Hidden treasures: inside the Kingdom of Ife exhibition

Bonnie Greer visits the British Museum to explore a rare display of west African art with Jonathan King, the museum's keeper. Together they explain why these medieval sculptures – excavated in 1938 and originally judged too exquisite to have been crafted by indigenous artists – are a glowing testament to Africa's cultural heritage

• guardian.co.uk, 
• Wednesday 21 April 2010

• via guardian.co.uk

Check Out This “Night Catches Us” Featurette & New Poster

By Tambay, on October 28th, 2010

Ahead of its December 3rd opening date…

 

In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Anthony Mackie, “The Hurt Locker”) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Kerry Washington, “Ray,” “Lift”) and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone's beliefs as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia.

>via: http://www.nightcatchesus.com/

Natural is the New Light Skinned

by Garfield Hylton on October 12, 2010

 

The topic of women and their hair is always a touchy subject. I have been on the end of some serious lip service (not that kind) when it comes to discussing women and their (seemingly) most prized possession. Since I have not learned my lesson (and I lightweight like pissing people off), I have returned for a discussion about what looks to be the newest trend among black women, natural hair.

A few years ago when Twitter did not exist and Facebook was still for college students, I was a young whippersnapper at FSU minding my own business when I started to observe that many women were going natural and getting “the big chop.” I also noticed that many of these women were Deltas…

I did not understand what was going on, so as any young person would do, I wrote a status on Facebook in hopes of getting some answers. Needless to say the backlash was crazy. The women who responded were very upset at my questioning of their movement from perms to natural and told me I had no business to inquire.

Fine.

Another incident rings out in my mind with a weave wearer I got into an argument with. I told her I preferred not to date heavy weave wearers (she was a heavy weave wearer) and she said something to the effect of “you probably like to date them natural bitches as if they are better than people who wear weave and they will probably cheat on you faster than a bitch with weave will.”

Mad feelings were obviously caught. But I paid more attention to her assumption of why I dated women who were “natural.”

In my naiveté, I was aware of the  hair complex of black women, but I did not know that there was a secret war between weave wearers, permed folk, and natural hair wearers.

A woman I know who has worn her hair natural for over 10 years is upset with what she refers to as “all these trendy natural hair wearing bitches.”

“I mean I have been wearing my hair natural for 10 years and when I first started, me and my cousin who was also natural got side eyed to death. People asked us why we did not like to comb our hair and how come our hair was not straight like everybody else. People can wear their hair how they want, but I do not understand why there has to be a big political showing. ‘Oh I am about to make the big chop.’ Saddown bitch, I been natural for 10 years and I made no spectacle of it. If you want to be natural, be natural, but I do not get why women have to make a big deal, it’s just hair.”

No doubt, a mouthful. On Twitter I saw others saying things about natural women like “natural is the new light skin” with one woman stating “just because you natural does not mean you have reached some higher consciousness, you just decided to stop getting your hair permed. Stop that “we are the world, black power” bulls**t.”

Now, if every woman rocking a natural is doing it because it is trendy, let me be the first to say that they are well within their right to do so (no matter how wack I think it is).

I just want to know why. Where did this trend start? Who started this trend? I am a bit secluded from the world since I spend my days around mostly “educated” people in school and on Twitter. Is this wide spread among ALL women or just a small percentage?

I am also reminded of another conversation I have had with an ex about her going natural. Around the same time all the Deltas on my campus were doing it, she was visibly upset too.

“When I first decided to go natural I remember talking about it with my girls for weeks and it just being a very uncomfortable topic. It felt like such a struggle to make the transition, and now I walk on campus and all these women are doing that because it’s the “in” thing to do and its wack.”

That story echoes the same sentiments as my close friend and I see there is plenty resentment from women who have been wearing their hair natural for years, to women who are hopping on it because it is the “cool” thing to do.

I thought this line of thinking problematic as well and after a few minutes it actually made sense. I will use video games for my example. Upon being released, video games were widely thought to be used by nerds and anti-social white kids who wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirts and built bombs in their basement.

Being the young form on entertainment it was, I can remember being side – eyed to death by my friends when I talked about spending all weekend playing role playing games in fantasy lands that people had never heard of. I actually had more nerdy white kids as friends growing up; because they were the only people I could share my love of gaming with.

Fast forward 15 years later and now gaming is the new hotness. Because of being so widespread, I no longer have to hide the fact that I spent an entire weekend on my couch playing the newest Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, or Final Fantasy game. Nope. Now it is a cool activity and I, at one point, found myself saying “you wasn’t on this stuff when it first came out because you thought it was lame, but now that everybody doing it, you want to do it too. Lame.”

There is also a great deal of ignorance when it comes to natural hair. Some women are not sure if being natural means “going to the salon to get it done” or just growing it out in its natural state. One dude on Twitter said that natural women are just “chicks who are bald and don’t have no hair.”

His words, not mine.

Some women also rock their natural hair straight (through the use of grease and hot combs) and were confused if their hair would be considered natural as well. The ex I mentioned earlier had hair down to the middle of her back when it was straightened. It was so long in fact, I mistakenly believed that it was a weave. (Nobody is perfect)

I want to say that there is some overarching point to this blog, but there isn’t. I’m interested to see what you guys have to say on the matter. Are you natural? Why did you do it? How long have you done it? Do you see it as a trend? Does it make you upset when other people treat is as a trend? Hit the comment box and let me know your thoughts.

Peace.

Bordering on Chaos

In South Sudan, a delayed vote could mean the collapse of fragile peace.

BY MAGGIE FICK | AUGUST 30, 2010

JUBA, Sudan -- "Nothing can stop this referendum," Nixon Simon told me last week in a restaurant in the fledgling capital of South Sudan. Simon, a forestry engineer, had just come home to Juba after fleeing as a refugee 20 years ago. But his words could have come from any southerner. Just about everyone in the region -- which has become increasingly independent-minded since the end of Sudan's horrific, decades-long civil war cut the country in two -- agrees they can no longer live under the oppressive yoke of the northern government in Khartoum. Simon is counting down to the referendum slated for next January, when the south is widely expected to vote for secession.

Khartoum, however, may have other plans. In recent weeks, high-level officials have recommended that the contested 1,300-mile border that divides the country into north and south should be given a final demarcation before a vote. It might seem reasonable to request that a country know its own borders before declaring independence -- but from the south's perspective, Khartoum's suggestion is purely a stalling tactic. Demarcating the borders will be a laborious, miserable process that could take years. And angry southerners aren't likely to wait that long for independence, even if it means descending back into violence.

When Sudan's north and south signed the 2005 agreement that ended the civil war, they agreed on the so-called "1/1/1956" border, the one in effect when Sudan became independent from Britain half a century ago. But in the past five years, the central government's National Congress Party (NCP) and the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) have found numerous points of contention along the historic boundary. A border-demarcation committee made up of technocrats from both north and south has officially mapped out 80 percent of the border, but at least five areas remain under dispute.

The most perilous disputed border may well be the Abyei region in the center of the country, populated by rival tribes, the Misseriya, seminomadic pastoralists, and the Ngok Dinka, who are sedentary farmers. The Ngok Dinka claim historic rights to the land, which they've lived on for hundreds of years and which the British guaranteed them in 1905. The Misseriya, meanwhile, have grazing rights, but explosive tension over the extent of these rights dates back to the 1960s and the first Sudanese civil war, when the Dinka became allied with the south and the Misseriya with the north. The situation came to a head most recently in May 2008, when 60,000 people fled into the south after the northern Sudanese army razed and looted Abyei's main town, indiscriminately killing at least 18 civilians.

The 2005 peace accord promised the people of Abyei their own separate referendum on whether to join the north or the south following the southern secession vote, regardless of its outcome. But this referendum has been delayed even longer than the southern vote. Locals have taken to the streets repeatedly in the past several months, protesting the current impasse between the NCP and SPLM over the administration of the vote and begging the international community to step in.

Visiting Abyei earlier this month to gauge the tensions, I asked several young people from the southern-allied Ngok Dinka group what they thought of their Misseriya rivals. The response was hardened resentment and flaring tempers. None of the Ngok Dinka said they had friends from the other tribe: "Of course not," one told me.

Internationally led attempts in recent years to reconcile the two groups have borne little fruit. Both sides face existential threats -- the loss of land and livelihood -- depending on the outcome of the vote. Most recently, the SPLM accused Khartoum of paying to build permanent structures for the Misseriya in historically Ngok-Dinka-dominated northern areas of Abyei, possibly in an attempt to stock the area with north-friendly voters and sway the referendum.

With the Abyei issue nowhere near resolution, can the South Sudan referendum proceed? Technically, the answer is a simple yes. On a number of occasions, disputed borders haven't prevented the formation of a new country: Eritrea being carved out of Ethiopia or the breakup of Yugoslavia, for example. (Of course, this didn't work out so well in either case.) Nor is there any international precedent for physically demarcating a border prior to a separation vote, as advisors to the SPLM have been quick to point out. Northern Sudan itself already has an undemarcated and disputed border with its ally Egypt: the Hala'ib Triangle, a border area almost twice the size of Abyei.

But the mere fact of precedent isn't going to hold the north back from blocking the vote, or the south back from a violent uprising -- not least because several of the disputed border areas in Sudan hold huge amounts of known oil reserves and gold deposits. The Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based think tank, has reported that the south currently holds about 82 percent of Sudan's oil fields. If Heglig and Bamboo -- two disputed fields that the south claims should end up on its side of the border -- were counted, that figure could reach up to 95 percent. At the moment, the armies of the NCP and SPLM are gathered close to these disputed areas, poised to see what will happen next.

And back in Juba, many miles away from the broiling borderlands, southerners like Simon are getting angrier and angrier. South Sudan is certainly tired of conflict, and it has good reason to be. But it is even more tired of waiting to vote.

________________________________________

The Independence Brigade

Southern Sudan prepares for statehood…or war.

PHOTOS BY PETE MULLER, CAPTIONS BY MAGGIE FICK | OCTOBER 29, 2010

For more than half of its independent history, Sudan was locked in brutal north-south civil war. And for anyone under the age of 30 -- about half of the country's people -- war has been a near constant reality. Displacement, active combat, and immense suffering have afflicted the Southern Sudanese people, who bore the brunt of the suffering during the second civil war throughout the 1980s and 90s. Then, in 2005, an incredible peace was brokered -- with one very large caveat: In 2011, Southern Sudan would vote on whether it wants to remain a part of Sudan or secede. That moment is now upon us; a self-determination referendum is scheduled to be held on January 9, 2011. Many worry that the north won't let its southern half go without bloodshed. Yet it is so likely that Southern Sudan will vote for an independence that the Obama administration recently declared it "inevitable."

With the prospect of independence looming, Southern Sudan is hard at work trying to act like a state before it becomes one. The semi-autonomous southern government, led by the political wing of what was once the south's main rebel group, has made impressive strides over the past five years. When the rebels became the regional government in the southern capital of Juba in 2005, there were virtually no roads and only a handful of cars. Today, the southern government has built the bricks and mortar of a capital -- but also institutions such as a cabinet and a judiciary from scratch.

Perhaps even trickier than building a bureaucracy from an insurrection is turning a rebel force into a legitimate military. The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Southern Sudan Police Service are bloated with untrained, unprofessional, ex-rebel fighters -- a sizeable proportion of whom were loyal to individual militia commanders who fought on different sides in the civil war. Men like the one pictured here in Pibor, a remote corner of restive Jonglei state near Ethiopia, learned how to fight in the bush during the civil war and have had little formal education. Then there's the sticky issue of child soldiers; the southern army says they have fewer than 1,000 children in its ranks, and it has pledged to make its army "child-free" by the end of the year. Accomplishing this tall order, however, could prove difficult given the plethora of other pressing priorities. This week, the Obama administration waived a requirement for Sudan to come into compliance with a law prohibiting child soldiers -- arguing that additional funding and support for the country's nascent army must take priority over penalties for the inability to enact immediate reforms. But international officials working in Juba say reform of the army, the police, and the handful of other security forces is a project that will take decades.  

 

The first task in professionalizing a military is figuring out what exactly it will and will not do. The army's modernizers -- a hodgepodge of international donors and internal Southern Sudanese military officers -- envision it securing an independent Southern Sudan's international borders and protecting the nation from external threats, first among them the north. In theory, the army would not take the lead on internal, civilian-related security as it does now. These tasks would be left for police -- but this force also needs building.

In addition to basic border protection, however, the military is once again preparing for the possibility of war. Despite five years of peace between north and south, mistrust between Juba and Khartoum is at an all-time high. Many here are skeptical that the north will let Southern Sudan secede without a fight. And so the army has to be battle-ready. Here, heavily armed soldiers stand guard on top of the Juba international airport on October 1 as they await Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir's arrival home from a trip to the United States.

 

Prior to the creation of the official Southern Sudanese Army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army -- the rebel group that fought 23 years for autonomy from the repressive central government in Khartoum was the region's main fighting force. "Victory is certain," their motto proclaimed. Unfortunately, their unity didn't prove so firm. During the war, factions of the SPLA often fought one another, only prolonging the conflict. Khartoum took to sponsoring dissident southern rebel commanders and opportunistic militia leaders. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005, Kiir tried his best to unite the dividers, bringing on board a number of key militia leaders by granting them positions in the southern army. The 2006 Juba Declaration, which officially integrated these ex-militiamen into the military, is still considered Kiir's greatest accomplishment in his five years as president.

But the line between civilians and armed actors remains blurred, a legacy of past militias built from community groundswells. Repeated attempts by the southern army to disarm civilian populations have resulted in bloodshed. A 2006 campaign in the remote Jonglei state, for example, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people after members of one tribal group took advantage of the vulnerability of their recently disarmed neighbors by raiding their cattle and settling other scores. The southern government has outlawed the possession of weapons by civilians in public, but in some instances it is difficult to tell the difference between a soldier in a ragtag uniform and a civilian in clothing resembling militia attire. Here, men walking in the town of Pibor carry weapons for protection; their clothing does not clearly indicate whether or not they are soldiers, police officers, or simply ordinary citizens.

 

The task of transforming a fractured rebel movement into an army begins with the soldiers themselves. International donors, including the United States but particularly Britain, are working with the top brass of the southern army to devise strategies to professionalize their troops -- and make their work conditions more livable. The life of a rank-and-file Southern Sudanese soldier is far from easy. Salaries are often paid infrequently, new uniforms and weapons are hard to come by, and living conditions in the field are dire. Yet there are few other options for employment for young and old soldiers alike. Here, soldiers, police, military police, and the wildlife service patrol the Sobat River, near Southern Sudan's border with Ethiopia.

 

 

There are countless more "to-do's" on the southern army's list: Disarming and demobilizing elderly and otherwise infirm and aged soldiers unfit for service; identifying child soldiers and finding a way to reintegrate them into civilian life; selecting and training elite units to serve in the presidential guard, border patrol forces, and other specialized arenas; training soldiers on proper weapons storage and maintenance -- not to mention teaching officers how to fire a weapon accurately and safely. Even more difficult is coming to terms with how the pervasive reality of tribalism in Southern Sudan impacts dynamics within the military. Since many of the rank and file soldiers were drawn from local militias, they are often more loyal to a commander who hails from their same village or tribe than the idea of a national army. The creation of a southern state, commanders hope, may help bolster nationalism among the army's ranks. Above, military police prepare to escort the southern president in a convoy in Juba. The mounted, Soviet-era, 50-caliber belt-fed assault weapon can blast a hole through a car's engine block.

 

In the five years since the war ended and donor money began flowing into the war-devastated south, the international community's effort to support security sector reform has become a multifaceted, multi-donor, multi-million-dollar undertaking. Though far from perfect, there are signs from the ground that coordination among international actors, particularly at the donor government level, is improving. Although diplomats from both the British and American consulates are tasked with overseeing security sector reform funding, the bulk of the work itself is done by contractors, including Adam Smith International and Civicon. The British generally have the lead on strategic, officer-level training and advising, while the Americans are involved in building basic infrastructure such as new barracks and training sites.   

Internationals working on these programs in Juba admit -- off the record, of course -- that strategic, internal army reform is not the top priority for the southern army at present; preparing for another possible war with the north comes first.

 

But the most difficult reform cannot be bought and paid for. It's political. With Southern Sudan's self-determination vote little more than two months away, internationals working on security sector reform in Juba quietly admit that it is unclear who would show up to fight for the SPLA if war with the north breaks out. An accurate estimate of the size of the army is not publicly available. Likewise, the contractors working on payroll reform for the various branches of the security forces, including the police and prison service, do not disclose the number of men in uniform. The topic is considered too sensitive; a unified south is sacred in the lead up to the referendum. Soldiers here are seated in front of a faded billboard calling for peace, picturing Southern Sudanese women in traditional dress while a triumphant Northern President Omar al-Bashir waves his trademark cane. This is the reality that most in Southern Sudan hope to end.

 

Before he died in a helicopter crash in 2005, the SPLA's commander-in-chief, the southern war hero Dr. John Garang, told fellow southerners in a speech:

"I and those who joined me in the bush and fought for more than twenty years, have brought to you CPA [the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brokered in 2005] in a golden plate. Our mission is accomplished. It is now your turn, especially those who did not have a chance to experience bush life. When time comes to vote at referendum, it is your golden choice to determine your fate. Would you like to vote to be second class citizens in your own country? It is absolutely your choice."

Here, soldiers patrol the border with Ethiopia.

 

Young police recruits sit in an open air classroom receiving training on how to read and interpret a map. The pupils at this site near Juba, photographed in early October, have been training since January without pay, but many seemed to be in good spirits and proud of what they had learned and accomplished to date. These young recruits have all had some formal education; some are even secondary school graduates. These soldiers are part of a new era in the police service; their predecessors in the police force are mostly illiterate former soldiers and rebel fighters.

 

In addition to its military, Southern Sudan is training thousands of new recruits in preparation for the upcoming referendum vote. U.N. police advisors from the $1 billion per year peacekeeping mission are supporting this project, training the fledgling force in VIP protection, crowd control, and other specialized fields. The hope is that the police service -- not the army -- will prove capable of promoting and protecting internal security during the referendum process. But if tensions escalate around the vote, which it did during recent national elections in April, it's likely that the army would step in to back up the police.

Here, riot police form a phalanx at the police training site in the town of Rajaf in October, for the U.N. Security Council visit on October 7. The visit included U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. 

 

Although the police trainees are pictured here with batons, Southern Sudanese police typically carry AK-47s. Hand guns are difficult to come by. AK-47s were a standard feature of the latest civil war; an influx of small arms during the war has left a security dilemma in its aftermath. Many families in rural and remote areas have several automatic weapons in their possession and are reluctant to hand them over for fear of attack by rival neighboring groups. While members of both the police and army still tote these guns, a shortage of ammunition means soldiers and police officers are unable to practice their marksmanship skills regularly. 

 

When U.S. Ambassador Rice and other Security Council members visited Southern Sudan on Oct. 7, Southern Sudan's minister of internal affairs, Gier Chuang, had a message for them: "We need your support in a serious way" ahead of the referendum, he said, specifically to support police training.

Chuang got his wish. The U.S. State Department paid for riot gear for a small, elite force, and various U.N. agencies have helped pay for the construction of barracks and classrooms.

 

Human rights advocates raised alarm bells this week when the Obama administration opted to waive the requirement that the Southern Sudanese Army be free of child soldiers. The rationale for the waiver was to prevent the child soldier law from cutting off funding to military reform. On the ground in Southern Sudan, the logic behind this decision is clear: The southern army and police force simply need to receive training and funding in order to move forward in their professionalization effort -- part of which involves demobilizing child soldiers.

 

Young police recruits demonstrate a "high-risk arrest" during the October 7 Security Council visit to Rajaf. U.N. police advisors are assisting in these training programs, which is why a U.N. vehicle was used for this demonstration.

 

New recruits, like the ones pictured here, tend to have more education than many of the older officers who served in the southern army during the war. Here, young new recruits stand at attention at a Southern Sudan Police Service training site in Bentiu, the capital of Unity state -- an oil-rich region bordering northern Sudan. 

 

The police recruits in this class are indefinitely in training for now -- unsure when and if they will be deployed throughout the south to monitor and provide security for the coming referendum vote. In an ideal situation, this riot gear will not be needed during the seven day polling period. Polling stations will be set up across the south -- even in tiny villages accessible for most of the year only by helicopter or on foot.

 

The challenges facing Southern Sudan as it braces for an uncertain future as an independent country are enormous, but the spirit of optimism pervades. Southerners who fought for decades to be free of Khartoum are eager to govern their own affairs. While the current pre-election period seems precariously calm, it is undeniably marked by hope and excitement among everyday citizens. Here, a police officer takes a break from his referendum security training course in Bentiu to pose for a portrait.

High expectations, however, will likely be tempered after the vote, when the hard work of nation and state building truly gets underway -- that is, if Khartoum does not dispute the results of the vote and try to block the south from seceding. Of all the nascent government institutions here, it is the security sector that has a make or break role in the future of Southern Sudan. Unlike the old SPLA motto, though, victory is not certain.

 

Maggie Fick is a journalist and Pete Muller is a photographer based in Juba, Sudan.

 

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance

Author and Page information

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Sunday, April 25, 2010

• This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance.
• To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
  • http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/35

Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments despite any good intentions from donor countries. In reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

• Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
• Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
• Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
• Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away.

This article explores who has benefited most from this aid, the recipients or the donors.

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1. Governments Cutting Back on Promised Responsibilities
   1. Rich Nations Agreed at UN to 0.7% of GNP To Aid
   2. Almost all rich nations fail this obligation
   3. Some donate many dollars, but are low on GNI percent
   4. Aid beginning to increase but still way below obligations
2. Foreign Aid Numbers in Charts and Graphs
   1. Aid money is actually way below what has been promised
   2. Side note on private contributions
   3. Side Note on Private Remittances
   4. Adjusting Aid Numbers to Factor Private Contributions, and more
   5. Ranking the Rich based on Commitment to Development
   6. Private donations and philanthropy
3. Are numbers the only issue?
   1. The Changing Definition of Aid Reveals a much Deeper Decline than What Numbers Alone Can Show
   2. Aid is Actually Hampering Development
   3. Private flows often do not help the poorest
4. Aid as a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient
   1. Aid And Militarism
   2. Aid Money Often Tied to Various Restrictive Conditions
   3. More Money Is Transferred From Poor Countries to Rich, Than From Rich To Poor
5. Aid Amounts Dwarfed by Effects of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, etc
6. But aid could be beneficial
   1. Trade and Aid
   2. Improving Economic Infrastructure
   3. Use aid to Empower, not to Prescribe
   4. Rich donor countries and aid bureaucracies are not accountable
   5. Democracy-building is fundamental, but harder in many developing countries
   6. Failed foreign aid and continued poverty: well-intentioned mistakes, calculated geopolitics, or a mix?

Governments Cutting Back on Promised Responsibilities

“Trade, not aid” is regarded as an important part of development promoted by some nations. But in the context of international obligations, it is also criticized by many as an excuse for rich countries to cut back aid that has been agreed and promised at the United Nations.

Rich Nations Agreed at UN to 0.7% of GNP To Aid

Recently, there was an EU pledge to spend 0.56% of GNI on poverty reduction by 2010, and 0.7% by 2015.

However,

• The donor governments promised to spend 0.7% of GNP on ODA (Official Development Assistance) at the UN General Assembly in 1970—some 40 years ago
• The deadline for reaching that target was the mid-1970s.
• By 2015 (the year by when the Millennium Development Goals are hoped to be achieved) the target will be 45 years old.

This target was codified in a United Nations General Assembly Resolution, and a key paragraph says:

In recognition of the special importance of the role which can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade.

— International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, UN General Assembly Resolution 2626 (XXV), October 24, 1970, para. 43

What was to be the form of aid?

