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Development Impact Bonds – Elizabeth Littlefield and Toby Eccles

10/23/12

The CGD and Social Finance Development Impact Bonds Working Group is designing a new type of investment vehicle to attract private investors who want to do good and do well while delivering development outcomes. My guests this week are two of the group’s three co-chairs: Elizabeth Littlefield, President and CEO of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and Toby Eccles, founder and Development Director at Social Finance, a UK-based non-profit that has pioneered a similar investment vehicle, the Social Impact Bond or SIB.

I recently spoke with Elizabeth and Toby following the working group’s second meeting here in Washington. Owen Barder, the third co-chair, joined the meeting via video link from London and did not join us for the Wonkcast.

A Moveable Feast of Meetings: Owen Barder

9/27/11

Owen Barder

Last week finance ministers and central bankers from around the globe convened in Washington for the annual meetings of the international Monetary Fund and World Bank. While the press and many of the meeting participants focused on the unfolding European financial crisis, below the radar there was plenty of discussion on development issues, including on the legacy of the Seoul Development Consensus and the role of development in the upcoming G-20 Summit in France. 

In this week’s Wonkcast, Owen Barder, CGD senior fellow, director of our European program, and host of the podcast Development Drums, updates us on the state of the development debate in these global gatherings. I also invite him to reflect on whether such confabs, including the last week’s UN General Assembly in New York and November’s upcoming High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, ultimately make any difference. His conclusion can be summed up simply: “can’t live with em, can’t live without em.” 

Famine in the Horn of Africa: Owen Barder

8/9/11

Owen Barder

It’s not often that the United Nations sees fit to officially declare a food crisis a famine. That’s a testament to the severity of the ongoing suffering in Somalia, a disaster of biblical proportions that has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands. But evidence abounds that famines are not only the result of natural occurrences. On the contrary, most are the shocking result of human error or, in the worst case, deliberate neglect.



This was the message Owen Barder drove home to me in this week’s Wonkcast. Owen acquired an intimate understanding of the realities of food scarcity when he traveled to Ethiopia during the food crisis of 1984-85, and more recently while spending three years in the capital, Addis Ababa. To him, governance and information are central components of food emergencies.

Following the Money: Owen Barder On Why Aid Transparency Matters

3/23/10

Owen BarderMy guest this week is Owen Barder, a visiting fellow here at the Center for the Global Development and the director of the AidInfo project at Development Initiatives, a UK-based NGO. Owen's current work focuses on improving the transparency of the international aid system—making it easier to know where and how aid is being spent.

Owen explains that more easily available aid data would benefit a number of audiences. Researchers and policymakers need the data to study what aid interventions work best. Developed country taxpayers have a right to information on how government is spending their money. Developing country governments need information on donor spending in order to budget their own resources effectively. However, according to Owen, the most important audience for aid data are the citizens of developing countries-the intended beneficiaries of the spending.

"They need to hold their government to account, they need to hold service delivery organizations to account," he says. "And to do that, they need to know what services they should be expecting, what money is being allocated, what's being spent, so they can make sure they're getting the services they need."

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