Blog survey on Italian G8 priorities for Africa

The blog Survey on the most important issues for Africa to be addressed in the Italian G8 ended after 6 moths. With 122 votes cast by international aid-watchers - Health, Agriculture and Education - resulted as the 3 main areas.

Table showing detailed results

	Italy	Intertional	Total	%
Agriculture	9	13	22	18,03
Education	15	5	20	16,39
Health	19	17	36	29,51
Energy	1	3	4	3,28
Infrastructures	4	1	5	4,10
Debt	3	3	6	4,92
Water	9	5	14	11,48
Remittances	0	1	1	0,82
Governance	6	3	9	7,38
Private sector	2	3	5	4,10
Total	68	54	122

The Libya connection: more and worse aid

Despite the heavy cuts for the development cooperation in 2009 Budget bill and the expected low levels of debt cancellations, Italy aid could have an unexpected quantitative boost by the Italian foreign policy. The Parliament has just started discussing the ratification of the Treaty between Italy and Libya. The agreement binds Italy to financially support various aid-reportable activities in Libya (roads construction, and students grants) for 20 years. Thanks to this Treaty, Italian ODA will increase by around 200 million euro each year ( around 0.012% of the Italian GDP) with predictable and additional money to the current ODA budget. In fact, the Parliament is also supposed to increase a profit-tax on oil-firms, in order to meet the Treaty financial requirements.

On the negative side, this additional money is going to worsen the quality of Italian aid, particularly its tied share- still 40% of the Italian bilateral ODA in 2007. As a matter of fact, all ODA–reportable interventions are 100% tied to the implementation by Italian firms. The possible injection of 200 million euro in tied aid will have an impact, as it represents 60% of the average 2006-07 Italian tied commitments. Finally due to the low levels of the Italian bilateral aid, this 200 million euro will also worsen the poverty focus of the whole Italian development cooperation. As the Italian annual country-allocated aid between 2006-2007 was around 400 million euros, the future Italian aid shares of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Least Developed Countries are going sharply to decrease.

Decree to extend Italian international peace operation does not provide extra-money for ODA: unlike last year

At the very end of 2008, the Government issued a Decree extending the Italian participation to international peace missions for 6 months, and allocated 763 million euro to meet foreseen expenditure. Required financial resources had already been appropriated by the 2007 financial bill. Last law approving the Italian participation to international military missions over the whole 2008 provided for 1 billion euros.

As for development cooperation, last year 94 million had been specifically earmarked for development cooperation activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia. 94 million added up to the development cooperation resources already appropriated by the 2008 Financial bill -732 million euros. Unfortunately, the last decree does not earmark any additional resources for development cooperation to lift up its minimal level -321 million- approved by the 2009 financial bill. If additional money is not appropriated during the Parliamentary debated, available financial resources are too scarce to allow Italy delivering on its commitment in fragile countries. For instance, in Afghanistan, the recently approved development cooperation 3-year plan had clearly stated the need to appropriate additional resources to be drawn from the international peace operation bill to meet its annual financial commitments for the country – around 50 million.