ACT CampaignAsking the Government to ACT on Aid Effectiveness, by

making our aid more:Accountable.

CreativeTransparent

HOW instead of WHAT• Past initiatives focused on increasing amount

of money spent, and changing what the money is spent on.

• Seeking to promote a more sophisticated message than the traditional “0.7%”

• Asking Canada to ACT on aid effectiveness – making our aid more: Accountable, Creative, and Transparent.

PURPOSE, The

• HOW, not WHAT• Advocacy campaign

• HOW, not WHAT• Goal is to create the political will to provide

the space/support to increase the effectiveness of Canadian development policy

• HOW, not WHAT

ISSUES, Accountable Aid

• chronic lack of feedback and accountability• tendency to focus on measuring what they are

putting into a project – inputs – rather than trying to measure what they get out – outputs– because inputs are easiest to measure

• feedback loop is broken– negative assessments rarely acted on– turning a blind eye to failure and waste for fear that

publicizing it will undermine support for development

ISSUES, Creativity

• delivery of aid needs to improve, and there needs to be new solutions found to some of the more pressing problems in Africa, particularly, around helping to increase agriculture yields

• require aid that is creative and flexible, rather than conventional and averse to learning/risk

• modeled on venture capital terms rather than bureaucratic terms

ISSUES, Transparency• National homepages of Global Fund to Fight AIDS,

Tuberculosis and Malaria – allows the user to see exactly where the organization’s

money is going• CIDA website– provides only vague background information on the

countries it operates in– statistics that only allow the reader to see the broad

picture of spending• hinders the ability of local journalists and activists to

hold CIDA and its partners to account for delivering what they have promised

ISSUES, Transparency

• $4 billion a year of official aid spent with little information about the impact of these dollars

• Cornerstone of a democracy is the availability of information – full disclosure of this information will keep our institutions honest and go a long way in strengthening public trust

ACCOUNTABLE• Means:– We are accountable to meet our international

promises around aid– We hold ourselves accountable to assessing the

results of our aid by committing to sharing a rigorous assessment to a “triple bottom line” of stakeholders – the Canadian public; partner governments that receive our aid; and citizens in partner country governments.

ACCOUNTABLE• To do:– Create a standard for tracking and reporting on

major international aid commitments, committing to use it, and inviting other G8 countries to follow our lead

– Establish an expert, independent, arms-length development evaluation agency to assess the results from Canadian aid

CREATIVE• Means:– Investing in innovation by piloting and scaling up

promising ideas• distinction between innovation and invention

– Modeling a portion of our aid on venture capital principles• flexibility to find the higher-risk and unexpected

solutions to difficult problems

CREATIVE• To do:– Set up a 150M$ venture-focused Implementation

Innovation Fund to fund the expansion of promising initiatives• would complement the research-focused Development

Innovation Fund• provide later stage financing to take ideas to scale

TRANSPARENT• Means:– Making information about aid more accessible to

inspection from others• key to enabling constructive dialogue and improvement

TRANSPARENT• To do:– Sign on to the International Aid Transparency

Initiative• aims to make information about aid spending easier to

access, use and understand• many of the world's leading donor organizations already

signed

– Publish comprehensive, openly available data about all CIDA projects and programs on its website• should allow the user to track any project from the initial

proposal through all stages to project implementation