development financing

How can African governments regain control of the aid process?

In the last three decades, changes in the global economy have led to debt and balance of payments crises in many African countries. They desperately needed foreign exchange which they could only get from the World Bank and the IMF. These institutions used this opportunity to expand their influence over the recipients’ national policies. This paper discusses country ownership which is a central issue of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. It looks at the contradictory and competing (...) read

Financing development in the Arab region : a case of a region at crossroads

> Financing for democracy : an oxymoron? The role of donors in supporting emerging democracies and civil society

The Monterrey Consensus that resulted from the International Summit on Financing for Development in 2002 highlighted several key actions to be worked upon in the process of enhancing the mobilization of needed funds for achieving the global development goals. The Summit convened in a period when several considerations in the global and regional policy-making process, and on the economic, political, and security fronts, were being rearranged upon the attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, (...) read

Progress on Global Taxes?

> Global Policy Forum, December 2005

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ (...)

In recent years, political leaders and influential institutions have taken important steps toward global taxes, and have succeeded in making the topic less of a taboo in international relations. While welcoming these developments, Katarina Wahlberg of Global Policy Forum argues that the recent high-level proposals neglect the vital role global taxes can play in steering global environmental and financial policy. Moreover, these proposals fail to guarantee that the tax revenue will be additional to Official Development Assistance (ODA) and spent in a democratic way to finance real development.  read

Aid to Africa: More doesn’t have to mean worse

http://www.odi.org.uk/annual_report/ (...)

Why are we condemned to conduct the public debate about aid to Africa in such grossly simplified terms? The sound bites around this year’s G8 seem to be dominated by just two points of view.
One uses the shocking statistics on unmet needs in Africa as a sufficient basis for urging substantially increased funding flows. The other scores telling points against an approach that worries so little about feasibility but fails to offer an alternative vision for aid.
Thus, a ping-pong ball is batted back and forth between two positions:
a. The needs of the peoples of Africa are enormous and urgent.
b. It is a moral outrage that we cannot meet them, even in the most basic ways.
So, a massive increase in aid resources and debt relief is the minimum acceptable response.
David Booth, a Research Fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, offers practical suggestions about Aid to Africa to both the donors and the recipients that is realistic and hopeful.  read

Workers Without Borders

> IPS, Sep 16 2005,

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idne (...)

78.6 billion dollars and 125.8 billion dollars - the first figure represents the amount given as aid by the world’s 22 wealthiest governments, the second is the money migrant workers sent home last year. So this article ask, should we be discussing "migrant worker foreign aid", how is this money being sent and what are the implications of this?  read