Initiatives

What Is the CDI?

Rich and poor countries are linked in many ways--by foreign aid, commerce, migration, the environment, and military affairs. The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) rates 21 rich countries on how much they help poor countries build prosperity, good government, and security. Each rich country gets scores in seven policy areas, which are averaged for an overall score. Request a print copy.

Browse the CDI charts by clicking bars, country names, and policy components.

CGD staff are proposing a "cash on delivery" approach to aid, under which donors would pay for measurable progress on specific outcomes pre-agreed with recipient governments. In education, donors could pilot “cash on delivery” aid by offering a contract to poor countries for $100 per additional child completing a quality primary education, to be used as the country chooses. The approach is also being explored for application by governments to their own transfers to states or districts.

Each year the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine present the Commitment to Development Award to honor an individual or organization from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world. CGD president Nancy Birdsall and Foreign Policy editor-in-chief Moisés Naím co-chair a selection panel that includes distinguished leaders of the development community.

This initiative, led by CGD Senior Fellow David Wheeler, builds on CGD Senior Fellow William Cline's forthcoming study of the agricultural impact of climate change through 2080. His findings starkly reveal the stakes for developing countries: reduced agricultural potential of 45% in India, and similar losses in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. The implications of such findings for global stability--not to mention development--highlight the need to reduce carbon emissions, as well as preparing for the impacts that past emissions have made inevitable.

Shortcomings in demand forecasting for essential drugs, vaccines and diagnostics have led to unnecessarily high prices, supply shortages, and reluctance to invest in R&D for developing country diseases. To address this challenge, CGD’s Global Health Forecasting Working Group has issued recommendations for donors to make strategic investments that would improve access to information and better align forecasting incentives, ensuring that increasing donor funds for health are used effectively.

Drug resistance is a major impediment to the successful treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria – the three diseases prioritized for urgent action in developing countries – as well as serious illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea and other common infections worldwide. Resistance emerges in response to epidemiological, socio-economic, and behavioral conditions stemming from common breakdowns in health systems, which have become more acute with new infectious disease burdens and investments in treatment. As a result, the significant investments being made in drug research and development and in improving health care delivery in developing countries could be undermined by an increasingly ineffective range of therapeutic options, while developed countries also face increased health threats from the spread of multi-drug resistant strains of diseases.

CGD's Engaging Fragile States initiative has as its central goal improving the effectiveness of foreign assistance in countries that represent difficult, long-term development challenges. The initiative, led by visiting fellow Vijaya Ramachandran and assisted by CGD vice president Dennis de Tray and research fellow Stewart Patrick, is undertaking new research to support the donor community's search for practical, effective ways of working in difficult, often badly governed, and sometimes conflict-prone environments. Learn more

The Evaluation Gap Working Group was convened by the Global Health Policy Research Network as an initiative of the Center for Global Development, to address the problem of the lack of knowledge about the effectiveness of social programs in low- and middle-income countries.

The Global Health Policy Research Network (GHPRN) develops original, focused research on high-priority global health policy issues.

Rapid growth in China and India is reducing the number of the world's poor. But the world's poorest countries, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, are growing slowly, and the gap between the richest and poorest countries is widening. Inequality within many countries is also increasing. In a series of papers and in her 2005 WIDER (World Institute for Development Economics Research) lecture, The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global Economy, CGD president Nancy Birdsall has argued that the inherent asymmetries of a global economy pose new problems that require new thinking. Among today's global problems are the international costs of state failure, the risks of climate change, cross-border corruption and sex and drug trafficking, the missing Green Revolution in Africa, and the slow pace of international action to reduce world poverty. Each of these problems points to the potential benefits of more effective and more legitimate global institutions.

Billions of dollars in aid are flowing to developing countries to confront HIV/AIDS but relatively little is known yet about the effectiveness of this aid. The HIV/AIDS Monitor is designed to help fill this knowledge gap by tracking and analyzing key features of the way aid for HIV/AIDS is allocated and disbursed, while identifying lessons relevant to broader questions about the effectiveness of development assistance.

