October 2011


Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity 

Cash on Delivery Aid | October 2011  

Seen and Heard

In a speech titled Results for Change, UK Secretary for International Development Andrew Mitchell discusses how plans to test Cash on Delivery Aid fit with his vision for a results-focused aid program.

This recent report from the community-based initiative Uwezo about the poor results of student learning in East Africa suggests that COD Aid might be one way to improve education outcomes there.  

Nancy Birdsall and Owen Barder presented Cash on Delivery Aid to European Commission staff in Brussels this summer. The Commission is considering how a COD Aid model can be used to increase the effectiveness of its budget support programs.

This month Bill Savedoff presented COD Aid at an Overseas Development Institute meeting about results and innovative approaches, as a part of the workshop series Long-term Research and Perspectives on Budget Support.  Participants from donor agencies and research institutions took interest in the idea of making budget support programs more outcome-focused. 

A new paper by Benjamin Olken, Junko Onishi and Susan Wong cites evidence from a field experiment in Indonesia that performance-based incentives can be a useful addition to aid programs.

In a recent blog post, Charles Kenny writes that the COD Aid approach forces development experts to be humble, while recipient country governments decide on the strategies they need to deliver outcomes.

COD Aid in the Media
  • Matt Morris includes COD Aid as one of six innovations that are improving the effectiveness of 21st century aid.

  • An article in AllAfrica.com describes the UK's plan to pilot results-based aid in Rwanda.
    This blog post discusses some of the merits of COD Aid compared to budget support.

  • Another recent blog post discusses how COD Aid principles can be applied to stimulate governance reform.
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    On the Horizon
  • The UK Department for International Development continues to pursue results-based aid pilots, modeled after COD Aid, in the education and health sectors.

  • Nancy Birdsall is scheduled to speak about how COD Aid can be used to finance energy access for the poor, at a conference in Oslo on October 10 and 11.

  • We understand from Rakesh Rajani, founder and head of Twaweza East Africa, that he and colleagues are planning COD Aid pilots in Tanzania and Uganda that seek to improve learning outcomes.


    • Team Update

    The fall got off to a busy start as the COD Aid team continues discussions with a number of organizations that are exploring how they can implement COD Aid pilots. Interest in results-based aid is growing among donor agencies, who want to provide evidence of the impact of aid, accelerate progress toward meeting the MDGs, and sharpen their results focus as called for in the Paris Declaration - all while under the pressure of tighter budgets.  We hope that COD and other forms of results-based aid will feature prominently in discussions in this year's High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea, and we look forward to seeing how willing aid agencies and their partner governments will be to test innovative approaches to aid.

    Please send any comments, questions or ideas about COD Aid here.

    Best wishes,

    Rita Perakis
    Program Coordinator to the President