admin January 25th, 2011
Many thanks to Toby Webb and Ethical Corporation for its support of Advance Aid over the past couple of years. And now thanks are due again as the Ethical Corporation website is going to feature a regular monthly column by Advance Aid – View from the Middle.
You can find the first column here .
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admin January 24th, 2011
We’ve taken a big step forward in the development of Advance Aid this week with the announcement of a link-up between ourselves and Independent Procurement Agency BV (IPA). IPA is a Dutch organisation that is a leading expert in procurement for aid and development projects and counts DFID and Cord Aid in Holland amongst its clients.
Their specialist knowledge and experience will add enormously to Advance Aid’s ability to deliver our mission – “To change the model for emergency relief and development in Africa to make it more effective for the recipients and to create sustainable economic and social benefits for the people of sub-Saharan Africa through job creation and enterprise development.”
admin January 22nd, 2011
Southern Africa is bracing itself for major flooding as heavy rains and some localized flooding across southern Africa from Angola to Madagascar are raising fears that the devastating floods of 2000 will be repeated.
An update produced last week by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that, “All countries in contiguous southern Africa are expected to receive normal to above-normal rainfall between January and March 2011 – northern Zimbabwe, central Zambia, southern Malawi, central Mozambique and most of Madagascar are expected to receive above-normal rainfall.”
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admin January 21st, 2011
We’ve just announced that the Anglo American Group Foundation has given Advance Aid a grant of £50,000, and that this money will go towards supporting our overall development programme.
In particular, the Foundation has agreed to back the ‘seedcorn’ phase of our development. We were delighted that we had the opportunity to present our case to the Foundation, and particularly delighted that it agreed to support our overall development – many trusts and foundations are unwilling to support core development work so this grant is especially welcome.
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admin January 17th, 2011
We write a lot on this blog about disasters that are perceived not to have happened because they are not covered on CNN – or in the British papers. Amongst the pernicious effects of this ‘not on CNN’ syndrome are not just the under-resourcing of smaller (and not so small if they are in Africa) emergencies, but the over-funding of the ones that do generate all of the media coverage.
But last week Valerie (Baroness) Amos, who took over as head of OCHA in July last year did something about this by allocating around $84m, as part of the first round of allocations for 2011 from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), to assist people affected by hunger, malnutrition, disease, displacement and conflict in 15 ‘neglected’ emergencies around the world.
Nearly three quarters of the $84m is going to ‘neglected’ emergencies (as defined by OCHA) in Africa. And, to some extent, the locations of these emergencies will not surprise – Somalia receives $15m, the largest single allocation, with $11m going to Ethiopia. Agencies working in Chad will receive $8m, while humanitarian partners in Kenya will receive $6 million to start up programmes for 2011.
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admin January 16th, 2011
Just over a week ago DFID announced that its new Private Sector Department was officially open. This was one of the private-sector oriented developments promised by International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell in his speech at the London School of Economics last October.
The aim of this new 25-strong department is to “step up its engagement with the private sector”. In practice this means that it is an internal lobbyist and catalyst within DFID for the private sector as the deliverer of aid and development projects and solutions to developing country problems. So its activities, powers and budget will all be keenly watched by private sector organisations who have – or would like to have – a role in helping DFID to spend its ring-fenced millions.
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admin January 11th, 2011
‘Haiti and Truth about NGOs’ was an extraordinary programme on Radio 4 this morning. If you didn’t catch it first time around, you can catch it again at 2130 tonight on Radio 4 or listen to it again here.
Described as an ‘Insight into the aid industry as it faces challenging times’, reporter/presenter Edward Stourton raises a lot of the issues that will be familiar to aid industry professionals – speed of response (or lack of it) in the face of massive disaster, the relative lack of Disaster Risk Reduction, the lack of any real stockpile of emergency goods, the ability of thousands of NGOs to land on a disaster and sometimes make things worse rather than better despite the best coordination efforts of the Clusters.
admin January 7th, 2011
UNHCR is reporting today that more 120,000 people have already left northern Sudan and are heading for their ancestral homes in South Sudan ahead of Sunday’s referendum on independence.
Advance Aid is working with one of the major aid agencies to provide pre-positioned emergency kits to help refugees who are made homeless as a result of any post-referendum disturbances – or simply as a result of ‘southerners’ moving back home either to vote or as returnees to any newly-formed state.
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