Financial aid will, in principle, be untied. While it may not be possible to untie assistance in all cases, developed countries will rapidly and progressively take what measures they can … to reduce the extent of tying of assistance and to mitigate any harmful effects [and make loans tied to particular sources] available for utilization by the recipient countries for the purpose of buying goods and services from other developing countries.

… Financial and technical assistance should be aimed exclusively at promoting the economic and social progress of developing countries and should not in any way be used by the developed countries to the detriment of the national sovereignty of recipient countries.

Developed countries will provide, to the greatest extent possible, an increased flow of aid on a long-term and continuing basis.

— International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, UN General Assembly Resolution 2626 (XXV), October 24, 1970, para. 45-47

The aid is to come from the roughly 22 members of the OECD, known as the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). [Note that terminology is changing. GNP, which the OECD used up to 2000 is now replaced with the similar GNI, Gross National Income which includes a terms of trade adjustment. Some quoted articles and older parts of this site may still use GNP or GDP.]

ODA is basically aid from the governments of the wealthy nations, but doesn’t include private contributions or private capital flows and investments. The main objective of ODA is to promote development. It is therefore a kind of measure on the priorities that governments themselves put on such matters. (Whether that necessarily reflects their citizen’s wishes and priorities is a different matter!)

Almost all rich nations fail this obligation

Even though these targets and agendas have been set, year after year almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $100 billion short.

Furthermore, the quality of the aid has been poor. As Pekka Hirvonen from the Global Policy Forum summarizes:

Recent increases [in foreign aid] do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Measured as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), aid lags far behind the 0.7 percent target the United Nations set 35 years ago. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases,

• Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
• Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
• Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
• Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
• All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

— Pekka Hirvonen, Stingy Samaritans; Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor, Global Policy Forum, August 2005 [bullet list formatting added]

The Cold War years saw a high amount of aid (though not near the 0.7% mark) as each super power and their allies aided regimes friendly to their interests. The end of the Cold War did not see some of the savings from the reduced military budgets being put towards increased aid, as hoped. Instead, as noted by the development organization, the South Centre, “developing countries found themselves competing with a number of countries in transition for scarce official assistance.”

As others have long criticized, aid had a geopolitical value for the donor countries as aid increased when a Cold War had to be fought. (A long decline in the post Cold War 1990s has seen another rise, this time to fight terrorism, also detailed below.)

The issues raised by Hirvonen above are detailed further below. But before going into the poor quality of aid, a deeper look at the numbers:

Some donate many dollars, but are low on GNI percent

Some interesting observations can be made about the amount of aid. For example:

• USA’s aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP has almost always been lower than any other industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically since 2000, their dollar amount has been the highest.
• Between 1992 and 2000, Japan had been the largest donor of aid, in terms of raw dollars. From 2001 the United States claimed that position, a year that also saw Japan’s amount of aid drop by nearly 4 billion dollars.

Aid beginning to increase but still way below obligations

Throughout the 1990s, ODA declined from a “high” of 0.33% of total DAC aid in 1990 to a low of 0.22% in 1997. 2001 onwards has seen a trend of increased aid. Side Note»The UN noted the irony that the decline in aid came at a time where conditions were improving for its greater effectiveness . According to the World Bank, overall, the official development assistance worldwide had been decreasing about 20% since 1990.

Between 2001 and 2004, there was a continual increase in aid, but much of it due to geo-strategic concerns of the donor, such as fighting terrorism. Increases in 2005 were largely due to enormous debt relief for Iraq, Nigeria, plus some other one-off large items.

(As will be detailed further below, aid has typically followed donor’s interests, not necessarily the recipients, and as such the poorest have not always been the focus for such aid. Furthermore, the numbers, as low as they are, are actually more flattering to donor nations than they should be: the original definition of aid was never supposed to include debt relief or humanitarian emergency assistance, but instead was meant for development purposes. This is discussed further below, too.)

See more details for those years»

For the change in aid trends in 2001, the OECD noted that:

• “Most of the United States’ increase in 2001 was due to a $600 million disbursement to Pakistan for economic support in the September 11 aftermath.”
• Japan’s ODA fell by nearly $4 billion. “A key factor accounting for this was a 12.7 per cent depreciation of the Yen….” Other factors were “the timing of Japan’s disbursements to multilateral organisations and loan repayments from Asian countries that have recovered from the Asian financial crisis.”

For the increase in overall aid in 2002 (by just 5%), the OCED commented that:

• “The United States increased its ODA by 11.6% in real terms in 2002 … mainly due to additional and emergency funds in response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks as well as new aid initiatives, especially in relation to health and humanitarian aid.”
• “Japan’s ODA fell slightly by 1.8% in real terms in 2002. Most of the fall … was because the Yen depreciated against the US dollar.”

For 2003 trends, the OCED noted that:

• The aid increases were modest in 2003.

• Reasons»

  • Continuing growth in general bilateral grants ($2 billion);
  • The start of reconstruction aid to Iraq ($2 billion); and
  • Offset by a cyclical fall of contributions to multilateral concessional funds (-$1.2 billion) and a small decrease in net lending (-$0.5 billion).
• In addition, the OECD admitted this was still not enough, and it “underlines the need for developing countries to make efforts on a range of fronts, including by creating an environment where the private sector can thrive.”
• In parallel, the OECD “stresses that OECD countries must do more to promote economic growth in poor countries through coherent economic policies that take account of these countries’ needs.”
• Some positive long-term trends were also noted, for example towards more support for governments that were delivering results, more untied aid, more support for policies “owned” by developing countries rather than imposed upon them through conditionality, and a greater emphasis on governance and health.
• However, there was also a sharp decline in aid for agricultural development, and a rising share in total aid outlays of humanitarian aid in response to emergencies as opposed to long-term development and aid to the poorest countries.

For 2004 trends, the OECD noted that:

• Aid rose 4.3% in real terms between 2003 and 2004.

• Reasons»

  • Increases in contributions to international organizations, aid to Afghanistan and Iraq, and technical co-operation grants;
  • This was despite gross debt relief grants and actual net lending falling;
  • US aid increased due to contribution to the International Development Association (IDA), the grant and soft-loan arm of the World Bank, and because of aid to Afghanistan and Iraq.
• EU countries combined represented 0.35% of GNI.
• The richest 7 countries, the G7, represented just 0.22%

Inter Press Service (IPS) noted a number of important issues based on a report released April 18, 2005, where U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “warned against any premature rejoicing over the rising numbers.”

• “Adjusted for depreciation of the fast-falling U.S. dollar and worldwide price inflation, the 18.4 percent annual increase of ODA reported for 2003 relative to 2002 ‘falls to around a quarter of that figure,’ [Kofi Annan] notes”
• “Arabella Fraser, policy advisor for the international humanitarian organization Oxfam, is equally guarded” noting that “Rich country self-congratulation is unwarranted,” because “Aid levels are still pitiful … way below the promise of 0.7 percent, which was made 35 years ago.”
• With only around 40 cents in every dollar spent on overseas aid actually reaching the poorest countries, Fraser said that the recent report shows “that aid flows are largely dictated by geo-strategic concerns rather than by efforts to reduce poverty.” (Emphasis added)
• In his report, Annan says that although ODA is normally expected to provide new cash resources for recipient countries to increase development spending, “an increasing portion of the recent increases of ODA has taken the form of expenditures on emergency relief in countries that donors have deemed critical for security reasons.” (Emphasis added)
• When the large amounts of aid given to Afghanistan and Iraq is taken into account, “ODA in 2003 barely increased in real terms, suggesting that the increase in resources available to meet the MDGs has been quite modest.”

Like Annan, the OECD was wary about the figures for 2004, and even for future expected increases. For example:

• The expected “aid ‘boom’ in 2005-06 is primarily due to debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria and emergency aid to the Indian Ocean Tsunami hit countries”
• This means that from 2007, the OECD warns, “donors will have to increase other forms of aid by around 10% per year, double the rate of recent annual increases.”
• There was a 13.3% increase ($7.7 billion) in long term development aid, which “starts reversing the trend which began in 1985 when donors began to give less long-term aid.” While this is positive, it needs to be sustained for many years.
• “Debt relief accounted for 17% of aid, the highest single item in that two year period (primarily because of debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003);”

For 2005 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected rise:

• Aid flows rose 31.4%, topping USD 100 billion in 2005, setting a record;
• Yet, this was still only 0.33% of GNI, meaning a shortfall in promise of just over the same amount.
• Reasons:
  • Debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria ($19 billion)
  • Tsunami aid ($2.2 billion)
• EU countries combined represented 0.44% of their combined GNI
• G7 countries accounted for just 0.29%

Without those special cases, aid levels were similar to previous years. (And, as explained further below, debt relief was never intended to count as official aid.)

For 2006 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected fall in DAC aid for 2006 from 2005’s exceptional “high” (for which major factors included debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria, humanitarian relief for the December 2004 Asian tsunami victims and aid to Afghanistan).

• Aid flows were down 5.1%, representing 0.3% of GNI of countries’ combined incomes
• Excluding debt relief, aid still fell by around 1.8%, the OECD noted
• Despite the fall, it was still the second highest amount after 2005, at USD 103.9 billion
• As before, poorest countries were not necessarily recipients of most aid. For example, “excluding debt relief for Nigeria, aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased by only 2%”
• EU countries combined represented 0.56% of their combined GNI, which was an increase, as some members increased their contributions.

For 2007 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected fall in DAC aid for 2007.

It was noted that

• Debt relief was down as expected
• Other ODA rose slightly
• But the rise in ODA was not as high as recently pledged by governments

Donor countries, the OCED said, will need to make “unprecedented increases to meet the targets they have set for 2010”.

For 2008, the OECD noted that ODA aid was at its highest level ever in dollar terms, increasing over 10% from 2007 in real terms.

However, this aid, as high as it was, was still only at 0.3% of GNI, compared to the 0.7% target). In other words, while aid was almost $120 billion, it was still short by some $260 billion (at 2007 prices).

With the worsening global financial crisis poorer countries are feeling the effects even though they have not caused this crisis. A global recession may result in wealthier nations reducing their development aid in coming years, but the OECD urges that aid be “countercyclical”. That is, during hard times, increasing aid for poorer countries is important to help them weather the coming economic storm. Reducing it just when it is most crucial may be very harmful, the OECD implied.

“Aid cuts at this point in time would place a dangerous additional burden on developing countries already faced with restricted sources of income and increased poverty, and perhaps undo some of the progress already made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals,” says the OECD.

In 2009, the OCED and many others feared official aid would decline due to the global financial crisis. They urged donor nations to make aid “countercyclical”; not to reduce it when it is needed most, but those who didn’t cause the crisis.

And indeed, for 2009, aid did increase as official stats from the OECD shows. It rose 0.7% from just under $123 bn in 2008 to just over $123 bn in 2009 (at constant 2008 prices).

While the financial crisis does show the reliance on aid is not a good strategy for poor countries at any time, some have little choice in the short term.

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Foreign Aid Numbers in Charts and Graphs

As the following chart shows

• Donor nations’ wealth (GNI) increased through the 1990s to 2009
• The levels of aid (tied to that growth) should have increased too
• Instead, in the 1990s it actually fell, while picking up in the 2000s. (Some of those recent rises, especially the large increases, were almost entirely due to debt write-off for a handful of countries — such as Iraq.)
• Aid for the poorest countries remained at a steady dollar amount in this period.
• Given overall wealth of donors had increased, this in effect meant that they reduced their aid to the poorest countries.
• Despite the loss in GNI in 2009 due to the financial crisis, aid did increase slightly. Some hope this is a positive sign for the future.

It should be noted that in 2009 when donor nations had lower GNI due to the global financial crisis they still increased their aid in % terms, perhaps heeding the OECD’s plea mentioned earlier.

Source: OECD, April 2010

The charts and data below are reproduced from the OECD (using their latest data, at time of writing. It will be updated when new data becomes available).

• Net ODA 2009
• Details: % of GNI
• Details: Aid in $
• Raw data

Net ODA 2009

Source: OECD Development Statistics Online, last accessed April 18, 2010

Details: % of GNI

Net ODA in 2009 as percent of GNI

Country	Aid amount by GNI
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
Sweden	1.12
Norway	1.06
Luxembourg	1.01
Denmark	0.88
Netherlands	0.82
Belgium	0.55
Finland	0.54
Ireland	0.54
United Kingdom	0.52
Switzerland	0.47
France	0.46
Spain	0.46
Germany	0.35
Austria	0.3
Canada	0.3
Australia	0.29
New Zealand	0.29
Portugal	0.23
United States	0.2
Greece	0.19
Japan	0.18
Italy	0.16
Korea	0.1

Details: Aid in $

Net ODA in 2009 as US dollar amounts (millions)

Country	Aid amount by dollars
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
United States	28,305
United Kingdom	13,179
France	12,746
Germany	12,297
Japan	8,556
Spain	6,786
Netherlands	6,675
Sweden	5,083
Norway	4,650
Canada	4,341
Italy	3,350
Denmark	2,922
Australia	2,912
Belgium	2,661
Switzerland	2,271
Finland	1,319
Austria	1,179
Ireland	1,077
Korea	910
Greece	618
Portugal	523
Luxembourg	423
New Zealand	337

Raw data

Official Development Assistance (ODA) from 2006 to 2009 at Current prices (2008, USD Millions)

		ODA in U.S. Dollars (Millions)				ODA as % of GNI
	Country	2006	2007	2008	2009	2006	2007	2008	2009
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 Note: The U.N. ODA agreed target is 0.7 percent of GNI. Most nations do not meet that target.
1.	Australia	2,572	2,798	2,954	2,912	0.3	0.32	0.32	0.29
2.	Austria	1,797	1,947	1,714	1,179	0.47	0.5	0.43	0.3
3.	Belgium	2,366	2,094	2,386	2,661	0.5	0.43	0.48	0.55
4.	Canada	4,167	4,237	4,795	4,341	0.29	0.29	0.33	0.3
5.	Denmark	2,726	2,805	2,803	2,922	0.8	0.81	0.82	0.88
6.	Finland	1,008	1,055	1,166	1,319	0.4	0.39	0.44	0.54
7.	France	12,793	10,670	10,908	12,746	0.47	0.38	0.39	0.46
8.	Germany	12,406	13,146	13,981	12,297	0.36	0.37	0.38	0.35
9.	Greece	519	546	703	618	0.17	0.16	0.21	0.19
10.	Ireland	1,175	1,242	1,328	1,077	0.54	0.55	0.59	0.54
11.	Italy	4,406	4,302	4,861	3,350	0.2	0.19	0.22	0.16
12.	Japan	12,328	8,660	9,579	8,556	0.25	0.17	0.19	0.18
13.	Korea	409	599	802	910	0.05	0.07	0.09	0.1
14.	Luxembourg	362	416	415	423	0.89	0.92	0.97	1.01
15.	Netherlands	6,539	6,738	6,993	6,675	0.81	0.81	0.8	0.82
16.	New Zealand	298	312	348	337	0.27	0.27	0.3	0.29
17.	Norway	3,720	4,193	3,963	4,650	0.89	0.95	0.88	1.06
18.	Portugal	479	506	620	523	0.21	0.22	0.27	0.23
19.	Spain	4,640	5,552	6,867	6,786	0.32	0.37	0.45	0.46
20.	Sweden	4,644	4,540	4,732	5,083	1.02	0.93	0.98	1.12
21.	Switzerland	1,971	1,883	2,038	2,271	0.39	0.38	0.44	0.47
22.	United Kingdom	12,974	9,167	11,500	13,179	0.51	0.36	0.43	0.52
23.	United States	24,723	22,252	26,842	28,305	0.18	0.16	0.19	0.2

And who gets what?

The OECD web site also provides some breakdowns of how the money is given:

• All DAC aid
• From USA
• Other countries

All DAC aid

Source: Aid at a Glance 2007-2008, OECD Web Site

From USA

Source: Aid at a Glance 2007-2008, OECD Web Site

Other countries

You can also see a full list of country breakdowns from the OECD web site.

When broken down by region over time it seems the poorest countries do not necessarily receive most of the aid:

Of the aid that has been delivered, just under a quarter has gone to the poorest regions for all DAC aid since 1970:

Recent years, however, show a similar trend, with the poorest countries receiving a quarter of all aid:

• Previous
• Next

While aid to the wealthier developing countries has reduced somewhat, the portion going to the poorest countries has hardly changed. In effect, most ODA aid does not appear to go to the poorest nations like we might naturally assume it would:

Aid money is actually way below what has been promised

2006 onwards is typically regarded as years of high aid volumes. However, at around 0.3% of GNI, if all DAC countries have given their full 0.7%, 2009’s aid alone would have been over $274 billion (at 2008 prices), or an increase of over $151 billion.

Considering the typical aid amount at around 0.25 to 0.4% of GNI for over 30 years, the total shortfall is a substantial and staggering amount: over $4 trillion aid shortfall at 2008 prices:

The numbers are probably flattering donors too much, for (as detailed further below), a lot of “development aid” today includes items not originally designated for this purpose (such as debt relief, emergency relief, etc.)

Averaging this data since 1970, when the target of donating 0.7% of national income was agreed, shows the following:

Between 1970 and 2009, the shortfall in aid has been 57%:

Taking the last 10 years, 2000 to 2009, the shortfall increases to 61%:

While dollar amounts of aid increases, the gap between the promised amount (0.7% of GNI) and the actual given seems to be increasing.

This gap was quite small during the 70s, and got smaller in the 80s, but has since widened considerably. (But even when the gap was close, the average ODA aid was around 0.35% of GNI at best, still far below the promised 0.7%.)

Taking just the latest figures (at time of writing), many nations, while seemingly providing large quantities of aid, are far below the levels they had agreed:

(See also the side note, Official global foreign aid shortfall: $4 trillion for more details.)

Side note on private contributions

As an aside, it should be emphasized that the above figures are comparing government spending. Such spending has been agreed at international level and is spread over a number of priorities.

Individual/private donations may be targeted in many ways. However, even though the charts above do show US aid to be poor (in percentage terms) compared to the rest, the generosity of the American people is far more impressive than their government. Private aid/donation typically through the charity of individual people and organizations can be weighted to certain interests and areas. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note for example, per latest estimates, Americans privately give at least $34 billion overseas—more than twice the US official foreign aid of $15 billion at that time:

• International giving by US foundations: $1.5 billion per year
• Charitable giving by US businesses: $2.8 billion annually
• American NGOs: $6.6 billion in grants, goods and volunteers.
• Religious overseas ministries: $3.4 billion, including health care, literacy training, relief and development.
• US colleges scholarships to foreign students: $1.3 billion
• Personal remittances from the US to developing countries: $18 billion in 2000
• Source: Dr. Carol Adelman, Aid and Comfort, Tech Central Station, 21 August 2002.

Although Adelman admitted that “there are no complete figures for international private giving” she still claimed that Americans are “clearly the most generous on earth in public—but especially in private—giving”. While her assertions should be taken with caution, the numbers are high.

The Center for Global Prosperity, from the Hudson Institute, (whose director is Adelman) published its first Index of Global Philanthropy in 2006, which contained updated numbers from those stated above. The total of US private giving, since Adelman’s previous report, had increased to a massive $71 billion in 2004. Page 16 of their report breaks it down as follows:

• International giving by US foundations: $3.4 billion
• Charitable giving by US businesses: $4.9 billion
• American NGOs: $9.7
• Religious overseas ministries: $4.5
• US colleges scholarships to foreign students: $1.7 billion
• Personal remittances from the US to developing countries: $47 billion.

While the majority of the increase was personal remittances ($18 bn in 2000 to $47 bn in 2004), other areas have also seen increases.

Side Note on Private Remittances

Globally, private remittances have increased tremendously in recent years, especially as a number of developing countries have seen rapid growth and economic migration has increased amongst these nations.

In 2005, private remittances were estimated to be around $167 billion, far more than total government aid.

In 2008, the World Bank estimated private remittances between 350 to 650 billion dollars were sent back home by 150 million international migrants.

Many economists and others, including Adelman in the article above, point out that personal remittances are effective. They “don’t require the expensive overhead of government consultants, or the interference of corrupt foreign officials. Studies have shown that roads, clinics, schools and water pumps are being funded by these private dollars. For most developing countries, private philanthropy and investment flows are much larger than official aid.”

Unfortunately Adelman doesn’t cite the studies she mentions because “these private dollars” do not seem to be remittance dollars, but private investment. Economists at the IMF surveyed literature on remittances and admitted that, “the role of remittances in development and economic growth is not well understood … partly because the literatures on the causes and effects of remittances remain separate.” When they tried to see what role remittances played, they concluded that “remittances have a negative effect on economic growth” as it usually goes into private consumption, and takes place under asymmetric information and economic uncertainty.

Even if that turns out to be wrong, the other issue also is whether personal remittances can be counted as American giving, as people point out that it is often foreign immigrant workers sending savings back to their families in other countries. Political commentator Daniel Drezner takes up this issue arguing, “Americans aren’t remitting this money—foreign nationals are.”

Comparing Adelman’s figures with her previous employer’s, USAID, Drezner adds that “Adelman’s figure is accurate if you include foreign remittances.” However, if you do not count foreign remittances then it matches the numbers that the research institute, the Center for Global Development uses in their rankings (see below).

Finally, Drezner suggests that Adelman is not necessarily incorrect in her core thesis that Americans are generous, but “lumping remittances in with charity flows exaggerates the generosity of Americans as a people.”

UNICEF also notes the dangers of counting on personal remittances solely based on economic value, as reported by Inter Press Service. Latin America alone received some $45 billion in remittances in 2004, almost 27% of the total. At a regional conference, noting a Mexican household survery showing remittances contributed to improved provision of child care, the United Nations children’s charity, UNICEF, warned that the importance of family unity cannot be underestimated in terms of child well-being. If a parent is away working in another country, for a child, “the loss of their most important role models, nurturers and caregivers, … has a significant psychosocial impact that can translate into feelings of abandonment, vulnerability, and loss of self-esteem, among others.”

In addition, as the global financial crisis starts to spread, private remittances will decrease, as well as foreign aid in general. Some nations rely a lot on these remittances. Remittances to Sri Lanka, for example, make up some 70% of the country’s trade deficit, according to the Inter Press Service (see previous link). This raises questions as to whether aid and remittances are sustainable in the long term or signal a more fundamental economic problem, as discussed further below.

Adjusting Aid Numbers to Factor Private Contributions, and more

David Roodman, from the CGD, attempts to adjust the aid numbers by including subjective factors :

• Quality of recipient governance as well as poverty;
• Penalizing tying of aid;
• Handling reverse flows (debt service) in a consistent way;
• Penalizes project proliferation (overloading recipient governments with the administrative burden of many small aid projects);
• and rewards tax policies that encourage private charitable giving to developing countries.

In doing so, the results (using 2002 data, which was latest available at that time) produced:

Quality-adjusted aid and charitable giving/GDP (%)

Country	Quality-adjusted aid as percent of GDP
Source: David Roodman, An Index of Donor Performance , Center for Global Development, April 2004 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
Sweden	0.5
Denmark	0.48
Netherlands	0.45
Norway	0.4
France	0.23
Belgium	0.21
Switzerland	0.21
Finland	0.19
United Kingdom	0.19
Austria	0.15
Germany	0.15
Canada	0.14
Ireland	0.12
Australia	0.11
Italy	0.11
Portugal	0.1
Japan	0.09
Greece	0.07
Spain	0.07
United States	0.07
New Zealand	0.03

You can also view this chart as an image.

Interesting observations included:

• Contrary to popular belief, the US is not the only nation with tax incentives to encourage private contributions. (Only Austria, Finland and Sweden do not offer incentives.)
• Factoring that in, the US ranks joint 19th out of 21
• Japan fairs a lot worse

Roodman also admits that “many—perhaps most—important aspects of aid quality are still not reflected in the index—factors such as the realism of project designs and the effectiveness of structural adjustment conditionality.”

