ZITF 2015 BUSINESS FORUM: KICKS OFF ON GOOD NOTE

By Ben Kangwa

The 2015 Zambia International Trade Fair was held in Ndola between the 1^st to the 7^th of July, 2015. The theme for the 51^st Fair was “Prosperity through Business Reforms and Linkages”. Sixteen foreign countries had confirmed their participation in the show. The countries included China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Japan, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The Trade Fair was officiated by President of the Republic of Zambia, His Excellency Edgar C. Lungu and his Kenyan counterpart His Excellency, President Uhuru Kenyatta on 4^th July, 2015.

On the sidelines, the Zambia International Trade Fair partnered with the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) to host the second Business Forum, the first of which was held in 2014. The Forum was highly interactive and dynamic whose plenary sessions were enriched with presentations, inputs from government, private sector and expert perspectives.

 The Forum brought together policy makers, business Chief Executive Officers, diplomats and participants from Non-Governmental Organizations to interact and debate issues and in so doing create a business networking environment. Topics and discussions anchored by this writer included marketing, banking, business, investment, infrastructure, energy and education. Segments of discussion were sponsored and supported by Stanbic Bank, the Energy Regulation Board and the Zambia State Insurance Corporation and other Cooperating partners.

 At a panel discussion session themed “National Prosperity Through a Transformed Public Private Relationship: Moving Zambia Forward”, on 2^nd July, 2015, at which Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry, Margaret Mwanakatwe officiated, she  said, “This Forum provides me and colleagues from Government with an opportunity to interact and exchange views with you the business community at large. You will agree with me that it is through such valuable platforms that networks are created among the business community, regulators and service providers.”

She told her audience that the Government was making strides in providing an enabling business environment and that it had embarked on programmes aimed at reducing the costs of doing business through the implementation of various business reforms. Notable was the “Industrialization and Job Creation Strategy” which, she said, “is aimed at transforming the industrial sector and would create more than one million formal jobs in the next five years. Further, she revealed that her Ministry was in the process of reviewing the Commercial, Trade and Industrial Policy in order to come up with two separate policy documents namely the Industrial Policy and the Commercial and Trade Policy in line with international best practices that will ensure that industry and trade issues are comprehensively addressed.

“In this regard, my Ministry has since developed a zero draft Industrial Policy that has since been subjected to stakeholder consultation before finalization. The review of the Trade Policy is ongoing and will be completed soon,” she added.

Indeed, the conference also provided a platform for experience sharing by international speakers such as Professor Kenneth Mwenda who is Program Manager and Executive Head of the Voice Secondment Program at the World Bank in Washington DC. In his paper “Public-Private Partnerships: The Case Of Zambia”, Professor Mwenda observed that PPPs are typically medium to long term arrangements between the public and private sectors whereby some of the service obligations of the public sector are provided by the private sector, with clear agreement on shared objectives for delivery of public infrastructure or public services.

He further observed that since the PPP Act of 2009 was enacted, according to the Zambia Development Agency on its website dated January 2014, “there has only been one PPP Agreement signed between Government and the private sector.” And that the agreement was for the Redevelopment of Long Acres Lodge into a Five-Star Hotel, a shopping Mall, Conference centre, Office Complex and related infrastructure. The agreement was signed with Thuthuka Group International of South Africa.

In his presentation, Professor Mwenda also said although the political leadership in Zambia had made pronouncements and expressed desire and optimism to use the PPP arrangement to deliver public infrastructure and services, the country required political champions to drive the PPP agenda.

The Professor also gave examples of PPPs in Zambia in the Health Sector citing the Ultra-modern Center of Excellency Hospital in Lusaka and the three Diagnostic Health Facilities in Lusaka, Livingstone and on the Copperbelt.

The Transport Sector included the E-Governance programme, the Chingola-Solwezi-Lumwana-Jimbe Railway line, the Kazungula-Livingstone railway spur, the Nseluka-Mpulungu railway spur and the Tazara line in Chipata. Others mentioned were the Solwezi via Kasempa-Kaoma-Mongu to Katima Mulilo road, Njanji commuter, operation of train services between Chipata and Mchinji and the Kafue Lions Den.

In the Agriculture Sector, he mentioned the development of Kalumwanga Farming Block as well as the development of the Luena Farming Block while in the Energy Sector was the development of Kabompo mini-hydro, Kalungwishi and Mombututu mini-hydros.

