MDGs and new aid-effectiveness targets are an opprtunity for donors to explain what they do before growing scepticism erodes taxpayer support for aid.

Donors, aid agencies and recipient governments are having a hard time implementing their promises on aid. Options based on a better understanding of their diverse priorities would help make the aid system more effective. Policy makers pursuing...

The financing of health care is a major challenge for developing countries, especially since deficiencies in national health systems specifically harm the poor. Innovative financing mechanisms, such as private health insurance, offer benefits and...

International development assistance from richer to poorer (“developing”) economies accounts for major flows of capital, human resources and technical assistance. While the net direction of these flows remains a topic of hot debate, there have been...

The Centre has highlighted in particular four areas where OECD countries can make a difference: maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment with affordable interest rates; helping to mitigate risks; enhancing trade opportunities through improving...

Access to energy is essential for economic, social and political development. Despite its enormous potential in fossil and renewable energy sources, Africa suffers from major energy deficits. The continent’s resources are underexploited or exported...

Limited access to finance is a major obstacle to development of SMEs in Africa as their inherent higher perceived risk makes financial institutions reluctant to lend to them and adequate financial instruments lack.

Against a backdrop of sustained global growth and high commodity prices, Africa has experienced its best economic performance in many years. While recent economic performance is not merely driven by favourable external factors, African economies...

Decentralisation has become a key issue in development policy in the past two decades. Whereas the advantages and risks of transferring power and resources to local tiers of government have been debated for quite some time, it is only very recently...

The East Asian development experience is still not well understood – especially the region’s clustered, sequential development process and neighbourhood effects linking economies at different levels of industrial development. Until now, the...

The quality of local corporate governance is critically important for the success of long-tem development efforts throughout the developing world today.

Citizens in OECD countries quite unambiguously support more solidarity and justice at the international level; however, despite the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their governments in 2000, they remain insufficiently informed...

The inaugural Policy Insight, "Towards an East Asian Free Trade Area", by Shujiro Urata, looks at the progress towards and consequences of an East Asian FTA, not only for the region itself, but also the world economy and for non members of the FTA....