Newsletter: What aid recipients think | Evaluation forum | Budget breakfast | PNG Update bumper response

How should aid agencies evolve? Recipients give their views

Are traditional development assistance providers facing unemployment? Apparently not, according to new research by Devpolicy in conjunction with the OECD as part of the ‘Agency of the Future’ project.

Devpolicy’s Robin Davies and Jonathan Pickering condensed some of the key points that came out of the survey with 40 developing country governments in a recent blog post. The findings have also recently been released as an OECD Development Cooperation Working Paper.

The research finds that most partner countries are counting on ongoing access to multilateral sources for large-scale financing. They are reaching out to non-DAC bilateral donors, both in recognition of their comparative advantage in economic infrastructure and in order to hedge the risk of aid volume cuts and abrupt exits on the part of DAC providers. And they want DAC development assistance to play a more enabling or facilitative role than at present. But they still see a substantial role for DAC donors for at least the next decade.

Evaluation forum

Join us on 29 April for our third annual forum to discuss Australian aid evaluations. The forum will focus on two recent Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) reports on Australia’s response to humanitarian crises (in the Horn of Africa and Syria, respectively) and on DFAT’s new Performance of Australian Aid 2013-14 report.

Presenters will include authors of the reports, DFAT management and external discussants. Jim Adams, Chair of the ODE’s Independent Evaluation Committee, and Dereck Rooken-Smith, ODE Head, will also speak. Register here.

Aid budget breakfast

How will the government cut the aid program by 20 per cent? The 2015 budget will be perhaps the most important ever for aid. We’ll be holding our third annual aid budget breakfast the morning after the budget, on Wednesday May 12. Register here.

Bumper response to PNG Update

We’ve already received more than twice as many responses to our call for papers for the PNG Update this year than last. The annual ANU-UPNG PNG Update will be held in Port Moresby on 18–19 June. The deadline for papers has been extended to Tuesday 31 March, so you only have a few days left if you haven’t yet submitted a paper. There will be a workshop for paper writers on 1 May: details to follow soon. The draft program will also be announced shortly. More details on how to submit an abstract are available here.

Upcoming events

2015 PNG Update
18-19 June, University of Papua New Guinea. Details here.

Australian aid evaluations: program performance and humanitarian responses
Wednesday 29 April, 9.30am – 1.30pm. Register here.

2015 aid budget breakfast
Wednesday 13 May, 9am – 10.30am. Register here.

Blog highlights

Perspectives on the AIIB: from China, and for Australia.

Vanuatu’s resilience after Cyclone Pam.

Development workers should engage with religion.

Senator Lee Rhiannon’s legislative plans to make Australian aid focus more on gender.

A review of J.’s latest aid fiction.

On the blog

Up and running – DFAT’s innovationXchange by Jonathan Pryke and Camilla Burkot

Maximising effectiveness of Gavi aid: when less can mean more by Camilla Burkot

Putting gender at the centre of Australian aid by Lee Rhiannon

Why Australia should join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank by Shahar Hameiri

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: a Chinese perspective by Katherine Harper

How should aid agencies evolve? Views from developing countries by Robin Davies and Jonathan Pickering

Peter O’Neill’s statecraft: a skilful politician by Jan Kees van Donge

My island home: the first week after Cyclone Pam by Tess Newton Cain

See no religion, hear no religion, speak no religion by Denis Dragovic

Honour amongst aid workers by Terence Wood

The changing composition of PNG’s foreign workforce by Carmen Voigt-Graf

In brief

Weekend reading and listening (plus a bonus talk to go to next week)

Funding for TB and malaria product development partnerships: Australia’s back

After the storm, the deluge

More aid cuts? It’s news to Julie Bishop

Weekend reading and listening: the art of development, election biometrics, expats, data quality and new addresses

Julia and the four challenges

Abbott on Australia’s modest aid cuts

Hope amidst the darkness: the 4th anniversary of the Syrian crisis

Cyclone Pam

Australasian Development Economics Workshop call for papers: March 30 deadline

First interactive map of Chinese aid to the Pacific launched

This is the fortnightly newsletter of the Development Policy Centre at Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, published every second Friday.

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Development Policy Centre

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