From his perspective, the Director in charge of PPP at the Zambia Development Agency, Henry Sakala  first gave a historical background of the previous PPPs as in Zambia Railways which was concessioned to Railway Systems of Zambia, the Mpulungu Harbour which was concessioned to Agro-Fuel and the Lubarma Market which was concession by the Lusaka City Council. He also informed the audience that the current PPP Projects include the Itezhi Tezhi Hydro Power between Tata and Zesco which is expected to produce 120 MW of power, the Kafue Gorge Lower being promoted by Zesco and is expected to produce 750 MW of power. Other projects include Major Trunk Roads, for instance Livingstone-Kafue, the Chirundu-Kafue-Lusaka Road and the Lusaka Ndola road which have been advertised by the Road Development Agency (RDA) to make dual carriage ways and then be tolled. He also mentioned that the Zambia International trade Fair would be turned into an ultra- modern facility to allow continuous year round activities.

During the question and answer segment  as to what the benefits of Public Private Partnerships are in infrastructure development, the PPP Director said PPPs could help create more jobs in infrastructure and related services, adding, “Infrastructure investments has the potential to create more jobs quickly while providing a foundation for future economic growth and employment. He further said PPPs could also help develop local private sector capabilities through joint ownership and that they could create  sub-contracting opportunities for local firms in areas such as civil works. The Stanbic Bank CEO Charles Mudiwa explained all about Risk Management Process in banking and how the economic climate and markets can be affected by exchange rates and interest rates. He mentioned that banks such as Stanbic Bank were willing to engage with business partners where possible.

As for Rob Stokes, a leading South African entrepreneur who is a founder and group Chief Executive Officer of Quirk SA who was also a speaker on a topic specifically titled “Marketing”, he confidently spoke about the role of Digital Marketing Strategy, Market Research, Content Market Strategy, Social Media, On-line Advertising in promoting business. Earlier, he gave a background of how he started his business into one of the largest Marketing Services Groups on the African continent.

Much later, Marius Krige, a South African expert involved with Information Technology and Finance Services for more than 20 years, also gave a talk  entitled “Harnessing the changes in the Financial Services: the Good, the Great and the Ugly of Technology Integration.” He focused on the impact and role of IT in shaping and changing various payment strategies and products.

On the panel was the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) Director of Technology and Engineering Patrick Mutimushi, Fabian Hara Regional Manager at the Bank of Zambia based in Ndola and Leonard Mwanza from the Bankers Association of Zambia. Following this discussion was yet a presentation by the Bank of Zambia Deputy Governor in charge of Operations Dr. Bwalya Ngándu on the topic “Are Banks Meeting the needs of Corporate Zambia?” The two discussions were timely and drew a lot of questions from the audience during the question and answer segments.

The presentations were later followed by an interesting discussion on Energy. The title was, “Transforming the Energy Sector”. In his submission, Zesco Senior Manager- Patrick Mwila submitted that the current load shedding in the country was as a result of the lower water levels at the Kariba Dam and Itezhi- Tezhi that were affecting power generation.

Energy expert Andrew Kamanga on the same discussion empathized with Zesco on the water level situation but stated that it was time to look at non-hydro- power investments to enhance the security supply of power that would enable the country have a fall- back position. He said renewable energy would address some of the energy challenges the country was facing.

“With only three percent of the rural population and less than half of the urban population connected to the national power grid, we are seriously facing enormous energy challenges as a country that are in turn making us back track in development, “he said.

Director Economic Regulation at the Energy Regulation Board Alfred Mwila who first gave an overview of the Energy Regulation in Africa, in the SADC Region and finally in Zambia. He also noted that Zambia and neighbouring countries had for some time been facing challenges in meeting energy requirements thereby implementing load shedding.

The Business Forum also hosted discussions on the “Role of Education in Economic Development” whose session was addressed by the Permanent Secretary Education, Science, Technology Vocational Training and Early Education, Dr. Patrick Nkanza. The discussants included Zambia Chamber of Mines Industry Training Manager, Francis Mulimbika, Zambia Qualifications Authority (ZQA) Chief Executive Officer, Miriam Chiyaba, Director General of the Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA), David Chakonta and Higher Education Authoritry (HEA) Interim Director General, Emmanuel Lutelo.

All said and done, the ZITF Business Forum was quite informative and educative as it provided a platform for policy makers, business executives, academicians, NGOs and diplomats to share ideas and experiences in a manner that encouraged networking. As Patrick Chisanga,the Board Member of the ZITF as well as Director-General of the Zambia Development Agency put it, “The Forum has been successful and it is our intention to make it much better next year.”

