Abstract:
With renewed world attention on foreign aid and poverty reduction, the
Canadian government has committed to dramatically ramp up its aid
budget over the near-term. This paper draws on the development
literature and compares the practices of the Canadian International
Development Agency to other widely-respected aid agencies of
similar size, to offer some policy recommendations.
Our findings reveal that Canadian aid might be made more effective through
the following changes: 1) decentralizing staff and decision-making
authority to the field; 2) making a strategic decision to either invest
more in-house research capacity (innovate) or more effectively
harnessing
outside research (implement); 3) continuing to concentrate aid
in fewer
countries and in fewer priorities (including internal benchmarking against
alternative concentration measures developed in the paper); and 4) setting
explicit targets and timelines to completely untie aid from the
requirement to purchase from Canadian suppliers.