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Policy News Roundup – Will they reform foreign aid before it implodes?

Foreign Aid Reform: In a recent Huffington Post article, Carol Peasley writes about the “what next” of foreign aid reform, beyond giving development a stronger voice in the larger policy discussions.  She asks: how can we make aid more effective through greater local ownership- what would that look like, in terms of process and funding?  She also says that much of the discussion about USAID reform has become “contractor bashing,” which is not constructive.

House Foreign Relations Committee Hearing, Combating Climate Change in Africa, next Thursday, April 15^th.  See the live webcast on the House website.

The collapse of aid? Owen Barder, author of the insightful and sometimes controversial blog Owen Abroad, writes about the “coming collapse of the development system.”   In sum, he writes that aid has become more and more complex, and based on the literature, complex systems are bound to fail when they are too rigid to change.

Global Jam: USAID held its first ever “jam” called Global Pulse last week, and the number of participants from around the world was impressive – 11,000 “jammers” from 150 countries, according to an article on the virtual event by Devex.

Blogger Chris Blattman remarks on the fact that there is a “market for everything,” even in pretty harsh conditions.  Like manicures in a Haitian tent camp.   See the feature presentation on PBS.

The Bad Old Days Were Better, in Zimbabwe: Kristof writes in the NY Times about how badly President Mugabe has destroyed Zimbabwe: people are nostalgic for the good old days of living under the rule of a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite.

How to Find Foreign Aid Data

No matter what your specific area of work, if you’re in the global development field, at some point you will probably need to find data on foreign aid.  Maybe you work for a small NGO considering a new venture, in say, Cambodia, and you want to know what other similar types of projects are happening there.  Maybe you are looking for funding for a project in Namibia, and you want to know which donors currently fund the most work there.  Or maybe you are writing an article about aid effectiveness and you want to see which country attracts the majority of U.S. foreign aid, compared with other large donors.

Here is a quick breakdown of the data sources out there, what kinds of information they have, and how to use them.  You can find all of these sources and more listed on our website, under the “Resources” tab, and “Policy” under “Issue Areas.”

The OECD DAC Statistics

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) collects aid data from OECD members and non-members, and is considered the most reliable source of aid data.  Other databases rely on OECD data.  The DAC includes grants and concessional loans, but does not include payments made to individuals, military aid, or loans that must be repaid within one year.  For more general information about DAC statistics see this factsheet.

How does it work?  I recommend using the QWIDS interface, or Query Wizard for International Development Statistics.  When you open the link to this interface, you can choose donors, recipients, types of aid flows, sectors, and time period (2008 is the most recent year available).  You can get really specific and only look at disbursements of grants for technical cooperation projects in a certain sector, like teacher-training.  Once you hit “display the data” you’ll see a chart with some of the data choices you selected- the rest will be visible by toggling the options at the top of the chart.  You can also change the layout of the chart.  You can see a breakdown of aid by project, by clicking on the dollar amount in the results.  This gives the name of the agency funding the project, along with a short description of the project which usually gives at least an idea of what sector the project is in.

AidData

AidData is a new source for development finance information.  It is based mainly on OECD data, but it includes more detail and cross-references the data with information from other sources.  It is a more graphical and somewhat more user-friendly interface.  According to their website, AidData plans to include aid flows from non-governmental sources, such as NGOs, in the near future.  So far there is no compilation of such data anywhere, so this would be useful.

The nice thing about AidData is the way the results are presented- it is much more intuitive and very easy to find whatever specific information is available.  AidData still runs into the same problem as the OECD though, a lot of information just isn’t available, probably because it’s not reported.

Foreign Assistance Congressional Budget Justification (FY 2011)

What if you need more current data for U.S. foreign assistance to a particular country?  What if you want to compare congressional appropriations with actual disbursements?  And what if you are interested in military aid, and other types of aid not considered by the OECD?  Then you might turn to the Congressional Budget Justification, or the CBJ as it is called.  There is no database, and no fancy online query to fill out, just lots of paper to wade through.  However, the State Department puts the most useful tables on foreign assistance together in one document, the Foreign Assistance tables, found here.  For comparison of U.S. assistance to recipient countries, tables 2a through 4 are the most useful.  Before you dive right into the material, you should at least look at the acronyms on page vii, which lists all of the different accounts used by Congress.  These accounts are known by their acronyms, like ‘DA’ for development assistance and ‘ESF’ for economic support fund.  To make matters more confusing, these accounts are not really used by the State Department and USAID except to request money from Congress- some programs use funding from multiple accounts, if necessary.  There is a different chart for each year, starting with actual funds committed in 2009, estimated commitments in 2010, and the Presidential request for the international affairs budget in FY 2011.  There are also special charts that track funding in areas of special interest to Congress, such as Basic Education and Microenterprise.

If you are looking for more detailed information than can be found in these handy charts, you may want to wade through Volume II of the Foreign Operations CBJ, where you will find lots of detailed information about various U.S. foreign assistance programs.