The writer is a Broadcast Journalist/Media Consultant

WILL AID FOR TRADE MOMENTUM CONTINUE AFTER GLOBAL REVIEW?

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.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, World Trade Organization

Director-General Roberto Azevêdo and Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development Secretary-General Angel Gurría at day

one of the fifth Global Review of Aid for Trade held from

June 30 to July 2 in Geneva, Switzerland.

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.

When about 1,000 government, donor, NGO, private sector and other representatives gathered in Geneva for the Global Review, the goal was not to create an outcome document but rather to share best practices and lessons learned to tackle the challenge of trade barriers and find ways to unleash some of that income. It was also set to serve as something of a rallying moment and reactions to the events seem to be mostly positive.

“Clearly, to travel along the path of inclusive, sustainable growth, we must do more to bring down high and excessive trade costs,” World Trade Organization Director-General Roberto Azevedo said.

And why are trade costs important?

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that trade costs are up to 17.5 percent higher due to poor or inadequate border procedures that restrict trade. According to OECD estimates, even a 1 percent reduction in global trade costs would increase worldwide income by more than $40 billion, most of which would go to developing countries.

Outcomes

While the goal wasn’t a negotiated document, the Global Review did play host to several announcements and donor commitments.

Australia released its newest aid for trade strategy, which included a commitment to spend 20 percent of its aid budget over the next five years on aid for trade.

The U.S. Agency of International Development and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative meanwhile announced that it would help form the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation — an international public-private sector coalition designed to streamline border management in developing countries as part of the implementation of the new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement. Concluded at the ninth WTO ministerial conference in Bali, the TFA was amended late last year to allow members to “formally accept” the agreement through domestic legislative processes.

The alliance will formally launch in December at the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

The United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, UPS, Samsung and the Borderless Alliance have all signed on, and the International Chamber of Commerce, the World Economic Forum and theCenter for International Private Enterprise will host the alliance in its early stages.

“WTO member governments cannot implement the TFA alone,” USAID Associate Administrator Eric Postel said in a statement. “They need to forge new approaches to fully deliver on the vast potential of streamlining border management. One critical new approach to this is partnering with the private sector.”

The alliance will create a framework for international and local businesses, especially small and midsize businesses, to partner with government to create and implement trade facilitation reforms.

The WTO launched a new phase of the Enhanced Integrated Framework, with help from a donation from Norway, that will allow the body to continue to support the least-developed countries. A pledging conference for the EIF will be held in Nairobi at the start of the ministerial.

The bolstering of the EIF is important because there has been “huge” interest from LDCs to invest more into trade capacity building and develop their trade potential, Gonzalez said. When the first Global Review was held, LDCs were much less aware about the role of using trade as a tool to tackle poverty than they are today.

In following the discussions, several key themes emerged — a greater focus than ever before on women’s economic empowerment and reducing trade barriers for women, and as Gonzalez indicated, an emphasis on improving trade in the least-developed countries.

The conference “was granular, which is good because we need to make sure the palette of options ahead of policymakers and companies is varied,” Gonzalez said.

Work ahead

Trade has often been a contentious issue for the development community in the past, especially when it comes to dedicating public monies to what some have said is the purview of the private sector. But it seems a shift in attitudes is underway, with trade likely to play a key role in the post-2015 agenda planning and implementation.

However, there is still a lot of work to do not only to change attitudes and prove the worth of aid investments in trade, but also to ensure implementation of the policies on a local and global level.

In his remarks at the Global Review, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said promoting freer and more inclusive trade is a critical part of the bank’s plan to end extreme poverty, a policy perspective that marks a personal shift for him.

“I say this knowing that, for some, the argument that trade helps the poor has been controversial,” he said. “Yet our best evidence suggests that, when countries are effectively integrated into regional and global markets, their poorest citizens can reap substantial benefits.”

The two critical objectives that must be included to ensure that the poor benefit are expanding opportunities for low- and middle-income countries to participate and reducing trade costs. Among the lessons the community has learned is that trade benefits countries when it creates ways for their poorest citizens to connect to global markets.

It’s not only about global markets — regional markets can present significant opportunities. But nontariff barriers often slow business or make trade prohibitively expensive for small enterprises.

The Borderless Alliance, which works to increase trade across West Africa by harmonizing trade rules, reducing delays and lowering costs of doing business across the region, is working to tackle nontariff barriers and encourage implementation of existing policies.

