Foreign Aid

The Asia Foundation, in partnership with the Development Policy Centre at Australian National University, will host the 2019 Australasian Aid Conference February 19-20 at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy in Canberra. The keynote address will be delivered by former president of the African Development Bank and Rwanda’s Minister of Finance, Dr…. Read more

Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, kicked off this year’s Australasian Aid Conference on February 15 and 16 with a reminder of the pressures facing international development today, and that “like other strands of globalization, our international aid sector must step up and explain—and re-explain, in clear and effective terms, why it is in… Read more

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have long played a crucial role in development cooperation, both in delivery of services and in policy advocacy. According to the OECD DAC, in 2013, DAC members allocated $19.6 billion in official development assistance (ODA) to NGOs. The majority of this (almost $13 billion) was channeled through NGOs based in… Read more

In March, The Asia Foundation’s director of International Development Cooperation program, Anthea Mulakala, joined more than 500 renowned scholars and experts from around the world for an international conference on South-South Cooperation (SSC) in New Delhi. In Asia editor Alma Freeman caught up with Mulakala to discuss how SSC is changi… Read more

The newly created Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) officially opened at a ceremony in Beijing on January 16. In Asia editor Alma Freeman spoke with The Asia Foundation’s International Development Cooperation program director, Anthea Mulakala, to find out what makes the bank unique, implications for development approaches, and how the bank could address Asia’s infrastructure deficit.

It’s not often that Canberra can be described as an international crossroads. But on February 10-11 it will be a hotbed of discussion when researchers and practitioners from across Asia, the Pacific, and beyond converge on The Australian National University…

On Monday, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit South Asia, its epicenter in northeastern Afghanistan, devastating many areas, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Just six months ago, on April 25, in similarly difficult and remote terrain, a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal.

Where governments do not function well, growth and sustainable development are rare, and destructive, violent conflicts are more likely. Working in such fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCASs) – common across Asia and the Pacific – requires development agencies, including ADB, to do business differently.

South Korea, a once-impoverished and war-torn nation that has grown to become an economic powerhouse and a provider of international assistance, is one of Asia’s great success stories, and The Asia Foundation has been a partner in that remarkable transformation since 1954.

Two reports with ungainly titles and ostensibly nothing to do with each other were released by U.S. federal agencies last month. Together, these two reports should provoke a moment of reflection by anyone interested in the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Recently retired after five years at the helm of USAID, Rajiv Shah brought new energy and improved morale, and earned bipartisan Congressional support as director of the United States’ premier development agency. Shah emphasized measurement, transparency, and outcomes in development spending, and he championed the idea that development dollars should build local institutions within developing countries.

Last week, Joon-Kyung Kim, president of leading economic policy think tank, the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, visited The Asia Foundation’s headquarters in San Francisco for a signing ceremony to extend the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)…

The global development landscape has changed dramatically in the last 15 years. In 2000, bilateral Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors (UK, U.S., Japan, France) and multilateral institutions like the World Bank dominated the provision of aid. Today, the face of aid is increasingly Asian.

In October, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Jose Ramos-Horta, former president of Timor-Leste, Nobel Peace laureate, and former head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Guinea Bissau…

On Feb. 12-13, The Asia Foundation and the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University (ANU) will bring together over 200 researchers, academics, and private and government aid practitioners for the 2015 Australasian Aid Conference in Canberra. With 63 papers spread over some 20 plenary and panel sessions, session topics will in… Read more

We held our first Australasian Aid Conference a year ago. In fact, we called it a workshop, because we thought it would be a rather small affair. Instead, we got 50 papers and 250 participants, and we’re doing it again this year, from February 12-13 at Australian National University…

In Asia editor Alma Freeman sat down last month with The Asia Foundation’s new trustee, Donald Steinberg, president and CEO of World Learning, and former deputy administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, White House Deputy Press Secretary, and U.S. ambassador to Angola.

In last week’s In Asia, I examined how the rise of Asia in recent decades has been accompanied by a growth in deadly subnational conflicts (SNCs). These conflicts are occurring across the continent, including in middle-income and otherwise stable states. Democratization has not been a cure. Asia’s subnational conflicts last twice as long as those elsewhere in the world.

On July 10, 2014, China released its much-awaited white paper on foreign aid on foreign aid. In recent years, Chinese foreign aid has been a subject of scrutiny and even controversy. As the world’s fastest rising power, China has sharply expanded its foreign aid spending in both scale and scope over the last decade.

International data indicate that Myanmar’s current growth rate is about 7 percent, which by any measure should indicate progress and pride. Macroeconomic reforms have been extensive. The unrealistic legal exchange rate, which at one point was about 150 times…

Over the past two years, the Philippines has achieved the distinction of being the fastest growing of the ASEAN-6 economies with growth rates of 6.8 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2013. The official poverty rate in the Philippines was 27.9 percent in 2012 and 28.8 percent in 2006; levels which were interpreted this way…

It is perhaps unusual for survey research to provoke demonstrations denouncing the results, but that is precisely what happened last month when Social Weather Stations issued a survey release showing that victims of Typhoon Haiyan, “Yolanda” in the Philippines…