In a recent survey, 640 development policymakers and practitioners in 100 developing countries were asked about the best ways to improve foreign aid so that it can have the most beneficial impact possible.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) shook the budget Magic 8 Ball and got a new response this year: outlook not so good. The administration requested $898.2 million for the MCC in FY2013, a decent number given today’s budget pressures and the same level appropriated in the FY2011 omnibus and FY2012 megabus. Despite this, I’m concerned Congress will make further cuts and puzzled that, while the MCC leads U.S. development rhetoric, it continues to get short shrift in the budget.
I had the honor to speak yesterday at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Philadelphia about the future of global poverty and what it means for philanthropy. I like to think in 3s, so here are my three 3s to frame the big questions:
This is a joint post with Christina Droggitis
This May will mark the five-year anniversary of CGD’s Evaluation Gap Working Group’s final report, "When Will We Ever Learn: Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation". The report noted a large gap in evidence about whether development programs actually work and recommended creating an independent international collaboration to promote more and better impact evaluations to close this gap. The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) was formed as a result of this recommendation. The report also stressed the need for countries, both donors and recipients, to make larger commitments towards high-quality evaluation work. These commitments, it argued, should include supporting 3ie financially, as well as generating and applying knowledge from impact evaluations of their own development programs.
USAID Administrator Shah has taken another step in his ambitious program of making USAID not only a premier development agency (as Hillary Clinton promised it would be back in her January 2010 development speech) but premier in economic analysis, and in macro as well as micro. Shah could not have been smarter than to recruit Steve Radelet from his job as a senior advisor on development to Secretary Clinton.
This is a joint post with Rita Perakis.
The UK Department for International Development is getting down to real business on adopting results-based approaches to aid. It will allocate future resources across country and regional programs on the basis of “results offers”, as explained here. (DFID spends annually almost 3 billion pounds, about $4.5 billion, on these programs – exclusive of its allocations for humanitarian assistance and for support of multilateral programs.) DFID recently wrapped up one step of the process, in which all country and regional teams set out their “results offers” for the period 2011/12 – 2014/5 (“indicative results teams proposed to deliver” ) for review and evaluation (and some sort of ranking we assume) by internal advisers and a panel including external experts. The reviews were asked to assess the extent to which the results offers are “realistic and evidence-based”. Now ministers will consider them as they determine their aid allocations for the next four years. According to an earlier press release the results offers will cover about 90 countries.
Here is what I liked about President Obama’s UN speech on development last week, what I liked less, and what to watch for next. I conclude with an epilogue on this week’s historic gathering of secretaries Clinton, Gates, and Geithner, USAID Administrator Shah, and Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Daniel Yohannes for the U.S.
Bipartisanship made a reappearance in a most unlikely place last Wednesday – at the podium of the United Nations. In his address to the United National Millennium Development Goals Summit, President Obama unveiled his “new” approach to development, emphasizing a focus on results, investing in countries committed to their own development through sound governance and democracy, tapping the forces of the economic growth through entrepreneurship and trade, and the need for mutual accountability between developed and developing countries. In doing so, he followed precisely in the footsteps of
I attended a conference convened and hosted by Jean-Michel Severino, the head of the French bilateral agency, outside Paris last week. The question participants addressed was: What should be the goals of the international development community in the post-MDG period after 2015? Should the MDGs be retrofitted and complemented with go
Secretary of State Clinton’s speech highlighted steps currently being taken to strengthen the role of development in U.S. foreign policy. First among these: a new emphasis on partnerships – “not only to the countries where we work, but to other countries and organizations working there as well.”