Ranking the Rich based on Commitment to Development

The CGD therefore attempts to factor in some quality measures based on their commitment to development for the world’s poor. This index considers aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.

Their result shows the Netherlands first, Japan last, and the US ranking thirteenth, just behind the United Kingdom, out of 21 total. As David Roodman notes in his announcement of the 2006 Commitment to Development Index, “As in the past, the G-7 ‘leading industrial nations’ have not led on the [Commitment to Development Index]; Germany, top among them, is in 9th place overall.”

Recent claims of some “leading industrial nations” being “stingy” may put people on the defensive, but many nations whom we are told are amongst the world’s best, can in fact, do better. The results were charted as follows:

Source: Center for Global Development, Commitment to Development Index 2006

Adelman, further above noted that the US is “clearly the most generous on earth in public—but especially in private—giving”, yet the CGD suggests otherwise, saying that the US does not close the gap with most other rich countries; “The US gives 13c/day/person in government aid….American’s private giving—another 5c/day—is high by international standards but does not close the gap with most other rich countries. Norway gives $1.02/day in public aid and 24c/day in private aid” per person. (These numbers will change of course, year by year, but the point here is that Adelman’s assertion—one that many seem to have—is not quite right.)

Private donations and philanthropy

Government aid, while frought with problems (discussed below), reflects foreign policy objectives of the donor government in power, which can differ from the generosity of the people of that nation. It can also be less specialized than private contributions and targets are internationally agreed to be measureable.

Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions. As Rajshri Dasgupta comments:

“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never be a viable alternative to State obligations,” said Dr James Obrinski, of the organisation Medicins sans Frontier, in Dhaka recently at the People’s Health Assembly (see Himal, February 2001). In a nutshell, industry and private donations are feel-good, short-term interventions and no substitute for the vastly larger, and essentially political, task of bringing health care to more than a billion poor people.

— Rajshri Dasgupta, Patents, Private Charity and Public Health, Himal South Asian, March 2001

As another example, Bill Gates announced in November 2002 a massive donation of $100 million to India over ten years to fight AIDS there. It was big news and very welcome by many. Yet, at the same time he made that donation, he was making another larger donation—over $400 million, over three years—to increase support for Microsoft’s software development suite of applications and its platform, in competition with Linux and other rivals. Thomas Green, in a somewhat cynical article, questions who really benefits, saying “And being a monster MS [Microsoft] shareholder himself, a ‘Big Win’ in India will enrich him [Bill Gates] personally, perhaps well in excess of the $100 million he’s donating to the AIDS problem. Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary of charity is here.” (Emphasis is original.)

India has potentially one tenth of the world’s software developers, so capturing the market there of software development platforms is seen as crucial. This is just one amongst many examples of what appears extremely welcome philanthropy and charity also having other motives. It might be seen as horrible to criticize such charity, especially on a crucial issue such as AIDS, but that is not the issue. The concern is that while it is welcome that this charity is being provided, at a systemmic level, such charity is unsustainable and shows ulteria motives. Would Bill Gates have donated that much had there not been additional interests for the company that he had founded?

In addition, as award-winning investigative reporter and author Greg Palast also notes, the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Intellectural Property Rights (TRIPS), “the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.” He also adds that it is killing more people than the philanthropy saving. What Palast is hinting towards is the unequal rules of trade and economics that are part of the world system, that has contributed to countries such as most in Africa being unable to address the scourge of AIDS and other problems, even when they want to. See for example, the sections on free trade, poverty and corporations on this web site for more.

The LA Times has also found that the Gates Foundation has been investing in questionable companies that are often involved in environmental pollution, even child labor, and more.

In addition to private contributions, when it comes to government aid, these concerns can multiply as it may affect the economic and political direction of an entire nation if such government aid is also tied into political objectives that benefit the donor.

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Are numbers the only issue?

The above talks a lot about numbers and attempts to address common questions about who gives what, as for Americans and Europeans, there is indeed a fascination of this topic.

Less mentioned in the media is that some aid money that is pledged often involves double accounting of sorts. Sometimes offers have even been reneged or just not delivered. This site’s section on the Asian tsunami disaster and on third world debt has more on these aspects.

It is common to hear many Americans claim that the US is the most generous country on earth. While the numbers above may say otherwise in a technical sense, is “who gives the most” really the important discussion here? While important, concentrating on this one aspect diverts us from other pressing issues such as does the aid actually help the recipient, or does it actually help the donor.

As we will see further below, some aid has indeed been quite damaging for the recipient, while at the same time being beneficial for the donor.

The Changing Definition of Aid Reveals a much Deeper Decline than What Numbers Alone Can Show

The South Centre, mentioned earlier, notes that when the 0.7% of GNI promise for development aid was made in 1970, “official development assistance was to be understood as bilateral grants and loans on concessional terms, and official contributions to multilateral agencies.”

But, as they note, a number of factors have led to a large decline in aid, some that cannot be shown by numbers and graphs, alone. Factors include:

• Tigher budgetary constraints in richer countries during the 1980s;
• More importantly, an ideology shift on governments and markets (see also primer on neoliberalism and structural adjustment on this site);
• Increasing number of countries competing for development aid funds;
• Donors putting a broader interpretation on what constitutes development assistance.

On the last point above, South Centre notes that the broader interpretation “include categories which bear little relationship to the need of the developing countries for long term development capital.” (Emphasis Added.) Thus, those expanded categories for official development assistance include:

• Debt relief;
• Subsidies on exports to developing countries;
• Food aid which disposes of agricultural surpluses resulting from government subsidies (see also this site’s section on food dumping and how it increases hunger and poverty);
• Provision of surplus commodities of little economic value;
• Administrative costs;
• Payments for care and education of refugees in donor countries;
• Grants to NGOs and to domestic agencies to support emergency relief operations; and
• Technical co-operation grants which pay for the services of nationals of the donor countries.

An analysis of OECD data over time shows such increases in non-development aid:

In effect, not only has aid been way below that promised, but what has been delivered has not always been for the original goal of development.

The technical co-operation grants are also known as technical assistance. Action Aid, has been very critical about this and other forms of this broader interpretation which they have termed “phantom aid”:

This year we estimate that $37 billion—roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”, that is, it is not genuinely available to poor countries to fight poverty.

… Nowhere is the challenge of increasing real aid as a share of overall aid greater than in the case of technical assistance. At least one quarter of donor budgets—some $19 billion in 2004—is spent in this way: on consultants, research and training. This is despite a growing body of evidence—much of it produced by donors themselves and dating back to the 1960s—that technical assistance is often overpriced and ineffective, and in the worst cases destroys rather than builds the capacity of the poorest countries.

… Although this ineffectiveness is an open secret within the development community, donors continue to insist on large technical assistance components in most projects and programmes they fund. They continue to use technical assistance as a “soft” lever to police and direct the policy agendas of developing country governments, or to create ownership of the kinds of reforms donors deem suitable. Donor funded advisers have even been brought in to draft supposedly “country owned” poverty reduction strategies.

— Real Aid: Making Technical Assistance Work , Action Aid, July 5, 2006, pp.5-6 (Emphasis Added)

The above report by Action Aid uses OECD data, as I have done. Their figures are based on 2004 data, which at time of their publication was the latest available. However, they also went further than I have to show just how much phantom aid there is. For example, they note (p.11) that the $37 billion of phantom aid in 2004 included:

• $6.9 billion (9% of all aid) not targeted for poverty reduction
• $5.7 billion (7%) double counted as debt relief
• $11.8 billion (15%) on over-priced, ineffective technical assistance
• $2.5 billion (3%) lost through aid tying
• $8.1 billion (10%) lost through poor donor co-ordination
• $2.1 billion (3%) on immigration related spending
• at least $70 (0.1%) million on excessive administration costs.

These figures are necessarily approximate, they note. “If anything, they probably flatter donors. Lack of data means that other areas of ‘phantom aid’ have been excluded from our analysis. These include conditional or unpredictable aid, technical assistance and administration spending through multilateral channels, security-related spending and emergency aid for reconstruction following conflicts in countries such as Iraq. Some of these forms of aid do little to fight poverty, and can even do more harm than good.”

Action Aid also provided a matrix (p.14) showing the volumes of real and phantom aid by donor countries:

Real aid volumes and share of phantom aid

	High Real Aid Volume	Medium Real Aid Volume	Low Real Aid Volume
Source: Action Aid, Real Aid: Making Technical Assistance Work, July 5, 2006, p.14; OECD Figures for 2004 (latest at time of publication)
Low share of phantom aid	Ireland Luxemborg Sweden Denmark Norway Netherlands	UK
Medium share of phantom aid	Switzerland	Belgium Finland Germany Canada New Zealand	Japan Italy
High share of phantom aid		France Portugal	Australia Spain Austria Greece USA

At the 2005 G8 Summit, much was made about “historic” debt write-offs and other huge amounts of aid. The problem, the media and government spin implied, was that rich country aid often gets wasted and will only be delivered to poor countries if they meet certain conditions and demands. Yet, hardly ever in the mainstream discourse is the quality of rich country aid an issue or problem that needs urgent addressing. The South Centre noted this many years ago:

The situation outlined above indicates a significant erosion in ODA in comparison with its original intent and content, and in relation to the 0.7 per cent target. It will no longer suffice to merely repeat that ODA targets should be fulfilled. What is required, in view of the policy trends in the North and the mounting need for and importance of concessional flows to a large number of countries in the South, is a fundamental and comprehensive review of the approaches by the international community to the question of concessional financial flows for development, covering the estimated needs, the composition and sources of concessional flows, the quantity and terms on which they are available, and the destination and uses.

— Financial Flows to Developing Countries, Financing Development; Issues for a South Agenda, The South Centre, April 1999

Aid is Actually Hampering Development

Professor William Easterly, a noted mainstream economics professor on development and aid issues has criticized foreign aid for not having achieved much, despite grand promises:

[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.

… It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicing to dying poor children.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), p. 4

The United Nations Economic and Social Council, when noting that effectiveness of aid to poor countries requires a focus on economic infrastructure, also noted that ODA was hampering aid. Jose Antonio Ocampo, Under-Secretary-General for the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs said that debt, commodities, official development assistance and, in some cases, the risk of conflict is hampering development in the least developed countries.

See also, for example, the well-regarded Reality of Aid project for more on the reality and rhetoric of aid. This project looks at what various nations have donated, and how and where it has been spent, etc.

Private flows often do not help the poorest

While ODA’s prime purpose is to promote development, private flows is often substantially larger than ODA. During economic booms, more investment is observed in rapidly emerging economies, for example. But this does not necessarily mean the poorest nations get such investment.

During the boom of the mid-2000s before the global financial crisis sub-Saharan Africa did not attract as much investment from the rich nations, for example (though when China decided to invest in Africa, rich nations looked on this suspiciously fearing exploitation, almost ignoring their own decades of exploitation of the continent. China’s interest is no-doubt motivated by self-interest, and time will have to tell whether there is indeed exploitation going on, or if African nations will be able to demand fair conditions or not).

As private flows to developing countries from multinational companies and investment funds reflect the interests of investors, the importance of Overseas Development Assistance cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, (and detailed below) these total flows are less than the subsidies many of the rich nations give to some of their industries, such as agriculture, which has a direct impact on the poor nations (due to flooding the market with—or dumping—excess products, protecting their own markets from the products of the poor countries, etc.)

In addition, a lot of other inter-related issues, such as geopolitics, international economics, etc all tie into aid, its effectiveness and its purpose. Africa is often highlighted as an area receiving more aid, or in need of more of it, yet, in recent years, it has seen less aid and less investment etc, all the while being subjected to international policies and agreements that have been detrimental to many African people.

For the June 2002 G8 summit, a briefing was prepared by Action for Southern Africa and the World Development Movement, looking at the wider issue of economic and political problems:

It is undeniable that there has been poor governance, corruption and mismanagement in Africa. However, the briefing reveals the context—the legacy of colonialism, the support of the G8 for repressive regimes in the Cold War, the creation of the debt trap, the massive failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank and the deeply unfair rules on international trade. The role of the G8 in creating the conditions for Africa’s crisis cannot be denied. Its overriding responsibility must be to put its own house in order, and to end the unjust policies that are inhibiting Africa’s development.

— It’s the 'Blame the Victim' Summit, Action for Southern Africa, June 25, 2002. You can also see the full briefing .

As the above briefing is titled, a common theme on these issues (around the world) has been to “blame the victim”. The above briefing also highlights some common “myths” often used to highlight such aspects, including (and quoting):

• Africa has received increasing amounts of aid over the years—in fact, aid to Sub-Saharan Africa fell by 48% over the 1990s
• Africa needs to integrate more into the global economy—in fact, trade accounts for larger proportion of Africa’s income than of the G8
• Economic reform will generate new foreign investment—in fact, investment to Africa has fallen since they opened up their economies
• Bad governance has caused Africa’s poverty—in fact, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), economic conditions imposed by the IMF and the World Bank were the dominant influence on economic policy in the two decades to 2000, a period in which Africa’s income per head fell by 10% and income of the poorest 20% of people fell by 2% per year

Christian Aid weighs in on this with a more recent report noting that sub-Saharan Africa is a massive $272 billion worse off because of “free” trade policies forced on them as a condition of receiving aid and debt relief. They also note that:

The reforms that rich countries forced on Africa were supposed to boost economic growth. However, the reality is that imports increased massively while exports went up only slightly. The growth in exports only partially compensated African producers for the loss of local markets and they were left worse off.

— The economics of failure: The real cost of ‘free’ trade', Christian Aid, June 20, 2005

The quantity issue is an input into the aid process. The quality is about the output. We see from the above then, that the quantity of aid has not been as much as it should be. But what about the quality of the aid?

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Aid as a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient

Aid appears to have established as a priority the importance of influencing domestic policy in the recipient countries

— Benjamin F. Nelson, International Affairs Budget: Framework for Assessing Relevance, Priority and Efficiency, (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, October 30, 1997)

As shown throughout this web site (and hundreds of others) one of the root causes of poverty lies in the powerful nations that have formulated most of the trade and aid policies today, which are more to do with maintaining dependency on industrialized nations, providing sources of cheap labor and cheaper goods for populations back home and increasing personal wealth, and maintaining power over others in various ways. As mentioned in the structural adjustment section, so-called lending and development schemes have done little to help poorer nations progress.

The US, for example, has also held back dues to the United Nations, which is the largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing countries. Former US President Jimmy Carter describes the US as “stingy”:

While the US provided large amounts of military aid to countries deemed strategically important, others noted that the US ranked low among developed nations in the amount of humanitarian aid it provided poorer countries. “We are the stingiest nation of all,” former President Jimmy Carter said recently in an address at Principia College in Elsah, Ill.

— Who rules next?, Christian Science Monitor, December 29, 1999

Evan Osbourne, writing for the Cato Institute, also questioning the effectiveness of foreign aid and noted the interests of a number of other donor countries, as well as the U.S., in their aid strategies in past years. For example:

• The US has directed aid to regions where it has concerns related to its national security, e.g. Middle East, and in Cold War times in particular, Central America and the Caribbean;
• Sweden has targetted aid to “progressive societies”;
• France has sought to promote maintenance or preserve and spread of French culture, language, and influence, especially in West Africa, while disproportionately giving aid to those that have extensive commercial ties with France;
• Japan has also heavily skewed aid towards those in East Asia with extensive commercial ties together with conditions of Japanese purchases;

Osbourne also added that domestic pressure groups (corporate lobby groups, etc) “have also proven quite adept at steering aid to their favored recipients.” And so, “If aid is not particularly given with the intention to foster economic growth, it is perhaps not surprising that it does not achieve it.”

Aid And Militarism

IPS noted that recent US aid has taken on militaristic angles as well, following similar patterns to aid during the cold war. The war on terrorism is also having an effect as to what aid goes where and how much is spent.

For example:

• “Credits for foreign militaries to buy US weapons and equipment would increase by some 700 million dollars to nearly five billion dollars, the highest total in well over a decade.” (This is also an example of aid benefiting the donor!)
• “The total foreign aid proposal … amounts to a mere five percent of what Bush is requesting for the Pentagon next year.”
• “Bush’s foreign-aid plan [for 2005] actually marks an increase over 2004 levels, although much of the additional money is explained by greater spending on security for US embassies and personnel overseas.”
• “As in previous years, Israel and Egypt are the biggest bilateral recipients under the request, accounting for nearly five billion dollars in aid between them. Of the nearly three billion dollars earmarked for Israel, most is for military credits.”
• This militaristic aid will come “largely at the expense of humanitarian and development assistance.”

The European Union is linking aid to fighting terrorism as well, with European ministers warning countries that their relations with the economically powerful bloc will suffer if they fail to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. An EU official is quoted as saying, “aid and trade could be affected if the fight against terrorism was considered insufficient”, leading to accusations of “compromising the neutrality, impartiality and independence of humanitarian assistance”.

Aid Money Often Tied to Various Restrictive Conditions

As a condition for aid money, many donors apply conditions that tie the recipient to purchase products only from that donor. In a way this might seem fair and “balanced”, because the donor gets something out of the relationship as well, but on the other hand, for the poorer country, it can mean precious resources are used buying more expensive options, which could otherwise have been used in other situations. Furthermore, the recipient then has less control and decision-making on how aid money is spent. In addition the very nations that typically promote free-markets and less government involvement in trade, commerce, etc., ensure some notion of welfare for some of their industries.

IPS noted that aid tied with conditions cut the value of aid to recipient countries by some 25-40 percent, because it obliges them to purchase uncompetitively priced imports from the richer nations. IPS was citing a UN Economic Council for Africa study which also noted that just four countries (Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) were breaking away from the idea of “tied aid” with more than 90 percent of their aid “untied”.

In addition, IPS noted the following, worth quoting at length:

[Njoki Njoroge] Njehu [director of the 50 Years is Enough campaign] cited the example of Eritrea, which discovered it would be cheaper to build its network of railways with local expertise and resources rather than be forced to spend aid money on foreign consultants, experts, architects and engineers imposed on the country as a condition of development assistance.

Strings attached to US aid for similar projects, she added, include the obligation to buy products such as Caterpillar and John Deere tractors. “All this adds up to the cost of the project.”

Njehu also pointed out that money being doled out to Africa to fight HIV/AIDS is also a form of tied aid. She said Washington is insisting that the continent’s governments purchase anti-AIDS drugs from the United States instead of buying cheaper generic products from South Africa, India or Brazil.

As a result, she said, US brand name drugs are costing up to 15,000 dollars a year compared with 350 dollars annually for generics.

…

AGOA [African Growth and Opportunity Act, signed into US law in 2000] is more sinister than tied aid, says Njehu. “If a country is to be eligible for AGOA, it has to refrain from any actions that may conflict with the US’s ‘strategic interests.’”

“The potential of this clause to influence our countries' foreign policies was hinted at during debates at the United Nations over the invasion of Iraq,” she added.

“The war against Iraq was of strategic interest to the United States,” Njehu said. As a result, she said, several African members of the UN Security Council, including Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, were virtually held to ransom when the United States was seeking council support for the war in 2003.

“They came under heavy pressure,” she said. “The message was clear: either you vote with us or you lose your trade privileges”.

— Thalif Deen, Tied Aid Strangling Nations, Says U.N, Inter Press Service, July 6, 2004

As noted further above, almost half of all foreign aid can be considered “phantom aid”, aid which does not help fight poverty, and is based on a broader definition of foreign aid that allows double counting and other problems to occur. Furthermore, some 50% of all technical assistance is said to be wasted because of inappropriate usage on expensive consultants, their living expenses, and training (some $11.8 billion).

In their 2000 report looking back at the previous year, the Reality of Aid 2000 (Earthscan Publications, 2000, p.81), reported in their US section that “71.6% of its bilateral aid commitments were tied to the purchase of goods and services from the US.” That is, where the US did give aid, it was most often tied to foreign policy objectives that would help the US.

Leading up to the UN Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, the Bush administration promised a nearly $10 billion fund over three years followed by a permanent increase of $5 billion a year thereafter. The EU also offered some $5 billion increase over a similar time period.

While these increases have been welcome, these targets are still below the 0.7% promised at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The World Bank have also leveled some criticism of past policies:

Commenting on the latest US pledge [of $10 billion], Julian Borger and Charlotte Denny of the Guardian (UK) say Washington is desperate to deflect attention in Monterrey from the size of its aid budget. But for more generous donors, says the story, Washington’s conversion to the cause of effective aid spending is hard to swallow. Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on itself—70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East. Only $3bn a year goes to South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

— Monterrey: US Will 'Seek Advice On Spending Aid', World Bank, March 21, 2002

In addition, promises of more money were tied to more conditions, which for many developing countries is another barrier to real development, as the conditions are sometimes favorable to the donor, not necessarily the recipient. Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment commented on the US conditional pledge of more money that:

Thus, status quo in world relations is maintained. Rich countries like the US continue to have a financial lever to dictate what good governance means and to pry open markets of developing countries for multinational corporations. Developing countries have no such handle for Northern markets, even in sectors like agriculture and textiles, where they have an advantage but continue to face trade barriers and subsidies. The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US $100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid.

— Puppets on purse strings, Down To Earth, (Centre for Science and Environment) Vol 10, No 23, April 30, 2002

As discussed further on this site’s section on water issues, the World Development Movement campaign organization reported in early 2005 that the British government has been using aid money to pay British companies to push privatization of water services to poor countries, even though it may not be in their best interests.

The 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles in Scotland saw promises of lots of aid and debt relief, but these were accompanied with a lot of spin, and more conditions, often considered harmful in the past.

Another aspect of aid tying into interests of donors is exemplified with climate change negotiations. Powerful nations such as the United States have been vocally against the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Unlike smaller countries, they have been able to exert their influence on other countries to push for bilateral agreements conditioned with aid, in a way that some would describe as a bribe. Center for Science and Environment for example criticizes such politics:

It is easy to be taken in with promises of bilateral aid, and make seemingly innocuous commitments in bilateral agreements. There is far too much at stake here [with climate change]. To further their interests, smaller, poorer countries don’t have aid to bribe and trade muscle to threaten countries.

— Pop of the world, Equity Watch, Center for Science and Environment, October 25, 2002.

This use of strength in political and economic arenas is nothing new. Powerful nations have always managed to exert their influence in various arenas. During the Gulf War in 1991 for example, many that ended up in the allied coalition were promised various concessions behind the scenes (what the media described as “diplomacy”). For example, Russia was offered massive IMF money. Even now, with the issue of the International Criminal Court, which the US is also opposed to, it has been pressuring other nations on an individual basis to not sign, or provide concessions. In that context, aid is often tied to political objectives and it can be difficult to sometimes see when it is not so.

But some types of conditions attached to aid can also be ideologically driven. For example, quoted further above by the New York Times, James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president noted how European and American farm subsidies “are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty.” While this criticism comes from many perspectives, Wolfensohn’s note on export also suggests that some forms of development assistance may be on the condition that nations reform their economies to certain ideological positions. Structural Adjustment has been one of these main policies as part of this neoliberal ideology, to promote export-oriented development in a rapidly opened economy. Yet, this has been one of the most disastrous policies in the past two decades, which has increased poverty. Even the IMF and World Bank have hinted from time to time that such policies are not working. People can understand how tying aid on condition of improving human rights, or democracy might be appealing, but when tied to economic ideology, which is not always proven, or not always following the “one size fits all” model, the ability (and accountability) of decisions that governments would have to pursue policies they believe will help their own people are reduced.

More Money Is Transferred From Poor Countries to Rich, Than From Rich To Poor

For the OECD countries to meet their obligations for aid to the poorer countries is not an economic problem. It is a political one. This can be seen in the context of other spending. For example,

• The US recently increased its military budget by some $100 billion dollars alone
• Europe subsidizes its agriculture to the tune of some $35-40 billion per year, even while it demands other nations to liberalize their markets to foreign competition.
• The US also introduced a $190 billion dollar subsidy to its farms through the US Farm Bill, also criticized as a protectionist measure.
• While aid amounts to around $70 to 100 billion per year, the poor countries pay some $200 billion to the rich each year.
• There are many more (some mentioned below too).

