Performance of Australian Aid 2015–16 May 2017

To ensure we learn, capture and share our experiences, learning activities have expanded. A partnership with USAID and KOICA has delivered the Global Innovation Exchange, an online platform to connect innovators and funding opportunities around the world, as well as share lessons learned. We have built an interactive map to share case studies on innovative investments across the entire aid program. AQC analysis shows that in 2015-16, 63 per cent of aid investments applied innovative programming such as adopting new technologies and nearly half of all investments applied a new approach to aid delivery (Figure 40). Investments in aid for trade related areas showed the strongest performance on innovation. Some examples of innovation across the aid program include:

• Using prototyping and non-traditional partnering to codify traditional regulations that support gender-sensitive village development planning, land ownership, and conflict resolution; 

• Crowd-sourcing and providing free disaster information, enabling first-responders to verify/reply to incidents and decision-makers to respond to the public’s needs; 

• Piloting mobile money where providers issue e-money to a network of agents who provide real money to villagers – a model set to empower village banks; 

• Collaborating with non-traditional partners to train ‘soy doctors’ to champion good agricultural practice, resulting in a 30 per cent increase in yield during the last harvest, despite the El Nino; 

Figure 40: Innovation investment performance by investment priority area, 2015-16