The end of foreign aid to Africa? Concerns about donor policies

African Affairs

Volumn 98, Issue 392, 1999, Pages 309-335

  Riddell, Roger C ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AID POLICY; INTERNATIONAL AID; POVERTY ALLEVIATION;

AFRICA;

EID: 0032858774     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a008042     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. UK Government White Paper on International Development. Eliminating World Poverty: A challenge for the 21st century (HMSO, London, 1997).
2. Britain was one of the prime movers behind the proposal going to the G-8 Summit in May 1998 for the end of all tied aid; see Financial Times, 12 March, 1998.
3. Shaping the 21st Century: The contribution of development co-operation (OECD, Paris, 1996).
4. World Bank, Poverty Reduction and The World Bank: Progress and challenges in the 1990s (The World Bank, Washington, DC, 1996), p. 4.
5. Development Co-operation Report (OECD, Paris, 1997), p. 55.
6. C. Foy and H. Helmich, Public Support for International Development (OECD, Paris, 1996); and A. Winter, Is Anyone Listening? Communicating development in developing countries (Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS), Geneva, 1996).
7. C. Foy and H. Helmich, Public Support for International Development (OECD, Paris, 1996); and A. Winter, Is Anyone Listening? Communicating development in developing countries (Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS), Geneva, 1996).
8. H. Johnson, 'Norway's' Aid Policies and Poverty Alleviation'. Address given at the Overseas Development Institute, London, 19 February 1998.
9. E. Weidnitzer, German Aid Policies for Poverty Reduction. Working Paper No. 101 (ODI, London, 1997).
10. L. de Boisedeffre, French Aid Policies for Poverty Reduction. Working Paper No. 100 (ODI, London, 1997).
11. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Development Co-operation Review Series: United States. No. 8 (OECD, Paris, 1995) pp. 18-19.
12. To put this figure of $646 m. into some comparative perspective: the figure constitutes less than one-third of the $2 bn which the US chip-maker Intel spends each year on its in-company research and development programme.
13. C. Colclough, Aid to Basic Education in Africa - Opportunities and Constraints. Evaluation Report 5-97 (Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oslo, 1997), p. 17.
14. P. Bennell and D. Furlong, Has Jomtien Made Any Difference? Trends in donor funding for education and basic education since the late 1980s. IDS Working Paper No. 51 (Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, 1997).
15. Colclough, Aid to Basic Education in Africa, pp. 4-7. For a discussion of the ways in which the quality of education in Zimbabwe has deteriorated see A. R. Riddell and L. Niagora, Primary School Achievement in English and Mathematics in Zimbabwe: A multi-level analysis (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper WPS 1208, October 1993).
16. Colclough, Aid to Basic Education in Africa, pp. 4-7. For a discussion of the ways in which the quality of education in Zimbabwe has deteriorated see A. R. Riddell and L. Niagora, Primary School Achievement in English and Mathematics in Zimbabwe: A multi-level analysis (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper WPS 1208, October 1993).
17. In his recent book on conditionality, Killick remarks that, whereas in the early 1980s many African governments did not give priority to macroeconomic policies and 'fundamentals', there is now almost universal acceptance of the need to give pride of place to such policies. T. Killick, Conditionality: Aid leverage and the political economy of policy changes in developing countries (Routledge, London, 1997), Chs 1 and 2. For a discussion of the growing consensus on macroeconomic policies among the countries of the Southern African Development Community see R. C. Riddell, Macro-Economic Convergence and Adjustment (Price Waterhouse, Sandton, 1998).
18. In his recent book on conditionality, Killick remarks that, whereas in the early 1980s many African governments did not give priority to macroeconomic policies and 'fundamentals', there is now almost universal acceptance of the need to give pride of place to such policies. T. Killick, Conditionality: Aid leverage and the political economy of policy changes in developing countries (Routledge, London, 1997), Chs 1 and 2. For a discussion of the growing consensus on macroeconomic policies among the countries of the Southern African Development Community see R. C. Riddell, Macro-Economic Convergence and Adjustment (Price Waterhouse, Sandton, 1998).
