SEEN AND HEARD
Seen and Heard
To build on CGD’s research about the application of COD Aid in the health sector, Bill Savedoff held a workshop entitled Cash on Delivery for Health at CGD on October 13. Global health experts from organizations including the World Bank, USAID, Malaria No More and MCHIP convened to discuss challenges and possible solutions for COD Aid in the health sector. The COD Aid health concept note is now available on CGD’s website as a discussion document and we continue to seek feedback on it as we improve our guidelines for piloting COD Aid in health.
Nancy Birdsall presented COD Aid at the African Development Bank this week. The African Development Bank is exploring the possibility of a COD Aid approach in the water sector. Suggested guidelines for this application of COD Aid are in the concept note Cash on Delivery Aid for Water.
On September 15 Bill presented COD Aid to the USAID Education Sector Council. He spoke about changes agencies can make if they want to start paying for results. An interested audience raised many practical questions about how COD Aid might work in various settings.
CGD research fellow Benjamin Leo released the working paper Can Donors be Flexible within Restrictive Budget Systems?, which discusses the challenge that budgetary scorekeeping systems have posed for governments’ ability or willingness to support innovative development finance initiatives like COD Aid. The paper describes various forms of innovative financing and recommends options for overcoming the restrictions that systems often impose.
COD Aid Update
As new audiences become interested in learning about COD Aid, our team has engaged in conversations about the application of the approach to many sectors, including primary and secondary education, health, water, and tobacco. We’re excited to see so many creative ways of thinking about how aid can be linked to outcomes, and we’re looking forward to continuing conversations about the practical implementation of COD Aid.
To learn more about the approach, you can read Cash on Delivery: A new approach to foreign aid with an application to primary schooling, and visit the COD Aid page of our website. Please send your comments, questions and ideas here.
Best wishes,
Rita Perakis
Program Coordinator to the President
Center for Global Development
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ON THE HORIZON
Bill, Mead and Katherine will finalize a concept note on applications of COD Aid to health, including in the subsectors of maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. The note is already being used in draft proposals for the application of COD Aid to improve maternal health. A consultation draft is posted on the CGD website, and we welcome your feedback and comments on it.
COD AID IN THE MEDIA
Eckhard Deutscher, Chairman of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, and Pierre Jacquet, Chief Economist of AFD-Agence Francais de Developpement, write about the need to address an overly complex international aid system, and discuss COD Aid as an example of a promising innovation.
This Development Policy blog highlights the UK’s ten point plan for better aid, which includes a commitment to pilot COD Aid this year.
In an article from Public Choice, David Zetland writes that COD Aid facilities the empowerment of ODA recipients by focusing on recipients’ goals and allowing for flexibility.
In this blog post, Owen Barder discusses how COD Aid’s focus on measuring results can improve the current aid system.
In this article about taking Cash on Delivery Aid “one step further”, Payal Pathak suggests that COD Aid could be applied to financial inclusion strategies and that results-based financing mechanisms should be more broadly used to promote asset-building.
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