Aid & Development

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Charting a more sustainable development path in the Pacific

It is undoubtedly in Australia’s geopolitical interests to invest in the development of our immediate region, but the question we should all be asking is: what is the most effective way to spend our taxpayer-funded aid budget in the Pacific, rather than simply, how can we compete with China? The

By Majella Hurney

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Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map - Country Profiles

These summary profiles of the 14 Pacific Islands countries analysed in the Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map pull together the key findings for each country. They include the total aid spent and committed, the top donors and the total number of projects. Each profile highlights the key projects in each

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Aid links: bad weather for the Rohingya, Oxfam scandal, more

Seven UN peacekeepers and 12 Congolese soldiers have been killed in clashes with militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After the Oxfam scandal, the peak body for the aid sector – the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) – commissioned an independent review

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid links: markets from space, a kink in a “nudge” policy, more

Is driving based on a ride-sharing app good work? In the piece, Julie Zollmann and Amolo Ng’weno analyse the impact of the market fight between Uber and Taxify in Africa, and how it impacts directly the livelihood of drivers. Nudge units (techniques to steer people towards making beneficial

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid links: plastic ban, celebrity ties, and more

Japan has decided to stop its 40-year official development assistance for China, as China has become the world’s second largest economy. Australia gave $5.5 million in relief aid to Indonesia this month after the earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 2,000 people and displaced millions

By Alexandre Dayant

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America builds on development aid

In the biggest reform of US foreign aid policy in recent history, the US Senate this month passed the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development, or the BUILD Act. This legislation, signed into law by President Donald Trump on 5 October, will create the new US International

By Cornelia Tremann

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Reconciling with China in the Pacific

Last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Wang Yi struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, expressing the wish to partner with Australia in the development of the Pacific

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid links: river relief, ranking helpers, more

The report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained why the world has just over a decade to get global warming under control. Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis discuss the implications of the research. The full impact of the tsunami in Central Sulawesi is still unknown,

By Alexandre Dayant

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Sulawesi tsunami: how Australia can best help

Yet another tsunami in Indonesia. The earthquake and resulting wave of destruction in Palu, Central Sulawesi, is the second major natural disaster to strike the country this year. It is not yet two months since more than 500 people died in the August earthquake in Lombok near Bali.

By Peter McCawley

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Aid links: African debt, Taxify and more

In New York, Turkey’s First Lady Emine Erdoğan says humanitarian aid policies should not increase the dependency of the recipients, but should focus on development. Lisa Cornish from Devex analyses the impact of the new government on Australia's aid and development program. This month

By Alexandre Dayant

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Submission to Review of Australian Broadcasting Services in the Asia-Pacific

Review by Department of Communications and the Arts

By Jonathan Pryke

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The case for a foreign aid tsar

The Australian aid program has always laboured under multiple and competing objectives, both implicit and explicit. This was identified in the 1997 Simons Report on foreign aid, commissioned by the Howard Government, into what was then a separate agency, AusAID: The managers of the aid

By Jonathan Pryke

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Aid links: Idlib and “humanitarian tragedy”, more

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres argued the situation in Idlib, Syria, is not sustainable, adding the presence of terrorist groups sheltering in the enclave cannot be tolerated. He warned the situation had the potential to be the worst “humanitarian tragedy” of the

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid links: political change and adjustment, more

Following Julie Bishop’s resignation as Australian foreign minister after five years in the job, Stephen Howes reflects on her aid and development legacy, which is only saved by the growth of the Seasonal Workers Program. Ashlee Betteridge and Lisa Cornish separately

By Jonathan Pryke

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Selling a Pacific paradise: upholding the façade

The image of Pacific Islands as a benign utopia – an exotic paradise of green palms, sandy beaches and smiling locals – is a lingering vestige of the first colonial era contact with Europeans. The same clichéd themes can be seen in modern day advertising campaigns to encourage

By Denis Tolkach

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Aid links: USAid cuts, blockchain bonds, and more

Samuel Oakford comments on the new rule applied by the Trump administration on money spent by USAid through the UN and other multinational agencies. The measure could negatively impact a quarter of all US foreign assistance. The Australian picked up Jonathan Pryke’s recent submission to the

By Alexandre Dayant

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Foreign aid and religion in the Pacific

Sometimes we in developed nations fail to grasp that not everything we do, no matter how well intentioned, is entirely welcomed in developing countries. Often they’re just too polite to tell us. Once on a flight to a Pacific island nation, I was seated next to an NGO worker who

By Bruce Hill

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Aid: investing in impact

This article is based on episode 9 of the Good Will Hunters podcast with Giles Gunesekera, CEO of the Global Impact Initiative. In March 2015, the Coalition committed $140 million over four years to an innovation hub within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The hub, known as

By Rachel Mason Nunn

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Aid links: dealing with data deluge, more

Terence Wood provides a good take on this Guardian op-ed from a group of development notables decrying foreign aid. Aid is not perfect, but is better than inaction. Working in development involves collecting a lot of data. But without adequate visualisation, the

By Alexandre Dayant

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NZ and Australia: Big Brothers or Distant Cousins?

