Context

Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) is a mechanism by which government aid promotes the economic development and welfare of developing countries.

ODA today is under pressure to change, increasingly tied with foreign policy goals, and delivered through market logic, impact investing and blended finance.

Such changes follow a global transition towards a post-aid word, where ODA is less central in global development and consensus for non-partisan redistribution on moral grounds seems out of touch amongst increasingly fragmented and transactional global relations

This site & the Principles

As academics, we have a role in not accepting the current direction of travel but to critique and inform a better direction and mode of travel. Amongst this mixed-message noise of these value shifts, we seek to offer clarity on what we, as development researchers, believe are the principles that should guide ODA values, framing and delivery.

We suggest nine guiding principles for ODA design and delivery, which we separate across pillars of ethics, priorities, relations and modalities. We hope by doing so that we can encourage debate and consensus across development actors of what values ODA should champion.

We present these ODA principles for wider academic debate.

This website exists as space where the ODA principles can continue to be updated, and curated with literature trialling and critiquing the ODA principles.