Lyn Morgain and Anthea Spinks – Can developing countries recover from COVID-19?

Welcome to Episode 74 of Good Will Hunters, from the Development Policy Centre.

Today on the show I’m speaking to newly appointed Oxfam Australia CEO Lyn Morgain, and Director of Programs Anthea Spinks.

Oxfam of course is one of Australia’s and the world’s biggest and most influential development NGOs. But it’s had some rough times lately with a decline in donations, and in Australia the closure of the iconic Oxfam shops.

In this interview, we discuss how the organisation is responding to the challenges it is facing. Lyn unveils Oxfam Australia’s new strategy that focuses on the connection between poverty and climate change, champions the integral role Indigenous Australians play in Oxfam, and outlines how Oxfam will transform its operating model as the world of INGOs continues to be “utterly redefined” as Lyn puts it.

Of course, we also discuss COVID19. In the last few weeks, Oxfam Australia has called on G20 Leaders to cancel or postpone the debt repayments of developing countries to help their economic recovery from COVID19. Oxfam has also been advocating for Australia to contribute just over 80m to the UN’s COVID19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.

Anthea and I also discuss Oxfam’s programming response. As we have in recent programs, we look at the localisation agenda, and whether local actors are ready for the task at hand. In particular, we zero in at Cyclone Harold which has hit some Pacific Island Countries, and compare it to the response to Cyclone Pam in 2015, and the key difference that this time there are no international actors flying-in.

Here is some of Oxfam’s recent research and advocacy around COVID19.

Here is a link to Devpolicy analysis on donations to Australian development NGOs.

And here is a link to the IMF’s most recent press briefing on the economic outlook.

For more coverage on COVID19, check out the Devpolicy website at devpolicy.org.

There is comprehensive coverage of the Pacific, but there are also some great articles from The Asia Foundation on the response in the Philippines and Nepal, and on the intersection of the pandemic with domestic violence and with civil conflict. We’ll be going into more depth on some of those issues in some of our upcoming episodes.

Please share any comments with us via our social media channels, which you can find @goodwillpod – we’d love to hear your feedback.

Enjoy the episode,
The GWH Team