In effect then, there is more aid to the rich than to the poor.

While the amount of aid from some countries such as the US might look very generous in sheer dollar terms (ignoring the percentage issue for the moment), the World Bank also pointed out that at the World Economic Forum in New York, February 2002, “[US Senator Patrick] Leahy noted that two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States.”

In October 2003, at a United Nations conference, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted that

developing countries made the sixth consecutive and largest ever transfer of funds to “other countries” in 2002, a sum totalling “almost $200 billion.”

“Funds should be moving from developed countries to developing countries, but these numbers tell us the opposite is happening…. Funds that should be promoting investment and growth in developing countries, or building schools and hospitals, or supporting other steps towards the Millennium Development Goals, are, instead, being transferred abroad.”

— Kofi Annan, Development funds moving from poor countries to rich ones, Annan says, United Nations News Centre, October 30, 2003

And as Saradha Lyer, of Malaysia-based Third World Network notes, instead of promoting investment in health, education, and infrastructure development in the third world, this money has been channelled to the North, either because of debt servicing arrangements, asymmetries and imbalances in the trade system or because of inappropriate liberalisation and privatisation measures imposed upon them by the international financial and trading system.

This transfer from the poorer nations to the rich ones makes even the recent increase in ODA seem little in comparison.

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Aid Amounts Dwarfed by Effects of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, etc

Combining the above mentioned reversal of flows with the subsidies and other distorting mechanisms, this all amounts to a lot of money being transferred to the richer countries (also known as the global North), compared to the total aid amounts that goes to the poor (or South).

As well as having a direct impact on poorer nations, it also affects smaller farmers in rich nations. For example, Oxfam, criticizing EU double standards, highlights the following:

Latin America is the worst-affected region, losing $4bn annually from EU farm policies. EU support to agriculture is equivalent to double the combined aid budgets of the European Commission and all 15 member states. Half the spending goes to the biggest 17 per cent of farm enterprises, belying the manufactured myth that the CAP [Common Agriculture Policy] is all about keeping small farmers in jobs.

— Europe’s Double Standards. How the EU should reform its trade policies with the developing world, Oxfam Policy Paper, April 2002, p.18 (Link is to the press release, which includes a link to the actual Microsoft Word document from which the above is cited.)

And as Devinder Sharma adds, some of the largest benefactors of European agricultural subsidies include the Queen of England, and other royalties in Europe!

The double standards that Oxfam mentions above, and that countless others have highlighted has a huge impact on poor countries, who are pressured to follow liberalization and reducing government “interference” while rich nations are able to subsidize some of their industries. Poor countries consequently have an even tougher time competing. IPS captures this well:

“On the one hand, OECD countries such as the US, Germany or France continue through the ECAs [export credit agencies] to subsidise exports with taxpayers' money, often in detriment to the competitiveness of the poorest countries of the world,” says [NGO Environment Defence representative, Aaron] Goldzimmer. “On the other hand, the official development assistance which is one way to support the countries of the South to find a sustainable path to development and progress is being reduced.”

…

Government subsidies mean considerable cost reduction for major companies and amount to around 10 per cent of annual world trade. In the year 2000, subsidies through ECAs added up to 64 billion dollars of exports from industrialised countries, well above the official development assistance granted last year of 51.4 billion dollars.

— Julio Godoy, New Report Reveals Drop in Aid to Developing Countries, Inter Press Service, May 16, 2002

As well as agriculture, textiles and clothing is another mainstay of many poor countries. But, as with agriculture, the wealthier countries have long held up barriers to prevent being out-competed by poorer country products. This has been achieved through things like subsidies and various “agreements”. The impact to the poor has been far-reaching, as Friends of the Earth highlights:

Despite the obvious importance of the textile and clothing sectors in terms of development opportunities, the North has consistently and systematically repressed developing country production to protect its own domestic clothing industries.

Since the 1970s the textile and clothing trade has been controlled through the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) which sets bilateral quotas between importing and exporting countries. This was supposedly to protect the clothing industries of the industrialised world while they adapted to competition from developing countries. While there are cases where such protection may be warranted, especially for transitionary periods, the MFA has been in place since 1974 and has been extended five times. According to Oxfam, the MFA is,

“…the most significant..[non tariff barrier to trade]..which has faced the world’s poorest countries for over 20 years”.

Although the MFA has been replaced by the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) which phases out support over a further ten year period—albeit through a process which in itself is highly inequitable—developing countries are still suffering the consequences. The total cost to developing countries of restrictions on textile imports into the developed world has been estimated to be some $50 billion a year. This is more or less equivalent to the total amount of annual development assistance provided by Northern governments to the Third World.

— Clothes, The Citizens' Guide to Trade, Environment and Sustainability, Friends of the Earth International, January 24, 2001

There is often much talk of trade rather than aid, of development, of opening markets etc. But, when at the same time some of the important markets of the US, EU and Japan appear to be no-go areas for the poorer nations, then such talk has been criticized by some as being hollow. The New York Times is worth quoting at length:

Our compassion [at the 2002 G8 Summit talking of the desire to help Africa] may be well meant, but it is also hypocritical. The US, Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries), and this money creates gluts that lower commodity prices and erode the living standard of the world’s poorest people.

“These subsidies are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty,” said James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, in a speech last month.

Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program, estimates that these farm subsidies cost poor countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural exports. By coincidence, that’s about the same as the total of rich countries' aid to poor countries, so we take back with our left hand every cent we give with our right.

“It’s holding down the prosperity of very poor people in Africa and elsewhere for very narrow, selfish interests of their own,” Mr. Malloch Brown says of the rich world’s agricultural policy.

It also seems a tad hypocritical of us to complain about governance in third-world countries when we allow tiny groups of farmers to hijack billion of dollars out of our taxes.

— Nicholas D. Kristof, Farm Subsidies That Kill, New York Times, 5 July 2002

In fact, J. Brian Atwood, stepped down in 1999 as head of the US foreign aid agency, USAID. He was very critical of US policies, and vented his frustration that “despite many well-publicized trade missions, we saw virtually no increase of trade with the poorest nations. These nations could not engage in trade because they could not afford to buy anything.” (Quoted from a speech that he delivered to the Overseas Development Council.)

As Jean-Bertrand Arisitde also points out, there is also a boomerang effect of loans as large portions of aid money is tied to purchases of goods and trade with the donor:

Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized nations. In 1995, the director of the US aid agency defended his agency by testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the US economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the US economy in goods and services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we find that aid does not aid.

— Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13

One could add to the above that while aid does not aid the recipient, it aids the donor. For the US here, its aid agency was an aspect of its foreign policy to enhance its interests, successfully.

And then there has been the disastrous food aid policies, which is another example of providing aid, but using that aid as an arm of foreign policy objectives. It has helped their corporations and large farmers at a huge cost to developing countries, and has seen an increase in hunger, not reduction. For more details, see the entire section on this site that discusses this, in the Poverty and Food Dumping part of this web site.

For the world’s hungry, however, the problem isn’t the stinginess of our aid. When our levels of assistance last boomed, under Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s, the emphasis was hardly on eliminating hunger. In 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz stated flatly that “our foreign assistance programs are vital to the achievement of our foreign policy goals.” But Shultz’s statement shouldn’t surprise us. Every country’s foreign aid is a tool of foreign policy. Whether that aid benefits the hungry is determined by the motives and goals of that policy—by how a government defines the national interest.

— Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, World Hunger: 12 Myths, 2nd Edition, (Grove/Atlantic and Food First Books, Oct. 1998), Chapter 10, p.130.

The above quote from the book World Hunger is from Chapter 10, which is also reproduced in full on this web site. It also has more facts and stats on US aid and foreign policy objectives, etc.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note the disparities between what the world spends on military, compared to other international obligations and commitments. Most wealthy nations spend far more on military than development, for example. The United Nations, which gets its monies from member nations, spends about $10 billion—or about 3% of what just the US alone spends on its military. It is facing a financial crisis as countries such as the US want to reduce their burden of the costs—which comparatively is quite low anyway—and have tried to withhold payments or continued according to various additional conditions.)

But, as the quote above highlights as well, as well as the amount of aid, the quality of aid is important. (And the above highlights that the quality has not been good either.)

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But aid could be beneficial

Government aid, from the United States and others, as indicated above can often fall foul of political agendas and interests of donors. At the same time that is not the only aid going to poor countries. The US itself, for example, has a long tradition of encouraging charitable contributions. Indeed, tax laws in the US and various European countries are favorable to such giving as discussed further above. But private funding, philanthropy and other sources of aid can also fall foul of similar or other agendas, as well as issues of concentration on some areas over others, of accountability, and so on. (More on these aspects is introduced on this site’s NGO and Development section.)

Trade and Aid

Oxfam highlights the importance of trade and aid:

Some Northern governments have stressed that “trade not aid” should be the dominant theme at the [March 2002 Monterrey] conference [on Financing for Development]. That approach is disingenuous on two counts. First, rich countries have failed to open their markets to poor countries. Second, increased aid is vital for the world’s poorest countries if they are to grasp the opportunities provided through trade.

— Meeting the Challenge of Poverty Reduction, Oxfam, March 2, 2002

In addition to “trade not aid” perspectives, the Bush Administration is also pushing for grants rather than loans from the World Bank. Grants being free money appears to be more welcome, though many European nations aren’t as pleased with this option. Furthermore, some commentators point out that the World Bank, being a Bank, shouldn’t give out grants, which would make it compete with other grant-offering institutions such as various other United Nations bodies. Also, there is concern that it may be easier to impose political conditions to the grants. John Taylor, US Undersecretary of the Treasury, in a recent speech in Washington also pointed out that “Grants are not free. Grants can be easily be tied to measurable performance or results.” Some comment that perhaps grants may lead to more dependencies as well as some nations may agree to even more conditions regardless of the consequences, in order to get the free money. (More about the issue of grants is discussed by the Bretton Woods Project.)

In discussing trade policies of the US, and EU, in relation to its effects on poor countries, chief researcher of Oxfam, Kevin Watkins, has been very critical, even charging them with hypocrisy for preaching free trade but practicing mercantilism:

Looking beyond agriculture, it is difficult to avoid being struck by the discrepancy between the picture of US trade policy painted by [US Trade Representative, Robert] Zoellick and the realities facing developing countries.

To take one example, much has been made of America’s generosity towards Africa under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This provides what, on the surface, looks like free market access for a range of textile, garment and footwear products. Scratch the surface and you get a different picture. Under AGOA’s so-called rules-of-origin provisions, the yarn and fabric used to make apparel exports must be made either in the United States or an eligible African country. If they are made in Africa, there is a ceiling of 1.5 per cent on the share of the US market that the products in question can account for. Moreover, the AGOA’s coverage is less than comprehensive. There are some 900 tariff lines not covered, for which average tariffs exceed 11%.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the benefits accruing to Africa from the AGOA would be some $420m, or five times, greater if the US removed the rules-of-origin restrictions. But these restrictions reflect the realities of mercantilist trade policy. The underlying principle is that you can export to America, provided that the export in question uses American products rather than those of competitors. For a country supposedly leading a crusade for open, non-discriminatory global markets, it’s a curiously anachronistic approach to trade policy.

— Kevin Watkins, Trade hypocrisy: the problem with Robert Zoellick, Open Democracy, December 12, 2002

Watkins lists a number of other areas, besides the AGOA that are beset with problems of hypocrisy, and concludes that “nihilism and blind pursuit of US economic and corporate special interest represents an obstacle to the creation of an international trading system capable of extending the benefits of globalisation to the world’s poor.” (See also this site’s section on free trade and globalization, where there is more criticism about northern countries exhibiting mercantilist, or monopoly capitalist principles, rather than free market capitalism, even though that is what is preached to the rest of the world.)

In that context then, and given the problems mentioned further above about agricultural and textiles/clothing subsidies, etc. the current amount of aid given to poor countries doesn’t compare to “aid” given to wealthier countries’ corporations and industries and hardly compensates for what is lost.

Both increasing and restructuring aid to truly provide developing countries the tools and means to develop for themselves, for example, would help recipients of aid, not just the donors. Aid is more than just charity and cannot be separated from other issues of politics and economics, which must also be considered.

Improving Economic Infrastructure

The United Nations notes that effectiveness of aid to poor countries requires a focus on economic infrastructure. Furthermore, to aid development requires, for example:

• Targeted investment
• Productive development strategies to attract currency and sustaining economic growth.
• For least developed countries (LDCs) to minimize their disadvantages—such as the small size of their economies—regional integration would help.

Countries giving aid could help by providing:

• Greater investment
• Greater debt relief
• Actually practice free and fair trade

“Trade not Aid” sounds like decent rhetoric. As the economist Amartya Sen for example says, a lot that can be done at a relatively little cost. Unfortunately, so far, it seems that rhetoric is mostly what it has turned out to be.

In addition, as J.W. Smith further qualifies, rather than giving money that can be squandered away, perhaps the best form of aid would be industry, directly:

Do Not Give the Needy Money: Build Them Industries Instead

With the record of corruption within impoverished countries, people will question giving them money. That can be handled by giving them the industry directly, not the money. To build a balanced economy, provide consumer buying power, and develop arteries of commerce that will absorb the production of these industries, contractors and labor in those countries should be used. Legitimacy and security of contracts is the basis of any sound economy. Engineers know what those costs should be and, if cost overruns start coming in, the contractor who has proven incapable should be replaced—just as any good contract would require…. When provided the industry, as opposed to the money to build industry, those people will have physical capital. The only profits to be made then are in production; there is no development money to intercept and send to a Swiss bank account.

— J.W. Smith, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century, Second Edition, (1st Books, 2002), pp. 300-301 (also available in full online)

Use aid to Empower, not to Prescribe

The approach which J.W. Smith hints to—and which has often been argued by progressive and developing world activists and experts—is that aid needs to empower local people. There may be some form of aid that is best delivered to (and via) governments, but there are many types of assistance that can be given directly to the people who need it, thus also avoiding the risk of governments withholding, diverting or delaying those funds.

Professor William Easterly, mentioned earlier, tries to provide a simplified view of these two general approaches, using the following definitions:

Planners

Those who go for a top-down, prescriptive, imposing approach

Searchers

Those who try to look for alternative approaches, often working at the grass-roots, or from the bottom up

A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions. A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), p. 4

Easterly also notes that Searchers “have had little chance to deliver in the area of global poverty because foreign aid has been dominated by the Planners” (p.7), which is also detailed further above in the rest of this page.

Rich donor countries and aid bureaucracies are not accountable

Furthermore, a fundamental issue Easterly also notes is that the “Planners” are rarely accountable for all the grand promises they make. For example, at the G8 Summit in July, 2005, there was much promised, such as over $40 billion in apparent debt write-off, plus further aid promises. While much of this and previous promises have included spin and fancy accounting, these promises have rarely been delivered upon, or if they have and subsequently failed, no-one has been held accountable. (It could be added that “Searchers” too have thus far largely been unaccountable, too.)

A major problem Easterly also sees is that the “Planners” have a modern version of the paternalistic attitude prevalent during colonial times; that the powerful know what is best for the rest, and should try to shape them in their image:

The new military interventions are similar to the military interventions of the cold war, while the neo-imperialist fantasies are similar to old-time colonial fantasies. Military intervention and occuptation show a classic Planner’s mentality: applying a simplistic answer from the West to a complex internal problem in the Rest.

… But if rich people want to help the poor, they must face an unpleasant reality: If it’s so easy to end the poverty trap, why haven’t the Planners already made it history?

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 10-11

Donors therefore, are not neutral actors as a review of NGOs questions:

Also problematic is the donors’ image of themselves as neutral actors, brokering relations between the state, business, and civil society, and indeed separate and hidden from the triadic unity.… Yet this begs the question from where international agencies derive their authority to act as broker and to pose as neutral observers. Indeed, the prior assumption of a broker role—unnegotiated, uncontested, and unlegitimate—in itself is revealing about the balance of power. The notion of brokering suggests that the broker has no interest of its own, no ideological preferences, no intrinsic values and goals.

Apart from the question of neutrality, which services to mask the distribution of power, there is also the larger question of the morality of interventionism. Is donor support to civil society another manifestation of neocolonialism in the post-Cold War era, aimed at controlling the nature of political regimes and extending global markets? Do donors have the right, let alone the capacity, to shape other civil societies? By projecting their own visions and understandings of civil society, do they not undermine the ability of local organizations to set their own priorities and agendas, to vocalize their own imaginations of social and political change?

— Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce (David Lewis and Tina Wallace, Editors), New Roles and Relevance; Development NGOs and the Challenge of Change, (Kumarian Press, 2000), p. 83

Interestingly, Easterly notes that politicians are often “Searchers” at home but “Planners” abroad because at home they have constituencies to whom they are usually accountable; they are not accountable to people in other countries. There is therefore no way for a feedback mechanism to have clout.

Without accountability and feedback, there is little chance for success Easterly feels. “Feedback guides democratic governments towards supplying services that the market cannot supply, and toward providing institutions for the markets to work”, while, “at a higher level, accountability is necessary to motivate a whole organization or government to use Searchers.” (P. 16)

Democracy-building is fundamental, but harder in many developing countries

Another aspect of accountability (especially when it comes to providing public services that free markets are not intended to provide for) is democracy. Politically, democracy is supposed to provide a feedback mechanism so that politicians are held accountable and react to needs. If a road needs repairing, water systems need improving etc, we should be able to demand that our local politicians act, for example.

As Easterly and many other writers have acknowledged, however, the struggle for democracy in the developing world is much harder because of the legacy of colonialism—the artificial borders, unnatural movement and displacement of people, etc—which means that either powerful minorities (e.g. European settlers), or powerful majorities may not always represent the interests of everyone in that nation. There may have been historic tension amongst people who are now confined to the same borders, for example, making positive democratic changes extremely difficult, further compounded by poverty and other related problems.

Failed foreign aid and continued poverty: well-intentioned mistakes, calculated geopolitics, or a mix?

These, and so many other factors all interplay, making foreign aid less useful than it should have been. Certainly trillions have been spent with little to show for it.

To oversimplify … the needs of the rich get met because the rich give feedback to political and economic Searchers, and they can hold the Searchers accountable for following through with specific actions. The needs of the poor don’t get met because the poor have little money or political power with which to make their needs known and they cannot hold anyone accountable to meet those needs. They are stuck with Planners. The … tragedy [of failed foreign aid] continues.

…

To make things even worse, aid bureaucrats [from rich donor countries] have incentives to satisfy the rich countries doing the funding as well as (or instead of) the poor. One oversight in the quest to help the poor was the failure to study the incentives of its appointed helpers. The bureaucratic managers have the incentive to satisfy rich-country vanity with promises of transforming the Rest rather than simply helping poor individuals. Internal bureaucratic incentives also favor grand global schemes over getting the little guy what he wants.

… A big part of the problem originates with the rich-country governments who set the mandates of the aid agencies. Dear rich-country funders, please give up your utopian fantasies of transforming the Rest. Don’t reward aid agencies for setting goals that are impossible as they are politically appealing. Please just ask aid agencies to focus on narrow, solvable problems. For example, let them focus on the health, education, electrification, water problems, and piecemeal policy reforms to promote the private sector—where they already had some success—and fix some remaining problems such as the refusal of donors to finance operations and maintenance.

Collective responsibility for the Millennium Development Goals or any other goals does not work. Hold aid agencies individually responsible for what they own program achieve, not for global goals. Letting different agencies specialize in different areas would also lessen the coordination problem.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 17, 167, 204-205

Easterly’s call to promote the private sector is not as much about foreign private corporation going into a country (as the problems of foreign private sector involvement has been well known in developing countries, e.g. privatizing water services where the poor often can no longer get access to water).

Instead, Easterly, like others such as J.W. Smith, Joseph Stiglitz, etc feel that a local, home-grown private sector would be more responsive to local needs. Searchers are not just of the private sector variety, but also politicians and NGOs who are responsive to local needs. (Easterly, for example, provides numerous examples of this.)

Easterly feels that “Planners” are generally well-intentioned, but fundamentally miss the point and are nonetheless popular perhaps because of a Western fascination of heroes and heroic stories “that stars the rich West in the leading role, that of the chosen people to save the Rest” (p.18). Side Note»I would suggest that this idea in the West can be linked to the story of Christ and how Christianity has helped shape culture and thought in the West. Similarly, one will find other hero figures in other parts of the world, such that stories of individuals saving the day will appeal to many around the world.

Others, especially from developing countries, are more cynical than Easterly (perhaps understandably, given that they are the ones who have suffered the long history for centuries at the hands of the Planners’ ancestors), that perhaps today’s “Planners” are continuing a time-tested strategy, to keep the developing world in poverty so the “Planners” may continue to dominate.

Yet others may argue that it is not necessarily these “Planners” actively seek to do this; they may be well-intentioned, but their education, culture, society, whatever, is geared towards perpetuating the existing system, so they cannot think outside of that “framework of orientation” (a term coined by J.W. Smith). The pressures of globalization affect both rich and poor nations, and so can (understandably) drive people that are in a position of power to follow the bad policies that we actually do see them pursue in foreign affairs.

The authoritative Assistant Director of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, Professor Ha-Joon Chang, for example, looks at the historical context, and just as J.W. Smith and others have noted, finds that today’s rich countries developed using different policies than those typically prescribed to today’s poor countries:

‘How did the rich countries really become rich?’

The short answer to this question is that the developed countries did not get to where they are now through the policies and the institutions that they recommend to developing countries today. Most of them actively used ‘bad’ trade and industrial policies, such as infant industry protection and export subsidies—practices that these days are frowned upon, if not actively banned, by the WTO. Until they were quite developed (that is, until the late nineteenth to early twentieth century), they had very few of the institutions deemed essential by developing countries today, including such ‘basic’ institution as central banks and limited liability companies.

If this is the case, aren’t the developed countries, under the guise of recommending ‘good’ policies and institutions, actually making it difficult for the developing countries to use policies and institutions they themselves had used in order to develop economically in earlier times?

— Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away The Ladder, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp.2–3. (Emphasis is original)

Chang also notes that German economist Friedrich List had analyzed the political system in his classic work, The National System of Political Economy (1841), and observed that even the rise of Britain, the hero of free trade and the free-market economy, was actually characterized by protecting infant industries. Chang comments that,

List [argued] that free trade is beneficial among countries at similar levels of industrial development … but not between those at different levels of development. Like many of his contemporaries in countries that were trying to catch up with Britain, he argues that free trade benefits Britain but not the less developed economies…. To [List]…, the preachings on the virtues of free trade by British politicians and economist of his time were done for nationalistic purposes, even though they were cast in the generalistic languages…. He is worth quoting…

It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith, and of the cosmopolitical tendencies of his great contemporary William Pitt, and of all his successors in the British Government administrations.

— Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away The Ladder, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp.4–5. (Emphasis is Chang’s)

Chang is looking at development from the perspective of international trade while Easterly is focused on development from the perspective of internal market development. Chang is therefore implying that for the kind of developments needed locally, international actions do have an impact. Easterly feels that international actions are misguided, though well-intentioned, while Chang sees historical calculation and power acting to conspire against development.

It is likely we will never know which views are correct, and there is perhaps a mixture of reasons; a mixture of bumbling mistakes, calculated statecraft, poor execution by some developing countries, and lack of opportunities for the poor, etc.

Easterly does acknowledge limitations to this oversimplification of “Planners” and “Searchers” and that there are reformers and dissidents working at all levels, grass-roots and macroeconomic. For example, many believe macro-economic changes are needed to the global system (perhaps in order to enable Searchers to work more effectively, or just to allow for a more just system where Planners from the rich world do not dictate) and this may indeed require people working at the global level, though this may not necessarily require a prescriptive “we know best” approach which ultimately Easterly is criticizing.

