Budget 2023

Hello and welcome to an NZADDs update,

Just after 2pm today I took a step back from my computer, did some yoga, put on my favourite CD of dolphin songs, lit some incense, and tried to find my happy place.

Yes, that’s right, it’s budget day, which means I’ve spent the afternoon exhuming spreadsheets, squinting at PDFs, and muttering in an exasperated way at my computer, “even the Australians release their aid budgets…”.

The incense has long wafted away, the dolphin CD has come to an end, but here’s the state of New Zealand’s aid spending.

This coming financial year New Zealand plans to spend just over NZ$1.4 billion on foreign aid. That, as you can see in the chart below, is a big leap from what Treasury thinks we will spend in the current financial year.*

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NZADDs update: Pacific Publishing, conferences, we gave how much to the Global Fund?

Hi and welcome to an NZADDs email update,

Journal opportunity for Pacific Scholars
Are you a researcher from a Pacific Island country or of Pacific heritage? Do you have insights into aid and development in the Pacific? Would you like to publish a short academic article in the UK-based journal Development Policy Review? If the answer is ‘yes’, please consider submitting something to the journal’s upcoming Pacific author special issue. You can read their call for contributions here. You can read a short blog summarising it here. The first task is submitting an abstract to them before 18 November.

DevNet 2022
The Aotearoa New Zealand Development Studies network will hold its biennial conference in Auckland in December this year. It’s New Zealand’s foremost academic conference on aid and development, and a great opportunity to learn and meet people. The deadline for early bird registrations is 14 October. Read more here.

2022 Australasian Aid Conference
After a break due to Covid, the Australasian Aid Conference is back on in Canberra. Run by the Development Policy Centre (my employer), it’s Australia’s top aid and development conference. It covers the Asia-Pacific and beyond. It’s an excellent conference for engaging with regional and global issues. This year’s conference runs from 28-30 November. Read more here.

We gave how much to the Global Fund?!?
The seventh Global Fund pledging round has just finished. In it, donors promised funding over the years 2023 to 2025.

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