Its co-founder and re-elected president, Ziad Hamoui, said that while economic communities in West Africa often have a set of common policies and directives, these aren’t implemented in practice.

The Borderless Alliance has found that bringing together businesses and government representatives helps push progress forward. It also runs initiatives to reduce nontariff barriers, including border information centers and tariff barrier-reporting websites. Recently, it has been working on professionalizing the trucking industry, which Hamoui said should reduce some of the existing challenges as well.

A lot of the future investment, policy changes and government commitments hinge on the implementation of the TFA at the December ministerial. Two-thirds of WTO members must ratify the agreement for it to go into force, and while efforts are underway, it appears too early to know if the target will be met.

The ITC is supporting 40 countries that have requested help to move forward with ratification to implement the agreement.

“Aid for trade is delivering, but as with any such initiative, we need to remain flexible and open-minded about how it can do more, and what the future priorities should be,” WTO’s Azevedo said in a statement at the Global Review.

THE FUTURE OF DEVELOPMENT FINANCE: LIVE FROM ADDIS

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Global Civil Society

Forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This week, the United Nations is holding the third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. One of the major development conferences this year, Addis will likely see new initiatives, commitments and partnerships all geared toward its overarching goal: finance the sustainable development goals.

Devex is on the ground at the headquarters of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, talking to high-level representatives from donor agencies, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. We’ll provide continuing updates on the buzz from the weeklong meetings on this running blog, so check back regularly.

What we know so far:

● The Addis Tax Initiative is launched to support domestic resource mobilization.

● The ONE Campaign is launching data.org.

● The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commits to creating a Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network, or CHAMPS, as well as building a Global Health Analytics Platform.

● The European Union joins Power Africa, and pledges to allocate 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in grants from the 2014-2020 budget to support power generation and electricity access across sub-Saharan Africa.

● The Islamic Development Bank has increased funding for activities related to the SDGs to $150 billion in the next 15 years, almost double the amount it spent for the MDGs.

● The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data will be launched, and the United States will be a founding member.

● The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and U.N. Development Program launched a new initiative that will provide tax audit assistance to developing countries.

● The World Bank and International Monetary Fund announced a joint initiative aimed at strengthening tax systems in developing countries. Civil society organizations meanwhile are wary that the creation of an intergovernmental regulatory body on taxes may not materialize.

● Major international financial institutions announced plans to make $400 billion available in the next three years to finance sustainable development goals.

● The Gates Foundation committed $75 million to the World Bank-managed Global Financing Facility Trust Fund to tackle maternal and child health. This and additional commitments by other bilateral donors bring total mobilized resources for the cause under GFF to $12 billion.

● Canada invests $40 million to jump-start a new partnership between GFF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which aims to mobilize private sector resources for maternal, newborn and child health.

Updates

10:38 p.m., July 15

An agreement has been reached

After a lengthy debate into the night an agreement has been reached at the third International Conference on Financing for Development. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda was agreed to by the 193 U.N. member states in attendance.

The United Nations called the agreement a “milestone in forging an enhanced global partnership” in a statement, but civil society didn’t quite see it that way.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that the agreement is a critical step forward.

“The results here in Addis Ababa give us the foundation of a revitalized global partnership for sustainable development that will leave no one behind,” he said in the statement.

Members of civil society are disagreeing with that assessment.

The Action Agenda contains more than 100 concrete measures and addresses multiple sources of finance and covers a range of issues, including technology, science, innovation, trade and capacity building.

Among the key issues highlighted in the document are commitments about domestic resource mobilization and aligning private investment with sustainable development in part by setting the right incentives.

But what’s missing — and what had stalled negotiations — is the creation of a U.N. global tax body. As a result, the OECD will continue to be the intergovernmental body that adopts global tax standards.

Civil society organizations, which were pushing for the tax body, are disappointed in the outcome.

“The decision is an appalling failure and a great blow to the fight against poverty and injustice,”ActionAid’s international tax power campaign manager Martin Hojsik said in a statement. “It means that developing countries, which are losing billions of dollars a year to tax dodging, are not being given an equal say in fixing unjust global tax rules.”

Civil society representatives criticized the deal as the powerful developed countries not wanting to cede power to other countries.

“Rich countries decided to maintain a system where money goes from south to north, but the rules follow the opposite route,” said Pooja Rangaprasad of the Financial Transparency Coalition.

