David Cameron gave a excellent and thoughtful speech at Oxfam at the tail end of last week calling for many of the things we at Institute believe would do a great deal of good in promoting prosperity in developing countries. He expressed the need for a "bottom up" approach to aid, proposing that aid vouchers should be given to the world's poorest communities that could be traded with aid organisations who would then redeem them into cash:
"I believe we can be more innovative still. One idea we will investigate, based on our belief in trusting people, and our instinctive dislike of top-down solutions, is aid vouchers. Aid vouchers, put directly in the hands of poor communities, would be redeemable for development services of any kind with an aid agency or supplier of their choice. The vouchers could be converted into cash by the aid agencies. For the first time, poor people would be the masters, and aid agencies would have a direct and clear incentive to deliver effective services. Such an innovation would help show us what the poor really want - and who is most effective in meeting their needs."
See article page.
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