The second problem with aid

Nikolai Hegertun writes that the biggest problem with foreign aid is not priorities, efficiency, or results, but that the ideological and political foundation is crumbling. He is right that this is the result of major global trends, but he downplays the responsibility of Norwegian politicians. Politicians have diluted foreign aid, thereby making it more vulnerable to criticism and dissatisfaction.

Foreign aid means too many different things

When people hear "foreign aid," they think of poverty reduction and emergency relief. Yet, Norwegian aid is increasingly being used for things that do not have this as their purpose. Since 2022, the share allocated to development, poverty reduction, and humanitarian efforts has fallen from 65 to 53 percent.

Hegertun describes well how fragmentation follows from the fact that problems have become cross-sectoral. Nevertheless, how we face such a world is well within our control. The answer has long been to try to solve everything within the framework of foreign aid. Today, foreign aid includes vaccines and schooling, but also cleaning plastic from the ocean and providing operating support to the Ukrainian state.

When foreign aid is diluted and we cannot clearly state what we have received for the money, it becomes difficult to defend.

A budget that makes sense

In Langsikt's input to Project Turning Point we propose, like several others, to divide the aid budget by purpose: 0.7 percent of GNI for poverty-focused aid, and a minimum of 0.3 percent for global public goods with development relevance. This way, aid is reoriented toward its original purpose, while global challenges that particularly affect the poorest receive their own funding.

The next step is to concentrate aid on the best measures. The emphasis should be on what buys the most poverty reduction and saves the most lives per krone. This will involve a number of major changes to the budget. One move is both simple and significant: to provide more through the World Bank's fund for the poorest countries (IDA), from less than 3 percent today to 15 percent by 2030. Every krone goes a long way there, and the results are well-documented.

In addition, we must support measures that attempt to strengthen systems in countries where they are weak. The impact of such measures is harder to measure, but we must still try. The added value of system support must be made plausible through research and evidence from evaluations, for example, increased service delivery, self-financing, and resilience in the face of crises.

Better aid and better explanations

Foreign aid is facing massive changes. Here in Norway, it is currently surviving both its own obituary and frequent proposals for cuts. If aid is to survive, it must demonstrate that it provides the best possible return on investment. The main criteria — poverty reduction and cost-effectiveness — need a benchmark against which to evaluate initiatives. Norad should be tasked with developing this. We must be able to say what the money has achieved, with conviction, and there is significant room for improvement here. Two good candidates against which other aid can be measured are IDA and cash transfers.

This way, we can ensure we have good answers when someone asks what the money went to. Aid that we can explain is aid that we can defend.