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Can aid donors find a better way to deliver aid? My guest this week is Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Along with William Savedoff and Ayah Mahgoub, Nancy is working on a potential new way of disbursing foreign assistance called Cash on Delivery Aid. COD Aid seeks to devise simple, results-based contracts that reward developing countries for making progress towards previously agreed goals—such as increased primary school completion rates, vaccination coverage, or access to clean water.

In the podcast, Nancy explains that the traditional mode of giving aid, in which donors often take an active role in prescribing which actions recipient governments should take, can undermine incentives for governments to identify problems and design and implement locally appropriate solutions. "We have to create a system in which outside resources actually help the developing country governments find out what works in their particular setting," says Nancy.

On September 10, 2009 CGD president Nancy Birdsall gave a keynote speech titled "The Crisis Next Time: U.S. Leadership at the Pittsburgh G-20 and Beyond." Tim Adams, managing director of The Lindsey Group and former Under Secretary for International Affairs at Treasury, and Francis Fukuyama, director of the International Development Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, served as discussants. CGD's vice president of communications and policy outreach, Lawrence MacDonald, moderated the discussion.

Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development discusses CGD's Cash on Delivery Aid initiative.

CGD founders Edward Scott, Fred Bergsten, and Nancy Birdsall describe CGD's mission and the organization's history.