Aid in the Global South - and in Africa, in particular - has at times functioned as a mechanism of control, entrenching asymmetries under the guise of assistance. Now is the time for an unwavering commitment to shift power. Obinna Onyekwena, Deputy Director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in his personal capacity.

The geopolitical vandalism of Trump II could have the unintended consequence of prompting low and middle-income countries, under duress, to liberate themselves from much of their long-running dependence on external financiers. Olusoji Adeyi writes.

Following the suspension of US foreign aid, the obvious expectation is that the European Union would step in to fill the void. But the levelling down of aid in country after country places huge constraints. This is a moment of reckoning for Europe’s approach to rights-based development assistance, writes Mar Logrono.

In an opinion article by two scholars, Jo Kelcy and Anne Irfan, published in Development Today on January 28, 2025, the authors refute the claims of the Israeli organisation IMPACT-se that UNRWA schools teach antisemitism. The CEO of IMPACT-se submitted this comment.

Two scholars challenge Development Minister Benjamin Dousa’s claim that other humanitarian agencies can replace services provided by UNRWA. “Palestinians in Gaza are the most immediate victims of Sweden’s decision - including almost 300,000 children who depend on UNRWA for their education,” write Jo Kelcey and Anne Irfan.

Civil society is calling for a new UN convention on development that will take over the power to decide what can qualify as official development assistance. Currently, this is controlled by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Salvatore Nocerino at Oxfam argues that the change will give the DAC “a unique opportunity to leverage” its expertise to serve both new and old donors in areas like donor coordination, best practice, and statistics.

The World Health Organization (WHO) concluded its first ever “investment round” at the G20 leaders’ summit in Brazil last week raising only half of its target. Part of the reason for the disappointing result is that it used a fundraising approach that is ill-suited to a normative organization like WHO, Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée and Katerini Storeng write.

Though it is the third-largest contributor to global warming among greenhouse gases and has a warming potential 270 times greater than CO2, nitrous oxide receives little attention. With fertilizers and manure as the principle sources, Kaveh Zahedi at FAO writes that solutions for drastically reducing nitrous oxide emissions are readily available.

As negotiations over new climate finance targets get underway, former Sida official Göran Holmqvist proposes a few simple guidelines to avoid the dishonest double counting that pervades the current system.

Poor countries are largely shut out of the world’s largest marketplace, and they do not have the option of hedging against currency risk. This hampers green investments, causes economic agony, and is the biggest single driver of debt distress, writes Sony Kapoor, Professor of Climate, Geoeconomics, and Finance at the European University Institute. He calls for the Nordic countries to take part in a capital extension for TCX, a unique DFI that does currency hedging where no such market exists.

The proposed conservative roadmap Project 2025 aims not only to drastically reshape the US federal government in an authoritarian direction. If implemented, it would affect other donors’ support for the UN system and human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It is time for Nordic governments to come up with a crisis plan, Sara Österlund at the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) writes.

Sida’s sudden decision to terminate multi-year agreements with 17 Swedish CSOs and put in place a completely new funding regime has left people in Sweden and around the world wondering what really is going on. Is this the dawn of a new era of direct funding to the Global South or a “move fast and break things” approach aimed principally at causing disruption? British anthropologist David Lewis reflects.

Global health institutions, controlled by a small group of countries and private foundations, have a fundamental design flaw and they are not fit for purpose. Olusoji Adeyi of Johns Hopkins and Justice Nonvignon of African CDC offer a prescription for donors.

The new OECD rules on reporting private sector aid reflect efforts driven largely by finance ministries in donor countries to score ODA without budgetary outlays. Stephen Cutts warns this will trigger a gradual shift away from grants.

Development Today has invited to a debate on an important but also fairly technical issue: how should the instruments donors use to encourage and incentivise private sector investments in developing countries be reflected in aid statistics? Jon Lomøy argues for a more inclusive discussion.

