It is happening: The international aid architecture is changing as new donors eager to position themselves as alternative sources of development finance enter the picture. Progress in forging relationships with these new donors and maximizing their potential to influence and contribute to the development community, however, is rolling out “too slowly,” aid experts have noted.
To be sure, there are efforts to engage these new donors, particularly Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the so-called BRICS group of countries. The United States, for instance, has started staff exchanges with the Brazilian aid agency while some U.N. aid agencies are increasingly reaching out to donors such as Saudi Arabia.
But the need for deeper dialogue and better coordination between these new donors, the United Nations and members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s donors club remains, experts said.
“Not enough dialogue is going on yet,” said Claudia Meier of the Germany-based Global Public Policy Institute, according to IRIN News.
International non-governmental organizations are also slowly reaching out to these new donors, but the latter’s contributions to NGOs are still relatively small, IRIN News said. Some international NGOs did stress the importance of building relationships with new donors, including at the policy level.
“Rather than just going after money, we are trying to build real partnerships, as well as seeing how Oxfam can influence them on a policy level,” according to Suzi Faye, Oxfam International’s deputy funding director.
For these dialogues to happen and for relationships to strengthen, aid experts said emerging donors must also do their part, including by embracing international transparency standards and improving their aid systems. Brazil’s aid system, for one, is fragmented and lacks a legal framework while India’s aid motives remain largely unknown, IRIN notes.
The anti-poverty campaign group, ONE, is also urging new donors to join existing international structures and organizations for aid coordination. Karin Christiansen of Publish What You Fund argued, however, that existing coordination structures must first be reformed to welcome new members.
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