In 2015 alone, donor governments around the world spent an estimated US$ 55 billion – or more than 44 per cent of Real Official Development Assistance (ODA) – on the procurement of goods and services. 

Eurodad welcomes the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) actions to open up debate on blended finance and the water sector. 

Tied aid is currently used to buy goods or services from the country providing the ODA. In other words, it puts the commercial objectives of companies in donor countries ahead of the priorities of people in the global south.

This is a background paper authored by Jesse Griffiths, Director of Eurodad, on the occasion of the UNCTAD intergovernmental expert group meeting in October 2017.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are ambitious objectives: business as usual will not deliver them.

The EU could take a generation to meet the 0.7%ODA/GNI target at the current rate of growth, reveals the CONCORD AidWatch Report 2017. While 2016 saw a substantial increase of 27% in development spending, there has also been a relatively dramatic increase in reporting of inflated aid, such as in-donor costs or debt relief.

Unravelling Tied Aid. Why aid must never be tied to donor country companies at the expense of women and men living in poverty.

The report Verdensvalg 2017 focuses on Norway's development policy. In the chapter 'Aid and Development Policy in Norway: a global analysis of the finance and economic development landscape' Jesse Griffiths writes about the key ways in which the global economic and financial system will have to be transformed if we are to achieve the SDGs, and the role Norway could play to promote change.

This report is published jointly with Oxfam International.

The 2016 report from Reality of Aid notes that despite technical cooperation being one of the most widely used forms of aid, to date it has largely been conducted in isolation from principles of democratic ownership and partnership.