Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity

Innovative Finance for Aid Delivery: The Potential in Agriculture

Apr 23, 2010

Private-sector innovation to help developing country governments promote food security, help their people stay healthy, educate kids, and, overall, reduce poverty is vastly under-supplied because market failures are so common. There is currently a pilot program using an advance market commitment to stimulate private-sector interest in developing a pneumococcal vaccine for developing countries. Prizes have also been used in a range of fields to attract investments in R&D. Might these "pull mechanisms," where donors stimulate demand for new technologies, be used more broadly to complement to traditional "push mechanisms," where donors provide funding to increase the supply of R&D? In particular, could these mechanisms be helpful in meeting the enormous challenge of feeding an additional three billion people over the next four decades, along with providing food security for another one billion people that are currently hungry or malnourished?

On Friday, April 23, 2010, Center for Global Development hosted a discussion on Innovative Finance for Aid Delivery: The Potential in Agriculture at the World Bank. Participants included Kimberly Elliott, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development; Michael Kremer, Gates Professor of Development Studies, Harvard University; Non-Resident Fellow, Center for Global Development; Susan McAdams, Director, Multilateral Trusteeship and Innovative Financing, Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships, World Bank; and Maura L. O'Neill, Senior Counselor to the Administrator and Director of Innovation, U.S. Agency for International Development. The session was co-chaired by Graham Flack, Assistant Deputy Minister, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance Canada and Lawrence MacDonald, Vice President of Communications and Policy Outreach, Center for Global Development.