In addition to our programmes on chronic poverty, global humanitarian assistance and aid information, we are currently working with:

• Africa Partnership Forum (APF)
• a consortium of NGOs
• the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• OCHA
• ONE/DATA.

You might also like to see our past projects or learn more about the type of work we do by visiting the themed sections of this site, as listed in the left-hand menus.

Working with the Africa Partnership Forum (APF) and the Economic Commission for Africa, Development Initiatives is leading the development of an online database of commitments for African development – Commit4Africa. By increasing their transparency, international and African leaders can be made more accountable for the commitments that they make. The database, launched 14 October 2008, is fully searchable and actively updated. Commit4Africa

For further details, please contact Dan Coppard on +44 1749 671343.

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Development Initiatives is working alongside the ODI on the first phase of a three-year project to strengthen the effective engagement of NGOs in the humanitarian reform agenda. The DFID-funded project is being led by a consortium of seven NGOs – ActionAid, Care, Cafod, ICVA, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and Oxfam.

Development Initiatives is involved in the mapping of humanitarian reform mechanisms in four case study countries – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. This study aims to produce baseline indicators of current NGO participation in these mechanisms and accountability to beneficiaries. The outcome of the study will inform the rest of the project. We are also working in partnership with the Feinstein International Center (FIC) at Tufts University.

For further details, please contact Tasneem Mowjee on +44 1749 671343.

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Together with private consultancy firm, COWI, Development Initiatives is working on a revision of the 2002 version of the strategic priorities in Danish humanitarian assistance.

Development Initiatives is responsible for the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) review component of the project, which comprises three main elements: a review of the internal decision-making processes and funding patterns to assess whether these are in line with GHD principles; an examination as to the extent to which the humanitarian aid programme fits within the broader humanitarian aid programme; and to provide the Ministry with some options for prioritising its humanitarian assistance.

For further details, please contact Tasneem Mowjee on +44 1749 671343.

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aidinfo is an initiative to accelerate poverty reduction by making aid more transparent.

The vision is that aid will work better – and that poverty will be reduced more quickly – when governments, civil society and people in both industrialised and developing countries can access information about aid quickly, easily and cheaply. In short, that better information will lead to better aid.

aidinfo is building an evidence-based case for greater aid transparency. It is researching the needs of current and potential future users of aid information to find out what information they have access to, what information they need, how they would use it, and what difference it would make. It is researching the options for donors. What information do they gather? What would be involved in adapting their systems to make that information more accessible? It is working with the academic and policy community to establish the evidence base on the potential benefits of aid transparency.

aidinfo is a partnership between Development Initiatives, Brigham Young University, The College of William and Mary and the Stimson Institute, with grant funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

For further details of our work to improve the transparency and timeliness of data on aid resources for poverty reduction, please visit aidinfo.org, or email or phone Victoria Room on +44 1749 671343.

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders took a major step forward in agreeing the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for 2015. If governments north and south deliver on aid and prioritise the needs of more than a billion people living on less than US$1 a day, the proportion of the world's population living in poverty can be halved within a decade.

But at the 1995 Social Summit, governments also accepted that absolute poverty could not just be halved – but eliminated within a generation. An MDG+ strategy is required to see beyond 2015.

Development Initiatives and HelpAge International have been working with the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) and its partners since 2000 to increase understanding of the factors that entrench and perpetuate poverty.

Key aims for the next five years include:

• highlighting the need to put an MDG+ strategy in place by 2010
• establishing a consensus on the affordability and achievability of absolute poverty elimination by a specified date (2025?).

For further details on our work on chronic poverty, please email or phone Tony German on +44 1749 671343.

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The Global Humanitarian Assistance programme exists to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and coherence of humanitarian response by further increasing access to reliable, transparent and understandable data on humanitarian assistance. The aim is to contribute to an authoritative and comparable shared evidence base for people and institutions involved in humanitarian policy, programming and performance.

Since 2000, GHA has been working closely with donors, NGOs and organisations not only to capture spending on humanitarian assistance – but also to build a common understanding of the data and what it really means.

Our programme is about to enter an exciting new phase. As well as continuing to work on access to data on international humanitarian financing, we are hoping to explore ways of:

• capturing and analysing information on domestic response to crises
• developing a programme of work to improve the comparability and application of data on the number, scale and severity of crises globally.

The 2008-2012 phase of the programme is funded by the donor governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.

globalhumanitarianassistance.org >

For further details on Global Humanitarian Assistance, please email or phone Lisa Walmsley on +44 1749 671343.

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Working in partnership with the Feinstein International Center (FIC) at Tufts University, Development Initiatives is engaged in a study that will model the relationship between extreme hydro-meteorological events, recorded disasters, international humanitarian response and international humanitarian spending. The model will then be projected for the next 20 years under a range of scenarios to estimate the increased humanitarian need and costs due to climate change. A final research report will be presented at the December 2008 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan.

For further details on this piece of work, email or phone Dan Coppard on +44 1749 671343.

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The G8 nations made a number of historic commitments to Africa at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles.

Working closely with ONE/DATA, Development Initiatives:

• writes chapters and contributes to the overall analysis and positioning of the annual DATA reports
• provides research, monitoring and analysis on the extent to which G8 countries are fulfilling commitments made on progress towards the MDGs
• clarifies exactly what was agreed in each commitment and determines a methodological baseline against which these can be measured
• determines critical paths that each G8 member would have to follow to meet each commitment, including annualised schedules to put each donor on track for meeting each of the goals
• identifies and collates sources of information relating to ODA (DAC statistics, finance and development ministries, statistical offices, NGOs, relevant academics)

For further details on this piece of work, email or phone Dan Coppard on +44 1749 671343.

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