Turning this debate of foreign aid from an issue of amount given (input and quantity) into one about aid effectiveness (outcome and quality) raises some different questions. For example,

• Would filling the $3.6 trillion shortfall help if aid comes with all the above-criticized strings still attached?
• Could far more be achieved with far less aid dollars if there was a change in approach with less top-down and more bottom-up?
• And if so, how much more could be achieved if the shortfall was filled at the same time?
• Although we keep hearing that the fault is of corrupt people in the developing world, should first world countries also be held to account for both the massive aid shortfall and the failed prescriptive, “we know best” approach to development?

Whether the hope for effective foreign aid will actually turn into reality is harder to know, because of power politics, which has characterized and shaped the world for centuries.

A risk for developing countries that look to aid, at least in their short-term plans to kick-start development (for becoming dependent on aid over the long run seems a dangerous path to follow), is that people of the rich world will see the failures of aid without seeing the detailed reasons why, creating a backlash of donor fatigue, reluctance and cynicism.

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance

Author and Page information

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Sunday, April 25, 2010

• This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance.
• To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
  • http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/35

Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments despite any good intentions from donor countries. In reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

• Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
• Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
• Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
• Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away.

This article explores who has benefited most from this aid, the recipients or the donors.

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1. Governments Cutting Back on Promised Responsibilities
   1. Rich Nations Agreed at UN to 0.7% of GNP To Aid
   2. Almost all rich nations fail this obligation
   3. Some donate many dollars, but are low on GNI percent
   4. Aid beginning to increase but still way below obligations
2. Foreign Aid Numbers in Charts and Graphs
   1. Aid money is actually way below what has been promised
   2. Side note on private contributions
   3. Side Note on Private Remittances
   4. Adjusting Aid Numbers to Factor Private Contributions, and more
   5. Ranking the Rich based on Commitment to Development
   6. Private donations and philanthropy
3. Are numbers the only issue?
   1. The Changing Definition of Aid Reveals a much Deeper Decline than What Numbers Alone Can Show
   2. Aid is Actually Hampering Development
   3. Private flows often do not help the poorest
4. Aid as a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient
   1. Aid And Militarism
   2. Aid Money Often Tied to Various Restrictive Conditions
   3. More Money Is Transferred From Poor Countries to Rich, Than From Rich To Poor
5. Aid Amounts Dwarfed by Effects of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, etc
6. But aid could be beneficial
   1. Trade and Aid
   2. Improving Economic Infrastructure
   3. Use aid to Empower, not to Prescribe
   4. Rich donor countries and aid bureaucracies are not accountable
   5. Democracy-building is fundamental, but harder in many developing countries
   6. Failed foreign aid and continued poverty: well-intentioned mistakes, calculated geopolitics, or a mix?

Governments Cutting Back on Promised Responsibilities

“Trade, not aid” is regarded as an important part of development promoted by some nations. But in the context of international obligations, it is also criticized by many as an excuse for rich countries to cut back aid that has been agreed and promised at the United Nations.

Rich Nations Agreed at UN to 0.7% of GNP To Aid

Recently, there was an EU pledge to spend 0.56% of GNI on poverty reduction by 2010, and 0.7% by 2015.

However,

• The donor governments promised to spend 0.7% of GNP on ODA (Official Development Assistance) at the UN General Assembly in 1970—some 40 years ago
• The deadline for reaching that target was the mid-1970s.
• By 2015 (the year by when the Millennium Development Goals are hoped to be achieved) the target will be 45 years old.

This target was codified in a United Nations General Assembly Resolution, and a key paragraph says:

In recognition of the special importance of the role which can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade.

— International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, UN General Assembly Resolution 2626 (XXV), October 24, 1970, para. 43

What was to be the form of aid?

Financial aid will, in principle, be untied. While it may not be possible to untie assistance in all cases, developed countries will rapidly and progressively take what measures they can … to reduce the extent of tying of assistance and to mitigate any harmful effects [and make loans tied to particular sources] available for utilization by the recipient countries for the purpose of buying goods and services from other developing countries.

… Financial and technical assistance should be aimed exclusively at promoting the economic and social progress of developing countries and should not in any way be used by the developed countries to the detriment of the national sovereignty of recipient countries.

Developed countries will provide, to the greatest extent possible, an increased flow of aid on a long-term and continuing basis.

— International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, UN General Assembly Resolution 2626 (XXV), October 24, 1970, para. 45-47

The aid is to come from the roughly 22 members of the OECD, known as the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). [Note that terminology is changing. GNP, which the OECD used up to 2000 is now replaced with the similar GNI, Gross National Income which includes a terms of trade adjustment. Some quoted articles and older parts of this site may still use GNP or GDP.]

ODA is basically aid from the governments of the wealthy nations, but doesn’t include private contributions or private capital flows and investments. The main objective of ODA is to promote development. It is therefore a kind of measure on the priorities that governments themselves put on such matters. (Whether that necessarily reflects their citizen’s wishes and priorities is a different matter!)

Almost all rich nations fail this obligation

Even though these targets and agendas have been set, year after year almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $100 billion short.

Furthermore, the quality of the aid has been poor. As Pekka Hirvonen from the Global Policy Forum summarizes:

Recent increases [in foreign aid] do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Measured as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), aid lags far behind the 0.7 percent target the United Nations set 35 years ago. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases,

• Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
• Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
• Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
• Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
• All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

— Pekka Hirvonen, Stingy Samaritans; Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor, Global Policy Forum, August 2005 [bullet list formatting added]

The Cold War years saw a high amount of aid (though not near the 0.7% mark) as each super power and their allies aided regimes friendly to their interests. The end of the Cold War did not see some of the savings from the reduced military budgets being put towards increased aid, as hoped. Instead, as noted by the development organization, the South Centre, “developing countries found themselves competing with a number of countries in transition for scarce official assistance.”

As others have long criticized, aid had a geopolitical value for the donor countries as aid increased when a Cold War had to be fought. (A long decline in the post Cold War 1990s has seen another rise, this time to fight terrorism, also detailed below.)

The issues raised by Hirvonen above are detailed further below. But before going into the poor quality of aid, a deeper look at the numbers:

Some donate many dollars, but are low on GNI percent

Some interesting observations can be made about the amount of aid. For example:

• USA’s aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP has almost always been lower than any other industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically since 2000, their dollar amount has been the highest.
• Between 1992 and 2000, Japan had been the largest donor of aid, in terms of raw dollars. From 2001 the United States claimed that position, a year that also saw Japan’s amount of aid drop by nearly 4 billion dollars.

Aid beginning to increase but still way below obligations

Throughout the 1990s, ODA declined from a “high” of 0.33% of total DAC aid in 1990 to a low of 0.22% in 1997. 2001 onwards has seen a trend of increased aid. Side Note»The UN noted the irony that the decline in aid came at a time where conditions were improving for its greater effectiveness . According to the World Bank, overall, the official development assistance worldwide had been decreasing about 20% since 1990.

Between 2001 and 2004, there was a continual increase in aid, but much of it due to geo-strategic concerns of the donor, such as fighting terrorism. Increases in 2005 were largely due to enormous debt relief for Iraq, Nigeria, plus some other one-off large items.

(As will be detailed further below, aid has typically followed donor’s interests, not necessarily the recipients, and as such the poorest have not always been the focus for such aid. Furthermore, the numbers, as low as they are, are actually more flattering to donor nations than they should be: the original definition of aid was never supposed to include debt relief or humanitarian emergency assistance, but instead was meant for development purposes. This is discussed further below, too.)

See more details for those years»

For the change in aid trends in 2001, the OECD noted that:

• “Most of the United States’ increase in 2001 was due to a $600 million disbursement to Pakistan for economic support in the September 11 aftermath.”
• Japan’s ODA fell by nearly $4 billion. “A key factor accounting for this was a 12.7 per cent depreciation of the Yen….” Other factors were “the timing of Japan’s disbursements to multilateral organisations and loan repayments from Asian countries that have recovered from the Asian financial crisis.”

For the increase in overall aid in 2002 (by just 5%), the OCED commented that:

• “The United States increased its ODA by 11.6% in real terms in 2002 … mainly due to additional and emergency funds in response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks as well as new aid initiatives, especially in relation to health and humanitarian aid.”
• “Japan’s ODA fell slightly by 1.8% in real terms in 2002. Most of the fall … was because the Yen depreciated against the US dollar.”

For 2003 trends, the OCED noted that:

• The aid increases were modest in 2003.

• Reasons»

  • Continuing growth in general bilateral grants ($2 billion);
  • The start of reconstruction aid to Iraq ($2 billion); and
  • Offset by a cyclical fall of contributions to multilateral concessional funds (-$1.2 billion) and a small decrease in net lending (-$0.5 billion).
• In addition, the OECD admitted this was still not enough, and it “underlines the need for developing countries to make efforts on a range of fronts, including by creating an environment where the private sector can thrive.”
• In parallel, the OECD “stresses that OECD countries must do more to promote economic growth in poor countries through coherent economic policies that take account of these countries’ needs.”
• Some positive long-term trends were also noted, for example towards more support for governments that were delivering results, more untied aid, more support for policies “owned” by developing countries rather than imposed upon them through conditionality, and a greater emphasis on governance and health.
• However, there was also a sharp decline in aid for agricultural development, and a rising share in total aid outlays of humanitarian aid in response to emergencies as opposed to long-term development and aid to the poorest countries.

For 2004 trends, the OECD noted that:

• Aid rose 4.3% in real terms between 2003 and 2004.

• Reasons»

  • Increases in contributions to international organizations, aid to Afghanistan and Iraq, and technical co-operation grants;
  • This was despite gross debt relief grants and actual net lending falling;
  • US aid increased due to contribution to the International Development Association (IDA), the grant and soft-loan arm of the World Bank, and because of aid to Afghanistan and Iraq.
• EU countries combined represented 0.35% of GNI.
• The richest 7 countries, the G7, represented just 0.22%

Inter Press Service (IPS) noted a number of important issues based on a report released April 18, 2005, where U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “warned against any premature rejoicing over the rising numbers.”

• “Adjusted for depreciation of the fast-falling U.S. dollar and worldwide price inflation, the 18.4 percent annual increase of ODA reported for 2003 relative to 2002 ‘falls to around a quarter of that figure,’ [Kofi Annan] notes”
• “Arabella Fraser, policy advisor for the international humanitarian organization Oxfam, is equally guarded” noting that “Rich country self-congratulation is unwarranted,” because “Aid levels are still pitiful … way below the promise of 0.7 percent, which was made 35 years ago.”
• With only around 40 cents in every dollar spent on overseas aid actually reaching the poorest countries, Fraser said that the recent report shows “that aid flows are largely dictated by geo-strategic concerns rather than by efforts to reduce poverty.” (Emphasis added)
• In his report, Annan says that although ODA is normally expected to provide new cash resources for recipient countries to increase development spending, “an increasing portion of the recent increases of ODA has taken the form of expenditures on emergency relief in countries that donors have deemed critical for security reasons.” (Emphasis added)
• When the large amounts of aid given to Afghanistan and Iraq is taken into account, “ODA in 2003 barely increased in real terms, suggesting that the increase in resources available to meet the MDGs has been quite modest.”

Like Annan, the OECD was wary about the figures for 2004, and even for future expected increases. For example:

• The expected “aid ‘boom’ in 2005-06 is primarily due to debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria and emergency aid to the Indian Ocean Tsunami hit countries”
• This means that from 2007, the OECD warns, “donors will have to increase other forms of aid by around 10% per year, double the rate of recent annual increases.”
• There was a 13.3% increase ($7.7 billion) in long term development aid, which “starts reversing the trend which began in 1985 when donors began to give less long-term aid.” While this is positive, it needs to be sustained for many years.
• “Debt relief accounted for 17% of aid, the highest single item in that two year period (primarily because of debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003);”

For 2005 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected rise:

• Aid flows rose 31.4%, topping USD 100 billion in 2005, setting a record;
• Yet, this was still only 0.33% of GNI, meaning a shortfall in promise of just over the same amount.
• Reasons:
  • Debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria ($19 billion)
  • Tsunami aid ($2.2 billion)
• EU countries combined represented 0.44% of their combined GNI
• G7 countries accounted for just 0.29%

Without those special cases, aid levels were similar to previous years. (And, as explained further below, debt relief was never intended to count as official aid.)

For 2006 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected fall in DAC aid for 2006 from 2005’s exceptional “high” (for which major factors included debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria, humanitarian relief for the December 2004 Asian tsunami victims and aid to Afghanistan).

• Aid flows were down 5.1%, representing 0.3% of GNI of countries’ combined incomes
• Excluding debt relief, aid still fell by around 1.8%, the OECD noted
• Despite the fall, it was still the second highest amount after 2005, at USD 103.9 billion
• As before, poorest countries were not necessarily recipients of most aid. For example, “excluding debt relief for Nigeria, aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased by only 2%”
• EU countries combined represented 0.56% of their combined GNI, which was an increase, as some members increased their contributions.

For 2007 trends, the OECD confirmed the expected fall in DAC aid for 2007.

It was noted that

• Debt relief was down as expected
• Other ODA rose slightly
• But the rise in ODA was not as high as recently pledged by governments

Donor countries, the OCED said, will need to make “unprecedented increases to meet the targets they have set for 2010”.

For 2008, the OECD noted that ODA aid was at its highest level ever in dollar terms, increasing over 10% from 2007 in real terms.

However, this aid, as high as it was, was still only at 0.3% of GNI, compared to the 0.7% target). In other words, while aid was almost $120 billion, it was still short by some $260 billion (at 2007 prices).

With the worsening global financial crisis poorer countries are feeling the effects even though they have not caused this crisis. A global recession may result in wealthier nations reducing their development aid in coming years, but the OECD urges that aid be “countercyclical”. That is, during hard times, increasing aid for poorer countries is important to help them weather the coming economic storm. Reducing it just when it is most crucial may be very harmful, the OECD implied.

“Aid cuts at this point in time would place a dangerous additional burden on developing countries already faced with restricted sources of income and increased poverty, and perhaps undo some of the progress already made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals,” says the OECD.

In 2009, the OCED and many others feared official aid would decline due to the global financial crisis. They urged donor nations to make aid “countercyclical”; not to reduce it when it is needed most, but those who didn’t cause the crisis.

And indeed, for 2009, aid did increase as official stats from the OECD shows. It rose 0.7% from just under $123 bn in 2008 to just over $123 bn in 2009 (at constant 2008 prices).

While the financial crisis does show the reliance on aid is not a good strategy for poor countries at any time, some have little choice in the short term.

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Foreign Aid Numbers in Charts and Graphs

As the following chart shows

• Donor nations’ wealth (GNI) increased through the 1990s to 2009
• The levels of aid (tied to that growth) should have increased too
• Instead, in the 1990s it actually fell, while picking up in the 2000s. (Some of those recent rises, especially the large increases, were almost entirely due to debt write-off for a handful of countries — such as Iraq.)
• Aid for the poorest countries remained at a steady dollar amount in this period.
• Given overall wealth of donors had increased, this in effect meant that they reduced their aid to the poorest countries.
• Despite the loss in GNI in 2009 due to the financial crisis, aid did increase slightly. Some hope this is a positive sign for the future.

It should be noted that in 2009 when donor nations had lower GNI due to the global financial crisis they still increased their aid in % terms, perhaps heeding the OECD’s plea mentioned earlier.

Source: OECD, April 2010

The charts and data below are reproduced from the OECD (using their latest data, at time of writing. It will be updated when new data becomes available).

• Net ODA 2009
• Details: % of GNI
• Details: Aid in $
• Raw data

Net ODA 2009

Source: OECD Development Statistics Online, last accessed April 18, 2010

Details: % of GNI

Net ODA in 2009 as percent of GNI

Country	Aid amount by GNI
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
Sweden	1.12
Norway	1.06
Luxembourg	1.01
Denmark	0.88
Netherlands	0.82
Belgium	0.55
Finland	0.54
Ireland	0.54
United Kingdom	0.52
Switzerland	0.47
France	0.46
Spain	0.46
Germany	0.35
Austria	0.3
Canada	0.3
Australia	0.29
New Zealand	0.29
Portugal	0.23
United States	0.2
Greece	0.19
Japan	0.18
Italy	0.16
Korea	0.1

Details: Aid in $

Net ODA in 2009 as US dollar amounts (millions)

Country	Aid amount by dollars
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
United States	28,305
United Kingdom	13,179
France	12,746
Germany	12,297
Japan	8,556
Spain	6,786
Netherlands	6,675
Sweden	5,083
Norway	4,650
Canada	4,341
Italy	3,350
Denmark	2,922
Australia	2,912
Belgium	2,661
Switzerland	2,271
Finland	1,319
Austria	1,179
Ireland	1,077
Korea	910
Greece	618
Portugal	523
Luxembourg	423
New Zealand	337

Raw data

Official Development Assistance (ODA) from 2006 to 2009 at Current prices (2008, USD Millions)

		ODA in U.S. Dollars (Millions)				ODA as % of GNI
	Country	2006	2007	2008	2009	2006	2007	2008	2009
Source: OECD Development Statistics Online last accessed Sunday, April 18, 2010 Note: The U.N. ODA agreed target is 0.7 percent of GNI. Most nations do not meet that target.
1.	Australia	2,572	2,798	2,954	2,912	0.3	0.32	0.32	0.29
2.	Austria	1,797	1,947	1,714	1,179	0.47	0.5	0.43	0.3
3.	Belgium	2,366	2,094	2,386	2,661	0.5	0.43	0.48	0.55
4.	Canada	4,167	4,237	4,795	4,341	0.29	0.29	0.33	0.3
5.	Denmark	2,726	2,805	2,803	2,922	0.8	0.81	0.82	0.88
6.	Finland	1,008	1,055	1,166	1,319	0.4	0.39	0.44	0.54
7.	France	12,793	10,670	10,908	12,746	0.47	0.38	0.39	0.46
8.	Germany	12,406	13,146	13,981	12,297	0.36	0.37	0.38	0.35
9.	Greece	519	546	703	618	0.17	0.16	0.21	0.19
10.	Ireland	1,175	1,242	1,328	1,077	0.54	0.55	0.59	0.54
11.	Italy	4,406	4,302	4,861	3,350	0.2	0.19	0.22	0.16
12.	Japan	12,328	8,660	9,579	8,556	0.25	0.17	0.19	0.18
13.	Korea	409	599	802	910	0.05	0.07	0.09	0.1
14.	Luxembourg	362	416	415	423	0.89	0.92	0.97	1.01
15.	Netherlands	6,539	6,738	6,993	6,675	0.81	0.81	0.8	0.82
16.	New Zealand	298	312	348	337	0.27	0.27	0.3	0.29
17.	Norway	3,720	4,193	3,963	4,650	0.89	0.95	0.88	1.06
18.	Portugal	479	506	620	523	0.21	0.22	0.27	0.23
19.	Spain	4,640	5,552	6,867	6,786	0.32	0.37	0.45	0.46
20.	Sweden	4,644	4,540	4,732	5,083	1.02	0.93	0.98	1.12
21.	Switzerland	1,971	1,883	2,038	2,271	0.39	0.38	0.44	0.47
22.	United Kingdom	12,974	9,167	11,500	13,179	0.51	0.36	0.43	0.52
23.	United States	24,723	22,252	26,842	28,305	0.18	0.16	0.19	0.2

And who gets what?

The OECD web site also provides some breakdowns of how the money is given:

• All DAC aid
• From USA
• Other countries

All DAC aid

Source: Aid at a Glance 2007-2008, OECD Web Site

From USA

Source: Aid at a Glance 2007-2008, OECD Web Site

Other countries

You can also see a full list of country breakdowns from the OECD web site.

When broken down by region over time it seems the poorest countries do not necessarily receive most of the aid:

Of the aid that has been delivered, just under a quarter has gone to the poorest regions for all DAC aid since 1970:

Recent years, however, show a similar trend, with the poorest countries receiving a quarter of all aid:

• Previous
• Next

While aid to the wealthier developing countries has reduced somewhat, the portion going to the poorest countries has hardly changed. In effect, most ODA aid does not appear to go to the poorest nations like we might naturally assume it would:

Aid money is actually way below what has been promised

2006 onwards is typically regarded as years of high aid volumes. However, at around 0.3% of GNI, if all DAC countries have given their full 0.7%, 2009’s aid alone would have been over $274 billion (at 2008 prices), or an increase of over $151 billion.

Considering the typical aid amount at around 0.25 to 0.4% of GNI for over 30 years, the total shortfall is a substantial and staggering amount: over $4 trillion aid shortfall at 2008 prices:

The numbers are probably flattering donors too much, for (as detailed further below), a lot of “development aid” today includes items not originally designated for this purpose (such as debt relief, emergency relief, etc.)

Averaging this data since 1970, when the target of donating 0.7% of national income was agreed, shows the following:

Between 1970 and 2009, the shortfall in aid has been 57%:

Taking the last 10 years, 2000 to 2009, the shortfall increases to 61%:

While dollar amounts of aid increases, the gap between the promised amount (0.7% of GNI) and the actual given seems to be increasing.

This gap was quite small during the 70s, and got smaller in the 80s, but has since widened considerably. (But even when the gap was close, the average ODA aid was around 0.35% of GNI at best, still far below the promised 0.7%.)

Taking just the latest figures (at time of writing), many nations, while seemingly providing large quantities of aid, are far below the levels they had agreed:

(See also the side note, Official global foreign aid shortfall: $4 trillion for more details.)

Side note on private contributions

As an aside, it should be emphasized that the above figures are comparing government spending. Such spending has been agreed at international level and is spread over a number of priorities.

Individual/private donations may be targeted in many ways. However, even though the charts above do show US aid to be poor (in percentage terms) compared to the rest, the generosity of the American people is far more impressive than their government. Private aid/donation typically through the charity of individual people and organizations can be weighted to certain interests and areas. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note for example, per latest estimates, Americans privately give at least $34 billion overseas—more than twice the US official foreign aid of $15 billion at that time:

• International giving by US foundations: $1.5 billion per year
• Charitable giving by US businesses: $2.8 billion annually
• American NGOs: $6.6 billion in grants, goods and volunteers.
• Religious overseas ministries: $3.4 billion, including health care, literacy training, relief and development.
• US colleges scholarships to foreign students: $1.3 billion
• Personal remittances from the US to developing countries: $18 billion in 2000
• Source: Dr. Carol Adelman, Aid and Comfort, Tech Central Station, 21 August 2002.

Although Adelman admitted that “there are no complete figures for international private giving” she still claimed that Americans are “clearly the most generous on earth in public—but especially in private—giving”. While her assertions should be taken with caution, the numbers are high.

The Center for Global Prosperity, from the Hudson Institute, (whose director is Adelman) published its first Index of Global Philanthropy in 2006, which contained updated numbers from those stated above. The total of US private giving, since Adelman’s previous report, had increased to a massive $71 billion in 2004. Page 16 of their report breaks it down as follows:

• International giving by US foundations: $3.4 billion
• Charitable giving by US businesses: $4.9 billion
• American NGOs: $9.7
• Religious overseas ministries: $4.5
• US colleges scholarships to foreign students: $1.7 billion
• Personal remittances from the US to developing countries: $47 billion.

While the majority of the increase was personal remittances ($18 bn in 2000 to $47 bn in 2004), other areas have also seen increases.

Side Note on Private Remittances

Globally, private remittances have increased tremendously in recent years, especially as a number of developing countries have seen rapid growth and economic migration has increased amongst these nations.

In 2005, private remittances were estimated to be around $167 billion, far more than total government aid.

In 2008, the World Bank estimated private remittances between 350 to 650 billion dollars were sent back home by 150 million international migrants.

Many economists and others, including Adelman in the article above, point out that personal remittances are effective. They “don’t require the expensive overhead of government consultants, or the interference of corrupt foreign officials. Studies have shown that roads, clinics, schools and water pumps are being funded by these private dollars. For most developing countries, private philanthropy and investment flows are much larger than official aid.”

