Great points Finn. Interested to know your background as well ;)!
In my opinion smaller country development offices might be a lot easier to shift than the bigger ones. You could well be right that the OP and enthusiastic people like myself are overestimating the tractability.
I agree there are a lot of academics and researchers in this space, but that work doesn’t usually lead to action. I would argue that the Paris agreement and Accra agenda were more about how countries should work together to deliver aid, and less about what aid money should actually be spent n.
Could you give an example of an organisation which has a primary role of lobbying for better evidence based use of aid?
If I look at CGD’s impact report for this year, the had no numerical assessment of their progres, and their stated achievements are - Increasing the number of women peacekeepers - Increasing ID cards for development - Maximising the benefits of migration - Changing the conversation on China’s development debt - Advance market commitments for pharmeceuticals
Among those I would only consider the advance market comitments for pharmecuticals and perhaps ID cards are likely to be high impact intervention sfor the world’s poorest. I found it interesting that the Center for Effective Altruism is one of their funders.
As a reply to your comments above
“Dambisa Moyo (who worked for the World Bank for 2 years—before going to Goldman Sachs) is one view on how aid effectiveness… but I think it’s fair to say the consensus is that govt ownership is generally seen as a GOOD thing in aid effectiveness literature. “
Dambisa Moyo isn’t against all aid (a common misconception), just against direct government to government aid. She seems to not mind NGOs so much. Yes you are correct that government ownership is generally seen as a good thing in aid effectiveness literature. I disagree with this consensus, at least I disagree that aid money should pass through government hands. Of course this would be the best approach in theory, and is a self serving opinion if you want to keep your job as a diplomat or aid practitioner. Unfortunately in practise it fails over and over again. The best Aid projects I have seen, work in conjunction with government systems while not actually giving government money or full control. These kind of projects include PEPFAR, Mosquito net distribution, cash transfers to refugees, building schools (underrated intervention).
”In my experience development agencies are slow to update their practices (but quicker to organize interminably long workshops about updating practices). E.g. we’ve known for some time that cash transfers are an effective way of doing humanitarian aid in many/most contexts—and we still see that they are not the common way of doing things.”
100% agree with that, well put.
Keep in mind I’m very biased living and working here in Uganda while trying to keep a broader perspective.
I want to clarify I’m positive about the idea too—I think there’s definitely space for this. But I think there will be more impact if it compliments existing efforts in this area and thinks hard about what is really neglected.
I’ve worked in development for about 10 years, some experience with evaluation of grass-roots projects but mainly working implementing projects funded by governments/donors. I try to stay anonymous on here, but I’ve lived and worked in Central, East Africa and South Asia for about 7 years. Never worked in Uganda.
CGD has a few work streams on aid effectiveness, I went to a presentation on their Quoda index a while back: https://www.cgdev.org/quoda-2021 I would recommend anything Owen Barder has written on this topic.
I think the examples in CGD’s report are where they have recommended things, and then actually seen them happen. This is really quite unusual in terms of research/policy impact.
They’ve definitely done lots more work that hasn’t necessarily led to neat case studies of change. For instance, they host the IDSI who look at making cost-effective decisions in health for LMICs: https://www.idsihealth.org/our-strategy/ I think it’s true that CGD doesn’t try to compare education and health or climate and governance… but they definitely have thought hard about cost-effectiveness within health for instance.
We may be talking past each other but in my experience—diplomats and aid practitioners often dislike govt to govt direct aid (budget support) because it cuts them out… it gives govts the chance to choose their own priorities rather than having them dictated by donors/external experts.
I think you could be right that smaller country funders might be easier to influence. Generally in my experience the Scandinavian donors do better projects & are able to focus more on poverty rather than being pushed around by political priorities/flashy ineffective projects.
Thanks so much Finn again, a lot of wisdom there and good links to look at. ISDI in particular looks like a great initiative and I didn’t know about it!
You might be right that we are talking past each other n the government to government aid thing given that I think it’s a complete disaster and should stop, while you understandably seem to agree with the development norm that government ownership is part of aid best practise. This is definitely off topic a bit, but I wanted to clarify that I am not against govt. to govt. aid for any petty reason that it cuts anyone out, but for a lot of other reasons.
Evidence of failure. (The classic Dambisa Moyo) Govt. to govt. aid has miserably failed for 50 years in Africa. Most development successes have been in either in partnership with govt. or despite governments. Why go against the evidence because it seems right?
Corruption
There is a strong norm that we should give governments the power to prioritise what they want. But the reality is that most low income governments don’t care much about the poorest of the poor (evidenced by both rhetoric and lack of action), so they won’t prioritise them with the money you give them. So why give them money to prioritise other things the aid was not intended for in the first place?
For undemocratic countries specifically, when you give aid to those governments you prop up the stranglehold of dictatorships. This can cause more harm than the good you can potentially do.
I know these are all fairly classic arguments, but I still believe that they stand. Don’t feel you have to reply by the way, just wanted to get it out there ;)
Great points Finn. Interested to know your background as well ;)!