19. Figures from World Bank, World Development Report 1997 and World Development Report 1998/99 (World Bank, Washington, DC).
20. T. Duncan et al., Study of Poverty and Poverty Alleviation in Botswana: Phase I. Volume I: Overall poverty assessment (Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, Gaborone, 1997).
21. Recent Tanzania primary data are reviewed in T. Voipio and P. Hoebrink, European Aid and Poverty Reduction in Tanzania, Overseas Development Institute Working Paper No. 116 (ODI, London, 1999).
22. Business Alliance for Economic Development, Foreign Assistance: What's in it for America? (Business Alliance for Economic Development, Washington, DC, 1996).
23. For a synthesis of the evidence of the impact of NGO development projects obtained from 30 donor-initiated evaluations see R. Riddell et al., Searching for Impact and Methods: NGO evaluation synthesis study. A Report Prepared for the OECD/DAC Expert Group on Evaluation. Report 1997/2. (Helsinki: Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 1997.)
24. This 'short-hand' clearly eclipses many important nuances in the reach of aid. There are examples of official aid reaching down to the poorest groups - Swedish aid to farm workers in Zimbabwe - and also of NGO assistance helping middle-class groups - Swedish NGO aid to Zimbabwean teachers. By and large, however, the evidence does suggest that NGOs are usually better at reaching poorer groups of people, though this evidence also suggests that many NGOs do not undertake any rigorous analysis to identify which groups in a locality are the poorer and more 'deserving'.
25. A 1997 evaluation of Tanzania's Integrated Roads Programme found that, in spite of 320 person-years of technical assistance, institutional improvement had not occurred. See Investment Development Consultancy (IDC), Evaluation of EU Aid to ACP Countries: Field phase. Case Study 2: Tanzania (IDC, Paris, 1998), p. 5.
26. For a critical review of the problems with aid conditionality see T. Killick, 'Principals, agents and the failings of conditionality'. Journal of International Development, 9, 4 (1997), pp. 483-95.
27. UK Government, Eliminating World Poverty, P. 38.
28. W. Brandt, North-South: A programme for survival (Pan Books, London, 1980).
29. Lord Bauer has been using these arguments to attack aid for decades. See P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development (1971) and Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1981).
30. C. Burnside and D. Dollar, Aid, Policies and Growth. Working Paper No. 1777. Policy Research Department, Macroeconomic and Growth Division (The World Bank, Washington, DC, 1997).
31. Killick, Conditionality, pp. 19-25.
32. For a discussion of aid dependency see R. Riddell, 'Aid dependency', in Sida, Aid Dependency: Causes, symptoms and remedies (Sida, Stockholm, 1998).
33. In this context, Killick notes that though 'conditionality is to be understood as providing an assurance of effective aid, by a similar logic ... it can also be seen as reducing the demand for aid, for the better is the quality of policies in developing countries, the less assistance will they need and the more quickly will they graduate from reliance on aid'. Killick, Conditionality, p. 162.
34. For a discussion of macroeconomic policies and their implications for growth and poverty in Southern Africa see Riddell, Macro-Economic Convergence and Adjustment.
35. H. Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth: policies to improve income distribution in developing countries in the context of economic growth (Oxford University Press, London, 1974).
36. Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth, p. 52.
37. Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth, p. 44.
38. Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth, p. 49.
39. For a discussion of the growing need for regulation in the globalized economy see G. de Jonquières, 'Rules for the Regulators', Financial Times, 2 March 1998.
40. World Bank 'WDR on Poverty and Development 2000/1 : A very first cut'. (The World Bank, Washington DC, 1999) [http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty].
