ODA and the Quest for Innovative Sources of Financing Development

Motivated in large part by recent economic and financial crises in several high-income donor countries, the emergence of new official donors (such as China), and the increasingly important role of private donors (philanthropy), the quest to identify alternative (or innovative) sources of financing development has accelerated in the past few years. At the same time, the issue of aid effectiveness has again become a hot topic. In this paper, I primarily comment on the official purpose of official development assistance and provide an overview of the main issues related to aid effectiveness and innovative sources of development finance.