A call to safeguard public services and sustainable businesses in Least Developed Countries

Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) remains a scarce resource: EU ODA to LDCs in 2019 was only € 13.8 billion (0.10% of GNI). The EU remains far off-track from the target to disburse 0.15%-0.20% of Gross National Income (GNI) towards LDCs¹. Globally, from 2012- 2018, close to €11 billion of private investments to LDCs were leveraged through official development finance². While this corresponds to only 6% of private sector finance mobilised for developing countries – it still represents an important share of overall investments available in LDCs. 

At a time when funding for public goods and access to social services for the most marginalised countries and people are under the spotlight, this paper examines the sectors, actors and modalities that are best suited for LDCs to achieve crucial SDGs. With a particular focus on EFSD+, the paper also reviews accountability structures and examines the extent to which the existing sets of voluntary principles – in the absence of robust binding legislation – can produce meaningful behaviour change for market-driven private sector operations in a development environment.