I’m currently reading Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid. While working my way through her arguments, I have had a chance to discuss with colleagues and friends and reflect on my professional experiences. In this post, I would like to weigh in on the much debated concept of aid.
Dambisa Moyo argues that overall, aid is negatively impacting recipient countries, achieving the exact opposite of its intended effects. At the same time as aid has increased to African countries, overall growth rates have decreased and poverty is on the rise. Large influxes of aid are encouraging increases in corrupt practices rather than engendering good governance. And rather than encouraging further investment, aid inflows flood the financial markets and detract investors. In reading through these and the other points discussed in “Part I. The World of Aid,” I found myself wishing I could have an additional book for every short, two page section. She reaches some very large, sweeping conclusions in a very short amount of space. I definitely felt myself wanting more. Perhaps this was her intention all along?
That being said, I think that some of the overarching problems she outlines resonate with my experiences thus far in a world of aid. In writing grants for development projects, countries do have to tweak their priorities so they fit in the tick marks of project proposal criteria. And sometimes, countries may find themselves implementing and accepting to pay in kind contributions for projects that are more a diversion from national priorities merely because that is where funding is being directed. As I discovered in Samoa, once a country does receives funds, they may have trouble spending them all before the project completion date. Ministries may simply lack the work force needed to prepare the required information for procurement processes. Most of the development cooperation projects I’ve dealt with have an amount of leftover funding that has to be quickly spent at the end of the project cycle.
Even more importantly, for some countries aid has become an assumed, constant additional source of funding that is relied on to implement national priorities. This dependency on aid is problematic for several reasons. For one, the amounts of aid sent to partner countries is highly volatile, depending on domestic support, national security and economic priorities, fluctuations in international financial markets, and so on. And even more importantly, the traditional aid set up is built on an unequal, one way relationship between donor and recipient countries; it is a unilateral transaction instead of an exchange. While I was at the OECD, I saw a definite push to switch from the word “aid” to “development cooperation.” While this switch in terminology is a positive step towards a much-needed shift in mentality, it has largely remained just that – a word change. The actual programs and policies are the same. A rose by any other name…
The world of aid needs to make a genuine shift towards cooperation. The work on climate change in Samoa is truly impressive. The Government of Samoa is pushing Ministries to incorporate climate change into all sectoral development plans. The Cabinet Development Committee endorsed a call in 2010 for Samoa to be climate neutral by 2020. A range of projects are working to help vulnerable communities protect their homes and livelihoods from the effects of climate change. (For one example, see this Government of Samoa-UNDP joint project that was kicked off in April. I plan to highlight another exciting project in a future blog post. For a teaser, check out the website for Women in Business Development Inc.) And while many of these initiatives are made possible by donor funding, the experience of implementing these projects is still unique and valuable knowledge that should be shared more broadly than in project completion reports. I would have to search quite thoroughly to find a few examples of similar projects at home. The US would be doing itself a true disservice if we only have a one-way conversation with Samoa about climate change programs and policies.
All this is not to say that all aid projects have only had negative effects on recipient countries. On the contrary, I think that every negative story could be complimented by a positive one. But this does not change the fact that if aid is to help countries truly advance on their path towards development, it has to be temporary. When working on the day-to-day of project implementation, it is very easy to become mired in the details and forget that every aid worker should be working towards a true transition from aid to development cooperation. What this might look like is a topic that should be discussed by government agencies and partner countries across the world, particularly now as we are quickly moving towards the September 2015 UN General Assembly meetings that will set out the post-2015 development agenda.
These are a few of my thoughts on a very complex, heatedly-debated topic, and I would love to have a continued discussion on this. Share your reactions by leaving a comment below, sending me a Tweet, etc.