Civil society also expressed concerns that the negotiations were not conducted in good faith and didn’t give developing countries a true voice, which sets a bad tone for the post-2015 and climate negotiations.

devex

HUMANITARIAN AND DEVELOPMENT AID: IT'S COMPLICATED

The humanitarian and development communities have long been the “frenemies” of international aid. But with a growing strain on resources, is it time to break down the walls between them and forge a stronger, more willing partnership?

Camps, such as this one in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo,

have traditionally been viewed as a humanitarian concern, but displacement

also has a big impact on a country's development, especially in the case of

protracted crises.

Whole departments, funding streams and staff are locked into these very separate classifications. Although development programmes complement – and can even reduce the need for – emergency aid response, there is little actual crossover between the two.

A paper produced for the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank in December last year observed that while humanitarian assistance has kept many people alive, it has also left large numbers stuck in aid dependency.

Development agencies, on the other hand, have not done enough to “focus on… the most vulnerable people in fragile states and protracted crises,” the report noted.

The resilience agenda – a concept that has emerged in recent years to bridge the gap – has broken down some of the barriers between the two communities.

But, the report said, there is still “a tendency for individual donors and agencies pursuing their own agendas, rather than collective action and alignment behind a common analysis, vision and plan of action.” 

So where is the middle ground?

This question is back on the agenda as governments, policymakers and aid organisations gather in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa this week to discuss how to pay for the soon-to-be-ratified post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The third UN Financing for Development (FFD3) summit will focus on ways to secure funding from new types of actors, especially in the private sector, as well as on improved tax collection, multilateral development banks in emerging markets, and new mechanisms such as risk financing.

Similar discussions about how to get more money are going on among humanitarians in the run-up to next year’s World Humanitarian Summit (WHS).

And yet they are happening largely in parallel to the FFD3 debate, despite obvious opportunities for joined-up approaches.

Sandra Aviles, a senior advisor on programme development and humanitarian Affairs at the FAO, hoped that humanitarians paid attention to what was going on in Addis Ababa this week but wasn’t confident they would.

“There is still this notion that there are two pots of money; that development is going to do this and humanitarians are going to do that,” Aviles, who is also part of the Future Humanitarian Financing (FHF) initiative, which is looking at new approaches for emergency aid funding, told IRIN.

“Unfortunately, humanitarians were not collectively engaged with Sendai [the UN Disaster Risk Reduction conference held in March], or with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and they have not collectively engaged with Addis.”

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah has a foot in both camps through his role as secretary general of global civil society network CIVICUS and as a member of the newly formed UN high-level panel on humanitarian financing.

“Much more needs to be done to bring the development and humanitarian actors together to work more efficiently,” he said. “Whether that’s in thinking about how we can use common data platforms, all the way to that handshake between humanitarian relief and development action.

“Sometimes sitting in discussions about humanitarian financing, it does feel like I am learning about a totally different community. There is a different language and very different approach.”

Intimately connected

In an interview with IRIN, Bertrand Badré, managing director and chief financial officer (CFO) of the World Bank Group – regarded as a member of the “development” camp – outlined why he believes the two sectors are “intimately connected” and why they should be working together, especially towards more shared financing solutions.

“Humanitarian crises are really shocks, whether they are connected to war or to natural disasters. At the World Bank, we are not involved directly in humanitarian activities, such as managing refugee camps, but our job is to improve the readiness and capacity of a country to face shocks,” he explained.

“You can’t stop an earthquake from happening, but what is in our power is to make sure the affected country is more prepared to deal with the consequences better and faster and at a lower cost.”

Displacement – previously seen as solely an emergency aid problem – is another area where the World Bank, and other development actors, are starting to become more engaged, particularly around notions of livelihoods, economic integration and resilience-building.

In Jordan and Lebanon, the bank is supporting the governments to manage the economic impact of hosting millions of Syrian refugees, and under the lender’s Global Program on Forced Displacement it has also worked with the authorities in Azerbaijan and Colombia.

“Development actors are slowly starting to realise that protracted displacement has an impact on development,” explained Manisha Thomas, head of the secretariat of the Geneva-based Solutions Alliance, formed last year to seek out partnership responses to protracted displacement.

“People have woken up to the fact that if you want to reduce poverty, you need to take displacement into consideration,” she added. “The whole theme of the SDGs is ‘leave no-one behind’, and that has to include displaced populations as well.”

Complementarity

Rachel Scott, team leader of the conflict, fragility and resilience development co-operation directorate at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), agreed that a “much more complementary approach” was required, particularly in the case of displacement.

