US President, Barack Obama, has authorised a government-wide review on US global development policy as part of a new White House-led Presidential Study Directive. The move ‘signals the intent to reach across [US] government agencies to think through a more coordinated and strategic approach to development policy’.

The contents of the directive are not yet available, but it will be interesting to see how the development policy review relates to the State Department’s Quadrennial Development and Diplomacy Review (QDDR) announced in July.

Early signs of US foreign aid reform; including Secretary Clinton’s first ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), support for both Howard Berman’s Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 and its related bill launched by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, as well as the continued effort by the Obama administration to change US development policy has all given cause for optimism and as such should not be ignored.

Hillary Clinton has made strong calls for aid transparency with her visit to Africa this August. The Secretary of State’s 11-day tour emphasised the importance of US aid reform and her addresses around Africa have resonated the need for aid transparency and accountability from both donor and recipient countries.

In anticipation of their upcoming Ownership Paper, Oxfam America have emphasised ‘the need to transfer information, capacity, and control of development assistance to recipients’ as a crucial step towards effective development. Highlighting the words of development leaders across the world, Oxfam America’s Aid Effectiveness Team focused on the three factors – information, capacity, and control, as the driving force towards effective country ownership of aid.

Former Republican member of the US House of Representatives, Mark Green, has called on his former colleagues to embrace the new aid reform bills introduced by the Foreign Relations Committee in both the House and Senate.

The Department for International Development (DfID) has released their new Project Information database. The database, which comes in response to DfID’s 2009 White Paper promise, aims “to improve aid transparency in line with the commitments made through the International Aid Transparency Initiative”.

Press Release

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