Cash on Delivery Aid Update - February 2010

SEEN AND HEARD

Nancy, Bill and I began the month with fruitful discussions on whether and how COD Aid could be applied to other development goals. We held two brainstorming sessions – the first to explore current progress and potential in the water sector, and the second in the health sector with a focus on malaria. In the water sector discussion, we benefitted tremendously from contributions of the staff of the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid (GPOBA). The ideas generated by participants (who deserve special thanks for braving DC’s storms to join us!) in both meetings were excellent, and we plan to continue these explorations and publish notes describing this work on the COD Aid page of our website.

Overseas, Nancy made presentations on COD Aid at seminars in Paris (hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee [OECD DAC] and by Sciences Po) and at the Global Korea 2010 conference in Seoul. These presentations were followed by excellent questions and useful discussion.

As followers of the CGD weekly e-newsletter (and for those who aren’t but would like to be, you can sign up here) may already know, last week Nancy took COD Aid to a new medium – podcast! Lawrence MacDonald, CGD’s Vice President of Communications and Policy Outreach and the host of CGD Wonkcasts, had a lively discussion with Nancy about COD Aid and its application to primary schooling. You can access the COD Aid Wonkcast here and subscribe to weekly Wonkcasts here.

Also featured in last week’s CGD e-newsletter, CGD Visiting Fellow Desmond Bermingham published a CGD Working Paper outlining four options for world leaders keen on improving global education assistance. In this paper, Desmond encourages donor officials to use innovative mechanisms both for raising and delivering education financing, and proposes COD Aid as one means for delivering it. These recommendations are particularly timely given ongoing efforts at the Education for All – Fast Track Initiative to improve their programs. Their recent efforts are outlined in this blog post by Desmond Bermingham.

Following the COD Aid Wonkcast, Felix Salmon, a Reuters journalist, blogged about COD Aid. You can read his blog post and comments on this post (including one by Bill) here.

ON THE HORIZON

We are excited to announce that our forthcoming book Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid with an Application to Primary Schooling will be available in hard copy next month! We will hold a launch event during the week of March 22nd. More details about the event will follow shortly.

As always, to learn more about COD Aid please visit the COD Aid page of our website. The feedback we receive at seminars and meetings is integral to our work – but input and idea-sharing is not limited to these formal events. We appreciate your continued feedback and welcome additional comments, ideas, and questions in the form of emails to me.

Best wishes,

Ayah Mahgoub
Program Coordinator to the President
Center for Global Development