“Changes are needed on both sides. We have to look more holistically at our response. Humanitarians shouldn’t be only analysing the basic physical needs of human beings,” she said, but also considering well-being factors such as economic needs and social cohesion.

Development actors, meanwhile, should be “looking at national policies such as the right to work, and taking the burden away from the economy, and finding long-term solutions for displacement by changing government policies, and eventually reducing case-loads.”

Debate over the parameters of the two sectors is nothing new, far from it.

It’s had various labels, including the “relief to development continuum” or Linking Relief Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD). Since the 1990s there has been an extensive body of literature on why the two sectors should – but in many cases have failed to - work better together.

“The humanitarian/development discussion has been on the table for longer than I can remember,” said Thomas, of Solutions Alliance.

 “Although there is definitely a difference in cultures in how humanitarians and development actors work, I don’t sense a huge amount of resistance about doing more together, I think it’s more about how to figure out how to make this work in practice.”

Barriers

One major barrier to more joined-up thinking is that humanitarians subscribe to four defined humanitarian principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.

Development funding is meanwhile governed by accords, such as the 2005 Paris Declaration, which stipulates aid should go to governments in terms of developing capacity and helping build institutions.

Lydia Poole, an independent aid policy consultant, told IRIN this can sometimes be “extremely difficult” for humanitarian actors, who in certain situations, particularly conflicts, “may have a difficult relationship with the state” and so feel joint programming wouldn’t work.

“Humanitarian funding is a very precious resource that enables you to operate in a principled manner in highly contested settings, so I don't think we should be diluting that and spreading it too thin across this ever-growing scope of programming ambition.”

FundingThat the funding streams – for the above reasons, as well as administrative and bureaucratic issues – have largely been kept separate is another explanation for the cultural divide between the two sides and their staff.

Necessity is the mother of invention; funding – or rather the lack of it – may also end up bringing the development and humanitarian worlds closer together.

Simultaneous protracted conflicts such Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan, on top of natural disasters like the earthquake in Nepal, have left emergency aid organisations scraping around for cash.

“The financing discussion is definitely one that is driving this move to bring development actors into a displacement response much earlier, and I think it makes sense,” said Thomas, pointing to the example of investing in the water systems of a refugee hosting country rather than continuing to pay out to fix temporary latrines.

But, she added, “It’s important that this doesn’t become only about money and that we don’t lose sight of the end goal of humanitarian and development actors working together to bring their collective strengths to the table in order to be able to deliver better solutions to those in need.”

Sriskandarajah, who is in Addis Ababa this week to chair an event about humanitarian funding, agreed that financing could lead to better cooperation.

“Financing is a great vehicle for bringing the two sides together,” he said. “Both sectors are seeking out new partners and new types of financing, and these new models are not going to worry about our sectors and sub-sectors. They are just going to want to get the job done.”

Badré, of the World Bank, told IRIN: “We have to stop finding opposition to one another, it doesn’t make any sense.

“We are not in competition with humanitarians, we are here to complement and support their actions. Everybody is in their own silo, but we have to really connect and agree, and accept, that more and more we can work together.”

IRIN

WHERE DO YOU RANK ON SAVING CHILDREN'S LIVES?

A doctor examines an infant at a hospital for women and children

in Ivory Coast.

Ray Chambers, U.N. special envoy for financing the health Millennium Development Goals, knows something about return on investment.

In 1981 his private equity firm acquired an $80 million greeting card company with only about $1 million in upfront capital, a ground-breaking “leveraged investment.” But Chambers also knows investors demand a clear picture of what it is they’re buying, before they are willing to front the cash.

As the third International Conference on Financing for Development kicks off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Chambers is trying to make that picture clearer for one of development’s central goals: saving children’s lives.

Chambers, who co-founded the health advocacy organization Malaria No More, published this week in the Lancet a proposal to create a new Lives Saved Scorecard, which draws a first-of-its-kind connection between overall dollars invested in child health and the number of child deaths those investments have averted over the past decade and a half. The “resources-to-lives-saved ratio,” determined in collaboration with Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, allows for the kind of wide angle reflection on big outcomes that is often hard to come by in the global health field.

According to the scorecard data, child health investments by donors and governments saved 34 million lives between 2000 and 2013. Of the 34 million, international donors saved 14 million, while national government investments saved 20 million. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, saved roughly 2.2 million lives, according to the scorecard, while U.S. bilateral assistance saved 1.7 million and the World Bank, 1.9 million.

