force on Principles for Expanding Access to Finance on the policy momentum their new report has achieved within just a few days of its release.  Announcing a new Dutch-funded IMF initiative to gather national data on access to financial services, Her Royal Highness Princess Maxima of the Netherlands, an international activist for development, praised the task force report predicting it would be “widely used when setting up national strategies” to improve financial service access. The Princess noted that more than two billion people across the world do not have access to basic financial services and only 20% of the world’s population has a formal savings account. The Dutch-funded IMF initiative will help to address this problem by regularly collecting country data on access to loans, deposits, debt securities and insurance. Read More…

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July 29, 2009

UK Poverty Action Plan Discussed at CGD Roundtable (Now, if only the United States…)

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Aid Effectiveness, Global Development Tags: ,

Douglas Alexander at CGD

UK Minister for International Development Douglas Alexander presented at a CGD roundtable yesterday a new poverty action plan to help the world’s poorest people cope with the global economic crisis. Alexander said that the measures described in the new UK government White Paper, Eliminating World Poverty: Building Our Common Future would help 50 million people hit by the crisis, keeping children in school, parents in jobs, and the most vulnerable people out of destitution.

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July 17, 2009

Response to Question on Attribution and Cash on Delivery Aid

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Aid Effectiveness, Global Development Tags: ,

In a recent blog post Duncan Green of Oxfam briefly introduced COD Aid (for what that is go here) and raised a few good questions (along with a disclaimer that he needs to learn more) about the approach. One concern he raised is whether the approach doesn’t pass the donor’s usual attribution test, i.e. the test of whether the donor’s aid made some positive and measurable difference. We could point out that that’s the case already with about 99 percent of all official aid—including budget support—but that would be surly! (To understand why serious evaluation doesn’t usually happen read the Evaluation Gap and learn about the subsequent founding of the 3IE and the support it provides for recipient countries to do their own evaluations of their own programs, whether financed by their own or donors’ revenues.) Read More…

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June 22, 2009

One Goal: Education And…Football for All?

Posted by Ayah Mahgoub in Aid Effectiveness, Education, Global Development Tags: ,

Education and Football for AllCGD friend Alcyone Vasconcelos, Senior Education Specialist at the Education for All – Fast Tack Initiative (EFA-FTI) (an international partnership of developing country governments and donors to make progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015), brought to our attention a very interesting idea: a campaign to support education for all linked with the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Read More…

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December 3, 2008

Disappointment for Development Goals in Doha

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Aid Effectiveness, Cash on Delivery Aid, Global Health, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags:

There was another meeting in Doha this past weekend through yesterday. This time it was the United Nations not the WTO that failed to close any deal.
I attended because CGD organized a “side event” on our COD Aid initiative — more on that in another comment later this week.
The meeting was the United Nations Financing for Development conference. It was meant to be a sequel to the famously successful Monterrey, Mexico conference on the same issue in 2002. A few weeks before Monterrey, President Bush announced the creation of the U.S. Millennium Development Account — that was just one example of how a UN confab can precipitate a serious commitment to some global goal by some key member countries.

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November 24, 2008

In the Midst of the Financial Crisis, an Opportunity for Innovative Financing for Development – Cash on Delivery Aid

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Cash on Delivery Aid, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags:

This is a joint posting with Ayah Mahgoub
This week, from November 29th through December 2nd, heads of government and multi-lateral institutions as well as representatives from business, and civil society will convene to evaluate the progress that has been made since world leaders met in Monterrey in 2002 to develop a plan to confront the challenges of international financing for development. Almost seven years later, some progress has been made towards fulfilling the commitments made there, but much is left to be done. In Monterrey, leaders made commitments to mobilize domestic and international resources, increase financial and technical cooperation, improve international trade, and address issues surrounding external debt and systemic challenges to financing international development.

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November 24, 2008

Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers – Good Picks for the U.S. and the World’s Poor

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in 2008 Presidential Election, Aid Effectiveness, Capitol Flows/Financial Crisis, Cash on Delivery Aid, Debt Relief, Economic Development, Economic Growth, Financial Crisis, Foreign Aid Reform, Global Education, Global Health, Governance/Democracy, Human Rights, International Monetary Fund, Migration and Labor Mobility, Millions Saved, News, The Future of the World Bank, U.S. Foreign Aid Reform, United Nations, World Bank Tags: , , , , ,

Timoth Geithner (L), Lawrence Summers (R)We at CGD warmly welcome president-elect Barack Obama’s appointments of Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury and Lawrence Summers to head the National Economic Council. Both are members of the CGD Board of Directors. This is no coincidence. It reflects the fact that both are tremendously knowledgeable about the problems and challenges faced by the world’s poor and are committed to policies to help address those problems — both in the interests of the poor in the developing world and of the United States itself. That can only be a good thing at a time when the U.S. economy hangs by a thread — and the thread is sustained and inclusive of growth in developing and emerging market economies such as China, India, and Brazil.

