The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have lofty expectations regarding the impact of official development aid. Are these expectations valid? This paper surveys the literature on aid and growth. It finds that practically all aid studies since the late 1990s conclude that aid increases economic...

Understanding the development effects of official aid is crucial to building a better bridge between research and policy. This paper reviews the current evidence regarding the impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction, and develops a new narrative. In the light of this narrative, the paper...

This paper presents some of the evidence that underlies the recent change in perceptions on African development and we discuss some of the key challenges facing the continent going forward. It intends to generate a debate among UNDP senior managers in Sub-Saharan Africa and aims to make the...

In spite of notable progress in medicine, infant-juvenile mortality remains a major issue in developing countries. One of the main causes of this mortality, namely malnutrition, continues to be a serious problem, and its reduction remains the primary target of many health policies developed in a...

Financing and the role of aid within the water sector are poorly understood. We estimate the levels of spending achieved in developing countries during the Millennium Development Goals period to be US$80 billion per year. Aid represented a substantial proportion of total sector financing in...

Unlike Mexico as a whole, the south (that is, the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca) may well not reach many of the MDGs. The objective of this paper is to document this assertion and discuss some of the constraints toward reaching the MDGs, as well as some initiatives recently taken to...

The international community has made a commitment that aims to halve, by 2015, the number of people without access to safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation systems. In Togo, the government struggles to provide the population with access to water and sanitation, despite a proactive policy....

Financing and the role of aid within the water sector are poorly understood. We estimate the levels of spending achieved in developing countries during the Millennium Development Goals period to be US$80 billion per year. Aid represented a substantial proportion of total sector financing in...

Since 2000, child mortality has dramatically decreased in Africa. Based on an econometrical analysis over 45 sub-Saharan African countries, this paper analyses the determinants of such evolution, and shows that urbanization, sanitation improvement and GDP growth per capita played a critical role...