Cash on Delivery Aid E-Update July 2009

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you to everyone who responded with feedback after the last newsletter on the Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid initiative.  In response to requests for more frequent updates, we will now send updates on a monthly basis. 

Seen and Heard
Since I last wrote, in addition to ongoing meetings with interested individuals, organizations, and government representatives, Nancy, Bill, Desmond, Owen and I have shared the idea at several events including:

• A seminar at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa headquarters (Addis Ababa, May 2009).  Bill and Owen had an opportunity to share the idea and learn from participants representing multilateral and bilateral aid agencies and advocacy organizations about both aspects of the approach that concerned and appealed to them.
• The Sixth Plenary Meeting for the Leading Group on Innovative Financing for Development (Paris, May 2009). Desmond (you can learn more about Desmond and the work he is doing on aid effectiveness in the education sector here and here) made a case to government and donor agency officials for implementing innovative approaches to the delivery of development finance to complement recent novel efforts to collect development funds. (You can learn more about an innovative proposal to raise funds for education through a campaign linked with the 2010 World Cup here.)
• The Meeting of European Union Member States Education Experts (Brussels, June 2009).  Desmond presented the approach to education experts from the EU community interested in innovative approaches to finance education as a response to the economic crisis.

What about…?
One question we are frequently asked is whether COD Aid can only work in middle-income and a few low-income countries with strong governance and highly developed testing and information systems.  In this note, we briefly describe why we think COD Aid can be tried in a range of different types of countries, including fragile states.  Information on this and other frequently asked questions are available here, and will be available in our forthcoming book Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid with An Application to Primary Schooling.  Stay tuned for more information about the book in the coming months. 

Future newsletters
We plan to continue to share new information on the initiative, identify resources that may be of use to you, and answer questions you may have.  We appreciate any and all feedback on the newsletter and our work, so please let me know if you have any thoughts you would like to share, or if there is anything you are interested in learning about in future issues.

Best wishes,
Ayah Mahgoub
Program Coordinator to the President
Center for Global Development