I wish you good luck on your quest for foreign aid data.  If you know of any other good sources, or if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

Policy News Roundup – March 30, 2010

A makeshift camp for earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince

Haiti:

United States Will Take a New Approach to Aid in Haiti
Secretary Clinton is expected to outline plans for an additional $1 billion in aid to Haiti at the upcoming UN donor conference.  U.S. assistance to Haiti will have one dramatic difference over past aid: this time, U.S. officials plan to work through the Haitian government, rather than around it.  They have plans to implement major aid projects through the government while building its capacity, instead of working mainly through local NGOs and other groups.  This new approach may increase local ownership and government accountability in Haiti.

Donor Countries Will Meet at the UN in New York to discuss decentralization as a Key to Haiti’s Recovery
World leaders at Wednesday’s UN conference on Haiti will be looking at a new focus on decentralizing Port-au-Prince in hopes of fulfilling long-terms needs after immediate needs are met.  They plan to look beyond basic relief and discuss not just how to rebuild, but how to build a better functioning Haiti.  The idea of decentralizating power in Port-au-Prince is a strategy that will be considered for a more stable Haiti.

Foreign Aid Reform:

Where is the QDDR?
The State Department was supposed to release the initial findings from its strategic review on development, known as the quadrennial diplomacy and development review (QDDR), sometime in March.  But now the release is set for “early April,” though there won’t be a public release until after a round of congressional briefings.  This is not the first time the QDDR’s release of initial findings has been set back, and there is no guarantee that we will see anything from the State Department in the month of April.  Unfortunately, this slows down the whole foreign aid reform process, as other reform efforts underway, such as the White House review (the PSD-7) and legislation in Congress (the Kerry/Lugar bill) are on hold until the QDDR findings are out.

New Online Tool Aims to Comprehensively Track Global Aid
A new online information portal on aid aims to improve transparency and prevent misuse of billions of dollars in international aid.  The tool, AidData, pulls together facts and figures from existing databases, donors’ documents, and other online resources.  About 837,000 projects are currently listed on the database, which reports official development aid as well as loans.  The tool gives more details about each project and provides information on new sectors such as funds provided by 36 under-reported bilateral and multilateral donors.  The goal for the project is to give donor and recipient governments, civil society organizations, beneficiaries, aid experts and the general public a fuller picture on who is funding what globally.  Founders of AidData include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

New Study on the Costs and Benefits of Duty-Free, Quota-Free Market Access for Poor Countries
The Center for Global Development released a new study on the costs and benefits of providing full market access for least-developed countries.  The study finds that Malawi and Cambodia would benefit the most under most scenarios, and most African LDCs would make small gains.  The only African country to suffer from preference erosion would be Madagascar- surprisingly, Mauritius, South Africa, and Central America show small gains even though they would not directly benefit from this market access.

USAID Announces New Global TB Strategy
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah declares a new strategy to fight tuberculosis on a worldwide scale. In accordance with the President’s Global Health Initiative, USAID is accelerating their programs to control TB. Their goal is to halve the number of TB cases and deaths by 2015.  In support of these global targets, USAID released the U.S. Government’s Global TB Strategy that describes their blueprint for expanded treatment and control over the next five years.

The International Monetary Fund Has Traded its Dogmatism for Pragmatism
After six decades of zealously promoting free market economic policies, the International Monetary Fund has changed its view on international trade and development.  For years, governments that dared to challenge the IMF model found themselves out of favor in Washington and other Western capitals. But the financial crisis that swept the planet in 2008 prompted a new debate over free market policies and IMF ideology.  Now, in a notable turnaround, the IMF has acknowledged that in some instances, developing countries might benefit from controlling how much foreign capital enters their economies — and how it’s used. The new IMF view is summarized in an official paper published last month, “Capital Inflows: The Role of Controls.”

Africa:

A New Strategy to Stimulate Africa’s Development
Many investors are afraid of doing business in Africa because of high political risks. This is where the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) comes into play with a unique strategy to stimulate development through trade and investment by reducing political and credit risk..  The ATI is Africa’s only multilateral political risk and credit risk insurance agency.  To join, African countries must sign a participation agreement and subscribe for at least 75 shares, each valued at $100,000. Member states are on the hook for any action or inaction that results in ATI paying claims.  Since 2004, ATIhas managed to secure $1.9 billion in investments across its member states, which includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and others. For more details on ATI please click here.

Tunisian Authorities Try to Gag Human Rights Watch’s Report
Human Rights Watch accused Tunisian authorities of using police to prevent journalists from attending the organization’s launch event for a report that criticizes the government’s human rights record.  A HRW employee said police had surrounded the lawyer’s office where the group was trying to brief reporters about its new report, which accuses Tunisia of adopting repressive measures toward former prisoners.  Tunisia, which attracts large sums in investment from EU countries, wants the European Union to grant it “advanced status,” which could give it preferential trade terms. However, diplomats say concerns about Tunisian’s human rights record risk complicating the application.