Tag: development aid

An EU-led donor conference agreed on Wednesday (15 May) to provide €3.25 billion to fund a sweeping development plan for Mali, but European donors made clear that the interim government must live up to its promises to democratic and social reforms in exchange for the international lifeline.

The European Union will pledge more than half a billion euros to help Mali rebuild after months of conflict, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday (14 May).

Europe and its global partners that are being asked to help finance a €4-billion development programme in Mali should be pressuring the government to address the executions, torture other abuses occurring in the divided country, human rights advocates say.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) club of rich countries has admitted it needs to comprehensively reassess how global aid figures are measured amid criticism that the value of assistance given is overstated by billions of dollars each year.

On the threshold of several prominent international meetings, there is no better time than this to boost resources for nutrition and to work together to tackle both the causes and symptoms of child malnutrition and stunting, writes British MP Stephen O’Brien.

East African livestock herders are using mobile phones to send early warnings of drought, part of a new effort to avert disasters like the one two years ago that required a massive EU humanitarian response.

Experience gained over the years shows that development cannot be governed from the outside, and this is why three out of four development projects in Africa fail, Volker Seitz, a German diplomat with a 17-years of experience in Africa, tells EurActiv Germany.

Development aid contributes to economic success in both developing countries and in Europe, Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs tells EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

In a sudden decision that has angered international development groups, the European Parliament’s agriculture committee has been handed special power to pare down hundreds of amendments to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on the eve of a vote Tuesday (12 March) by the full Assembly. EurActiv reports from Strasbourg.

UNESCO increasingly counts on partnerships with the private sector to help fund projects, Director General Irina Bokova tells EurActiv. She identified Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Ericsson for being “very open to innovative methods of cooperation”. 

If the UK reaches its promised target of devoting 0.7% of its gross national income to foreign development aid, it cannot be taken for granted that this high-water mark will be maintained, writes Ben Jackson.

EurActiv has compared the figures in the EU budget deal, struck among EU heads of states on 8 February, with the European Commission's original proposal. The difference – €6.3 billion according to our calculations – represents the gap with the EU's pledge to spend 0.7% of its Gross National Income (GNI) on overseas assistance.

EU leaders who meet today (7 February) to work on the 2014-2020 budget are expected to cut spending for development aid up to 13%, says MEP Eva Joly, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development. She calls on EU leaders not to sacrifice development aid, which she calls “peace insurance for Europe”. 

EU candidate Turkey and South Korea, nations that have watched their own fortunes surge in a generation, are ramping up aid programmes for poor nations at a time when such spending in Europe is under threat, a EurActiv analysis of aid statistics shows.

With EU-backed forces advancing across Mali, the need for European and other donors to accelerate the development process in Africa’s poorest regions appears ever more pressing. For development experts a simple, yet unheralded solution exists - planting trees.

Development aid organisations hailed an agreement, approved by 11 EU countries today (22 January), to set up a financial transactions tax (FTT), and called on the European Commission to follow France's example by allocating 10% of the revenue “to the benefit of the poorest in the world".

Africa still needs massive international development assistance but it also has its success stories, with countries such as Ghana heading towards a possible ‘aid exit’, European Commission officials have told EurActiv.

The European Union has spent billions of euros to build roads in sub-Saharan Africa that are left to deteriorate because of poor maintenance, the European Court of Auditors said on Tuesday (15 January).

The EU budget heading ‘Global Europe’, which allows the EU to be a player on the global stage, may suffer more than other spending areas, because development aid and humanitarian action don't have the advocates among member states like agriculture and regional aid do, European Parliament President Martin Schulz tells EurActiv.

Many EU-backed sanitation and water projects in sub-Saharan Africa are unsustainable because of missing technical and financial support, says a new financial audit of more than 20 development projects.

As the European Union embarks on a major revamp of its aid policies to the developing world, the Francophonie organisation believes its close ties with French-speaking African nations can help the Union with "political mobilisation" on development issues.

Some of the EU’s millions of euros of energy aid to the developing world could be spent on gas projects, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has told EurActiv. But biofuels, nuclear and coal energy will not be funded. 

Europe, the US and other donors have an opportunity to be a more catalytic part of the solution to global water and sanitation needs by strengthening the capacity of developing countries to solve these challenges themselves, writes John Oldfield. 

Plans for an EU-wide tax on financial trading remain uncertain amid growing concerns that introducing such a fee in troubled economic times could harm recovery efforts. EU finance ministers are set to discuss the proposal at their next meeting on 24 January.