Unfortunately Adelman doesn’t cite the studies she mentions because “these private dollars” do not seem to be remittance dollars, but private investment. Economists at the IMF surveyed literature on remittances and admitted that, “the role of remittances in development and economic growth is not well understood … partly because the literatures on the causes and effects of remittances remain separate.” When they tried to see what role remittances played, they concluded that “remittances have a negative effect on economic growth” as it usually goes into private consumption, and takes place under asymmetric information and economic uncertainty.

Even if that turns out to be wrong, the other issue also is whether personal remittances can be counted as American giving, as people point out that it is often foreign immigrant workers sending savings back to their families in other countries. Political commentator Daniel Drezner takes up this issue arguing, “Americans aren’t remitting this money—foreign nationals are.”

Comparing Adelman’s figures with her previous employer’s, USAID, Drezner adds that “Adelman’s figure is accurate if you include foreign remittances.” However, if you do not count foreign remittances then it matches the numbers that the research institute, the Center for Global Development uses in their rankings (see below).

Finally, Drezner suggests that Adelman is not necessarily incorrect in her core thesis that Americans are generous, but “lumping remittances in with charity flows exaggerates the generosity of Americans as a people.”

UNICEF also notes the dangers of counting on personal remittances solely based on economic value, as reported by Inter Press Service. Latin America alone received some $45 billion in remittances in 2004, almost 27% of the total. At a regional conference, noting a Mexican household survery showing remittances contributed to improved provision of child care, the United Nations children’s charity, UNICEF, warned that the importance of family unity cannot be underestimated in terms of child well-being. If a parent is away working in another country, for a child, “the loss of their most important role models, nurturers and caregivers, … has a significant psychosocial impact that can translate into feelings of abandonment, vulnerability, and loss of self-esteem, among others.”

In addition, as the global financial crisis starts to spread, private remittances will decrease, as well as foreign aid in general. Some nations rely a lot on these remittances. Remittances to Sri Lanka, for example, make up some 70% of the country’s trade deficit, according to the Inter Press Service (see previous link). This raises questions as to whether aid and remittances are sustainable in the long term or signal a more fundamental economic problem, as discussed further below.

Adjusting Aid Numbers to Factor Private Contributions, and more

David Roodman, from the CGD, attempts to adjust the aid numbers by including subjective factors :

• Quality of recipient governance as well as poverty;
• Penalizing tying of aid;
• Handling reverse flows (debt service) in a consistent way;
• Penalizes project proliferation (overloading recipient governments with the administrative burden of many small aid projects);
• and rewards tax policies that encourage private charitable giving to developing countries.

In doing so, the results (using 2002 data, which was latest available at that time) produced:

Quality-adjusted aid and charitable giving/GDP (%)

Country	Quality-adjusted aid as percent of GDP
Source: David Roodman, An Index of Donor Performance , Center for Global Development, April 2004 If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance for further details.
Sweden	0.5
Denmark	0.48
Netherlands	0.45
Norway	0.4
France	0.23
Belgium	0.21
Switzerland	0.21
Finland	0.19
United Kingdom	0.19
Austria	0.15
Germany	0.15
Canada	0.14
Ireland	0.12
Australia	0.11
Italy	0.11
Portugal	0.1
Japan	0.09
Greece	0.07
Spain	0.07
United States	0.07
New Zealand	0.03

You can also view this chart as an image.

Interesting observations included:

• Contrary to popular belief, the US is not the only nation with tax incentives to encourage private contributions. (Only Austria, Finland and Sweden do not offer incentives.)
• Factoring that in, the US ranks joint 19th out of 21
• Japan fairs a lot worse

Roodman also admits that “many—perhaps most—important aspects of aid quality are still not reflected in the index—factors such as the realism of project designs and the effectiveness of structural adjustment conditionality.”

Ranking the Rich based on Commitment to Development

The CGD therefore attempts to factor in some quality measures based on their commitment to development for the world’s poor. This index considers aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.

Their result shows the Netherlands first, Japan last, and the US ranking thirteenth, just behind the United Kingdom, out of 21 total. As David Roodman notes in his announcement of the 2006 Commitment to Development Index, “As in the past, the G-7 ‘leading industrial nations’ have not led on the [Commitment to Development Index]; Germany, top among them, is in 9th place overall.”

Recent claims of some “leading industrial nations” being “stingy” may put people on the defensive, but many nations whom we are told are amongst the world’s best, can in fact, do better. The results were charted as follows:

Source: Center for Global Development, Commitment to Development Index 2006

Adelman, further above noted that the US is “clearly the most generous on earth in public—but especially in private—giving”, yet the CGD suggests otherwise, saying that the US does not close the gap with most other rich countries; “The US gives 13c/day/person in government aid….American’s private giving—another 5c/day—is high by international standards but does not close the gap with most other rich countries. Norway gives $1.02/day in public aid and 24c/day in private aid” per person. (These numbers will change of course, year by year, but the point here is that Adelman’s assertion—one that many seem to have—is not quite right.)

Private donations and philanthropy

Government aid, while frought with problems (discussed below), reflects foreign policy objectives of the donor government in power, which can differ from the generosity of the people of that nation. It can also be less specialized than private contributions and targets are internationally agreed to be measureable.

Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions. As Rajshri Dasgupta comments:

“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never be a viable alternative to State obligations,” said Dr James Obrinski, of the organisation Medicins sans Frontier, in Dhaka recently at the People’s Health Assembly (see Himal, February 2001). In a nutshell, industry and private donations are feel-good, short-term interventions and no substitute for the vastly larger, and essentially political, task of bringing health care to more than a billion poor people.

— Rajshri Dasgupta, Patents, Private Charity and Public Health, Himal South Asian, March 2001

As another example, Bill Gates announced in November 2002 a massive donation of $100 million to India over ten years to fight AIDS there. It was big news and very welcome by many. Yet, at the same time he made that donation, he was making another larger donation—over $400 million, over three years—to increase support for Microsoft’s software development suite of applications and its platform, in competition with Linux and other rivals. Thomas Green, in a somewhat cynical article, questions who really benefits, saying “And being a monster MS [Microsoft] shareholder himself, a ‘Big Win’ in India will enrich him [Bill Gates] personally, perhaps well in excess of the $100 million he’s donating to the AIDS problem. Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary of charity is here.” (Emphasis is original.)

India has potentially one tenth of the world’s software developers, so capturing the market there of software development platforms is seen as crucial. This is just one amongst many examples of what appears extremely welcome philanthropy and charity also having other motives. It might be seen as horrible to criticize such charity, especially on a crucial issue such as AIDS, but that is not the issue. The concern is that while it is welcome that this charity is being provided, at a systemmic level, such charity is unsustainable and shows ulteria motives. Would Bill Gates have donated that much had there not been additional interests for the company that he had founded?

In addition, as award-winning investigative reporter and author Greg Palast also notes, the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Intellectural Property Rights (TRIPS), “the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.” He also adds that it is killing more people than the philanthropy saving. What Palast is hinting towards is the unequal rules of trade and economics that are part of the world system, that has contributed to countries such as most in Africa being unable to address the scourge of AIDS and other problems, even when they want to. See for example, the sections on free trade, poverty and corporations on this web site for more.

The LA Times has also found that the Gates Foundation has been investing in questionable companies that are often involved in environmental pollution, even child labor, and more.

In addition to private contributions, when it comes to government aid, these concerns can multiply as it may affect the economic and political direction of an entire nation if such government aid is also tied into political objectives that benefit the donor.

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Are numbers the only issue?

The above talks a lot about numbers and attempts to address common questions about who gives what, as for Americans and Europeans, there is indeed a fascination of this topic.

Less mentioned in the media is that some aid money that is pledged often involves double accounting of sorts. Sometimes offers have even been reneged or just not delivered. This site’s section on the Asian tsunami disaster and on third world debt has more on these aspects.

It is common to hear many Americans claim that the US is the most generous country on earth. While the numbers above may say otherwise in a technical sense, is “who gives the most” really the important discussion here? While important, concentrating on this one aspect diverts us from other pressing issues such as does the aid actually help the recipient, or does it actually help the donor.

As we will see further below, some aid has indeed been quite damaging for the recipient, while at the same time being beneficial for the donor.

The Changing Definition of Aid Reveals a much Deeper Decline than What Numbers Alone Can Show

The South Centre, mentioned earlier, notes that when the 0.7% of GNI promise for development aid was made in 1970, “official development assistance was to be understood as bilateral grants and loans on concessional terms, and official contributions to multilateral agencies.”

But, as they note, a number of factors have led to a large decline in aid, some that cannot be shown by numbers and graphs, alone. Factors include:

• Tigher budgetary constraints in richer countries during the 1980s;
• More importantly, an ideology shift on governments and markets (see also primer on neoliberalism and structural adjustment on this site);
• Increasing number of countries competing for development aid funds;
• Donors putting a broader interpretation on what constitutes development assistance.

On the last point above, South Centre notes that the broader interpretation “include categories which bear little relationship to the need of the developing countries for long term development capital.” (Emphasis Added.) Thus, those expanded categories for official development assistance include:

• Debt relief;
• Subsidies on exports to developing countries;
• Food aid which disposes of agricultural surpluses resulting from government subsidies (see also this site’s section on food dumping and how it increases hunger and poverty);
• Provision of surplus commodities of little economic value;
• Administrative costs;
• Payments for care and education of refugees in donor countries;
• Grants to NGOs and to domestic agencies to support emergency relief operations; and
• Technical co-operation grants which pay for the services of nationals of the donor countries.

An analysis of OECD data over time shows such increases in non-development aid:

In effect, not only has aid been way below that promised, but what has been delivered has not always been for the original goal of development.

The technical co-operation grants are also known as technical assistance. Action Aid, has been very critical about this and other forms of this broader interpretation which they have termed “phantom aid”:

This year we estimate that $37 billion—roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”, that is, it is not genuinely available to poor countries to fight poverty.

… Nowhere is the challenge of increasing real aid as a share of overall aid greater than in the case of technical assistance. At least one quarter of donor budgets—some $19 billion in 2004—is spent in this way: on consultants, research and training. This is despite a growing body of evidence—much of it produced by donors themselves and dating back to the 1960s—that technical assistance is often overpriced and ineffective, and in the worst cases destroys rather than builds the capacity of the poorest countries.

… Although this ineffectiveness is an open secret within the development community, donors continue to insist on large technical assistance components in most projects and programmes they fund. They continue to use technical assistance as a “soft” lever to police and direct the policy agendas of developing country governments, or to create ownership of the kinds of reforms donors deem suitable. Donor funded advisers have even been brought in to draft supposedly “country owned” poverty reduction strategies.

— Real Aid: Making Technical Assistance Work , Action Aid, July 5, 2006, pp.5-6 (Emphasis Added)

The above report by Action Aid uses OECD data, as I have done. Their figures are based on 2004 data, which at time of their publication was the latest available. However, they also went further than I have to show just how much phantom aid there is. For example, they note (p.11) that the $37 billion of phantom aid in 2004 included:

• $6.9 billion (9% of all aid) not targeted for poverty reduction
• $5.7 billion (7%) double counted as debt relief
• $11.8 billion (15%) on over-priced, ineffective technical assistance
• $2.5 billion (3%) lost through aid tying
• $8.1 billion (10%) lost through poor donor co-ordination
• $2.1 billion (3%) on immigration related spending
• at least $70 (0.1%) million on excessive administration costs.

These figures are necessarily approximate, they note. “If anything, they probably flatter donors. Lack of data means that other areas of ‘phantom aid’ have been excluded from our analysis. These include conditional or unpredictable aid, technical assistance and administration spending through multilateral channels, security-related spending and emergency aid for reconstruction following conflicts in countries such as Iraq. Some of these forms of aid do little to fight poverty, and can even do more harm than good.”

Action Aid also provided a matrix (p.14) showing the volumes of real and phantom aid by donor countries:

Real aid volumes and share of phantom aid

	High Real Aid Volume	Medium Real Aid Volume	Low Real Aid Volume
Source: Action Aid, Real Aid: Making Technical Assistance Work, July 5, 2006, p.14; OECD Figures for 2004 (latest at time of publication)
Low share of phantom aid	Ireland Luxemborg Sweden Denmark Norway Netherlands	UK
Medium share of phantom aid	Switzerland	Belgium Finland Germany Canada New Zealand	Japan Italy
High share of phantom aid		France Portugal	Australia Spain Austria Greece USA

At the 2005 G8 Summit, much was made about “historic” debt write-offs and other huge amounts of aid. The problem, the media and government spin implied, was that rich country aid often gets wasted and will only be delivered to poor countries if they meet certain conditions and demands. Yet, hardly ever in the mainstream discourse is the quality of rich country aid an issue or problem that needs urgent addressing. The South Centre noted this many years ago:

The situation outlined above indicates a significant erosion in ODA in comparison with its original intent and content, and in relation to the 0.7 per cent target. It will no longer suffice to merely repeat that ODA targets should be fulfilled. What is required, in view of the policy trends in the North and the mounting need for and importance of concessional flows to a large number of countries in the South, is a fundamental and comprehensive review of the approaches by the international community to the question of concessional financial flows for development, covering the estimated needs, the composition and sources of concessional flows, the quantity and terms on which they are available, and the destination and uses.

— Financial Flows to Developing Countries, Financing Development; Issues for a South Agenda, The South Centre, April 1999

Aid is Actually Hampering Development

Professor William Easterly, a noted mainstream economics professor on development and aid issues has criticized foreign aid for not having achieved much, despite grand promises:

[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.

… It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicing to dying poor children.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), p. 4

The United Nations Economic and Social Council, when noting that effectiveness of aid to poor countries requires a focus on economic infrastructure, also noted that ODA was hampering aid. Jose Antonio Ocampo, Under-Secretary-General for the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs said that debt, commodities, official development assistance and, in some cases, the risk of conflict is hampering development in the least developed countries.

See also, for example, the well-regarded Reality of Aid project for more on the reality and rhetoric of aid. This project looks at what various nations have donated, and how and where it has been spent, etc.

Private flows often do not help the poorest

While ODA’s prime purpose is to promote development, private flows is often substantially larger than ODA. During economic booms, more investment is observed in rapidly emerging economies, for example. But this does not necessarily mean the poorest nations get such investment.

During the boom of the mid-2000s before the global financial crisis sub-Saharan Africa did not attract as much investment from the rich nations, for example (though when China decided to invest in Africa, rich nations looked on this suspiciously fearing exploitation, almost ignoring their own decades of exploitation of the continent. China’s interest is no-doubt motivated by self-interest, and time will have to tell whether there is indeed exploitation going on, or if African nations will be able to demand fair conditions or not).

As private flows to developing countries from multinational companies and investment funds reflect the interests of investors, the importance of Overseas Development Assistance cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, (and detailed below) these total flows are less than the subsidies many of the rich nations give to some of their industries, such as agriculture, which has a direct impact on the poor nations (due to flooding the market with—or dumping—excess products, protecting their own markets from the products of the poor countries, etc.)

In addition, a lot of other inter-related issues, such as geopolitics, international economics, etc all tie into aid, its effectiveness and its purpose. Africa is often highlighted as an area receiving more aid, or in need of more of it, yet, in recent years, it has seen less aid and less investment etc, all the while being subjected to international policies and agreements that have been detrimental to many African people.

For the June 2002 G8 summit, a briefing was prepared by Action for Southern Africa and the World Development Movement, looking at the wider issue of economic and political problems:

It is undeniable that there has been poor governance, corruption and mismanagement in Africa. However, the briefing reveals the context—the legacy of colonialism, the support of the G8 for repressive regimes in the Cold War, the creation of the debt trap, the massive failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank and the deeply unfair rules on international trade. The role of the G8 in creating the conditions for Africa’s crisis cannot be denied. Its overriding responsibility must be to put its own house in order, and to end the unjust policies that are inhibiting Africa’s development.

— It’s the 'Blame the Victim' Summit, Action for Southern Africa, June 25, 2002. You can also see the full briefing .

As the above briefing is titled, a common theme on these issues (around the world) has been to “blame the victim”. The above briefing also highlights some common “myths” often used to highlight such aspects, including (and quoting):

• Africa has received increasing amounts of aid over the years—in fact, aid to Sub-Saharan Africa fell by 48% over the 1990s
• Africa needs to integrate more into the global economy—in fact, trade accounts for larger proportion of Africa’s income than of the G8
• Economic reform will generate new foreign investment—in fact, investment to Africa has fallen since they opened up their economies
• Bad governance has caused Africa’s poverty—in fact, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), economic conditions imposed by the IMF and the World Bank were the dominant influence on economic policy in the two decades to 2000, a period in which Africa’s income per head fell by 10% and income of the poorest 20% of people fell by 2% per year

Christian Aid weighs in on this with a more recent report noting that sub-Saharan Africa is a massive $272 billion worse off because of “free” trade policies forced on them as a condition of receiving aid and debt relief. They also note that:

The reforms that rich countries forced on Africa were supposed to boost economic growth. However, the reality is that imports increased massively while exports went up only slightly. The growth in exports only partially compensated African producers for the loss of local markets and they were left worse off.

— The economics of failure: The real cost of ‘free’ trade', Christian Aid, June 20, 2005

The quantity issue is an input into the aid process. The quality is about the output. We see from the above then, that the quantity of aid has not been as much as it should be. But what about the quality of the aid?

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Aid as a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient

Aid appears to have established as a priority the importance of influencing domestic policy in the recipient countries

— Benjamin F. Nelson, International Affairs Budget: Framework for Assessing Relevance, Priority and Efficiency, (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, October 30, 1997)

As shown throughout this web site (and hundreds of others) one of the root causes of poverty lies in the powerful nations that have formulated most of the trade and aid policies today, which are more to do with maintaining dependency on industrialized nations, providing sources of cheap labor and cheaper goods for populations back home and increasing personal wealth, and maintaining power over others in various ways. As mentioned in the structural adjustment section, so-called lending and development schemes have done little to help poorer nations progress.

The US, for example, has also held back dues to the United Nations, which is the largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing countries. Former US President Jimmy Carter describes the US as “stingy”:

While the US provided large amounts of military aid to countries deemed strategically important, others noted that the US ranked low among developed nations in the amount of humanitarian aid it provided poorer countries. “We are the stingiest nation of all,” former President Jimmy Carter said recently in an address at Principia College in Elsah, Ill.

— Who rules next?, Christian Science Monitor, December 29, 1999

Evan Osbourne, writing for the Cato Institute, also questioning the effectiveness of foreign aid and noted the interests of a number of other donor countries, as well as the U.S., in their aid strategies in past years. For example:

• The US has directed aid to regions where it has concerns related to its national security, e.g. Middle East, and in Cold War times in particular, Central America and the Caribbean;
• Sweden has targetted aid to “progressive societies”;
• France has sought to promote maintenance or preserve and spread of French culture, language, and influence, especially in West Africa, while disproportionately giving aid to those that have extensive commercial ties with France;
• Japan has also heavily skewed aid towards those in East Asia with extensive commercial ties together with conditions of Japanese purchases;

Osbourne also added that domestic pressure groups (corporate lobby groups, etc) “have also proven quite adept at steering aid to their favored recipients.” And so, “If aid is not particularly given with the intention to foster economic growth, it is perhaps not surprising that it does not achieve it.”

Aid And Militarism

IPS noted that recent US aid has taken on militaristic angles as well, following similar patterns to aid during the cold war. The war on terrorism is also having an effect as to what aid goes where and how much is spent.

For example:

• “Credits for foreign militaries to buy US weapons and equipment would increase by some 700 million dollars to nearly five billion dollars, the highest total in well over a decade.” (This is also an example of aid benefiting the donor!)
• “The total foreign aid proposal … amounts to a mere five percent of what Bush is requesting for the Pentagon next year.”
• “Bush’s foreign-aid plan [for 2005] actually marks an increase over 2004 levels, although much of the additional money is explained by greater spending on security for US embassies and personnel overseas.”
• “As in previous years, Israel and Egypt are the biggest bilateral recipients under the request, accounting for nearly five billion dollars in aid between them. Of the nearly three billion dollars earmarked for Israel, most is for military credits.”
• This militaristic aid will come “largely at the expense of humanitarian and development assistance.”

The European Union is linking aid to fighting terrorism as well, with European ministers warning countries that their relations with the economically powerful bloc will suffer if they fail to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. An EU official is quoted as saying, “aid and trade could be affected if the fight against terrorism was considered insufficient”, leading to accusations of “compromising the neutrality, impartiality and independence of humanitarian assistance”.

Aid Money Often Tied to Various Restrictive Conditions

As a condition for aid money, many donors apply conditions that tie the recipient to purchase products only from that donor. In a way this might seem fair and “balanced”, because the donor gets something out of the relationship as well, but on the other hand, for the poorer country, it can mean precious resources are used buying more expensive options, which could otherwise have been used in other situations. Furthermore, the recipient then has less control and decision-making on how aid money is spent. In addition the very nations that typically promote free-markets and less government involvement in trade, commerce, etc., ensure some notion of welfare for some of their industries.

IPS noted that aid tied with conditions cut the value of aid to recipient countries by some 25-40 percent, because it obliges them to purchase uncompetitively priced imports from the richer nations. IPS was citing a UN Economic Council for Africa study which also noted that just four countries (Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) were breaking away from the idea of “tied aid” with more than 90 percent of their aid “untied”.

In addition, IPS noted the following, worth quoting at length:

[Njoki Njoroge] Njehu [director of the 50 Years is Enough campaign] cited the example of Eritrea, which discovered it would be cheaper to build its network of railways with local expertise and resources rather than be forced to spend aid money on foreign consultants, experts, architects and engineers imposed on the country as a condition of development assistance.

Strings attached to US aid for similar projects, she added, include the obligation to buy products such as Caterpillar and John Deere tractors. “All this adds up to the cost of the project.”

Njehu also pointed out that money being doled out to Africa to fight HIV/AIDS is also a form of tied aid. She said Washington is insisting that the continent’s governments purchase anti-AIDS drugs from the United States instead of buying cheaper generic products from South Africa, India or Brazil.

As a result, she said, US brand name drugs are costing up to 15,000 dollars a year compared with 350 dollars annually for generics.

…

AGOA [African Growth and Opportunity Act, signed into US law in 2000] is more sinister than tied aid, says Njehu. “If a country is to be eligible for AGOA, it has to refrain from any actions that may conflict with the US’s ‘strategic interests.’”

“The potential of this clause to influence our countries' foreign policies was hinted at during debates at the United Nations over the invasion of Iraq,” she added.

“The war against Iraq was of strategic interest to the United States,” Njehu said. As a result, she said, several African members of the UN Security Council, including Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, were virtually held to ransom when the United States was seeking council support for the war in 2003.

“They came under heavy pressure,” she said. “The message was clear: either you vote with us or you lose your trade privileges”.

— Thalif Deen, Tied Aid Strangling Nations, Says U.N, Inter Press Service, July 6, 2004

As noted further above, almost half of all foreign aid can be considered “phantom aid”, aid which does not help fight poverty, and is based on a broader definition of foreign aid that allows double counting and other problems to occur. Furthermore, some 50% of all technical assistance is said to be wasted because of inappropriate usage on expensive consultants, their living expenses, and training (some $11.8 billion).

In their 2000 report looking back at the previous year, the Reality of Aid 2000 (Earthscan Publications, 2000, p.81), reported in their US section that “71.6% of its bilateral aid commitments were tied to the purchase of goods and services from the US.” That is, where the US did give aid, it was most often tied to foreign policy objectives that would help the US.

Leading up to the UN Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, the Bush administration promised a nearly $10 billion fund over three years followed by a permanent increase of $5 billion a year thereafter. The EU also offered some $5 billion increase over a similar time period.

