It's Time to Get Real About Aid Effectiveness

In my closing remarks at the Effective Development Cooperation Summit last week in Geneva, there was a catchphrase I used to sum things up: I think we need to “get real” about aid effectiveness.

The conference in Geneva ended on a high note—literally. Upbeat pop music reverberated around the hotel conference room while government ministers, ambassadors, heads of NGOs and others posed for photos and congratulated one another on a productive gathering.?

And in many ways, the summit—which featured Paul Kagame, Amina J. Mohammed , Thomas Gass , Michele Sumilas , Rebeca Grynspan , Susanna Moorehead CMG and others—was productive. For one thing, USAID made a play to make so-called localization, well, global. Samantha Power’s agency assembled 14 donor countries to commit support for localization. Whether this will go beyond the buzzword remains to be seen, but it’s yet another proof-point that the localization trend has legs.

But while there was agreement about the importance of aid effectiveness and general consensus about what needs to be done, it’s time to get real. The fact is foreign assistance is plateauing while needs are going through the roof. Already, humanitarian spending is beginning to swamp traditional development aid, leaving little left over for long-term development investments, including for resilience.

Humanitarian crises are increasing and becoming more protracted. Here’s just one sobering stat: 222 million people face acute food insecurity this year. And it’s not a blip: by the end of the century, death from extreme heat is expected to match cancer and infectious disease in magnitude.?

This makes aid effectiveness not just important but essential. It’s an issue we’ve been discussing for a long time, at least since the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation was established in Busan, South Korea in 2011. I was there and recall the fanfare with leaders like Hillary Clinton putting a stake in the ground around effective aid. A set of principles was established designed to guide development going forward: Developing countries will take ownership of development priorities; investments will produce results; development will be driven by inclusive partnership; and development cooperation has to be transparent and accountable to all citizens.??

After a decade of talk, it’s high time we keep these commitments. Otherwise, soon, there won’t be much funding for long-term sustainable development, and we’ll be forced to put out one fire after the next as emergencies become more and more common.

So what do we need to get real about? How about more explicit targets around pay-for-performance instead of traditional aid contracting and grants? What about more blended finance (it’s just around 3% of aid today) to crowd-in much larger private sector investment? And what can we do to accelerate the uptake of cash transfer programs? These are just some of the practical changes that require tough reforms at aid agencies and that too often are swept under the rug when everyone declares their agreement with the aid effectiveness principles.

The summit in Geneva may be just one in a series of opportunities for the development community to reflect on these issues. But as we enter a new era, my hope is that it can serve as a marker—both of the progress we’ve made, and how far we have yet to go.?

If you’re taking next week off like me, I hope to see you back here in January. In the meantime, have a restful end to your 2022 and an impactful 2023.