1. Imagine for a second a small village in a poor country in Sub-Saharan Africa…
Imagine a woman who’s about to give birth. This is a very natural event in a woman’s life…

2. … yet for her it is a very risky one, as she has roughly a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth.

3. Just compare this to a 1 in 2,800 risk in this part of the world
Just compare this to a 1 in 2,800 risk in this part of the world! We know exactly how most maternal deaths can be averted, yet these are the statistics. And the situation is just as shocking in other areas of life… education, access to safe water, access to electricity and so forth…
The goal of development aid is to save and improve lives

4. Aid matters
SO AID REALLY MATTERS! I don’t think anyone in this room will disagree with this statement.

5. But does aid work?
BUT the question that’s often asked is: DOES IT WORK?
Well, to some extent, it probably does. The problem is that, for most of the AID, we don’t really know.
WHY? Because the focus is on the INPUTS, the ingredients if you want…

6. And on the measurement of these inputs.

7. What happens with these inputs is often hard to say…
And we typically don’t know what they’ve produced…

8. And what the results are… whether that woman in the village was able to have a safe delivery… And even when we think we know… we usually don’t know for sure, because we haven’t verified.

9. The good news is that there are a number of innovative financing mechanisms that put emphasis on results. These are receiving growing attention from governments in developing countries and from the donor community.
What I’d like to propose today is that we take these mechanisms a few steps further.
The concept I’d like to propose is called TRAID+. Which combines the words ‘TRADE” plus “AID”

10. In trAid+, the focus IS on results.
What trAid+ does is providing the conditions that are necessary for the development of a market for outputs, such as safe deliveries, that have been verified

11. The verification is done by external accredited entities, and it is done following approved protocols…

12. TrAid+, therefore, acts as a third-party stamp of approval
TrAid+, therefore, acts as a third-party stamp of approval. It guarantees that these results have really been delivered, and that they meet certain quality standards. They are trAid-certified.

13. The trAid+ registry is an essential part of what I’m proposing.
It enables the tracking of all trAid-validated interventions and of all trAid-certified outputs, from issuance to retirement.
It ensures that all these results are real, additional, independently verified, and traceable.

14. The information pertaining to each step in this process is publicly disseminated.
This transparency increases accountability and introduces a strong incentive for soundness and accuracy.
It also allows this market for verified results to grow rapidly.
How? By attracting funding from existing donors as well as new ones, who can now trust that their contributions are making a concrete difference.

15. Purchaser of Results Producer of Results Clearing house Philanthropic
Corporation
Government
Multilateral
Individual
Bilateral
Private company
Public entity
Government
Network
NGO
Clearing house
By acting as a clearinghouse between the increasing number of donors and those who can produce the results, TrAid+ offers a way to manage the increased complexity and fragmentation of development assistance
The purchaser of results can be a philanthropic organization, a multilateral organization a bilateral organization, a corporation, an individual or even a national or sub-national government
The producer of results can be any professional entity that is qualified and able to produce and deliver a verifiable output
This can be an NGO, a private company, a public agency or facility, a network –f.ex. A social franchise-- or a government – national or local)

16. Rules and procedures Protocols Accreditation IT support Appeals
In order to play this role, trAid+ would need to fulfill a number of key functions. These include:
- The development and enforcement of rules and procedures pertaining to the trAid-ing process, to the roles and responsibilities of the different trAid+ stakeholders involved in that process, and to the TrAid+ Registry
- The approval of protocols for the monitoring, reporting and verification of outputs
The accreditation of Verification Entities – it could be a local or international organization with strong technical and operational skills combined with scientific rigor. It could also be a partnership between several institutions or a national independent entity specialized in monitoring and evaluation. There are a few interesting examples of such entities in Latin America
The development and maintenance of required IT support
The provision of a mechanism allowing trAid+ stakeholders to challenge trAid+ rulings

17. TrAid+ can be tailored to any sector where outputs can be clearly defined and measured. This includes health,

18. Energy

19. water and sanitation

20. Or education

21. Go to www.cgdev.org alexergo@broadbranch.org
If you want to learn more about trAid+ -- how exactly it would work, how it could be set up and what it would take -- I’d like to refer you to our paper that was published by the Center for Global Development just a few weeks ago. You’ll find it on the CGD website.
What we propose for the setup of trAid+ is to adopt a very pragmatic approach. We would start with a pilot, for which we will need seed money. This means that we need to identify one anchor donor, one partner that believes in this vision and is ready to support its implementation. We could start with one type of output in one country using one credible external verifyer. The success of the pilot could then be used to generate buy-in among other donors. And then, we could gradually expand to other outputs, to other countries, and working with other external verifiers, which would first need to be accredited.