Foreign Aid Foreign Aid, charity, development assistance…whatever you call it, it
has become a global activity. The assistance is delivered by various
means: government-to-government, pooled multilaterally or channeled
through non-governmental organisations of all sizes. Actually, the
bulk of foreign aid is funneled through international financial
institutions like the World Bank, which gives grants, loans and
advice, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which gives loans
with strict requirements.
David Sogge is an independent aid analyst and consultant based in The
Netherlands. In his book Give and Take: What's the Matter with Foreign
Aid? He suggests that even compassionate forms of aid like feeding the
hungry can have dramatic and sometimes negative effects on those it
seeks to help. Changing Habits
"Clearly food aid has helped people in situations of great distress
survive. But I think we have to look at food aid's original purposes.
Why was it launched in the first place? Clearly one major reason has
been surplus production in North America and Western Europe - wheat,
maize and other grains and milk and butter."
David Sogge argues that food aid changed Africa's diets and created a
dependency on an expensive, foreign commodity: bread. "Wheat is grown
in only a few corners of Africa and at greater cost than it is grown
in Western Europe or North America. So those count...
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are having an impact. And democratising aid - giving citizens,
especially those from countries receiving aid, the opportunity to say
and even decide how aid should be used - is a concept that gives David
Sogge hope.
"In Northern Mozambique a group of Mozambican and Danish development
workers have devised a program based on a local development fund. And
that's in a part of Africa that has no history of public participation
in determining how public money will be used."
Letting policy makers and citizens decide together how best they can
improve their lives is the simple yet much neglected message David
Sogge offers us. Even the skeptics of aid say it should continue
despite its flaws, few people are willing to suggest that it should
stop. Whether at its best or at its worst, foreign aid is here to
stay.