“Being in the Pacific, of the Pacific” was an aspiration announced by New Zealand’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fletcher Tabuteau at a recent conference in Wellington. New Zealand’s Pacific identity has been a continuing theme of the Pacific reset policy&

By Jon Fraenkel

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The new US–Japan–Australia infrastructure fund

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has announced a “trilateral partnership” for Australia, Japan, and the US for what is billed as “infrastructure investment in the Indo-Pacific”. In a speech in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US had earmarked US $113

By Richard McGregor

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Business aid and aiding business

This article is based on episodes 7 and 8 of the Good Will Hunters Podcast with Georgina Camp, CEO of Huber Social, and Andrea De Almeida, CEO of B Lab Australia. B Corp certification is to businesses what Fair Trade certification is to coffee. In Australia, there are just

By Rachel Mason Nunn

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Aid links: an escape from the resource curse, more

The Thai cave rescue has been a global success story. Jody Lightfoot argues that the rescue is a good example of how Australian aid can change the world. In addition, PM Turnbull will award honours to Australian divers Richard Harris and Craig Challen for playing a key role in

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and the new face of entrepreneurship

This article is based on episodes 5 and 6 of the Good Will Hunters podcast. Most would agree that “entrepreneurship” has been a business buzzword for quite some time. Less apparent is how entrepreneurship is redefining the informal economy, especially in developing countries. Last week

By Rachel Mason Nunn

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Aid links: empowering women, mapping welfare, more

Dan Kopf at Quartz summarises “the transformative power of giving young women cash”, covering work in Malawi, South Africa, and Bangladesh on cash transfers and domestic violence. A new study shows average unemployment rates are substantially lower in poor countries than in

By Alexandre Dayant

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Asking the wrong questions in the aid debate

This article is based on episode 4 of the Good Will Hunters podcast, featuring former deputy director of AusAID Richard Moore. One draft title for this article was “Why I won’t campaign for Australian aid”. While in some ways this statement is true, it has many, many caveats. A

By Rachel Mason Nunn

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Aid links: maternal mortality, school uniforms and truancy, more

Saku Akmeemana and Tobias Haque analyse the good, and bad, of the new report from the LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development, chaired by David Cameron, which looks at factors of instability in developing countries. On VoxDev, Dean Karlan, Benjamin N

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid links: cricket in India, “edutainment” in Nigeria, and more

RMIT ABC fact-checkers confirmed the accuracy of a tweet from World Vision’s policy and advocacy director, Susan Anderson, that stated: “This year’s budget is the fifth year in a row that the Australian Government has cut Australian aid”. Matt Lowe ran an interesting

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Australia can help Indonesia kick the habit

Australia is an undisputed world leader in tobacco control. From massive wins with plain packaging to widely enforced bans on smoking in public places, it is easy to see why. Australia is successfully creating a generational shift in tobacco use, with its youngest generation growing up in a

By Madeleine Randell

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Aid links: top-down development, insurance expectation, more

The Australian budget was handed down last week, with the aid budget receiving a slight increase, though only by definition. Stephen Howes analysed trends in the aid budget in great detail at the Devpolicy post-budget breakfast. In this great blog post, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

By Alexandre Dayant

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Budget 2018: an aid increase by definition, not design

I was quite excited to hear from officials in the budget lock-up on Tuesday evening that the Australian aid budget was going to increase by 5% next year, from $3.9 billion to nearly $4.2 billion. Perhaps additional aid resources would be spent on the new undersea data cable, or

By Jonathan Pryke

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Aid links: budget time, poverty and brain power, more

The Australian aid program will be in the spotlight this week as the Australia Federal budget is handed down on Tuesday. To see where Australian aid goes, take a look at the just released statistics for 2016/17. According to a recent poll, the majority of Australians believe that

By Alexandre Dayant

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Working with China in the Pacific

In Wellington earlier this year, Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna took the opportunity to signal the benefits of the Pacific’s traditional development partners collaborating with China. Puna described the Pacific as a region of consensus rather than of competition, and said it

By Jose Sousa-Santos

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Aid links: microfinance for farms, religion, Facebook and the poor, more

Penny Goldberg, the new World Bank Chief Economist, and Nina Pavcnik discuss the threats and benefits of trade liberalisation on developing economies. David Evans comments on new research underlining how microcredits in Africa not only help farmers who borrow

By Alexandre Dayant

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Britain’s new Pacific presence

Last week, the UK announced it was establishing diplomatic representation in nine countries: Lesotho, Swaziland, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu. From an Oceanian perspective, this might be a game changer. There

By Cleo Paskal

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Aid links: laptop failures, Indian justice, and Australian parsimony

To the surprise of many aid watchers, the Trump administration is supporting a capital increase for the World Bank. Annual (non-aid) lending is expected to leap from US$60 billion to $80 billion in 2019, and to $100 billion on average by 2030. The announcement still has to pass

By Alexandre Dayant

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Will China’s new aid agency be effective?

