Aid Accountability -- It's About Time

According to a story in today’s Washington Post, G-8 leaders are expected to endorse a document that actually assesses, in some detail, how well individual countries are doing in meeting their commitments for development assistance. If true, this is an important and long overdue step in the direction of responsible behavior on the part of the G-8, which is noted more for its promises regarding development assistance than for carrying them out. Each summit has turned into a showcase of extravagant (or sometimes, not so extravagant) commitments of additional money to address the urgent needs of the world’s poor countries, but with no mechanism or procedures to see that commitments are met. And, in fact, many are not. Adding further insult to injury, the G-8 then reliably goes on to perpetuate those commercial and environmental practices (farm subsidies and trade restrictions, unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions) that further impede poor countries’ development prospects.

Several recent studies suggest that the G-8 countries will miss their goal, set in 2005, of doubling development assistance to Africa without a redoubling of efforts. “Donors are yet again ‘off track’ in delivering upon their commitments and, with every ‘off track’ year that passes, fully delivering the commitments by 2010 becomes more difficult,” according to DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa).

Development experts consistently point out that the effectiveness of development assistance is as much a function of its reliability and the conditions imposed upon it as the volume. And while more assistance is clearly needed in the face of rapidly rising food and fuel prices, it’s equally important that such assistance be deployed reliably and effectively. President Bush, to his credit, has made that clear in early G-8 meetings, lending his strong support to developing an international monitoring mechanism for African assistance. According to the President, “ . . . when people say they’re [going to] make a pledge to feed the hungry or provide for the ill, that we ought to honor that pledge.” 

Accountability, however, is only a first step toward greater aid effectiveness. When that’s combined with reforms in agricultural and trade policies and reductions in “tied aid” (“aid” that can only be spent on goods and services from the funding country) along the lines of the Center for Global Development’s “Commitment to Development Index,” then we’ll be getting somewhere.