While these increases have been welcome, these targets are still below the 0.7% promised at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The World Bank have also leveled some criticism of past policies:

Commenting on the latest US pledge [of $10 billion], Julian Borger and Charlotte Denny of the Guardian (UK) say Washington is desperate to deflect attention in Monterrey from the size of its aid budget. But for more generous donors, says the story, Washington’s conversion to the cause of effective aid spending is hard to swallow. Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on itself—70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East. Only $3bn a year goes to South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

— Monterrey: US Will 'Seek Advice On Spending Aid', World Bank, March 21, 2002

In addition, promises of more money were tied to more conditions, which for many developing countries is another barrier to real development, as the conditions are sometimes favorable to the donor, not necessarily the recipient. Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment commented on the US conditional pledge of more money that:

Thus, status quo in world relations is maintained. Rich countries like the US continue to have a financial lever to dictate what good governance means and to pry open markets of developing countries for multinational corporations. Developing countries have no such handle for Northern markets, even in sectors like agriculture and textiles, where they have an advantage but continue to face trade barriers and subsidies. The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US $100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid.

— Puppets on purse strings, Down To Earth, (Centre for Science and Environment) Vol 10, No 23, April 30, 2002

As discussed further on this site’s section on water issues, the World Development Movement campaign organization reported in early 2005 that the British government has been using aid money to pay British companies to push privatization of water services to poor countries, even though it may not be in their best interests.

The 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles in Scotland saw promises of lots of aid and debt relief, but these were accompanied with a lot of spin, and more conditions, often considered harmful in the past.

Another aspect of aid tying into interests of donors is exemplified with climate change negotiations. Powerful nations such as the United States have been vocally against the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Unlike smaller countries, they have been able to exert their influence on other countries to push for bilateral agreements conditioned with aid, in a way that some would describe as a bribe. Center for Science and Environment for example criticizes such politics:

It is easy to be taken in with promises of bilateral aid, and make seemingly innocuous commitments in bilateral agreements. There is far too much at stake here [with climate change]. To further their interests, smaller, poorer countries don’t have aid to bribe and trade muscle to threaten countries.

— Pop of the world, Equity Watch, Center for Science and Environment, October 25, 2002.

This use of strength in political and economic arenas is nothing new. Powerful nations have always managed to exert their influence in various arenas. During the Gulf War in 1991 for example, many that ended up in the allied coalition were promised various concessions behind the scenes (what the media described as “diplomacy”). For example, Russia was offered massive IMF money. Even now, with the issue of the International Criminal Court, which the US is also opposed to, it has been pressuring other nations on an individual basis to not sign, or provide concessions. In that context, aid is often tied to political objectives and it can be difficult to sometimes see when it is not so.

But some types of conditions attached to aid can also be ideologically driven. For example, quoted further above by the New York Times, James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president noted how European and American farm subsidies “are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty.” While this criticism comes from many perspectives, Wolfensohn’s note on export also suggests that some forms of development assistance may be on the condition that nations reform their economies to certain ideological positions. Structural Adjustment has been one of these main policies as part of this neoliberal ideology, to promote export-oriented development in a rapidly opened economy. Yet, this has been one of the most disastrous policies in the past two decades, which has increased poverty. Even the IMF and World Bank have hinted from time to time that such policies are not working. People can understand how tying aid on condition of improving human rights, or democracy might be appealing, but when tied to economic ideology, which is not always proven, or not always following the “one size fits all” model, the ability (and accountability) of decisions that governments would have to pursue policies they believe will help their own people are reduced.

More Money Is Transferred From Poor Countries to Rich, Than From Rich To Poor

For the OECD countries to meet their obligations for aid to the poorer countries is not an economic problem. It is a political one. This can be seen in the context of other spending. For example,

• The US recently increased its military budget by some $100 billion dollars alone
• Europe subsidizes its agriculture to the tune of some $35-40 billion per year, even while it demands other nations to liberalize their markets to foreign competition.
• The US also introduced a $190 billion dollar subsidy to its farms through the US Farm Bill, also criticized as a protectionist measure.
• While aid amounts to around $70 to 100 billion per year, the poor countries pay some $200 billion to the rich each year.
• There are many more (some mentioned below too).

In effect then, there is more aid to the rich than to the poor.

While the amount of aid from some countries such as the US might look very generous in sheer dollar terms (ignoring the percentage issue for the moment), the World Bank also pointed out that at the World Economic Forum in New York, February 2002, “[US Senator Patrick] Leahy noted that two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States.”

In October 2003, at a United Nations conference, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted that

developing countries made the sixth consecutive and largest ever transfer of funds to “other countries” in 2002, a sum totalling “almost $200 billion.”

“Funds should be moving from developed countries to developing countries, but these numbers tell us the opposite is happening…. Funds that should be promoting investment and growth in developing countries, or building schools and hospitals, or supporting other steps towards the Millennium Development Goals, are, instead, being transferred abroad.”

— Kofi Annan, Development funds moving from poor countries to rich ones, Annan says, United Nations News Centre, October 30, 2003

And as Saradha Lyer, of Malaysia-based Third World Network notes, instead of promoting investment in health, education, and infrastructure development in the third world, this money has been channelled to the North, either because of debt servicing arrangements, asymmetries and imbalances in the trade system or because of inappropriate liberalisation and privatisation measures imposed upon them by the international financial and trading system.

This transfer from the poorer nations to the rich ones makes even the recent increase in ODA seem little in comparison.

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Aid Amounts Dwarfed by Effects of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, etc

Combining the above mentioned reversal of flows with the subsidies and other distorting mechanisms, this all amounts to a lot of money being transferred to the richer countries (also known as the global North), compared to the total aid amounts that goes to the poor (or South).

As well as having a direct impact on poorer nations, it also affects smaller farmers in rich nations. For example, Oxfam, criticizing EU double standards, highlights the following:

Latin America is the worst-affected region, losing $4bn annually from EU farm policies. EU support to agriculture is equivalent to double the combined aid budgets of the European Commission and all 15 member states. Half the spending goes to the biggest 17 per cent of farm enterprises, belying the manufactured myth that the CAP [Common Agriculture Policy] is all about keeping small farmers in jobs.

— Europe’s Double Standards. How the EU should reform its trade policies with the developing world, Oxfam Policy Paper, April 2002, p.18 (Link is to the press release, which includes a link to the actual Microsoft Word document from which the above is cited.)

And as Devinder Sharma adds, some of the largest benefactors of European agricultural subsidies include the Queen of England, and other royalties in Europe!

The double standards that Oxfam mentions above, and that countless others have highlighted has a huge impact on poor countries, who are pressured to follow liberalization and reducing government “interference” while rich nations are able to subsidize some of their industries. Poor countries consequently have an even tougher time competing. IPS captures this well:

“On the one hand, OECD countries such as the US, Germany or France continue through the ECAs [export credit agencies] to subsidise exports with taxpayers' money, often in detriment to the competitiveness of the poorest countries of the world,” says [NGO Environment Defence representative, Aaron] Goldzimmer. “On the other hand, the official development assistance which is one way to support the countries of the South to find a sustainable path to development and progress is being reduced.”

…

Government subsidies mean considerable cost reduction for major companies and amount to around 10 per cent of annual world trade. In the year 2000, subsidies through ECAs added up to 64 billion dollars of exports from industrialised countries, well above the official development assistance granted last year of 51.4 billion dollars.

— Julio Godoy, New Report Reveals Drop in Aid to Developing Countries, Inter Press Service, May 16, 2002

As well as agriculture, textiles and clothing is another mainstay of many poor countries. But, as with agriculture, the wealthier countries have long held up barriers to prevent being out-competed by poorer country products. This has been achieved through things like subsidies and various “agreements”. The impact to the poor has been far-reaching, as Friends of the Earth highlights:

Despite the obvious importance of the textile and clothing sectors in terms of development opportunities, the North has consistently and systematically repressed developing country production to protect its own domestic clothing industries.

Since the 1970s the textile and clothing trade has been controlled through the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) which sets bilateral quotas between importing and exporting countries. This was supposedly to protect the clothing industries of the industrialised world while they adapted to competition from developing countries. While there are cases where such protection may be warranted, especially for transitionary periods, the MFA has been in place since 1974 and has been extended five times. According to Oxfam, the MFA is,

“…the most significant..[non tariff barrier to trade]..which has faced the world’s poorest countries for over 20 years”.

Although the MFA has been replaced by the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) which phases out support over a further ten year period—albeit through a process which in itself is highly inequitable—developing countries are still suffering the consequences. The total cost to developing countries of restrictions on textile imports into the developed world has been estimated to be some $50 billion a year. This is more or less equivalent to the total amount of annual development assistance provided by Northern governments to the Third World.

— Clothes, The Citizens' Guide to Trade, Environment and Sustainability, Friends of the Earth International, January 24, 2001

There is often much talk of trade rather than aid, of development, of opening markets etc. But, when at the same time some of the important markets of the US, EU and Japan appear to be no-go areas for the poorer nations, then such talk has been criticized by some as being hollow. The New York Times is worth quoting at length:

Our compassion [at the 2002 G8 Summit talking of the desire to help Africa] may be well meant, but it is also hypocritical. The US, Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries), and this money creates gluts that lower commodity prices and erode the living standard of the world’s poorest people.

“These subsidies are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty,” said James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, in a speech last month.

Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program, estimates that these farm subsidies cost poor countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural exports. By coincidence, that’s about the same as the total of rich countries' aid to poor countries, so we take back with our left hand every cent we give with our right.

“It’s holding down the prosperity of very poor people in Africa and elsewhere for very narrow, selfish interests of their own,” Mr. Malloch Brown says of the rich world’s agricultural policy.

It also seems a tad hypocritical of us to complain about governance in third-world countries when we allow tiny groups of farmers to hijack billion of dollars out of our taxes.

— Nicholas D. Kristof, Farm Subsidies That Kill, New York Times, 5 July 2002

In fact, J. Brian Atwood, stepped down in 1999 as head of the US foreign aid agency, USAID. He was very critical of US policies, and vented his frustration that “despite many well-publicized trade missions, we saw virtually no increase of trade with the poorest nations. These nations could not engage in trade because they could not afford to buy anything.” (Quoted from a speech that he delivered to the Overseas Development Council.)

As Jean-Bertrand Arisitde also points out, there is also a boomerang effect of loans as large portions of aid money is tied to purchases of goods and trade with the donor:

Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized nations. In 1995, the director of the US aid agency defended his agency by testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the US economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the US economy in goods and services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we find that aid does not aid.

— Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13

One could add to the above that while aid does not aid the recipient, it aids the donor. For the US here, its aid agency was an aspect of its foreign policy to enhance its interests, successfully.

And then there has been the disastrous food aid policies, which is another example of providing aid, but using that aid as an arm of foreign policy objectives. It has helped their corporations and large farmers at a huge cost to developing countries, and has seen an increase in hunger, not reduction. For more details, see the entire section on this site that discusses this, in the Poverty and Food Dumping part of this web site.

For the world’s hungry, however, the problem isn’t the stinginess of our aid. When our levels of assistance last boomed, under Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s, the emphasis was hardly on eliminating hunger. In 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz stated flatly that “our foreign assistance programs are vital to the achievement of our foreign policy goals.” But Shultz’s statement shouldn’t surprise us. Every country’s foreign aid is a tool of foreign policy. Whether that aid benefits the hungry is determined by the motives and goals of that policy—by how a government defines the national interest.

— Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, World Hunger: 12 Myths, 2nd Edition, (Grove/Atlantic and Food First Books, Oct. 1998), Chapter 10, p.130.

The above quote from the book World Hunger is from Chapter 10, which is also reproduced in full on this web site. It also has more facts and stats on US aid and foreign policy objectives, etc.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note the disparities between what the world spends on military, compared to other international obligations and commitments. Most wealthy nations spend far more on military than development, for example. The United Nations, which gets its monies from member nations, spends about $10 billion—or about 3% of what just the US alone spends on its military. It is facing a financial crisis as countries such as the US want to reduce their burden of the costs—which comparatively is quite low anyway—and have tried to withhold payments or continued according to various additional conditions.)

But, as the quote above highlights as well, as well as the amount of aid, the quality of aid is important. (And the above highlights that the quality has not been good either.)

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But aid could be beneficial

Government aid, from the United States and others, as indicated above can often fall foul of political agendas and interests of donors. At the same time that is not the only aid going to poor countries. The US itself, for example, has a long tradition of encouraging charitable contributions. Indeed, tax laws in the US and various European countries are favorable to such giving as discussed further above. But private funding, philanthropy and other sources of aid can also fall foul of similar or other agendas, as well as issues of concentration on some areas over others, of accountability, and so on. (More on these aspects is introduced on this site’s NGO and Development section.)

Trade and Aid

Oxfam highlights the importance of trade and aid:

Some Northern governments have stressed that “trade not aid” should be the dominant theme at the [March 2002 Monterrey] conference [on Financing for Development]. That approach is disingenuous on two counts. First, rich countries have failed to open their markets to poor countries. Second, increased aid is vital for the world’s poorest countries if they are to grasp the opportunities provided through trade.

— Meeting the Challenge of Poverty Reduction, Oxfam, March 2, 2002

In addition to “trade not aid” perspectives, the Bush Administration is also pushing for grants rather than loans from the World Bank. Grants being free money appears to be more welcome, though many European nations aren’t as pleased with this option. Furthermore, some commentators point out that the World Bank, being a Bank, shouldn’t give out grants, which would make it compete with other grant-offering institutions such as various other United Nations bodies. Also, there is concern that it may be easier to impose political conditions to the grants. John Taylor, US Undersecretary of the Treasury, in a recent speech in Washington also pointed out that “Grants are not free. Grants can be easily be tied to measurable performance or results.” Some comment that perhaps grants may lead to more dependencies as well as some nations may agree to even more conditions regardless of the consequences, in order to get the free money. (More about the issue of grants is discussed by the Bretton Woods Project.)

In discussing trade policies of the US, and EU, in relation to its effects on poor countries, chief researcher of Oxfam, Kevin Watkins, has been very critical, even charging them with hypocrisy for preaching free trade but practicing mercantilism:

Looking beyond agriculture, it is difficult to avoid being struck by the discrepancy between the picture of US trade policy painted by [US Trade Representative, Robert] Zoellick and the realities facing developing countries.

To take one example, much has been made of America’s generosity towards Africa under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This provides what, on the surface, looks like free market access for a range of textile, garment and footwear products. Scratch the surface and you get a different picture. Under AGOA’s so-called rules-of-origin provisions, the yarn and fabric used to make apparel exports must be made either in the United States or an eligible African country. If they are made in Africa, there is a ceiling of 1.5 per cent on the share of the US market that the products in question can account for. Moreover, the AGOA’s coverage is less than comprehensive. There are some 900 tariff lines not covered, for which average tariffs exceed 11%.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the benefits accruing to Africa from the AGOA would be some $420m, or five times, greater if the US removed the rules-of-origin restrictions. But these restrictions reflect the realities of mercantilist trade policy. The underlying principle is that you can export to America, provided that the export in question uses American products rather than those of competitors. For a country supposedly leading a crusade for open, non-discriminatory global markets, it’s a curiously anachronistic approach to trade policy.

— Kevin Watkins, Trade hypocrisy: the problem with Robert Zoellick, Open Democracy, December 12, 2002

Watkins lists a number of other areas, besides the AGOA that are beset with problems of hypocrisy, and concludes that “nihilism and blind pursuit of US economic and corporate special interest represents an obstacle to the creation of an international trading system capable of extending the benefits of globalisation to the world’s poor.” (See also this site’s section on free trade and globalization, where there is more criticism about northern countries exhibiting mercantilist, or monopoly capitalist principles, rather than free market capitalism, even though that is what is preached to the rest of the world.)

In that context then, and given the problems mentioned further above about agricultural and textiles/clothing subsidies, etc. the current amount of aid given to poor countries doesn’t compare to “aid” given to wealthier countries’ corporations and industries and hardly compensates for what is lost.

Both increasing and restructuring aid to truly provide developing countries the tools and means to develop for themselves, for example, would help recipients of aid, not just the donors. Aid is more than just charity and cannot be separated from other issues of politics and economics, which must also be considered.

Improving Economic Infrastructure

The United Nations notes that effectiveness of aid to poor countries requires a focus on economic infrastructure. Furthermore, to aid development requires, for example:

• Targeted investment
• Productive development strategies to attract currency and sustaining economic growth.
• For least developed countries (LDCs) to minimize their disadvantages—such as the small size of their economies—regional integration would help.

Countries giving aid could help by providing:

• Greater investment
• Greater debt relief
• Actually practice free and fair trade

“Trade not Aid” sounds like decent rhetoric. As the economist Amartya Sen for example says, a lot that can be done at a relatively little cost. Unfortunately, so far, it seems that rhetoric is mostly what it has turned out to be.

In addition, as J.W. Smith further qualifies, rather than giving money that can be squandered away, perhaps the best form of aid would be industry, directly:

Do Not Give the Needy Money: Build Them Industries Instead

With the record of corruption within impoverished countries, people will question giving them money. That can be handled by giving them the industry directly, not the money. To build a balanced economy, provide consumer buying power, and develop arteries of commerce that will absorb the production of these industries, contractors and labor in those countries should be used. Legitimacy and security of contracts is the basis of any sound economy. Engineers know what those costs should be and, if cost overruns start coming in, the contractor who has proven incapable should be replaced—just as any good contract would require…. When provided the industry, as opposed to the money to build industry, those people will have physical capital. The only profits to be made then are in production; there is no development money to intercept and send to a Swiss bank account.

— J.W. Smith, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century, Second Edition, (1st Books, 2002), pp. 300-301 (also available in full online)

Use aid to Empower, not to Prescribe

The approach which J.W. Smith hints to—and which has often been argued by progressive and developing world activists and experts—is that aid needs to empower local people. There may be some form of aid that is best delivered to (and via) governments, but there are many types of assistance that can be given directly to the people who need it, thus also avoiding the risk of governments withholding, diverting or delaying those funds.

Professor William Easterly, mentioned earlier, tries to provide a simplified view of these two general approaches, using the following definitions:

Planners

Those who go for a top-down, prescriptive, imposing approach

Searchers

Those who try to look for alternative approaches, often working at the grass-roots, or from the bottom up

A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions. A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), p. 4

Easterly also notes that Searchers “have had little chance to deliver in the area of global poverty because foreign aid has been dominated by the Planners” (p.7), which is also detailed further above in the rest of this page.

Rich donor countries and aid bureaucracies are not accountable

Furthermore, a fundamental issue Easterly also notes is that the “Planners” are rarely accountable for all the grand promises they make. For example, at the G8 Summit in July, 2005, there was much promised, such as over $40 billion in apparent debt write-off, plus further aid promises. While much of this and previous promises have included spin and fancy accounting, these promises have rarely been delivered upon, or if they have and subsequently failed, no-one has been held accountable. (It could be added that “Searchers” too have thus far largely been unaccountable, too.)

A major problem Easterly also sees is that the “Planners” have a modern version of the paternalistic attitude prevalent during colonial times; that the powerful know what is best for the rest, and should try to shape them in their image:

The new military interventions are similar to the military interventions of the cold war, while the neo-imperialist fantasies are similar to old-time colonial fantasies. Military intervention and occuptation show a classic Planner’s mentality: applying a simplistic answer from the West to a complex internal problem in the Rest.

… But if rich people want to help the poor, they must face an unpleasant reality: If it’s so easy to end the poverty trap, why haven’t the Planners already made it history?

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 10-11

Donors therefore, are not neutral actors as a review of NGOs questions:

Also problematic is the donors’ image of themselves as neutral actors, brokering relations between the state, business, and civil society, and indeed separate and hidden from the triadic unity.… Yet this begs the question from where international agencies derive their authority to act as broker and to pose as neutral observers. Indeed, the prior assumption of a broker role—unnegotiated, uncontested, and unlegitimate—in itself is revealing about the balance of power. The notion of brokering suggests that the broker has no interest of its own, no ideological preferences, no intrinsic values and goals.

Apart from the question of neutrality, which services to mask the distribution of power, there is also the larger question of the morality of interventionism. Is donor support to civil society another manifestation of neocolonialism in the post-Cold War era, aimed at controlling the nature of political regimes and extending global markets? Do donors have the right, let alone the capacity, to shape other civil societies? By projecting their own visions and understandings of civil society, do they not undermine the ability of local organizations to set their own priorities and agendas, to vocalize their own imaginations of social and political change?

— Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce (David Lewis and Tina Wallace, Editors), New Roles and Relevance; Development NGOs and the Challenge of Change, (Kumarian Press, 2000), p. 83

Interestingly, Easterly notes that politicians are often “Searchers” at home but “Planners” abroad because at home they have constituencies to whom they are usually accountable; they are not accountable to people in other countries. There is therefore no way for a feedback mechanism to have clout.

Without accountability and feedback, there is little chance for success Easterly feels. “Feedback guides democratic governments towards supplying services that the market cannot supply, and toward providing institutions for the markets to work”, while, “at a higher level, accountability is necessary to motivate a whole organization or government to use Searchers.” (P. 16)

Democracy-building is fundamental, but harder in many developing countries

Another aspect of accountability (especially when it comes to providing public services that free markets are not intended to provide for) is democracy. Politically, democracy is supposed to provide a feedback mechanism so that politicians are held accountable and react to needs. If a road needs repairing, water systems need improving etc, we should be able to demand that our local politicians act, for example.

As Easterly and many other writers have acknowledged, however, the struggle for democracy in the developing world is much harder because of the legacy of colonialism—the artificial borders, unnatural movement and displacement of people, etc—which means that either powerful minorities (e.g. European settlers), or powerful majorities may not always represent the interests of everyone in that nation. There may have been historic tension amongst people who are now confined to the same borders, for example, making positive democratic changes extremely difficult, further compounded by poverty and other related problems.

Failed foreign aid and continued poverty: well-intentioned mistakes, calculated geopolitics, or a mix?

These, and so many other factors all interplay, making foreign aid less useful than it should have been. Certainly trillions have been spent with little to show for it.

To oversimplify … the needs of the rich get met because the rich give feedback to political and economic Searchers, and they can hold the Searchers accountable for following through with specific actions. The needs of the poor don’t get met because the poor have little money or political power with which to make their needs known and they cannot hold anyone accountable to meet those needs. They are stuck with Planners. The … tragedy [of failed foreign aid] continues.

…

To make things even worse, aid bureaucrats [from rich donor countries] have incentives to satisfy the rich countries doing the funding as well as (or instead of) the poor. One oversight in the quest to help the poor was the failure to study the incentives of its appointed helpers. The bureaucratic managers have the incentive to satisfy rich-country vanity with promises of transforming the Rest rather than simply helping poor individuals. Internal bureaucratic incentives also favor grand global schemes over getting the little guy what he wants.

… A big part of the problem originates with the rich-country governments who set the mandates of the aid agencies. Dear rich-country funders, please give up your utopian fantasies of transforming the Rest. Don’t reward aid agencies for setting goals that are impossible as they are politically appealing. Please just ask aid agencies to focus on narrow, solvable problems. For example, let them focus on the health, education, electrification, water problems, and piecemeal policy reforms to promote the private sector—where they already had some success—and fix some remaining problems such as the refusal of donors to finance operations and maintenance.

Collective responsibility for the Millennium Development Goals or any other goals does not work. Hold aid agencies individually responsible for what they own program achieve, not for global goals. Letting different agencies specialize in different areas would also lessen the coordination problem.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 17, 167, 204-205

Easterly’s call to promote the private sector is not as much about foreign private corporation going into a country (as the problems of foreign private sector involvement has been well known in developing countries, e.g. privatizing water services where the poor often can no longer get access to water).

Instead, Easterly, like others such as J.W. Smith, Joseph Stiglitz, etc feel that a local, home-grown private sector would be more responsive to local needs. Searchers are not just of the private sector variety, but also politicians and NGOs who are responsive to local needs. (Easterly, for example, provides numerous examples of this.)

