April 2010

SEEN AND HEARD

At the request of Liberian government officials, Bill and I conducted the third of our COD Aid feasibility study trips in Liberia. We met with government officials and development partners to learn about their country programs, and whether and how they thought COD Aid could contribute to education progress across Liberia. We are currently drafting a brief country exploration report (akin to our Malawi and Ethiopia reports), which we will share in the next COD Aid electronic update.

Last month, Nancy, Bill, and our colleagues Nandini Ooman and Katherine Douglas continued delving into an exploration of how COD Aid can be applied to tackle the seemingly intractable challenge of maternal mortality. A reduction of maternal mortality, the Millennium Development Goal on which the international community has made the least progress, has recently received substantial high level attention, including in the run-up to this summer’s G8 Summit. To learn more about the problem and how COD Aid may help the international community make progress, you can read this and this blog post by Bill, Nandini and Katherine.

In addition to applying COD Aid to maternal health, our colleagues have continued to explore another health application of COD Aid: COD4HIV. CGD senior fellow Mead Over and Timothy Hallett of the Imperial College London released this CGD working paper advancing options for applying COD Aid to averted HIV infections.

Over the past few weeks, we have presented COD Aid at several events. First, at All Children Reading, a conference convened by RTI International, the International Reading Association, USAID, the Education for All – Fast Track Initiative and the World Bank READ Trust Fund. I presented COD Aid as an example of a financing modality that could be included in a package of approaches targeted at increasing the number of children reading by the end of second grade. Across the Atlantic, Owen Barder presented COD Aid at the Belgian States General for Development Cooperation forum on the Millennium Development Goals in Brussels. Bob Kaplan, the chief advisor to the executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and author of this concept note on the application of COD Aid to water, hosted a roundtable discussion at the IADB for feedback on this application.

COD AID IN THE MEDIA

In this article in Foreign Policy on US aid to Pakistan, James Traub proposed COD Aid as an innovative approach that could be used to provide more effective aid to Pakistan.

Carol Peasley referred to COD Aid in the context of discussing more effective ways the US could provide foreign assistance in this Huffington Post article.

Nicholas Kristof suggested donors try COD Aid in this post. Nancy and Bill responded to his post here.

Yemisrach Kifle explains COD Aid, the debate surrounding it, and why she thinks it should be tried in this blog post on change.org.

Owen Barder argues here (in response to Tom Harrison and others) that COD Aid should be tried not because of the incentives it provides to recipients, but because it provides donors with a politically viable means to transfer funding in a less burdensome manner to developing countries.

COD AID UPDATE

In April, following the launch of our book Cash on Delivery: A new approach to foreign aid with an application to primary schooling, there was a flurry of public and private discussions about the possible impact of COD Aid, and requests for additional information on the approach from donors and civil society. Anticipation over the UK’s possible involvement in pilots of COD Aid post-elections, our work on other applications of the approach, and growing developing country government requests to try the approach helped fuel this interest.

We welcome all those interested in learning more about the approach and the initiative to visit the COD Aid page of our website.  We appreciate the continued input and collaboration of many individuals. We welcome additional comments, ideas and questions, which you can send here.

Best wishes,

Ayah Mahgoub
Program Coordinator to the President
Center for Global Development

ON THE HORIZON

Later this month, Bill and I will share a short report, based on our meetings in Liberia, outlining suggestions for how COD Aid could be implemented to help focus efforts on schooling outcomes.

Bill and Katherine will release a note outlining several options for indicators in the health sector. This note will include a discussion of maternal health, child health and infant mortality indicators.

Also this month, Owen Barder will present COD Aid and its possible application to maternal health at Save the Children, UK.