The Working Group on IMF-Supported Programs and Health Expenditures investigated how macroeconomic policies under IMF programs in low-income countries interacted with the management of health spending in a context of scaled-up aid. Utilizing case studies and cross-country comparisons, the working group explored the evidence on what actually happened under IMF programs on the key issues where the IMF role has been criticized. The group concluded with six recommendations for the IMF as well as lessons for other stakeholders.

The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), an innovative U.S. foreign assistance program established in 2004 to complement existing programs, targets a select group of poor countries with demonstrated commitment to economic growth and development, emphasizes country ownership, and focuses on accountability and measurable results. The MCA Monitor provides rigorous policy analysis and research on the operations and effectiveness of the MCA. It aims to contribute to the MCA's success by drawing lessons from relevant experiences, raising awareness, and linking it to broader work on aid effectiveness and US foreign assistance reform.

Rich countries' decisions to admit or block workers from poor countries have a substantial impact on potential migrants and their homelands. While most of the rich world migration debate focuses on the impact of migrants on receiving countries, CGD's Migration and Development initiative examines effects on migrants and their countries of origin. We aim to put migration at the center of the development policy agenda, and to bring solid evidence about the development impact of labor mobility to the rich world migration policy debate.

From eradication of polio in Latin America, to elimination of measles in southern Africa, to HIV prevention in Thailand, the 17 cases documented in this study show that large-scale success in health are indeed possible. An extensive Web site offers the book, a video, teacher's guide, and information about how major successes can be achieved in the future.

CGD has an active program of research and analysis on aid effectiveness and recognizes that strong foreign assistance programs are vital to U.S. national interests. They enhance our security, expand global economic opportunities and promote American values. The past 40 years of foreign assistance have shown successes, but they have also shown that our foreign assistance programs are out of date and badly in need of overhaul to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The mission, mandate and organizational structure of our outdated foreign assistance apparatus must be rebuilt and adequately funded to meet today's foreign policy challenges, particularly our institutions and policies focusing on global development and poverty reduction.

The Scott Family Fellows program aims to recruit and support young professionals to help address the severe capacity gap existing at the sub-Ministerial level in Liberia from 14 years of brutal civil war where many civil service workers were either killed or fled the country. Each year, for three years, five to six young professionals will work in Liberia as “special assistants” to senior Liberian government officials, primarily Cabinet members. This program is funded by a generous grant from the family of Edward W. Scott, Jr.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's inauguration as the President of Liberia in January 2006 marked a watershed in that country's tumultuous history. Twenty-five years of corruption, misrule and civil war under Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor and successive interim governments had left the country in complete ruins. President Sirleaf, the first African woman to be elected head of state, has energetically set the country on a new course, putting accountability, transparency, good governance, and economic opportunities for all Liberians at the center of her agenda.

CGD has an active program of research and analysis of the World Bank, the world's largest development institution and a leading source of funds, ideas and expertise for development. Recent outputs include “The Hardest Job in the World: Five Crucial Tasks for the New President of the World Bank.”

CGD is urging donors to commit in advance to purchase vaccines against deadly diseases such as as malaria, TB, and HIV, thereby stimulating private sector R&D. Such advance market committments could lead to the creation of new life-saving vaccines for about 3 billion dollars per disease.

Nigeria, home to one in five Africans, has been the continent's most indebted nation. CGD began working on Nigerian debt issues in early 2004 to provide analytical support to Nigeria's ongoing efforts to persuade its creditors to agree to an appropriate debt relief package. In October 2005 Nigeria and the Paris Club announced a final agreement that should lead to debt relief worth $18 billion and an overall reduction of Nigeria's debt stock by $30 billion.

A CGD working group has identified three areas of population dynamics where investment in data collection and research could improve policy. They are: the implications for growth and poverty of projected trends in fertility and mortality; the impact of investments in reproductive health on economic conditions of women, children and households; and how the type and organization of reproductive health services shape effectiveness and the ability to reach poor people. The research agenda is especially useful for research organizations and funders. Learn More

CGD has taken an extra interest in Zimbabwe because the country presents several unique challenges for the development community and for Africa.