For countries everywhere, government policies are driven first and foremost by domestic politics. But for African governments, the priorities of foreign governments that provide aid play a major part too.
Foreign aid can come with various degrees of conditionality, driven by donor countries’ own policies, priorities, and values. And it goes far beyond aid: for everything from migration to intellectual property to emissions, decisions made by the richest countries about their own policies and behavior have repercussions for people living in lower-income countries across Africa.
In this episode of Lagos to Mombasa, Ian Mitchell, Co-Director of Development Cooperation in Europe and Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development, joins Gyude to discuss the newest edition of CGD’s Commitment to Development Index (CDI). The CDI ranks 40 of the world’s most powerful countries on policies that affect more than five billion people living in poorer nations. It covers eight policy areas: development finance, investment, migration, trade, environment, health, security, and technology. How do Africa’s development partners rank, and where is improvement needed?
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