41. 'In developing countries, development programmes frequently are controlled and administered at the higher levels of members of the politically dominant ethnic group; and most of the fruits of such development flow into the pockets of a tiny ethnic elite, or, at best, are distributed in a limited manner within the same ethnic group' (D. Dwyer and D. Drakis-Smith (eds.), Ethnicity and Development: Geographical perspectives (Wiley, London, 1996), p. 4.
42. A recently published cross-country study analysing the relationship between foreign aid and civil society argues that donor efforts to strengthen civil society suffer from a range of profound weaknesses, not least the lack of a coherent theory of civil society and often an insufficient understanding of the complexities involved, casting doubt on major parts of the whole enterprise. See A. Van Rooy (ed.), Civil Society and the Aid Industry (Earthscan, London, 1998).
43. X. Gorostiaga, Central America 2015: a mixture of Somalia and Taiwan? Or a socially stable bridge between north and south America between the Atlantic and Pacific? Project 2015: Regional Studies, Latin America (Sida, Stockholm, 1997). These issues are discussed by Galtung whose analysis points to the increased problems of social disintegration caused by providing education for people geared to formal sector employment when jobs in the formal sector are not forthcoming. Those who fail are left in a worse state than when they were 'living in poverty' because of the likelihood that they experience both greater culturelessness (anomie) and structurelessness (atomie). J. Galtung, 'On the social costs of modernization: social disintegration, atomie/anomie and social development', Development and Change, 27, 2 (1996), pp. 379-413.
44. X. Gorostiaga, Central America 2015: a mixture of Somalia and Taiwan? Or a socially stable bridge between north and south America between the Atlantic and Pacific? Project 2015: Regional Studies, Latin America (Sida, Stockholm, 1997). These issues are discussed by Galtung whose analysis points to the increased problems of social disintegration caused by providing education for people geared to formal sector employment when jobs in the formal sector are not forthcoming. Those who fail are left in a worse state than when they were 'living in poverty' because of the likelihood that they experience both greater culturelessness (anomie) and structurelessness (atomie). J. Galtung, 'On the social costs of modernization: social disintegration, atomie/anomie and social development', Development and Change, 27, 2 (1996), pp. 379-413.
45. For an initial discussion of the practical implications of adopting a rights-based approach to development and aid see Novib, Human Rights and Development: Novib's challenges in the field of human rights (Novib, The Hague, 1997). See also J. Häusermann, A Human Rights Approach to Development. A discussion paper commissioned by The Department for International Development of the United Kingdom Government. (Rights and Humanity, London, 1998.)
46. For an initial discussion of the practical implications of adopting a rights-based approach to development and aid see Novib, Human Rights and Development: Novib's challenges in the field of human rights (Novib, The Hague, 1997). See also J. Häusermann, A Human Rights Approach to Development. A discussion paper commissioned by The Department for International Development of the United Kingdom Government. (Rights and Humanity, London, 1998.)
47. G. Hyden, 'Foreign aid in longer term perspective', in Sida, Development Co-operation in the 21st Century (Sida, Stockholm, 1997), p. 64.
48. One comparatively new way of allocating aid is by pooling funds at the sectoral level - in some cases this is called 'basket funding'. Though it is too early to comment on the likely success of such approaches, early results provide some worrying evidence. Thus, in countries such as Zambia, Lesotho and Tanzania, it has been extremely difficult to get donors to agree genuinely to pool their funds and not to continue to trace through 'their' funds in the basket. By early 1999 in Tanzania, in spite of wanting to initiate a joint aid approach, not even the most like-minded donors, the Nordic countries, had managed to agree together on a single way of drawing up an aid programme and implementing it.
49. O. Stokke, 'Foreign aid: what now?' in Foreign Aid Towards the Year 2000: Experiences and Challenges (Frank Cass, London, 1996).
50. L. M. Rao, 'Ranking Foreign Donors: An index combining the scale and equity of aid giving'. Report commissioned by the Office of Development Studies. (UNDP, New York, 1996) (mimeo).