For my last post I thought I would summarise some thoughts on UK development assistance, some thoughts that I shared at a panel last week for my wonderful farewell event.
How does UK development policy need to change for the post 2015 world?
Next year is a big one for global development and
for the UK. In September 2015 the new
development goals will be unveiled and in May 2015 we will have a new
Government in place, no matter who wins. So it is timely to ask: is UK development policy fit for purpose? I am proud of the UK’s development efforts,
but I do have my worries about the future.
First, I believe that an increasing proportion of
the world’s problems will be solved collectively, for example, climate, trade,
financial flows, drugs, firearms and tax. DFID’s bilateral programme is focused
on 28 countries. This makes is very
difficult to contribute to collective solutions via this route. One obvious way forward is to work through
the multilaterals. The Multilateral Aid Review should
give UK politicians some confidence that their money is contributing to things
that support development, but a smaller and smaller proportion of the
multilateral spend is going into the UN, the EC and even the World Bank.
Instead it is increasingly going through Global Funds, which often are not set
up to solve collective action issues. If collective action problems require DFID to
work better multilaterally, they also require the UK’s contribution to go
beyond DFID. However when this is tried
(for example, Ed Davey’s Energy and Climate Change Department and their £15m grant
to Colombian climate mitigation by reducing cattle flatulence) it does
not exactly fly terribly well with those who are aid sceptics. There is almost a sense among some that if
UK development spending is not focused on the 28, it is wasted. The UK needs to get better at being a leader
on collective action issues—this will benefit the 28, the rest, and the
UK.
Second, I am worried about the UK’s engagement with
the international development assistance (IDA) “graduates”, those countries
that have GDP per capita above the $1195. The economic growth of many of these
countries disguises the fact that very large proportions of their populations
remain extremely poor. Seventy percent
of the world’s poor live in middle or low middle income countries. How can the UK support them? The DFID focus
seems to be almost exclusively on helping these countries focus on economic
growth and jobs, with side benefits for the UK’s own trading interests. Nothing wrong with that. However the lack of nuance in this growth
focus is somewhat alarming. The World
Bank’s World Development Report on jobs tells us that some jobs are development
promoting and some clearly are not. We
also know that some economic growth delivers what we want--poverty reduction,
health improvements, wellbeing--while some does not. Why does this matter? Well the UK is squarely behind the World
Bank’s Zero Poverty goals (getting $1.25 a day poverty down to 5% or so). But the World Bank’s optimism on this is
derived from analysis that assumes the average growth rates of the past 10
years will persist in the next 15—but in every country! This proviso is wildly unrealistic. As work by Richard Bluhm has
shown the only chance we have of getting anywhere close to zero poverty, even
if average growth rates are maintained, is by improving equity. We actually have a pretty good idea about
what to do on equity, but we also have a pretty good idea about how difficult
that is in a political sense. But this
is an issue for UK leadership. The quantity
of growth only matters if the quality is above a certain threshold. And reducing inequality is a big part of
growth’s quality. The UK has been very
silent on this issue. It needs to step
up to the plate and be a leader if it has any hope of seeing extreme poverty
rates continue to decline at current rates.
Finally, UK development assistance has to get a
better balance of accountability and flexibility. I don’t know a single person who has said to
me in the past couple of years “DFID is getting easier to work with”. The transactions costs are mind numbing and
resource consuming. They have been put
in place to demonstrate value for money. We all want value for money. I’m a UK taxpayer too. But when, by the very nature of the work, it is easier to track the money than the value, the focus will be too much on the former and not enough on the latter. This can lead to strange investments, where cost control is wonderful but value is not interrogated. The other side of this is that only really large
partners can afford to engage with DFID. This is a problem because creative ideas often come from the smaller groups and organisations. These creative ideas are needed more than ever in the world of collective action, fragile
contexts and persistent poverty in middle-income countries. The recent appointment of a Head of Procurement within DFID in response to the recent Independent Commission for Aid Impact review (pdf) is a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done.
Wherever I travel it is easy to see that the UK Government’s development efforts are held in very high regard. That is a massive credit to David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and the rest. But if our leaders want the UK to stay at the top of the tree, DFID and other UK development agencies need to start showing more leadership on collective action problems, on worrying more about the quality of growth and inequality and on reducing the costs of engaging while still relentlessly
focusing on accountability. Fit for
purpose? Yes, but creaking. The
world still needs DFID. But DFID also
needs the world.
1 comment:
Thanks article ilove DFID Portugal
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