Rethinking North–South Research Partnerships Amidst Global Uncertainties: Leveraging Lessons Learned from UK GCRF Projects during COVID-19

International research and development projects (or grand challenge projects) consist of multicultural, multi-country, multi-sectoral, and multi-stakeholder initiatives aimed at poverty reduction. They are usually conceived as partnerships between actors in the global north–south. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major unexpected disruption to ongoing projects and challenged their already complex management. The aim of this paper is to present evidence on how international development projects were impacted by COVID-19 with a particular focus on the relationship between research institutions in the north and south. We conducted a mixed-methods research study, combining a reflective exercise with the co-author team and a survey with principal investigators, project managers, and capacity development leads drawn from 31 Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) projects funded through the UK government's Official Development Assistance (ODA) and focused on social–ecological system research. The survey contained closed- and open-ended questions in order to (i) demonstrate how those involved in managing projects adapted to risks, including both threats and opportunities, presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, and (ii) consider the implications for tailoring adaptive management approaches in international research projects amidst uncertainties, with a special focus on enhancing equities in global north–south partnerships. The paper offers the following recommendations on designing, planning, and implementing international research and development projects: (i) devolve project management in order to enhance project resilience and improve north–south equities;(ii) allocate dedicated resources to enable equitable north–south research partnerships;(iii) rely more on hybrid and agile approaches for managing a project's life cycle;and (iv) improve resource flexibility, transparency, and communication through enhanced funder–implementer collaboration.

What Determines Korea's Health Aid Allocation: Altruistic, Economic, or COVID-19 Motivations?

With the disproportionate impact of the global pandemic on developing countries, health aid has become crucial in improving people's health and well-being more than ever. Reflecting developing countries' needs, Korea, like other donors, made significant contributions to support the global COVID-19 response. Considering the increased amount and importance of the health sector in Korea's foreign aid, this article aims to investigate the motivations of Korea's total bilateral aid and bilateral health aid using panel data of 128 developing countries from 2006 to 2021 with the random-effects panel Tobit model. The time frame was divided into three periods, 2006-2009, 2010-2019 and 2020-2021, to test Korea's aid determinants pre- and post-pandemic outbreak. No notable changes in Korea's aid allocation pattern were found before and after the pandemic. Instead, Korea seemed to have mixed motives of donor interest and recipients' needs in specific periods. However, a priority partner country was consistently identified as an influential factor in Korea's aid. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022.

Experience of emergency medical services provider training using online training of trainers during COVID-19: official development assistance project in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

OBJECTIVE: Since onsite education is difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic, official development assistance (ODA) projects have implemented online training of trainers (ToT) for emergency medical experts and staff. This study aims to share and discuss the ToT experience and its results in Uzbekistan. METHODS: We trained emergency medical advanced course instructors through online ToT among emergency medical service experts in Uzbekistan as a part of an ODA project. After the ToT, instructors were selected based on written tests, video monitoring of practice, and simulation performance. They operated the emergency medical course including lectures, practices, and simulations for 5 days. We tested the trainees through written tests before and after the course. They were surveyed regarding the course contents, its relevance, and their satisfaction with the course. RESULTS: Six instructors were selected after the online ToT program. They educated 68 emergency medical workers through the three training courses. The total score of the pretest was 129.2±34.8, and the posttest score was 170.8±31.2, which was significantly higher (P<0.05). The satisfaction calculated by adding the values of survey items for this curriculum was 28.0 (interquartile range, 26.0-30.0), and there was no statistical difference regarding trainee satisfaction between the three courses (P=0.148). CONCLUSION: Instructors trained by online ToT programs could provide an in-person emergency medical advanced course.

COVID-19 pandemic in Africa: Is it time for water, sanitation and hygiene to climb up the ladder of global priorities?