Carsten Staur and Katrine Heggedal respond to Simon Scott’s critique of the OECD new rules on reporting private sector investments as ODA. They write: Scott raises important questions about ODA as an objective for aid performance, but he goes off track when he criticizes the new directives.

In a previous op-ed, the Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Carsten Staur and Chair of the DAC Working Party on Development Finance Statistics Katrine Heggedal argued that new rules on aid reporting will open the way for increased engagement with the private sector. Simon Scott, a former head of the Statistics on Development Finance Division of the OECD, strongly disagrees.

In an era marked by global crises and the urgent call to combat poverty, clear rules for ODA are critical. After a decade of work, new rules for reporting private sector investments are finally in place. OECD DAC Chair Carsten Staur and Chair of the DAC statistics committee Katrine Heggedal explain.

The new Norwegian guarantee scheme, which aims to provide support for green infrastructure in developing countries, heralds a shift to a new investment-based model of aid and climate finance. This will eat into official development assistance and increase indebtedness, Thea Sofie Rusten Grastveit, Political Advisor at Debt Justice Norway, Kathrine Sund-Henriksen, Secretary General of Norwegian Forum for Development and Environment, and Tess Woolfenden, Senior Policy and Research Officer, Debt Justice UK, write.

The Swedish government’s decision to halt Palestinian aid “plays into the hands of Hamas,” Erik Lysén at Act Church of Sweden writes. He argues that the move harms rights work and urges a re-think.

Costa Rican indigenous leader Levi Sucre Romero calls for action from Norway, financier of the ART forest carbon standard, on indigenous demands for justice and recognition of land rights. Romero writes that the carbon credit standard is in non-compliance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and it could now “undermine all that has been achieved in Costa Rica by indigenous peoples and the government.”

Finnish development practitioners experienced a painful déjà vu after the recent parliamentary election. The two main winners were parties that carried out massive aid cuts in 2016. But to form a government, they need the Swedish People’s Party, which has called for an increase in aid spending. As negotiations enter the fourth week, Marikki Karhu and Inka Hopsu offer this analysis.

Afghanistan is burdened by multiple crises, and there is an urgent need for innovative collective global action. The upcoming Global Refugee Forum in December 2023 is a key opportunity to break the current deadlock. Najeeba Wazefadost and Evan Jones write that a strategic group of 15 donors – the so-called Support Platform for the Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees – where Japan and Switzerland are key members, is strategically placed to re-ignite regional support for displaced Afghans, both in and outside the country.

Nordic aid is up for a major remake. In Sweden and Denmark, new political alliances took power in 2022 and the war in Ukraine will dominate policymaking in all four countries in the months to come.

Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s Minister for Climate and Environment, has just signed a new climate and environment deal with Indonesia. It appears support to civil society and independent scientific research are not among the priorities, researchers from Chr. Michelsens Institute write.

Several African countries have a huge overcapacity in the power sector, but consumers lack electricity. Production is often locked into long-term contracts at high prices while the grid remains underdeveloped. As donors and investors push for renewable energy in Africa, they must take a more transparent and holistic approach or risk delaying the transition to clean energy, Rasmus Hundsbæk Pedersen and Ole Winckler Andersen at DIIS write. 

Five Nordic church leaders call for Nordic governments to show solidarity in the face of growing poverty, food insecurity and climate disaster. Don’t use aid to fund vaccines, domestic refugee costs and climate, they write.

Diverting scarce aid resources risks worsening on-going humanitarian crises around the world. The global consequences of redirecting aid and attention towards the Ukraine response are extremely worrying, Charlotte Slente of Danish Refugee Council writes.

The global vaccine initiative COVAX aimed to procure 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 to accelerate efforts towards vaccine equity. By the end of the year, it had delivered only 910 million doses, more than half of these through donations. Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée and Katerini T. Storeng explain how donated doses came to dominate COVAX’s vaccine supply and they unpack the politics of vaccine sharing.  

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