The brilliant blogger and economist Owen Barder yesterday clarified the total amount of money spent on aid since it began in the 1960s. According to OECD DAC statistics, together donors have given $502 billion ($866 billion in today’s prices) to sub-Saharan Africa; a far cry from the ‘over a trillion’ quoted by aid sceptics, who may be relieved to find out it is in fact only ‘billions’ worth of aid that ‘hasn’t worked’.
Today Karin Christiansen, Director of Publish What You Fund, spoke at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Debt, Aid and Trade (APPG DAT), which has a membership of over 170 MPs and Peers in the UK Parliament and has developed into a forum for discussion on crucial issues facing the developing world.
We are delighted to see the release of ‘Show Me the Money’, a valuable paper from Aidinfo which considers the issue of transparency in aid and the role that the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) plays.
Practical approaches to the aid effectiveness agenda: Evidence in aligning aid information with recipient country budgets
Ahead of the 7 July International Aid Transparency Initiative Steering Committee meeting in Paris, CSOs from around the world urged development ministers to support an aid transparency standard which ensured more effective foreign assistance. On 28 July CSOs sent follow-up letters encouraging IATI signatories to continue their participation in advance of the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in November 2011.
Rajiv Shah, director of the U.S. government’s Agency for International Development, USAID, once more promised major reform of the aid agency in a speech at the National Press Club last Friday, 18th June.
