The U.K. aid agency released its long-awaited multilateral and bilateral development reviews, and Colombia’s post-peace deal plans look to get back on track. This week in development news.
The U.K. Department for International Development released its first Multilateral Aid Review and Bilateral Development Review since 2011 on Thursday, after a year-long delay. The MAR issued some stinging critiques for organizations like UNESCO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Caribbean Development Bank, but also chastised the multilateral development community as a whole for poor accountability, redundancy and, in the case of the U.N. system in particular, failure to play well together. DfID, the £13 billion government agency, which delivers about 40 percent of its aid through multilateral institutions, also outlined a new results-based payment strategy for its multilateral partners in which up to 30 percent of funding will be determined by performance and paid out only after a project demonstrates results.
The Bilateral Development Review offered less intrigue, but consolidated many of DfID’s recent aid priority shifts. It brought together its pledge to spend 30 percent of aid in fragile states, end general budget support in bilateral spending in favor of earmarked contributions, and budget shifts to follow through on its pledge from April’s Syria Donor Conference to spend an additional £1.2 billion in the region. Devex will report later this week on DfID’s proposal to increase the budget of its development finance institution, the CDC, by more than £4 billion, a 75 percent boost.
About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