Easterly feels that “Planners” are generally well-intentioned, but fundamentally miss the point and are nonetheless popular perhaps because of a Western fascination of heroes and heroic stories “that stars the rich West in the leading role, that of the chosen people to save the Rest” (p.18). Side Note»I would suggest that this idea in the West can be linked to the story of Christ and how Christianity has helped shape culture and thought in the West. Similarly, one will find other hero figures in other parts of the world, such that stories of individuals saving the day will appeal to many around the world.

Others, especially from developing countries, are more cynical than Easterly (perhaps understandably, given that they are the ones who have suffered the long history for centuries at the hands of the Planners’ ancestors), that perhaps today’s “Planners” are continuing a time-tested strategy, to keep the developing world in poverty so the “Planners” may continue to dominate.

Yet others may argue that it is not necessarily these “Planners” actively seek to do this; they may be well-intentioned, but their education, culture, society, whatever, is geared towards perpetuating the existing system, so they cannot think outside of that “framework of orientation” (a term coined by J.W. Smith). The pressures of globalization affect both rich and poor nations, and so can (understandably) drive people that are in a position of power to follow the bad policies that we actually do see them pursue in foreign affairs.

The authoritative Assistant Director of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, Professor Ha-Joon Chang, for example, looks at the historical context, and just as J.W. Smith and others have noted, finds that today’s rich countries developed using different policies than those typically prescribed to today’s poor countries:

‘How did the rich countries really become rich?’

The short answer to this question is that the developed countries did not get to where they are now through the policies and the institutions that they recommend to developing countries today. Most of them actively used ‘bad’ trade and industrial policies, such as infant industry protection and export subsidies—practices that these days are frowned upon, if not actively banned, by the WTO. Until they were quite developed (that is, until the late nineteenth to early twentieth century), they had very few of the institutions deemed essential by developing countries today, including such ‘basic’ institution as central banks and limited liability companies.

If this is the case, aren’t the developed countries, under the guise of recommending ‘good’ policies and institutions, actually making it difficult for the developing countries to use policies and institutions they themselves had used in order to develop economically in earlier times?

— Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away The Ladder, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp.2–3. (Emphasis is original)

Chang also notes that German economist Friedrich List had analyzed the political system in his classic work, The National System of Political Economy (1841), and observed that even the rise of Britain, the hero of free trade and the free-market economy, was actually characterized by protecting infant industries. Chang comments that,

List [argued] that free trade is beneficial among countries at similar levels of industrial development … but not between those at different levels of development. Like many of his contemporaries in countries that were trying to catch up with Britain, he argues that free trade benefits Britain but not the less developed economies…. To [List]…, the preachings on the virtues of free trade by British politicians and economist of his time were done for nationalistic purposes, even though they were cast in the generalistic languages…. He is worth quoting…

It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith, and of the cosmopolitical tendencies of his great contemporary William Pitt, and of all his successors in the British Government administrations.

— Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away The Ladder, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp.4–5. (Emphasis is Chang’s)

Chang is looking at development from the perspective of international trade while Easterly is focused on development from the perspective of internal market development. Chang is therefore implying that for the kind of developments needed locally, international actions do have an impact. Easterly feels that international actions are misguided, though well-intentioned, while Chang sees historical calculation and power acting to conspire against development.

It is likely we will never know which views are correct, and there is perhaps a mixture of reasons; a mixture of bumbling mistakes, calculated statecraft, poor execution by some developing countries, and lack of opportunities for the poor, etc.

Easterly does acknowledge limitations to this oversimplification of “Planners” and “Searchers” and that there are reformers and dissidents working at all levels, grass-roots and macroeconomic. For example, many believe macro-economic changes are needed to the global system (perhaps in order to enable Searchers to work more effectively, or just to allow for a more just system where Planners from the rich world do not dictate) and this may indeed require people working at the global level, though this may not necessarily require a prescriptive “we know best” approach which ultimately Easterly is criticizing.

Turning this debate of foreign aid from an issue of amount given (input and quantity) into one about aid effectiveness (outcome and quality) raises some different questions. For example,

• Would filling the $3.6 trillion shortfall help if aid comes with all the above-criticized strings still attached?
• Could far more be achieved with far less aid dollars if there was a change in approach with less top-down and more bottom-up?
• And if so, how much more could be achieved if the shortfall was filled at the same time?
• Although we keep hearing that the fault is of corrupt people in the developing world, should first world countries also be held to account for both the massive aid shortfall and the failed prescriptive, “we know best” approach to development?

Whether the hope for effective foreign aid will actually turn into reality is harder to know, because of power politics, which has characterized and shaped the world for centuries.

A risk for developing countries that look to aid, at least in their short-term plans to kick-start development (for becoming dependent on aid over the long run seems a dangerous path to follow), is that people of the rich world will see the failures of aid without seeing the detailed reasons why, creating a backlash of donor fatigue, reluctance and cynicism.

BOONDOGGLE FILMS presents a film by LERONE D. WILSON produced by NONSO CHRISTIAN UGBODE
BENNY ANDREWS   JOHN ASHFORD   GUSTAVE BLACHE III   LINDA GOODE BRYANT   MARY SCHMIDT CAMPBELL   NANETTE CARTER   ED CLARK   ADGER COWANS   FRANCKS DECEUS   LARRY HAMPTON   MARVA HUSTON
GORDON JAMES   JUNE KELLY   JOHN KISCH   WANGECHI MUTU   RON OLLIE   OTTO NEALS   HOWARDENA PINDELL   DANNY SIMMONS   MICHAEL SINGLETARY   DIANNE SMITH   DUANE SMITH   ANN TANKSLEY   TAFA
original music by THE MAGALI SOURIAU TRIO additional music by LENAE HARRIS
www.coloredframes.com

GO HERE TO VIEW ONE HOUR ART DOCUMENTARY   

Press Releases

Film Celebrates Beauty of African American Visual Art

Articles/Interviews

3BlackChicks.com Interview with Lerone D. Wilson

Short Synopsis

A look back at the last fifty years in African American art, Colored Frames is an unflinching exploration of influences, inspirations and experiences of black artists. Beginning at the height of the Civil Rights Era and leading up to the present, it is a naked and truthful look at often ignored artists and their progenies.

Long Synopsis

Colored Frames chronicles the Black artist's struggle for visibility and acceptance. As legendary artist Benny Andrews puts it, Black artists seek to be included or excluded on the basis of quality, "eliminate it on the basis that its not acceptable," Andrews implores, "not because it's Black." The film trumpets the value behind an engaged audience that consumes mainstream images consciously. The film highlights the beauty that comes from variety in representation, as writer and art historian Mary Schmidt Campbell acknowledges about Black art specifically, and the Black experience in general, "we have a lot of beauty to contribute to this country, and I take a lot of pride in that."

With concise interview segments and impressionistic video collages, Colored Frames is a documentary showcasing the works of contemporary Black artists. The film explores the conversation of art and the Black experience and seeks to eliminate years of negative stereotyping and assumptions that come with images of Blackness in America.

Treatment

Colored Frames launches with a visual introduction to the variety, both thematically and stylistically, of contemporary work by African American artists. It immediately showcases its nuanced style of collage and conversation by leading the audience through a brief recollection of historical circumstances that have defined the Black experience in America. Through these all-too-real anecdotes of a history scared by prejudice, the film sets the stage for an honest dialogue from a talented pool of artists, historians, curators, dealers and collectors hungry for an equitable depiction of art by African Americans.

The film dissects the socialization of the Black artist in America by documenting the inherent inequalities present for all people of color, especially Black people. The film gives voice to the truth of the limits an artist comes in contact with when trying to be part of a world as fantastic as fine art. Artists like Ed Clark and Michael Singletary recall their days abroad in Paris as expatriate artists searching for that unconditional attention which can be the only breeding ground for art with any growth potential. "I went there with a lot of pain," Singletary recalls, "but they were judging me based on my art."

At the center of Colored Frames is an exploration of the conflict between Black artists and the mainstream art society in America. Abstract painter Howardena Pindell likens the Black artists' experience to an old Japanese proverb which urges the community to hammer back in any nail that sticks out - providing a perfect metaphor for the institutions of art which historically grant little understanding to most Black artists, instead squeezing them into one category, or ignoring them entirely. Legendary painter Benny Andrews attests to the excessive frequency of gallery shows themed as simply, "Black Show." And here we learn of the struggle, physical and through their work, of artists like Benny Andrews to push through the barriers upheld by long standing institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Discussing the negative perceptions surrounding Black art, curator Linda Goode-Bryant speaks of attempting to find gallery space and being rejected because the building owner assumed she was in the business of showing "Black velvet paintings." Here the negative images perpetrated by most of the mainstream, notably Blaxploitation films and posters, provides a glimpse into the psyche of exclusion that refuses to accept the Black artist as legitimate. However, here we also get a complex questioning of the situation as artist Francks Deceus states that many audiences "subscribe to a lot of commercialism," which ultimately recycles the same stereotypical images for mass consumption.

Colored Frames moves on to explore the question of rejection of the abstract style, both inside and outside the Black community; raising the question of communal self-validation. Here the film contemplates the challenges to artists just trying to paint a wide spectrum of the Black experience - from darkly complex, to simply joyful - and speaks to the value of art in that it is all that is left after generations have passed on.

The importance of a film like Colored Frames is underscored by the recent death of a legendary artist like Benny Andrews to whom the film is dedicated. The film is a social document which brings to the forefront the works of a long ignored people. As Andrews states in the film, the goal of the artist is to pass forward the influences of others. Colored Frames is the realization of Andrews' words. It provides the truth about contemporary Black art; it is not a collective of the same old images, but a vibrant and much-alive cornucopia of strong themes, vibrant ideas and 'colored frames.'

Lerone Wilson - Executive Producer/Director/Editor

Lerone D. Wilson

Boondoggle Films is the brainchild of esteemed filmmaker Lerone Wilson, a New York University graduate holding degrees in both Film & Television and Economics.

A product of the Metro Detroit area, Lerone has worked in various research, editing, and production capacities on documentary productions for HBO, PBS, The Travel Channel, and independent cinema. Meanwhile, he has amassed collections of documentary features and shorts, produced and directed by himself. His first feature "No Child Left Behind", a film exploring the education policy of the same name, was selected for various festivals and enjoyed a run on PBS. His following film, "Aardvark'd" explored the world of computer programming. The film enjoyed a stint on the festival circuit as well as airing on The Documentary Channel, and NYCTV.

Blending his unique journalistic prowess with his penchant for emotional tales of humanism, Lerone continues to produce high style documentary television with redeemable social qualities.

Contact: lerone@boondogglefilms.com
Office: (646)330-5403
 
 
 
 

Nonso Christian Ugbode - Producer

Nonso Christian Ugbode

A native of Nigeria, West Africa, where he was born and lived with his family until May of 1997. At fifteen Ugbode moved to Brooklyn, New York and consequently completed his high school and undergraduate studies - the latter with a BFA at New York University. He has had chance to work in both film/TV and theatre; directing the 2003 off-Broadway remake of Rebel Without A Cause.

His resume also includes work in London with the BBC's Art department where he gained a love and deeper understanding for documentary filmmaking while working on a short documentary entitled The Devil That Danced On Water, which aired on BBC Four in May of 2003.

Contact: nonso@boondogglefilms.com
 
 

Lerone Wilson & Nonso Christian Ugbode
(Photo by Kori Raishon)

 

 

Lerone Wilson photographs artist Duane Smith

Watch Brit Short Film “Limbo” (Short Shouts)

By Tambay, on October 28th, 2010

An architect turned street-sweeper and part-time night watchman introduces us to his life, his passion for London and his grand plans to transform the city.

Welcome to the official site of the CSSC!

The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition, administered by Year of the Skunk Productions (Regina), established in 2008, has been hailed as the premiere screenwriting contest for short film scripts. CSSC is the single-most competitive, prestigious, short screenplay festival in Canada, a champion for literacy and screenwriters everywhere and a launching pad for writers’ professional careers; winners are announced as part of the Golden Sheaf Awards gala as part of the oldest film festival in North America, the Yorkton Film Festival.

2010 Important Dates and Deadlines:
Kick-off deadline: September 30, 2010
Early-Bird deadline: October 31, 2010
Half-Time deadline: November 30, 2010
Final deadline: December 31, 2010
I-Missed-The-Deadline deadline: January 31, 2011

1st Place (GRAND PRIZE) prize pack includes:

 

1st Place (GRAND PRIZE): The “Writer’s Block” Award.

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There will be one (1) “Grand Prize” title awarded to the screenplay deemed to be the overall best screenplay by the competition judges. This screenplay will be produced by Year of the Skunk Productions. The “Grand Prize” title also comes with an option and purchase agreement for Two Thousand Five Hundred Canadian Dollars (CAD $2,500.00) prize, an Electronic Publishing Agreement, accreditation to attend the 2011 Yorkton Film Festival (including complimentary shuttle ground transportation from Regina airport to Yorkton and one (1) ticket to attend the Golden Sheaf Awards gala event), an Apple iPad, Writer’s Block crystal award and additional prize package TBD and subject to availability from competition sponsors.

2nd PLACE PRIZE: The “2nd Place” Award.

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There will be one (1) “2nd Place” title awarded to the screenplay deemed to be the 1st runner-up to the Grand Prize by the competition judges. The “2nd Place” title also comes with an option and purchase agreement for One Thousand Canadian Dollars (CAD $1,000.00) prize, an Electronic Publishing Agreement, accreditation to attend the 2011 Yorkton Film Festival (including complimentary shuttle ground transportation from Regina airport to Yorkton and one (1) ticket to attend the Golden Sheaf Awards gala event) and additional prize package TBD and subject to availability from competition sponsors.

3rd PLACE PRIZE: The “3rd Place” Award.

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There will be one (1) “3rd Place” title awarded to the screenplay deemed to be the 2nd runner-up to the Grand Prize by the competition judges. The “3rd Place” title also comes with an option and purchase agreement for Five Hundred Canadian Dollars (CAD $500.00) prize, an Electronic Publishing Agreement, accreditation to attend the 2011 Yorkton Film Festival (including complimentary shuttle ground transportation from Regina airport to Yorkton and one (1) ticket to attend the Golden Sheaf Awards gala event) and additional prize package TBD and subject to availability from competition sponsors.

Additionally, there are ten finalist prizes:

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Finalists will each receive One Hundred Canadian Dollars (CAD $100.00), an Electronic Publishing Agreement, accreditation to attend the 2011 Yorkton Film Festival (including complimentary shuttle ground transportation from Regina airport to Yorkton and one (1) ticket to attend the Golden Sheaf Awards gala event) and additional prize packages TBD and subject to availability from competition sponsors.

 

Please read the rules and regulations for the 2010/11 Canadian Short Screenplay Competition below:

Submissions will not be considered for competition until full entry fee has been received.

1. Entry into this competition confirms each entrant’s acceptance of these rules and regulations and the terms as set forth on this page.

2. The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition (CSSC) is open to writers of any nationality from any country worldwide.

3. Multiple authorship screenplays are acceptable.

4. The entered screenplay must not have been previously optioned, sold or produced and the non-exclusive publishing rights must remain available. The submitted Material must be original works, and the sole property of the Applicant(s).

5. If the submitted Material becomes optioned or purchased between the time of submission and the end of the judging period that Material will no longer be eligible (entry fees are non-returnable).

6. Screenplays must be: written in the English language, industry standard format, no more than 15 pages in length, numbered and without the inclusion of headings or footnotes on pages and bound with one (1) brass brad on plain white paper (in the case of hard copy submissions). Failure to adhere will mean that the Short Screenplay may be disqualified (entry fees are non-returnable).

7. The screenplay must be no more than fifteen (15) minutes screen time (max. 15 pages).

8. Screenplays of any genre will be considered and must be the original work of the Applicant(s) submitting it. Where the screenplay is based upon another piece of work it is the responsibility of the Applicant(s) to obtain permission/copyright clearance from the original author. Proof of chain of title will be required before any script can be announced as a top three winning script as part of the competition.

9. Screenplays based upon another work must be clearly marked as such.

10. Screenplays must be submitted by the deadline and all entries may be sent by email to:CSSC@yearoftheskunk.com, or by post (no hand deliveries please) to:
The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition
c/o Year of the Skunk Productions
1914 Hamilton Street, PH#104
Regina, SK, S4P 3N6
Canada. 

11. In the event of electronic submission via email, submitted screenplays will be accepted in .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .fdr formats. No exceptions. (NB. .pdf and .fdr formats are preferred).

12. All entries must enclose the Registration Form and the fee in Canadian Dollars. Payments must be made either by certified cheque, postal order/money order, or debit/credit card/bank transfer using PayPal. All payments should be made in Canadian Dollars. Personal cheques or any other currency money order/postal order will not be accepted.

13. Submissions must include a title page that includes the title, the writer’s name, address, phone number and Email address. NB: providing an email address is optional on the title page, but highly advisable.

14. The writer’s name must not appear anywhere within the body of the screenplay to assure anonymity in the judging process. Failure to adhere will mean that the material will be disqualified (entry fees are non-returnable).

15. No additional material should be attached to the screenplay.

16. Entering the competition constitutes permission to use the winners’ names and licenses for publicity and promotions without any additional compensation.

17. The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges. The decision of the judges will be final and no correspondence nor discussion will be entered into.

18. Prizes will be awarded as is. In the event of multiple authorship on a selected winning entry, the prize will be awarded to the first applicant named on the corresponding registration form.

19. No cash alternatives to any of the prizes or additional payments shall be made.

20. All entrants acknowledge that neither the judges nor the sponsors or any partners mentioned here on this site or any other publication will be held responsible for any and all disputes between you and the CSSC.

21. All entrants acknowledge that the final top three winners will be expected to make a standard form of assignment of all rights in the finished work to Year of the Skunk Productions and provide a waiver of so called “moral rights”.

22. By entering this competition all entrants understand their script may be selected by the judges as a winning entry. In the event an entrant’s script is selected as a top 3 winner, the entrant agrees to perform rewrites and revisions to their script without further remuneration, in a timely manner, if deemed necessary and requested by the producer.

23. By entering this competition all entrants understand their screenplay may be selected by the competition judges as a top 13 finalist. In the event a competition entrant’s screenplay advances to the top 13 finalists, the entrant agrees they will, in good faith, enter into an Electronic Publishing Agreement with Year of the Skunk Productions, wherein Year of the Skunk Productions and the CSSC will have the right to publish your screenplay electronically as part of CSSC compilation eBooks. In the event of sales of the published eBook, compensation shall be set at the rate of CAD $.25 per each copy of eBook sold by the CSSC that contains entrant’s screenplay.

24. Year of the Skunk Productions will be the producer of the winning screenplay(s).

25. The Competition organizers reserve the right to reject any entry for any reason at their absolute discretion.

26. The Competition organizers reserve the right to appoint any director, producer, cast, crew or other personnel deemed necessary to the winning screenplay(s).

27. Once submitted, no substitution or new drafts or corrected pages for screenplay entries will be accepted for judging under any circumstances.

28. Only submit one copy. Do Not Send Originals. Screenplays WILL NOT be returned under any circumstances.

29. Multiple entries are accepted provided a signed entry/registration form and additional entry fees are attached with each submission. Entries without a signed Registration form and fees will NOT be entered into the competition.

30. The Applicant indemnifies Year of the Skunk Productions, David Cormican, the CSSC, its affiliates, sponsors and judges of and from any and all claims, loss or liability that may be asserted against you or incurred by you or any associates, at any time in connection with said Material.

31. The burden of obtaining copyright, or otherwise protecting any proprietary interests in the material, rests entirely with the Applicant.

32. If confirmation of receipt is required please a send self-addressed stamped envelope with proper Canadian Return Postage.

33. As a courtesy, competition results will be made available and public on the CSSC website and/or blog.

34. Kick-Off deadline is September 30, 2010 at 11:59PM PST. Kick-Off Competition Administration Fee is CAD $25.00. Early Bird deadline is October 31st, 2010 at 11:59PM PST. Early Bird Competition Administration Fee is CAD $35.00. Half-Time deadline is November 30, 2010 at 11:59PM PST. Half-Time Competition Administration Fee is $45.00. Final deadline is December 31st, 2010 at 11:59PM PST. Final Competition Administration Fee is CAD $55.00. I-Missed-The-Deadline deadline is January 31st, 2011 at 11:59PM PST and is available to online entry ONLY. I-Missed-The-Deadline deadline Competition Administration Fee is CAD $75.00. Submissions made after the respective deadline(s) are subject to an Administration Fee corresponding with the next appropriate deadline that has not yet passed. Submissions made or received after January 31st, 2011 at 11:59PM PST will be disqualified. All entries must be received on or prior to the deadline in order to be eligible for the reduced rate(s). All Final deadline snail mail submissions must be date-stamped on or before December 31, 2010 and received no later than January 31st, 2011 to be considered for competition. Competition is not responsible for lost, late, missing, incomplete or misdirected submissions. Late or incomplete submissions will be disqualified (entry fee is not returnable).

35. Applicants are limited to the use of one (1) discount code per screenplay entered. Discount must be applied at the time of entry and will not be applicable retroactively. For electronic submissions, the discount will be refunded by the organizers via the same PayPal account making the original payment for entrance to the competition. Proof of the discount/coupon code must be provided before any refund will be made. Alternatively, applicants may email the competition organizers requesting an invoice for the discounted amount (providing proof of the discount/coupon to be applied). The organizers reserve the right to terminate the use of discount codes at any time. Snail mail submissions using discount codes must provide with the submission printed proof of the discount code/coupon. Snail mail entries received that are claiming a discount and are not accompanied with the appropriate discount code or proof of coupon may be disqualified from competition.

36. The organizers reserve the right to amend the prizes and these rules and regulations at any time without notice.

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2010/11/30 – F/NF – Wild Words: Prose Competition

Wild Words, an open genre, open form prose competition. Open genre means that fiction in all forms (literary, horror, children’s, etc.) and non-fiction (memoir, essays, creative non-fiction, etc.) will compete head to head and word for word. Open form gives writers full license to experiment.

• Send readers on a Wild ride
• Back to nature in the Wild
• Invent a character with Wild ideas
• Be a “Wild and Crazy” writer
• Minnesota Wild hockey team
• Baby, it’s Wild out there

So send us your very best Wild Words by the November 30, 2010 deadline

Please…no poetry. We love poetry but it is still not prose.

JUDGING:
Three-tier blind judging

PRIZES:
• $750 first place

• $500 second place

• $250 third place

• Selected honourable mentions, plus first,
second and third prize winners, to be published
in the anthology Wild Words and receive $25
PLUS contributor’s copy

• All entries will receive feedback from
the first-tier judges!

FINAL JUDGE: To Be Announced

$20 entry fee through PayPal

Attach entries to email ‘cover letter’ to wildwords (at) wcdr.org
All entrants will be sent their feedback by email

THE RULES

• Maximum: 1200 words in English; entries must be original, unpublished and not submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere.

• Email entries as attachments to wildwords@wcdr.org

• Blind judging. Any name or other identifying mark on your entry will disqualify it. Include a cover email with your name, address, telephone number, and email address and entry title(s). Judges cannot enter the contest.

• All entries in manuscript format: 12 pt, Times New Roman, double-spaced, MSWord or RTF only.

• $20 Canadian entry fee ($25 for international entries) Online via Paypal (below); cheque or money order may be sent by surface mail. See www.wcdr.org for address; No entries by surface mail.

• Enter as many times as you wish; each entry requires the entry fee.

• First, Second and Third Prize and selected Honourable Mentions will be published in the Wild Words print anthology.

• Entries will NOT be returned.

• Deadline: November 30, 2010; winners announced March 2011

Click HERE to download a PDF version of the guidelines for WILD WORDS.

$20.00 Canadian entry fee
$25.00 International entry fee

Click here to see the entry from last year’s contest anthology launch.

 

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