China has a new International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA). The IDCA will respond directly to the State Council and integrate the aid functions of the Ministries of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Foreign Affairs. The reform aims to reduce bureaucratic frictions and make aid better serve China

By Marina Rudyak

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Aid links: Timor youth, India’s biometric ID test, and more

Mahmoud Mohieldin explains how PPPs (public-private partnerships) can work together with the Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate global poverty around the world. In his latest blog post, Roy Trivedy explains how the Timor-Leste National Human Development Report 2018&

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: superheroes and the resource curse, poverty in Nigeria, and more

The Australian Financial Review has interviewed a number of senior defence commentators condemning the potential for more Australian aid cuts, questioning why instruments of deterrence are so quickly invested in, yet instruments of persuasion are not. Sheila P. Wamahiu, Kees de Graaf

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: cut or not, gender and water, trade in Central America, and more

Fairfax news reported last week that the Coalition is considering another 10% cut to the Australian aid budget. The Government has alrady cut the aid budget by close to 33% since 2014. Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop has since dismissed the reports. This news

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: vanilla fever in Madagascar, textbooks in Kenya, and more

A great piece by Ingrid Gercama and Nathalie Bertrams looks at the negative impact of vanilla fever in Madagascar. Markus Goldstein and David Evans summarise the economic research and other presentations delivered at the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) conference held

By Alexandre Dayant

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Getting aid governance right after the Oxfam scandal

“Just the tip of the iceberg.” This is a phrase used repeatedly to describe the headline-grabbing sexual misconduct allegations against senior Oxfam staff in Haiti in 2011. Sure enough, many more reports have followed. Some 26 (as yet unnamed) organisations have so far reported 80

By Jeni Whalan

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Aid and development links: Chinese aid agency, electrification in Kenya, and more

Last Tuesday, the establishment of a Chinese international development cooperation agency was announced before the 13th National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. Devex reporters Jenny Lei Ravelo and Lisa Cornish answered these key questions about the new agency.&

By Alexandre Dayant

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China’s new aid agency

Last week, the Chinese Government announced its decision to establish China’s international development cooperation agency. As described by Beijing, the main purpose of the new agency is to give full attention to foreign aid, as a key means of major-country diplomacy. The goal is to

By Denghua Zhang

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Aid and development links: food security in China, AI in development, and more

An interesting article by David Cyranoski shows how evidence-based approaches in rural China improved food security while protecting the environment. The signing of a £100-million UK–Saudi aid partnership has been met with fury from opposition MPs and the aid sector, with deep

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: waste pickers, African high tech, and US aid changes

Bill and Melinda Gates have followed up their annual letter of a few weeks ago, in which they answer 10 tough questions from readers, by answering another set of readers’ questions. Bill Gates also participated in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event. In an address to the Lowy Institute

By Alexandre Dayant

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China’s loans and the debt dilemma

It’s no fun being in debt. Creditors want to chase you, the debts increase as you procrastinate about paying them, and you literally feel “indebted” and guilty, especially if those creditors are friends or family. There are studies about the effects of debt on personal well-being. Micro

By Hannah Ryder

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Aid and development links: CAR crisis, Kenya politics, and Mumbai slums

The Oxfam scandal continues to receive airtime. The Independent discusses how the NGO’s failings are part of a deeper malaise in the industry; the BBC charts what UK charities actually do; and Mark Hurst discusses what Oxfam can learn from other charities that have weathered

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: the cost of a job, traffic in megacities, and more

Rolling out the same aid program in different countries can generate contrasting results. This Global Innovation Fund blog post discusses an attempt to replicate the Kenyan “Sugar Daddies” trial – aimed at reducing the risk of aid and unintended pregnancy – in Botswana,

By Alexandre Dayant

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Aid and development links: future of US aid, Oxfam under fire, the meaning of resilience, and more

The Rohingya crisis is terrible in itself; however, many refugees are giving untrue (and more horrific) stories when asked their testimony. Hannah Beech, a reporter for The New York Times, uncovers these lies and explains their origins. President Donald Trump questions the future and

By Alexandre Dayant

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