Dear friends,
Speaking as a guest at the G7 Summit in Évian, President Lula put the problem in one sentence: “There is no shortage of good ideas. What we lack is implementation and political will.” He said it at a moment when official development assistance had just fallen 23% in a single year, and he named the Global Alliance as a way to share what works and back its implementation. What struck me was that the G7 itself moved in the same direction: its Leaders’ Declaration on Mutually Beneficial International Partnerships, and the Development Ministers’ Communiqué before it, both put country ownership at the centre. The idea is now widely shared. This edition is about what it takes to deliver on it.
Some of that delivery is already visible. During a visit to the Support Mechanism in Rome, IDB President Ilan Goldfajn reviewed the Bank’s engagement with the Alliance. Against the up-to-US$25 billion that the IDB pledged at the Alliance’s launch, it approved US$4.1 billion in aligned operations in 2025 and expects close to US$5.8 billion more in 2026, bringing the total to nearly US$10 billion in the first two years. That engagement is already reaching countries – in Haiti, the IDB is supporting the government’s cash transfer programmes within a broader package alongside the World Bank, WFP, Education Above All and the Global Partnership for Education, with the Support Mechanism facilitating the coordination.
Haiti is the kind of example we want to be able to point to more often and more precisely. Part of the work ahead is getting better at showing what members are actually delivering against the commitments they made – turning a long list of pledges into a clear picture of what has landed and where. We are building the means to do that, and expect to have more to share as the Alliance approaches its second anniversary in November.
Ethiopia shows the same logic, moving from commitment to a concrete implementation plan. This week the Support Mechanism took its first in-country mission there, and on 2 July Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture will convene a closed-door technical workshop on the Yelemat Tirufat Plus programme, where the Government will present its Partnership Requests to Alliance members and begin building an Implementation Roadmap – who contributes what and in what role, around the country’s own plan. This is the part that is hard and unglamorous, and it is exactly where coordination either becomes real or stays on paper.
Behind these country moments is a method we are now opening up to the whole membership. On 26 June, we held the first meeting of the Country Support Contact Group, open to all members, to walk through the revised approach for planning and partnerships and the current pipeline of country plans — and to be candid about when, where and how members can actually engage. The pipeline keeps growing: alongside Ethiopia and Haiti, countries including Kenya, Cambodia and Cuba are moving forward at various stages. You can follow the validated plans on the Country Programme Support page.
The point of all this is that good policy is meant to travel. This edition’s Policy Basket highlights two such cases, both in our active pipeline: the Dominican Republic’s Supérate, which combines cash transfers, skills training, microfinance and business support with dedicated pathways for women, and Zambia’s Food Security Pack, which gives vulnerable but viable smallholder farms climate-resilient seed, inputs and training after repeated climate shocks. The same instinct runs through the Graduation Approach pioneered in Bangladesh two decades ago, now informing more than 170 programmes across over 40 countries. If what works in one place is to be usable in another, it has to be documented honestly and shared – which is also why the Alliance website now reads in English, Portuguese, French and Spanish.
In November, the Alliance turns two. That is the right moment to take Lula’s challenge literally – to set the good ideas aside for a minute and show, country by country, what has actually been delivered. The commitments are on the table, and the method is taking shape. The question for the next few months is whether we can turn them into delivery that a family in Haiti, a herder in Ethiopia or a small-scale farmer in Zambia would recognise. That is the standard worth holding ourselves to.
All the best,
Renato D. Godinho
Director, Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty
Support Mechanism