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September 9, 2008

Accra Agenda for Action: A Few (Small) Steps in the Right Direction

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Cash on Delivery Aid, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags:

This is a joint posting with Ayah Mahgoub
The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Accra, Ghana has come to an end, with as many as 1,500 people (officials, advocates, activists) milling and talking. The conference was convened as a follow-up to the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, in which donors and recipients agreed on five major principles to improve foreign aid: recipient country ownership of programs and reforms funded by aid, alignment of donor programs to recipient country priorities, harmonization and coordination between donors, managing for results, and mutual accountability of both donors and recipients for achieving those results.

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September 8, 2008

Adrian Wood’s FT Proposal to Cap Aid in Africa Sets off Lively Debate — Here’s What I and Others Think

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Cash on Delivery Aid, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags:

Adrian Wood, a professor of international development at Oxford, proposed in an article in the Financial Times last week (free registration required) that donors as a group limit their aid flows to aid-dependent countries to no more than 50 percent of the tax revenue a country raises from its own citizens (excluding oil and other mineral revenue). He argues that too much aid undermines a government’s accountability to its own citizens — a point made by Moss and Subramanian, Brautigam and Knack (Subscription Required), and African tax commissioners, too.

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September 3, 2008

Accra Aid Forum Take Note: Financial Management in Poor Countries is Improving — Donor Behavior, Not So Much

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Cash on Delivery Aid, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags:

A new report from OECD DAC, the club of traditional aid donors, says that poor countries’ management of public finances is improving That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: donors have been slow to respond. Despite the donors repeated pledges to avoid the high costs of setting up parallel programs and projects, they are still doing so — including in countries like Cape Verde and Moldova which are in the top group of low-income countries where financial management is concerned according to the 2008 version of the annual OECD-DAC Survey on Monitoring the Paris Declaration.

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September 3, 2008

Tanzanian President Kikwete Focuses on Education & Malaria Control

Posted by Ruth Levine in Africa, Cash on Delivery Aid, Global Education, Global Health, Global Health Policy, Inequality, Migration and Labor Mobility, News, Regions Tags: ,

This is a joint posting with former CGD special assistant Rena Pacheco-Theard
President Kikwete.JPG
Last week, CGD was honored to host Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete and senior officials in his government for a discussion with a small group of development experts on Tanzania’s recent education and malaria control activities.
The importance that the government places on core social sectors is unmistakable – and continues a long Tanzanian tradition. Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Jumanne Maghembe, noted that, “Education is the highest priority, and the foundation of any social development venture.” In fact, the education sector – primarily teacher salaries – accounts for a full 17% of the national budget. Over the past few years, the country has consolidated progress toward universal primary education and has increased secondary school enrollment by two and a half times (from a very low base). The Minister also reported on expansion in post-secondary education, including universities and vocational training centers. Attention is also being given to the early years. Zanzibar’s Minister of Education, Haroun Ali Suleiman, stressed the importance of pre-primary education.
As the sector expands, the challenges are profound. The most obvious is the shortage of teachers. Historically, secondary schooling has been so limited that there simply aren’t enough graduates to train as teachers. In response, at least for the near term, the government has implemented programs to bring in teachers with non-traditional training, and is looking at distance education technologies.

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September 3, 2008

Tanzanian President Kikwete Focuses on Education & Malaria Control

Posted by Ruth Levine in Regions Tags: , , , , , ,

This is a joint posting with former CGD special assistant Rena Pacheco-Theard

President Kikwete.JPG

Last week, CGD was honored to host Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete and senior officials in his government for a discussion with a small group of development experts on Tanzania’s recent education and malaria control activities.

The importance that the government places on core social sectors is unmistakable – and continues a long Tanzanian tradition. Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Jumanne Maghembe, noted that, “Education is the highest priority, and the foundation of any social development venture.” In fact, the education sector – primarily teacher salaries – accounts for a full 17% of the national budget. Over the past few years, the country has consolidated progress toward universal primary education and has increased secondary school enrollment by two and a half times (from a very low base). The Minister also reported on expansion in post-secondary education, including universities and vocational training centers. Attention is also being given to the early years. Zanzibar’s Minister of Education, Haroun Ali Suleiman, stressed the importance of pre-primary education.

As the sector expands, the challenges are profound. The most obvious is the shortage of teachers. Historically, secondary schooling has been so limited that there simply aren’t enough graduates to train as teachers. In response, at least for the near term, the government has implemented programs to bring in teachers with non-traditional training, and is looking at distance education technologies.

Read More…

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