What can we do in the years to come to ensure food security? In the opinion of Action contre la Faim, a number of avenues could help promote secure access to food for everyone. 

Tackling the challenge to build well-functioning tax systems in developing countries requires concerted international co-operation among developed and developing countries, international organisations, business and civil society. 

Hunger affects about 1 billion people around the world, and as the economic crisis continues, the push for growth can actually make matters worse.

In many African countries, where unemployment rates can run as high as 30%, there is strong potential for entrepreneurship and employment. Development must focus on bringing down the barriers to progress. 

The increase in average incomes and the fall in levels of absolute poverty, in particular during the last decade, suggest that an increasing proportion of the world’s population is neither rich nor poor by national standards but finds itself in the middle of the income distribution. 

Discrimination against women hurts everyone. As Founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women Cherie Blair explains, women entrepreneurs are an economic resource that economies, rich and poor alike, can ill afford to overlook.

Speech by Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State and Chair of the 2011 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting, at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the OECD, 25 May 2011.

There are signs of a new, more confident and self-affirming Africa taking shape. As the 2011 edition of the African Economic Outlook argues, this newness is also evident in the continent’s relationships with emerging economies.

Development aid from OECD donor countries totalled $129 billion in 2010, the highest level ever, and an increase of 6.5% over 2009. But despite this record, the 2010 figures confirm that some donors are not meeting internationally agreed commitments.

As efforts to restart the stalled Doha Development Round negotiations intensify, the policy focus on world trade, and, specifically, its relation to development aid and growth in poorer countries, has become more acute. Trade is a powerful engine for economic growth, as the OECD’s founders argued 50 years ago, and, as such, can contribute to reducing poverty. However, efforts to improve trade in developing countries are often hampered by domestic constraints, particularly a lack of adequate economic infrastructures, as well as institutional and organisational obstacles.

A new kitchen can raise the value of any home, but in developing countries it can also save lives. That is why in 2010 the OECD’s very own staff charity, the War on Hunger Group, decided to contribute funding to fitting a new kitchen in the headquarters of AFENA, an NGO dedicated to looking after abandoned women and children, and based in Niger’s second city, Maradi.

In 2008, the Chinese economist Justin Yifu Lin became the first person from a developing country to be appointed World Bank Chief Economist.

Child poverty warning; Economy; Soundbites; Slower development aid?; Japan rebuilds; Tax burden on the rise; Estonia joins the OECD; Shinier steel outlook; Cities under-served by carbon markets; Brazil and India sign OECD chemical accord; Corruption: governments warned; Plus ça change...

We are celebrating the OECD’s 50^th anniversary during the tail-end of the worst financial and economic crisis of our lifetimes. It’s a good moment to take stock and to ask the right questions. Why couldn’t we avoid the crisis? Were the policies and the policy mix we promoted the right ones, and how can we adjust these polices to new realities? What is more, are we doing enough to prevent another crisis? Are our economic theories, our models and our assumptions still appropriate? How should our organisation’s work be adapted so that we continue fulfilling our founding mission of promoting better policies for better lives?

The OECD, a pioneer in the quest to measure the progress and well-being of societies, is launching an exciting new initiative, incorporating Your Better Life Index. The initiative is not only a major step forward in assessing people’s true welfare, but involves people in the process too.

Is Africa finally on the move? The signs are promising.Rich in natural resources and with more than one billion people, it achieved five consecutive years of economic growth averaging more than 5% over 2004-08. In fact, private investment rose every year from 2000 to reach US$472.2 billion in 2008. And despite some fallout from the economic crisis that started in the OECD area in 2008 and brought African GDP per head to a virtual standstill in 2009, activity has started to ramp up again.

There are no silver bullets or magic potions for human development. Rather than trying to replicate past experience, we need to focus on new opportunities.

As the OECD reaches 50, it must continue to become more relevant, useful and open within a new architecture of global governance, argues Angel Gurría, in this extract from remarks delivered following the renewal of his mandate as OECD secretary-general.*

Structural economic challenges and preparing for recovery were the dominant themes at this year’s Ministerial Council Meeting (27-28 May), under the chair of Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Fiscal challenges, jobs, green growth, innovation, development, trade and investment, and societal progress all figured on the agenda. These highlights are based on the full conclusions, which can be read at www.oecd.org/mcm2010

The staging of the World Cup in South Africa was a tribute to that country’s transformation since Apartheid in the 1990s. However, poverty persists. Some 54% of South Africans are poor, based on a national definition of poverty of living on $4 a day. And poverty and inequality still reflect race, as our graph shows. While widespread access to services such as housing, water and electricity has improved substantially, the link between race and poverty remains remarkably strong by international standards, as the income of black South Africans continues to lag behind whites and Asians in the country.

The road from conflict to peace and from destruction to development is far from smooth. In fact, research shows that half of all countries that have been ravaged by conflict are at war again within a decade. Transition Financing: Building a Better Response, part of the OECD’s Conflict and Fragility series of books, examines how the international community can help countries move from resolving conflicts to a lasting peace, grounded in what the authors describe as “sustainable development”. It involves a transition to greater national ownership and a greater capacity to ensure public safety and welfare.

Health spending rises; Round up; Soundbites; Benvenuto!; Economy; Food speculation question; Chinese flexibility welcomed; Slovenia joins the OECD; Plus ça change...

With the crisis still unfolding, can governments meet their agreed development aid targets? Total net official development assistance (ODA) from donor countries in the OECD Development Assistance Committee came to $119.6 billion in 2009, which is a real increase of 0.7% from 2008. If debt forgiveness is excluded, the real increase jumps to 6.8%. In fact, development aid rose by some 30% in real terms between 2004 and 2009, and continued to grow during the crisis, unlike other financial flows to developing countries, which have fallen sharply. Nonetheless, more aid effort is needed.

Before the global recession, most of Africa was booming. At last. Can it bounce back?

As an OECD “veteran”, I was delighted to see that “human progress” is now on the OECD agenda (see www.oecd.org/progress). If you compare the OECD strategy to emerge from the oil-shock recessions of the 1970s (the McCracken Report) to the OECD Strategic Response to the Financial and Economic Crisis of today, you can see that in three decades the OECD has been transformed.

Could country-by-country tax reporting help boost revenue for development? The answer is not that simple.

Reforming tax systems can boost development by giving countries more autonomy. This can lead to broader reforms too.

A salmon would find it a hardscrabble life in the waterways of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Not because of dried riverbeds, overfishing or pollution, but because the region has more dams per cubic metre of water than any other place on earth.

State building is governance writ large. Seen from without, the accomplishments of a nascent state stand in harsh juxtaposition to the fine-tuning of politically and economically stable governments. One is a stone mason and the other a builder, confident the foundations will support his project.

According to President John F. Kennedy, the person who can solve the water problems of the world should receive two Nobel prizes, one for peace and the other for science. More than four decades after his death, the world is realising the complexity and urgency of the water-related problems facing humanity, and the relevance of his remark.

In 1962, we usually divided the world into three regions. The advanced capitalist group was then known as the developed world. The second was the “Sino-Soviet bloc”. Countries “in course of development” were the third world. The China-USSR split occurred in the early 1960s; most of the communist regimes collapsed around 1990, and the hostility of the cold war has largely faded away. The income gap between the former communist countries and the advanced capitalist group has become very much wider than it was. For this reason, a tripartite division of the world economy is no longer appropriate.