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Blog Post
March 24, 2014
I have always chafed at the idea of “capacity building” – a donor fallback in developing countries whenever progress on a donor-financed project is slow. Too much of what donors mean by capacity building has turned out to be training sessions, workshops, and nice trips of mid-level...
Blog Post
March 18, 2014
How can donors know if their aid is making a difference? This question is tougher than it seems. Attributing results to donor inputs seems straightforward if the donor pays for progress on a measurable outcome, as CGD has proposed for Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid). If the desire...
Blog Post
November 20, 2013
What will it take to end extreme poverty by 2030? That is the goal President Obama included in his SOTU in 2013, President Kim recently announced as the World Bank's key objective, and that USAID Administrator Raj Shah will discuss Thursday in a much-anticipated speech at the Brookings Instituti...
Blog Post
September 26, 2013
In Norway last year I met with the impressive staff of one of the world’s largest and smartest NGOs. They were unhappy that Norwegian aid money was being used to discourage deforestation in Brazil instead of to immunize children and educate girls in low-income Africa—in other words,...
Blog Post
September 11, 2013
When we make presentations on COD AIDat development agencies, we are frequently told: “Oh, we’re already doing that.” The more we investigate, however, the fewer cases we find where agencies are really disbursing funds against independently verified outcomes in a hands-off fas...
Blog Post
February 07, 2013
As mentioned in our last post, aid agencies are experimenting with programs that incorporate the main features of COD Aid: paying for outputs and outcomes, giving the recipient greater discretion to spend as they see fit, independent verification, and transparency. Once these results-based programs ...