When development aid works, there’s no better investment. Tatum Anderson reports on five of the smartest kinds of aid. First up…

“1. EDUCATED GIRLS CHANGE WORLDS”

When Naomi Kwampa was six years old, she started primary school near Accra, the capital of Ghana. Barely a term later, she was forced to drop out because her mother could not afford essential school accessories. Four years later – thanks to help with school costs – she has been able to return to school. She plans to become a nurse.

Had she been unable to return to school it would have been a tragedy, not just for Naomi but for her community and her own children. Because bringing girls into the classroom has a phenomenal effect, not just on them, but their families.

Statistically, Naomi will earn more and have more economic independence. She’ll be less likely to marry young, have fewer babies and her children are likely to be more spaced apart (helping reduce the chance of complications that lead to half a million maternal deaths every year in the developing world).

And the longer Naomi stays in school, the better off her children will be too. They are more likely to be immunised, better fed, and educated too.

Aid agencies, NGOs and governments around the world have been working towards getting girls into school by such initiatives as abolishing fees and providing toilets (not having them is a huge deterrent). Importantly, more girls were enrolled in primary education than boys in all developing regions between 2000 and 2006. Two-thirds of all countries now have equal numbers of girls and boys attending school, with southern Asia making the most progress.

But lots more must be done. Around 75 million children still do not go to school, most of them girls.

“2. WATER AND SANITATION LIFE SAVERS”

Imagine getting up to go to school or work, and there is no bathroom to have a wash, maybe no toilet either. If you’re lucky, there could a long-drop latrine near where you live but you share it with many other people.

Along with quality housing and shelter, safe water and sanitation are human rights and basic needs for healthy living. Yet 2.5 billion people have no access to basic sanitation. And 884 million do not have access to safe water either.

That’s why efforts to fund the building of latrines and provide clean water sources are so vital. Concerted efforts by governments, NGOs and aid agencies have so far helped provide a staggering 1.6 billion more people with access to safe water since 1990. East Asia has reported the most progress by helping over 400 million people since 1990.

Access to safe water and sanitation is not just a matter of human dignity, however. Diarrhoeal diseases, such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid, kill thousands of under-fives every day.

Water and sanitation projects are one of the most effective interventions because they help boost other development efforts too. Diarrhoea, for instance, causes malnourishment in children and exacerbates the effects of other diseases. Living far from a water source affects education too. Girls around the world are expected to collect water and can spend hours every day walking to the nearest source.

In short, you can’t have healthy and educated communities who are able to pursue good livelihoods without the basic necessities of water and sanitation being sorted out.

“3. SMALL LOANS BIG RESULTS”

Nakakande Teopista was struggling to support her family in central rural Uganda when she heard about a scheme that would change her and her family’s lives dramatically.

She lived miles from the nearest payphone, so making phone calls was normally out of the question. She applied for a tiny loan – enough to buy a mobile phone and the equipment enabling her to offer mobile services to her neighbours. In four months she had repaid the loan and, with her son, began to offer mobile services in neighbouring villages and even opened a stationery shop at the nearest trading centre.

Ms Teopista can now afford to send her children to school and help secure the future welfare of the family. What’s more, entrepreneurs like her can provide employment to others too.

The process of offering small loans to poor people who want to generate income is known as microfinance. This concept turns on its head an entrenched view that poor people are credit risks. Traditionally they have been excluded from normal financial services and forced to rely on moneylenders who charge extortionate rates that drive borrowers further into poverty.

But, as many thousands of instances attest, providing small loans – less than $200 – to poor people (particularly women) is actually an enormously efficient use of money. Not only are loans repaid in full within months but the repayments are recycled as more loans to other women. The small businesses, in everything from weaving and baking to brick-making and bicycle repair, help families escape poverty – in Bangladesh, at a rate of 10,000 women every month. As a result families eat better, are healthier and better educated too. And crucially, women who earn their own money usually have more self-esteem, more say and more status in their homes and neighbourhoods.

The idea is catching. In 2007, development agencies provided loans worth a staggering $4bn.

“4. KILLER DISEASES ON THE RUN”

Dr Chetan Chitnis is a busy man. At a laboratory in Delhi, India, he and his team are working on vaccines that prevent malaria that kills almost a million people a year – mainly children – and affects over 250 million altogether.

He is just one of a global movement of researchers, governments, charities and health workers which has formed to eradicate malaria once and for all.

The programme has already seen a dramatic reduction in child deaths from Zanzibar to Zambia – partly because more children under five are sleeping under insecticide- treated bed nets. “Vaccines will always be the most cost-effective long-term solution for many diseases,” says Dr Chitnis. “But vaccines are difficult to make and need sustained funding.” But the global teams fighting against disease are gaining ground:

• Deaths from measles have dropped by more than two- thirds to less than 200,000 between 2000 and 2007.
• Deaths from AIDS fell from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2 million in 2007.
• Polio is on the verge of elimination there were less than 2,000 cases in 2008.

And there are wider benefits than strictly medical ones. Healthy people are better able to work and learn than the sick, thus benefiting the economy. Health interventions can also help prevent more families falling further into poverty. Getting sick can be devastating for an entire family because they must pay out-of-pocket for doctors, hospitalisation and medication, and also lose income by stopping work to care for their sick relative. Some households rapidly run into debt simply by buying over-the-counter drugs for childhood fevers.

“5. RESEARCH DRIVES DEVELOPMENT”

Over a decade ago, the virulent African mosaic virus blighted almost a quarter of all cassava, a root vegetable which is staple food for families and smallholder farmers across Africa.

However, new cassava varieties, resistant to both the virus and drought, were developed by researchers at the National Agricultural Research Organisation, a Ugandan research institute.

A trial among 1,500 smallholder farmers achieved up to nine- times the yield of older varieties. This convinced, 6,000, habitually sceptical, farmers to grow this new type of cassava, and even invest in machinery to turn the tubers into crisps and generate more income.

Research like this is a vital driver for development. Not only does research help discover new crop varieties and new drugs, it also tells us how plant, animal and human diseases spread. And it leads to the development of new technologies and methods, besides providing important social information about communities in order to make aid more effective.

For maximum benefit, more research needs to be focused on the poor. For example, at present, only 10% of the global spend on health research examines issues affecting the poorest (90%) of the world’s population.