How Can We Improve Aid to Developing countries? Fresh Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy: Developing World Voices Discuss Smart Development through O

This morning I attended the panel discussion co-sponsored by Foreign Policy and Oxfam America: How Can We Improve Aid to Developing countries? Fresh Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy: Developing World Voices Discuss Smart Development through Ownership. Susan Glasser, executive editor of Foreign Policy, moderated the panel discussion.

Paul O’Brien, director of Oxfam America’s Aid Effectiveness Team, discussed Oxfam’s new framework for aid: ownership is the key to smart development. Oxfam encourages improving information transparency to countries about aid in their countries, increasing capacity building, and improving country control of aid. O’Brien referenced findings from the Brookings Institute that US foreign aid is the most volatile and unreliable, and suggested multi-year funding cycles, which is the current choice of actors such as Oxfam, MCC, and various other countries’ international development agencies.

Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist, claimed that aid is an ineffective instrument of development policy because current aid policy rewards failure. Also, because aid is given regardless of government capacity, aid disincentivizes governments from creating sustainable revenue streams (like taxes) and applying for aid is easier than creating a functioning economy or tax collection system. He claimed that aid makes governments less accountable to their citizens, and suggested that aid should reward innovation rather than subsidize failure and failing governments. In addition, he claimed aid should target change agents, target pockets of efficiency, and support effective institutions.

Hon. O. Natty B. Davis, II, minister of state, National Coordinator for Reconstruction and Development, and Head of the Secretariat of the Liberia Reconstruction and Development Committee (LRDC), noted government coordination with donors, capacity building, and government responsibility as important to Liberia’s post-conflict development. He emphasized the need for local capacity building in decentralized government and noted that this is a significant challenge that Liberia faces in the coming years.

Wore Gana Seck, Executive Director of Green Senegal, suggested improving aid by increasing the proportion of aid that reaches the field, putting the needs and priorities of communities at the heart of aid, reducing conditionalities that make aid less effective, and increasing capacity building at the field level.