Aid & Development

The big boost When Prime Minister Scott Morrison put the South Pacific at the centre of his foreign policy priorities last year, the relatively low-profile Export Finance Insurance Corporation was suddenly thrust into the strategic limelight. But last week’s foray into a form of state

Bryan Caplan makes the argument for his “Trillion Dollar Idea” – international open borders, which would allow productive labour to work in productive places.A group of Stanford researchers found Russian-run fake Facebook accounts attempting to influence public political opinion in four

In the last two years China’s engagement in the Pacific – particularly through its aid program – has sparked alarm in Canberra. The spiking orange line in 2017 is part of the story. In 2017 China committed to spend almost US$5 billion in the Pacific. US$4.1 billion of that was to upgrade

Three development specialists (MIT economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, and Harvard economist Michael Kremer) won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their groundbreaking work on global poverty, studying interventions in a range of areas: combating teacher absenteeism, direct cash transfers to

In the varied debates about influence in the Pacific, rarely does Japan’s position in the region feature prominently. On the off chance that Japan’s presence in the Pacific is discussed, its “aid diplomacy” is usually characterised in quid pro quo terms. Yet a closer examination of Japan

The Pacific Islands are grappling with the effects of disasters and climate change, which have the potential to make entire countries inhospitable, posing significant development challenges. Small Pacific Islands countries have limited natural resources, are far from major markets, and are

In August last year, the Lowy Institute launched our flagship Pacific research project, the Pacific Aid Map. Foreign aid is an important resource flow for many parts of the Pacific, making up 7% of regional GDP. Leaving out Fiji and Papua New Guinea, this number shoots up to 27%. But the world of

Fin Tarp and Sinikka Parviainen discuss the economic benefits of migration and refugees.An African doctor is believed to have found anti-Ebola drugs, with an efficiency rate of 90%. Zimbabwe’s former finance minister explains the deep roots of the economic crisis in the country at the time of

China is changing the way Australia’s political elites think about aid. Chinese aid to the Pacific isn’t new, but in recent years, “China the aid donor” has become an unavoidable presence. In response, the Australian government is increasing the Pacific focus of its aid programs. It has also

Despite the recent spotlight on Chinese aid and labels of China as an “emerging donor”, China has actually been delivering foreign aid since as far back as the 1950s. Indeed, China provided aid to North Korea for reconstruction purposes after the Korean War, along with Cambodia, Nepal and Egypt

What counts as aid? Whether it’s disaster relief, infrastructure, or a much longer term and less visible type of development assistance, in the end it all comes back to money. But the many differing types of aid does create awkward discrepancies when seeking to rank the contributions by nations

Gender equality is fundamental to human development. Papua New Guinea is Australia’s closest neighbour and biggest recipient of Australia’s bilateral development aid globally ­– but significant and persistent inequalities remain when it comes to the status of women in society, sexual violence

If you are interested in teaching people what development economics is, look at David Evans’ presentation to a youth group, making it easy for everyone to understand the wealth inequalities of this world.Similarly, Professor Lord Nicholas Stern analyses an extraordinary dataset that has been

Speaking at the launch of Christian Aid Week in Westminster on Sunday morning, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown set out a passionate defence of the international aid budget and the importance of the fight against global poverty, before addressing the themes behind the Brexit debate.In this

The Pacific, when measured by aid inflows as a proportion of GDP, is the most aid-dependent region in the world. Geographic remoteness, exposure to frequent natural disasters and vulnerability to climate change are several of the causes that make the region vulnerable. Because of this

There were few surprises for the Australian aid program in this week’s federal budget, which has disappointingly continued the downward trend of Australian aid spending. At $4.044 billion in 2019, when adjusting for inflation, aid will have now been cut by 27% since its peak in 2013–14.

At a speech delivered at the University of Queensland last week, Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong accused the current government of having “damaged Australia’s reputation as a reliable partner in the region” by cutting the aid budget, and committed to increase development assistance as

Last week, at a special one-day conference to ease the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, $2.6 billion was raised. Paradoxically, more than half was donated by countries that are involved in the conflict. Dave Evans, lead economist in the chief economist’s office for the Africa region at

Floods in north Queensland, a summer of bushfires around Australia, and one of the worst droughts in living memory have pushed some Australians to ask for a cut in spending on foreign aid and to help Australians “first and foremost”. Morten Wendelbo discusses the reason

Ebola is back. Photographer Kate Holt documents efforts to contain the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, challenged by conflicts and the fear of treatment centres. On Tuesday, the United Nations and its aid partners, together with the Government of Libya, launched a humanitarian

Britain’s former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has called for the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to be rolled into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This would be a monumental mistake for a country looking for relevance in a post-Brexit world. Over the past two

Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, has announced that he will retire. This is far earlier than expected. Jim Kim was first appointed in 2011 and was re-elected in 2016 for a five-year term, due to end in 2022. The president of the World Bank is, in effect, the Pope of the official

It is undoubtedly in Australia’s geopolitical interests to invest in the development of our immediate region, but the question we should all be asking is: what is the most effective way to spend our taxpayer-funded aid budget in the Pacific, rather than simply, how can we compete with China? The

Seven UN peacekeepers and 12 Congolese soldiers have been killed in clashes with militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After the Oxfam scandal, the peak body for the aid sector – the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) – commissioned an independent review