In today’s tight and uncertain fiscal climate, donor countries are in constant pursuit of new strategies and viable partners that can help maximize each aid dollar they invest in developing countries. The private sector has been the answer in some cases, approaching development challenges in emerging markets differently and opening up to public sector aid donors to coordinate development investments.
Donor countries are restructuring their aid programs to capitalize, in part, on these new realities and alignments. In 2013, Canada and Australia folded their aid agencies into their country’s foreign affairs and trade ministry. While it remains to be seen exactly how both donor countries will integrate aid, diplomacy and trade, and the impact it will have on developing countries, there are signs that Canada and Australia are testing new avenues at the intersection of development and commerce, and one of those avenues is leading to enhanced public-private partnership in the extractive sector.
“Sustainable private sector growth and poverty reduction are directly linked,” said Christian Paradis, Canada’s minister for international development during the World Economic Forum on extractives and sustainable growth on March 1, 2014. “It is nearly impossible to have one without the other.”