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What better way to end the year than a new paper by @MarkWPlant, @charlesjkenny and I? We suggest an approach to using ODA wisely in middle-income countries and note how far donor practices fall short.
Paper here, and a short thread below.
https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/PP201-ODA-MICs.pdf
Paper here, and a short thread below.
https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/PP201-ODA-MICs.pdf
ODA should mainly go to the poorest countries; this is certainly the case when considering need, and usually the case when considering need*effectiveness - you'd need huge differences in effectiveness not to focus on low income countries.
1/n
1/n
But ODA *is* spent in MICs. How to avid wasting scarce resources and achieve some development gain?
Firstly, we suggest a focus on specific development problems faced by sub-groups or regions left behind; or spend that has substantial spilllovers to other poor countries.
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Firstly, we suggest a focus on specific development problems faced by sub-groups or regions left behind; or spend that has substantial spilllovers to other poor countries.
2/n
Second, ODA in MICs should mainly not be grants, and if it is, it should be small, focused assistance aimed at inducing much larger action from other actors. ODA just isn't big enough in MICs to achieve things through brute force.
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Third, ODA should aim to bring forward, not replace, state capacity. This should generally be true of all ODA, but it is particularly important when the recipient Government has the resources and capacity to do good things itself already.
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Fourth, combine action with other donors and use multilateral approaches to maximise the collective effect of action, important when each donor is a drop in the ocean.
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5/n
But donor action doesn't remotely look like this. We don't find a general tendency to smaller, more focused support in MICs. In fact, the distribution of commitments in 2018 looks very different to what we'd expect (forgive the ggplot defaults):
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And it looks just as bad - maybe worse - when we look at ODA per poor person (using the most recent poverty calculation available, and 2018 CRS commitment data).
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7/n
ODA is under pressure. The real fear is that the trend is to make the misuse of ODA more prevalent, not less.
We make the case that on *effectiveness* grounds, ODA should be used quite differently to how it currently is. The blog summarises. n/n. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/better-ways-use-aid-middle-income-countries
We make the case that on *effectiveness* grounds, ODA should be used quite differently to how it currently is. The blog summarises. n/n. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/better-ways-use-aid-middle-income-countries