In my opinion smaller country development offices might be a lot easier to shift than the bigger ones. You could well be right that the OP and enthusiastic people like myself are overestimating the tractability.
I agree there are a lot of academics and researchers in this space, but that work doesn’t usually lead to action. I would argue that the Paris agreement and Accra agenda were more about how countries should work together to deliver aid, and less about what aid money should actually be spent n.
Could you give an example of an organisation which has a primary role of lobbying for better evidence based use of aid?
If I look at CGD’s impact report for this year, the had no numerical assessment of their progres, and their stated achievements are
- Increasing the number of women peacekeepers
- Increasing ID cards for development
- Maximising the benefits of migration
- Changing the conversation on China’s development debt
- Advance market commitments for pharmeceuticals
Among those I would only consider the advance market comitments for pharmecuticals and perhaps ID cards are likely to be high impact intervention sfor the world’s poorest. I found it interesting that the Center for Effective Altruism is one of their funders.
As a reply to your comments above
“Dambisa Moyo (who worked for the World Bank for 2 years—before going to Goldman Sachs) is one view on how aid effectiveness… but I think it’s fair to say the consensus is that govt ownership is generally seen as a GOOD thing in aid effectiveness literature. “
Dambisa Moyo isn’t against all aid (a common misconception), just against direct government to government aid. She seems to not mind NGOs so much. Yes you are correct that government ownership is generally seen as a good thing in aid effectiveness literature. I disagree with this consensus, at least I disagree that aid money should pass through government hands. Of course this would be the best approach in theory, and is a self serving opinion if you want to keep your job as a diplomat or aid practitioner. Unfortunately in practise it fails over and over again. The best Aid projects I have seen, work in conjunction with government systems while not actually giving government money or full control. These kind of projects include PEPFAR, Mosquito net distribution, cash transfers to refugees, building schools (underrated intervention).
”In my experience development agencies are slow to update their practices (but quicker to organize interminably long workshops about updating practices). E.g. we’ve known for some time that cash transfers are an effective way of doing humanitarian aid in many/most contexts—and we still see that they are not the common way of doing things.”
100% agree with that, well put.
Keep in mind I’m very biased living and working here in Uganda while trying to keep a broader perspective.
Hi Nick,
I want to clarify I’m positive about the idea too—I think there’s definitely space for this. But I think there will be more impact if it compliments existing efforts in this area and thinks hard about what is really neglected.
I’ve worked in development for about 10 years, some experience with evaluation of grass-roots projects but mainly working implementing projects funded by governments/donors. I try to stay anonymous on here, but I’ve lived and worked in Central, East Africa and South Asia for about 7 years. Never worked in Uganda.
CGD has a few work streams on aid effectiveness, I went to a presentation on their Quoda index a while back: https://www.cgdev.org/quoda-2021 I would recommend anything Owen Barder has written on this topic.
I think the examples in CGD’s report are where they have recommended things, and then actually seen them happen. This is really quite unusual in terms of research/policy impact.
They’ve definitely done lots more work that hasn’t necessarily led to neat case studies of change. For instance, they host the IDSI who look at making cost-effective decisions in health for LMICs: https://www.idsihealth.org/our-strategy/ I think it’s true that CGD doesn’t try to compare education and health or climate and governance… but they definitely have thought hard about cost-effectiveness within health for instance.
We may be talking past each other but in my experience—diplomats and aid practitioners often dislike govt to govt direct aid (budget support) because it cuts them out… it gives govts the chance to choose their own priorities rather than having them dictated by donors/external experts.
I think you could be right that smaller country funders might be easier to influence. Generally in my experience the Scandinavian donors do better projects & are able to focus more on poverty rather than being pushed around by political priorities/flashy ineffective projects.
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks so much Finn again, a lot of wisdom there and good links to look at. ISDI in particular looks like a great initiative and I didn’t know about it!
You might be right that we are talking past each other n the government to government aid thing given that I think it’s a complete disaster and should stop, while you understandably seem to agree with the development norm that government ownership is part of aid best practise. This is definitely off topic a bit, but I wanted to clarify that I am not against govt. to govt. aid for any petty reason that it cuts anyone out, but for a lot of other reasons.
Evidence of failure. (The classic Dambisa Moyo) Govt. to govt. aid has miserably failed for 50 years in Africa. Most development successes have been in either in partnership with govt. or despite governments. Why go against the evidence because it seems right?
Corruption
There is a strong norm that we should give governments the power to prioritise what they want. But the reality is that most low income governments don’t care much about the poorest of the poor (evidenced by both rhetoric and lack of action), so they won’t prioritise them with the money you give them. So why give them money to prioritise other things the aid was not intended for in the first place?
For undemocratic countries specifically, when you give aid to those governments you prop up the stranglehold of dictatorships. This can cause more harm than the good you can potentially do.
I know these are all fairly classic arguments, but I still believe that they stand. Don’t feel you have to reply by the way, just wanted to get it out there ;)