Why Development Assistance is Important to Africa | Data.org

Why Development Assistance is Important to Africa

06.15.07

Background
Development assistance plays a critical role in global efforts to fight extreme poverty, demonstrating remarkable results, improving lives and laying the foundation for future growth.

In the past, particularly during the Cold War, political and strategic concerns behind U.S. development assistance meant that assistance was channeled to unaccountable and, often, unelected regimes. This led some skeptics to brand all ‘aid’ as ineffective. Since those days, development strategies have evolved dramatically. Today, good governance and accountability are playing a central role in many countries’ development assistance, ensuring that more funding is being used to help those people on the ground most in need.

Over the last two decades, donors have begun designing smarter and more efficient programs that are proving effective. These programs are proving that strategically designing development assistance in accordance with the needs and policies of its recipients can yield impressive results. In countries where there are effective governments, the donors are increasingly working directly with them to scale up capacity to coordinate global and local efforts. In other countries, where governments are less reliable, donors are reaching individuals in need by tailoring efforts to work through local or international organizations, or through the private sector.

Development assistance is helping to achieve dramatic results around the world:

Fighting AIDS: In 2002, only 50,000 HIV-positive people in Africa had access to antiretroviral medicines. At the end of 2006, 1.34 million Africans — and 2 million people globally — were receiving treatment, thanks in large part to the Global Fund and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Education for All: Between 2000 and 2004, 20 million African children who had previously been denied an education went to school for the first time. These results can be attributed in large part to the effective use of debt relief, but they are also due to scaled-up development assistance through programs such as the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI). For example, since receiving FTI endorsement in 2002, Burkina Faso has increased its primary enrolments by 55%, sending nearly 500,000 more children to school.
Microcredit: Microcredit plays a vital role in economic growth and poverty alleviation by ensuring the poor are not left out of the marketplace. The provision of small loans to the working poor to help establish or expand small individual businesses enables developing countries to meet the challenge of generating economic growth while simultaneously reducing poverty. Worldwide, microcredit has already reached more than 80 million of the world’s poorest people.

The value of international assistance depends not just on the quantity of assistance, but on its quality as well. Predictable, long-term development assistance that supports nationally-owned programs is particularly valuable. Better harmonization between donor programs in recipient countries, with partner agencies in other countries, and with multilateral organizations is also especially important for increasing aid efficiency. Tied aid, which is development assistance that is given on the condition that it is used to purchase goods and services either from the donor or from a group of countries specified by the donor, reduces the purchasing value of the development assistance dollar. It has been estimated that the efficacy of assistance that is tied in this way is reduced by approximately 30%.

Current Situation
The Commission for Africa has estimated that Africa needs an additional $25 billion a year by 2010 and another $25 billion by 2015 (a trebling of aid). If these recommendations are met, Africa will receive a total of $50 billion in 2010 and $75 billion in 2015. During the 2005 G8 Summit, donors closely followed the Commission’s recommendations and committed to increase aid to Africa by $25 billion by 2010, a more than doubling of aid compared to 2004. But two years later, these historic aid promises are not coming through. Collectively, the G8 are badly off track with their development assistance promises to Africa. In total, G8 assistance to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by only $2.3 billion since 2004, when it should have increased by $5.4 billion over that period.

Moving Forward

Donors should increase the quantity of development assistance in line with the recommendations of the Commission for Africa and commit to an accountable and ambitious timetable for delivering their 2005 aid promises for Africa.
Donors should address the quality of their development assistance by more effectively targeting it directly in the poorest communities. This should include efforts to increase harmonization both within their development portfolios and among other donors and host countries. In addition, an aggressive timetable for reducing the proportion of tied assistance is essential.
Donors should increase the focus on program measurement and impact evaluation by providing funding for operations research and program evaluation as an integral component of all international development activities. Unproven programs should be required to have an evaluation component to determine their effectiveness.