How aid policy changes, tight-fisted donors

Hi and welcome to another NZADDs update,

Have you ever wondered what causes high-level aid policy to change in New Zealand? If you have, Jo Spratt has kindly blogged some answers for you, all based on her soon to be finished PhD. Read about the importance of individuals in driving change here, the importance of ideas based networks here, and the role of the rules of the game here.

Jo will be speaking about her work at Oxfam in Auckland at 11.30am on the 27th of July. Members of the development community who would like to attend should email Angela Wilton at Oxfam.

Meanwhile, in his first public statement on aid (that I’m aware of) Gerry Brownlee has promised to continue his predecessor’s focus on economic development (although with bonus swimming metaphors!).

If you need to read something more substantive, Peter Adams has an interesting op-ed on trust in NGOs.

How generous are Australia and New Zealand in giving ODA? When you take our comparative wealth into account alongside the comparatively low levels of debt our governments have, it turns out we are two of the most tight-fisted countries in the OECD. Read the numbers and full analysis here.

Finally, here’s a chart of New Zealand’s ODA/GNI over time (the grey line comes from OECD data, the red line comes from Treasury data on actual spending, the green line is Treasury projections of future spending). Witness the bumpy but continued slide in aid effort since 2008. If trends continue, by 2022 our aid effort will be lower than it has been at any time since record keeping started. To download data click here.

Aid over GNI long time series