Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Let me speak for the development wing of the Massachusetts Avenue Think Tank Row community in rejoicing at the arrival among us of Kemal Dervis, as vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, our friends and neighbors across the street.
The National Institutes of Health, recipient of more than $10 billion in economic stimulus dollars, has been scrambling to push the money out the door through its Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research – and some of these grants will have major payoffs for global health.
Five years after Africa was centerstage at a meeting of the G7 heads of state in Gleneagles, it has all but vanished from the priorities of policymakers from the rich and emerging economies. At the G20 Summit in London this week, heads of state will debate new resources for the IMF, in the range of $250 billion. But these resources will likely be deposited in the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) facility, which will be far too expensive and out of reach of most African countries.
Last week, I sent a policy memo to the White House recommending they amend Presidential Policy Directive 1 (PPD-1) which sets out the organization and membership of the National Security Council, to add the USAID Administrator. Why? Three main reasons:
1. It puts real action to the Obama campaign pledge and, most recently its new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, to elevate development in U.S. national security and foreign policy.
Would a “Crisis Round” of trade talks launched at the London Summit next week be a useful mechanism for averting a further beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism? My colleague Arvind Subramanian and his frequent co-author, World Bank economist Aaditya Mattoo, think so. They argued for such a move in an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal Asia earlier this week (A Crisis Calls for a Crisis Round):
As part of CGD’s efforts to track the impact of the financial crisis, I have been leading a series of conference calls to discuss how recent policy responses—or the lack thereof—may affect poor people in the developing world. Our latest call on the prospects for Russia suggests that the government could—and should—do more.
The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an innovative funding mechanism founded in 2002 to fight three killer diseases across the developing world, is currently facing a $4 billion shortfall through 2010, according to the Fund’s Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine.
There’s a lot to like in UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call yesterday for the heads of heads of state attending the April 2 London Summit to commit to new measures to help developing countries cope with the global economic crisis. According to an interview reported in today’s Financial Times:
Savaging Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid yesterday left an ugly aftertaste. To cleanse my palette, I offer a list of fantastic books on microfinance. All are written by intelligent and deeply thoughtful people who have immersed themselves in their subject. They think and write with clarity and sensitivity. In no particular order:
With Ruth Levine.
The High Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems met week before last in London. To their great credit, they’ve posted draft reports from their two Working Groups so interested observers can see the where they’re going. Working Group 1 seeks to identify the health systems-related constraints to achieving global health goals, and presents estimates of costs of achieving priority goals (e.g. targeted reductions in maternal and child health). Working Group 2 (WG2) aims to identify new sources of funding and lay out the best options for channeling the funding to countries to improve health system performance. Further work and consultation is pending over the next three months, and then the Taskforce will provide their suggestions to the G8 for consideration at the July Summit in Italy.
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