In the current pandemic context, it is necessary to remember the lessons learned from previous outbreaks in Africa, where the incidence of other diseases could rise if most resources are directed to tackle the emergency. Improving the access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) could be a win-win strategy, because the lack of these services not only hampers the implementation of preventive measures against SARS-CoV-2 (e.g. proper handwashing), but it is also connected to high mortality diseases (for example, diarrhoea and lower respiratory infections (LRI)). This study aims to build on the evidence-based link between other LRI and WASH as a proxy for exploring the potential vulnerability of African countries to COVID-19, as well as the role of other socioeconomic variables such as financial sources or demographic factors. The selected methodology combines several machine learning techniques to single out the most representative variables for the analysis, classify the countries according to their capacity to tackle public health emergencies and identify behavioural patterns for each group. Besides, conditional dependences between variables are inferred through a Bayesian network. Results show a strong relationship between low access to WASH services and high LRI mortality rates, and that migrant remittances could significantly improve the access to healthcare and WASH services. However, the role of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in enhancing WASH facilities in the most vulnerable countries cannot be disregarded, but it is unevenly distributed: for each 50-100 US$ of ODA per capita, the probability of directing more than 3 US$ to WASH ranges between 48% (Western Africa) and 8% (Central Africa).

Tracking sectoral allocation of official development assistance: a comparative study of the 29 Development Assistance Committee countries, 2011-2018.

Background: Official development assistance (ODA) is one of the most important means for donor countries to foster diplomatic relations with low- and middle-income countries and contribute to the welfare of the international community.Objective: This study estimated the sectoral allocation of gross disbursements of ODA of the 29 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the duration of 2011 to 2018, by aid type (bilateral, multilateral, and both aids).Methods: Data from the OECD iLibrary were used. The sector definition was based on the OECD sector classification. For core funding to multilateral agencies that do not specialize in each aid sector, we estimated ODA and its flows based on the OECD methodology for calculating imputed multilateral ODA.Results: For all 29 countries, during the period of 2014-2018 where data were available for all the countries, the sector with the highest average annual ODA contribution was health at 20.34 billion USD (13.21%), followed by humanitarian aid at 18.04 billion (11.72%). Humanitarian aid has increased in the sectoral share rankings in both bilateral and multilateral aid, and the sectoral share for refugees in donor countries has increased in bilateral aid. While the 29 countries show relatively similar trends for sectoral shares, some countries and sectors display unique trends. For instance, infrastructure and energy sectors in bilateral aid of Japan are particularly high accounts for 48.48% of the total bilateral ODA of the country in 2018.Conclusions: This paper evaluated ODA trends by major donors of DAC countries in the pre-COVID-19 pandemic periods. We hope that our estimates will contribute to the review of the strategic decision-making and the effective implementation of future ODA policy discussions in the DAC countries while ensuring transparency.

Aid to Africa's agriculture towards building physical capital: Empirical evidence and implications for post-COVID-19 food insecurity.

The formation of physical capital in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in agriculture is imperative to help the continent (1) overcome the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on food insecurity and (2) still be on track towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of "No poverty" and "Zero hunger" in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using country-level data on 40 SSA countries from 1996 to 2014 and rainfall deviations as an instrument for agricultural official development assistance (ODA) in fixed-effect estimation settings, this paper examines the 'instantaneous' impact of agricultural ODA on agricultural fixed capital formation in SSA. The question here is whether aid to agriculture does translate instantaneously to building fixed capital urgently needed to address the effect of any potential crisis on food insecurity. Measuring agricultural fixed capital as fixed investments in farm machinery, dams, industrial buildings for agricultural and agro-processing, fences, ditches, drains, etc., we find that capital formation in SSA agriculture improves instantaneously with agricultural ODA inflows. Second, we find that even though rainfall deviations are associated with agricultural ODA inflows to SSA, institutions particularly those designed to control corruption and strengthen rule of law, do matter for agricultural aid inflows to SSA. These results suggest that agricultural ODA is necessary to accelerate agricultural investments and achieve food security. Our results are robust to sensitivity analysis on the specification of the instantaneous model.