While the past decades have seen a foreign aid field dominated by the world's wealthy countries who are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), a new form a donorship has emerged, or more accurately, re-emerged. Aid funding from prosperous, yet still developing countries to other developing countries has drawn international attention, much of it from a critical perspective. A 2007 article in Foreign Policy labeled aid from China, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia as both “generous” and “toxic,” while a recent cover of the Economist labeled China “The New Colonialists.” However, an increase in global aid to the poorest countries, delivered with fresh perspectives and an intensified spirit of South-South cooperation has many potential benefits.

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, 179 nations endorsed an approach to improving reproductive health based on meeting individual needs and respecting human rights. They pledged to share the costs needed to make basic reproductive health care available to all who need it by 2015. Today, however, most donor and developing countries still fall short of paying their “fair share.”

With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria's political and economic developments reverberate across the continent. Nigeria chairs the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and is the eighth largest oil exporting country in the world. More than 40 percent of the region's gross domestic product is accounted for by Nigeria's economy, and the petroleum industry is responsible for about two-thirds of national revenue and a great deal of international interest in the country. Yet the government maintains a delicate hold on democracy, and the country has recently experienced political instability. Throughout 2006, militant rebels angry about the distribution of oil revenue have conducted a series of attacks against the industry, including kidnapping foreign workers, which resulted in the country's petroleum output dropping by 25 percent.

Governments in developing countries have an important role to play in making reproductive health products and services affordable for the poor and other under-served groups. Accordingly, efforts to improve access to family planning and other reproductive health care have focused primarily on the public sector.

At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, the international community pledged to share the costs of reproductive health care in developing countries, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005. Donor nations committed to provide one-third of this total, or $6.1 billion. Donors still fall far short of this pledge, once inflation is taken into account, and actual resource needs are dramatically higher today.

The Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 establishes the right of men and women to be informed about their reproductive choices and health, and to have access to the information and services that make good health possible. The Programme of Action mandates access to a range of reproductive health care services, including health education, information and counseling on sexuality and reproductive health issues-including parenting, family planning, prenatal care, delivery, and postpartum care, abortion (where not against the law) and post-abortion care-and the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases and infertility.

Paying their Fair Share - Donor Countries and International Population Assistance outlines the need for more financial support from donor countries to improve reproductive health while slowing population growth.

Money matters and policies count. Ten years ago, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the international community endorsed an approach to improving reproductive health based on meeting individual needs and respecting human rights. The 179 nations present agreed on a plan for achieving universal access to basic reproductive health care by 2015-and on the financial resources needed to make it a reality. They pledged to share the costs, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005, and donor nations committed to providing one-third of that total.

New foreign assistance strategies that aim to encourage ownership by recipients while still effectively reducing poverty are laudable. They offer the hope of increased financial support to overall global development-a bigger pie-but they also pose significant challenges to the family planning field: Will it be able to keep a slice of that pie?