Multimedia

In this two-minute clip from 2006, Steve Radelet, former CGD senior fellow, explains how CGD has contributed to the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)—a U.S. aid program focusing on effectiveness, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. Ken Hackett, a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) board member explains how CGD has been involved with the account since its creation in 2002. CGD continues to have an impact through its MCA Monitor initiative which provides rigorous policy analysis and research on the operations and effectiveness of the MCC. You can learn more about CGD’s MCA monitor initiative here.

Ghana’s recent recalculation of its GDP led to an overnight $500 per capita jump, putting in motion unexpectedly rapid graduation from the International Development Association (IDA) and ultimately a new relationship with the World Bank. In this week’s Wonkcast, I speak with Todd Moss, vice president for programs and senior fellow at CGD, about his recent trip to the newly categorized lower-middle income country, the implications of IDA graduation, and a sudden influx of oil wealth.

In this two-minute 2006 video clip, Ruth Levine, then CGD senior fellow and director for global health, tells the story of CGD’s Making Markets for Vaccines initiative. She describes how a CGD Working Group produced an economic and legal framework for funds to incentivize vaccine development. The G-7 Finance Ministers endorsed the approach and five donors (Canada, Italy, Norway, UK and Russia, and the Gates Foundation) committed $1.5 billion to create an incentive for a vaccine against the strains of pneumococcus disease prevalent in low-income countries. Owen Barder, a co-author of the working group report, and Alice Albright, a member of the working group who was then CFO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, help tell the story of moving this innovative proposal from idea to action.

On November 29th, aid donor and recipients will convene in Busan, South Korea at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. In this week’s Wonkcast, I speak with Homi Kharas, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Rita Perakis, program coordinator at the Center for Global Development, about the new 2011 Brookings-CGD Quality of Official Development Assistance assessment (QuODA) and how it can help to hold donors accountable to their own aid effectiveness pledges.

Homi explains that he and Nancy Birdsall began work on QuODA after aid effectiveness forums in Paris and Accra drew international attention to the importance of aid quality. Previously the debate had focused almost entirely on quantity and how well recipients used aid, rather than the problems and opportunities in how the aid was delivered.   

Funding for HIV/AIDS has increased massively in the past few years. But is the money being used in the best possible way? In this short clip, CGD experts Nandini Oomman and Mead Over describe the HIV/AIDS monitor initiative which analyzes how PEPFAR, The Global Fund, and the World Bank deliver aid. The initiative has pushed for greater information disclosure and has made an impact on HIV/AIDS aid effectiveness.

The Arab Spring has grabbed the world’s attention, yet Iraq—the Arab country that not long ago was the very epicenter of American foreign policy—has almost entirely fallen off the front pages. While Iraq’s security has improved greatly, the country is still struggling to consolidate a functional government and come up with a coherent spending plan for its oil wealth. In a new CGD working paper, “Iraq’s Last Window: Diffusing the Risks of a Petro-State,” Johnny West, a longtime journalist in the Middle East and author of the recent book, Karama! Journeys through the Arab Spring, identifies a new opportunity for direct distribution of Iraqi oil rents that he argues could halve poverty, diversify the economy and cement territorial integrity by giving Iraqis a stake in their oil wealth. The event will feature a brief presentation of the paper by West, followed by a discussion with a distinguished panel.

How well did the 22 rich countries that belong to the OECD Development Committee (OECD-DAC) perform in terms of supporting development in 2011? In this week’s Wonkcast, my guest David Roodman, architect of the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), explains some surprising results of the newly released 2011 CDI. While the United States climbed the charts due to a controversial increase in internationally mandated military intervention in Afghanistan, other countries such as Spain and Ireland fell in the rankings because of slower immigration from developing countries.

I also ask David about CGD’s new research data disclosure policy, and its potential to help him improve the Index. As a result of this policy, which David initiated, and the World Bank’s decision to offer free access to its World Development Indicators, full CDI data and “do files” are now available on-line. David encourages students and researchers to poke at it—he is modestly confident that somebody will find some bugs. To read full show summary of the Wonkcast go to www.cgdev.org/wonkcast.

When Dominique Straus-Kahn resigned suddenly as head of the International Monetary Fund last May, the world was thrown unexpectedly into search for his successor. Within days, CGD launched a survey of the global development community opinion on three issues: the selection process, criteria for rating the candidates, and ratings for 15 candidates identified in international media.

My guest on this Wonkcast is David Wheeler, who led the survey and a similar survey on the process for selecting the president of the World Bank when Paul Wolfowitz resigned from that post in 2007. The big take away (summarized in CGD working papers here and here): Regardless of nationality, a huge majority of respondents agree on the need to reform the leadership selection processes for the two Bretton Woods institutions.