In low-income countries, it costs $4,205 to save a child’s life. In lower-middle-income countries, it costs $6,496.

The figures emerge from a fairly simple comparison of variables: dollars spent on child health differentiated by spending channel, and year-to-year child mortality rates.

When it comes to drawing broad conclusions about the impact of global health dollars, the perfect measurement — or fear of the imperfect measurement — has often been the enemy of the good enough. Chambers’ team is not blind to the risk they’ve taken in publishing numbers that are, by their own admission, far from perfect and based on a set of big assumptions. Chief among them is that every dollar spent on health interventions is equally effective.

But they are also unwilling to accept the alternative conclusion — that it’s not possible to draw global-scale connections between money spent and outcomes achieved.

“It puts us as a global health community at risk if we aren’t able to answer these relatively simple questions,” Protik Basu, CEO at the office of the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy, told Devex. “It exposes us to having a less credible case than I think we have.”

Apart from providing a global snapshot of the relationship between resources spent on child health and trends in child mortality, proponents hope the scorecard will make clear that money committed in this area is saving lives at a rate and scale that justifies requests for additional funding.

“Ray’s original interest in this was as an advocacy tool, and I think what’s turned out is that the science supports that advocacy role,” Murray told Devex. “It would be very hard, even [for] the most sceptical person, to not equate the accelerated decline in child mortality ... as being an effect of development action.”

Apart from these “macro” conclusions — that increased spending on child health has driven a reduction in child deaths, and that low-income countries present the lowest cost per child life saved — the scorecard data points to a number of other interesting trends. In some countries, for example, increased spending on child health did not yield declines in child mortality. Those findings can serve as “flags” for health experts to investigate what might have stood between spending and desirable outcomes, Murray said.

In some instances, perhaps the resources failed to reach those most in need, and greater understanding is needed of the specific populations and locations where child health investments should gravitate. Murray and Basu hope future iterations of the scorecard will allow for that kind of granular accounting to happen, by differentiating urban versus rural health investments, for example.

According to Murray, the scorecard could also provide an opportunity to test whether claims about “allocative efficiency,” the idea that resources can be stretched with better decision-making and wiser spending, are actually coming true. Policy commitments to focus resources on the most effective interventions for children — the technologies, vaccines, drugs and programs that are likely to have the biggest impact — have generated enthusiasm about what can be done with limited resources.

“Some organizations have claimed that they’re going to improve the efficiency of their resources quite substantially by taking this into account,” Murray said. “This is something that one can also use this framework to track over time, and see if those allocative efficiency gains have actually occurred.”

The special envoy’s office met some resistance to the idea of the scorecard when initially presented to major development donors.

“The answer we got when we first started approaching this was, it’s not possible and it’s not something we should do,” Basu told Devex.

Now that the data has been compiled, analyzed and published in a “provocative” way, Basu hopes the focus will not be on picking it apart based on academic technicalities, but on how to make it better.

“Go at it, improve, change it, adapt it, fix it … but you can’t go back to the days where the answer is, well we just don’t know,” Basu said. “The only provocation I think we wouldn’t welcome would be — nothing like this should exist.”

The scorecard’s architects shy away from presenting the data as a competitive comparison — a sort of U.S. News & World Report college rankings equivalent for child health donors. Their aim instead is to show evidence that spending on child health is a good investment overall, and to provide donors with a tool that might supplement discussions about where to direct resources, and how those resources relate to big desired outcomes.

With the international community poised to commit to ending preventable child deaths by 2030 just one part of 17 ambitious goals, big desired outcomes are in no short supply.

DEVEX

HOW AKON LIGHTING AFRICA IS WORKING TO TACKLE ENERGY ACCESS

Senegalese-American singer Akon

Celebrities often lend their brand to a cause or undertake pet projects, but for Senegalese-American singer Akon, the issue of improving access to energy is personal and has been his main focus for the past two years.

Akon, who spent part of his childhood living in Senegal without access to electricity, launched Akon Lighting Africa, an initiative to bring solar power to the continent, about a year ago.

“There’s always been so many initiatives in Africa, so much money raised in Africa, but there’s never no results and it got to the point where you get tired of it,” he told Devex in a recent interview. “I took it more personal than anything and I wanted to be in a position to where if I move forward on something I wanted to actually see it materialize.”

