For aid for trade advocates, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the third International Conference on Financing for Development is likely welcome news — it mentions trade 53 times and includes a section on the importance of trade in reducing poverty.
When many of those working on aid for trade issues gathered at the start of this month in Geneva, Switzerland, for the fifth Global Review on Aid for Trade, it was seen as a critical moment to rally people behind the issue and carry that momentum through to the summits in Addis Ababa, New York and Paris. Addis seems to have been an important next step.
“It’s important in a way go back to basics,” said Arancha Gonzalez, the executive director of the International Trade Center. “Trade is a bit forgotten in the big discussion. … What I sense is people all of a sudden realized here we have a great means of achieving this goal of eradicating poverty” in a way that is fiscally responsible and can combine traditional official development assistance with the private sector and domestic resource mobilization.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
