This has been a busy week as far as meetings go, and it's only Wednesday. Yesterday I went to two meetings that between the 2 of them took up the entire day. Today I spent my whole morning at another panel discussion.
The first was a panel discussion on Global Cooperation on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), hosted by the Brookings Institution. Among the speakers were the United Nations Under-Secretary General/High Representative for LDCs, a chief economist from USAID, the president of Rural Restoration Nepal (RRN), and a research fellow at the Brookings Institution's Global Economy and Development Program. I guess I'll summarize that meeting by saying that it was quite interesting, pretty informative, and smart people (or people who think of themselves as smart) like to talk...a lot.
The second meeting yesterday involved a few other aid/advocacy organizations (such as Oxfam) us (InterAction) and the World Bank. The purpose of the meeting was for the WB to show us what they had done with feedback we'd given them on a report for IDA16 - the next round of funding replenishment for the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA). Last year the same thing had happened, but they never showed how they used our feedback, so this year we said we wouldn't do it unless they committed to show us how they used our feedback. So they reported on it, and they had included significant changes to their report based on feedback we had given them. Interestingly, they seemed very hesitant to publicize the fact that they had received feedback from NGOs. Also, while reading the report I felt like I was reading a UN General Assembly resolution. Most of the words didn't actually DO anything. There were words like "encourage, support, promote, recognize, and hope" rather than "commit, mandate, and promise."
This morning I attended a panel discussion on Innovative Financing and the Global Health Funding Gap. It was hosted by the UN Foundation, and on the panel was a representative from African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), a director of Standard Bank, a program manager from the World Bank, and an Executive Director from the UN Foundation. The keynote speaker was an Administrator for Global Health at USAID. This panel was actually very interesting, and spoke somewhat on issues familiar to me, somewhat on issues entirely new to me. The general topic of global health is not something I have a ton of experience with, but I do find it very interesting.
The main topic of the panel was Innovative Financing, which is basically using financial tools (and banks) to guarantee funding on pledges made towards development (in this case health) projects. The "Pledge Guarantee for Health" (PGH) was launched as part of this panel, and you can read here (http://www.undispatch.com/pledge-guarantee-for-health-goes-live) about it's opening program. Basically the point is that in development, aid is often unpredictable, unstable, and limited. What the PGH does is serve as a way for the funds to be guaranteed and on time. When an organization or government makes a pledge to fund a program, the PGH serves as a guarantee, so through a bank like Standard Bank (the largest bank in Africa) provides the funding up front, before the pledge is actually fulfilled. This allows development projects to proceed on a much more timely basis, making them far more effective.
To use the example from the opening project of PGH, malaria nets were provided in Zambia. Normally, disbursal of these funds and procurement of the nets would take about 32 weeks. Through PGH, the funding was received in about 6 weeks, and 88% of the nets were delivered within 2-3 weeks of the project being announced, reaching the areas of highest need.
PGH, and other Innovative Financing methods, help make aid far more effective, and more efficient. Another aspect of this is results based finance, in which rather than provide all the funds up front and have disjointed inputs, if an organization (or in this case clinics) are successful at carrying out their program, then upon completion they receive some extra funding to further their programs. This doesn't cost anything extra, but rather makes more efficient use of funds already provided. It does this by creating a chain of actions for success rather than a bunch of separated, discordant inputs, by focusing on the outputs of the program.
It's tough for me to provide a very complete analysis of these programs, because this is really the first time I've encountered them, (so maybe I should be waiting on this post), but at first glance they seem like a really good idea. To be certain, they are no silver bullet, but I don't think there is any 1 silver bullet solution. I think that Innovative Finance probably is a good thing, and I hope to see it contribute to improved aid effectiveness.
more on this once I know more about it...
IN OTHER NEWS...
Did anyone see this (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50019.html#comments) story? Justin Amash (our US Representative) has voted "present" 5 times in the last week alone. Voting "present" basically means abstaining, because it signifies "present, but not voting." To compare, Vern Ehlers (please come out of retirement Vern!) voted present only 4 times IN THE LAST 8 YEARS! What exactly does Amash think he was elected to do? Sit around and enjoy DC? I don't think so. Oh, and his excuse "he wasn't given adequate time to read the bill." Well guess what, EVERYBODY ELSE READ IT (or there staffers did), so get with the program buddy, you got elected, now do your job (on second thought, maybe it's better that he doesn't vote, since I'd disagree with most of his votes anyways.
Time for Bible study...adios
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