The initiative primarily targets rural communities that are not connected to the grid and is working to find creative financing financing arrangements and bring costs down to make the electricity affordable

An installation of solar energy panels in Kenya. Akon Lighting Africa

is an initiative that brings solar power to the continent.

Designed to promote inclusive and sustainable growth, the initiative focuses first on providing solar power through microgrid systems to rural communities, which are often far from existing grids.

Akon and his partners didn’t come up with the business model — government-subsidized installation with commercial entities taking on the additional risk and collecting the payments — on their own. It’s a model that has been tested by the World Bank, said Samba Bathily, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Akon Lighting Africa.

In partnership with solar panel manufacturers and others, Akon Lighting Africa has secured a roughly $1 billion credit line that allows it to help broker longer-term financing for governments that may not be able to pay for a certain project in one budget cycle.

Governments use the loans to finance public utilities like street lights and to subsidize the installation of community solar kits. But costs aren’t borne by government alone — households connected to the community microgrid prepay for their electricity through a scratch card, similar to how cellphone credit is sold, until they own the the product outright.

Traditional energy sources like candles and kerosene are still cheaper, Akon Lighting Africa co-founder Thione Niang acknowledged. But the political activist and consultant said the initiative is working to reduce prices further — negotiating with suppliers, forming partnerships such as the one it has with Columbia University, and boosting economies of scale.

“The bottom line,” Niang said, “is [to] get people away from aid.”

Early progress

It’s been a busy year for Akon Lighting Africa.

Last week it announced it would give $200,000 to support the new Western African Energy Leaders Group, a platform for West African political and business leaders to work together to improve energy access. In May, it launched a solar academy to train African entrepreneurs, engineers and technicians in the field of solar energy.

Further, the initiative reached 11 countries in its first year and has provided electricity to more than a million Africans. That may seem like a large number, but with more than 600 million Africans lacking access, it’s only a small step.

That seems to be something that is often on the minds of Akon and his business partners Bathily and Niang. It is fueling their plans to expand quickly and broaden their reach to 48 African countries by 2020.

The initiative, which was in the works for at least a year before its launch, meant that Akon put music on the backburner as he focused on studying the challenges and opportunities. The result: a realization that not only is there a great need, but that the market was huge and there was limited competition, he said.

The response thus far has been positive. The initiative has received “amazing feedback” and many people want to be a part of it to understand how it was able to get things done so quickly, Akon said.

“The main answer is you have to be able to understand Africa,” he said. Spending a lot of time in Africa and involving as many Africans as possible is critical, the singer added, because it brings a greater understanding of how things work, which makes working in each particular context a smoother process.

That’s not the only thing that has helped.

Akon is quick to admit that his celebrity has helped open a lot of doors. His name, and thus stamp of approval, gave partners and governments a sense of security — it created opportunities to meet with presidents and government ministers and business owners alike, he said

What’s next

With more than a year of work behind them, the partners are stepping up on the international stage and increasingly engaging with others, including potential partners, working on sustainable energy access.

They were at the U.N. Sustainable Energy for All forum and have had conversations with many of the donors, trying to share the details of what they are doing, the importance of reaching rural populations, and what sort of innovative financing opportunities may be possible.

They’ve had positive conversations with Power Africa, Niang said, but believe that action needs to be taken to combine off-grid solutions that can create jobs, improve schools, health clinics and the economy in the near term.

Big power projects — be they new plants or dams — can take many years to get up and running, and there are questions about how much of that new generation will reach rural communities or connect new customers to the grid.

“Big infrastructure projects are good in the long term, but now we should do both,” Niang said. “Why are we going to wait to give basic energy to 60 percent of the population?”

As large-scale capacity comes online they can feed into the systems that companies and initiatives like Akon Lighting Africa are helping to build.

That all relies on proving the business model. The initiative took substantial losses on early projects, in part due to investments in training African staff to install and maintain the systems. But the partners say they are confident. They are working to make the case in part through the ecosystem fund they set up — based on a cluster of 10 countries where results are tracked — to bring private equity investors into the business, Niang said.

The Akon Lighting Africa initiative is looking to expand into 48 countries by 2020 and he plans to launch other initiatives tackling agriculture, infrastructure and education in the coming years. Akon said he recognizes that these are ambitious goals but he believes in aiming high and bringing on partners to help do the work.

“No matter who you have to bring in, regardless of politics [and] policies, we just want to be able to bring solutions to Africa without the extra red tape,” he said.

And for those concerned about his other career, Akon said he’ll continue to record and perform, because music is what enables all of this work.

DEVEX