Owen Barder responds to those who claim that the West has spent over a trillion on aid in Africa. First point: it’s not true. Second:
The G-20 countries have, over the whole history of aid, given less aid to sub-Saharan Africa than they spent on fiscal stimulus in the single year of 2009.
Duncan Green has a review up of a new book on cash transfers, currently all the rage in social welfare thinking in the South. Cash transfers–simply giving money, at times without conditions–too the poor, is positioned as a truly ‘Southern’ solution to poverty. And one that, incidentally, seems to work. In general, people who need money use money well, and create demands for services from hospitals and other service providers, not to mention demands for food and small consumer goods. Green’s own employer has tested cash transfers in Vietnam with interesting results. Some questions remain about who pushes for cash transfers and why.
James Ferguson spoke about cash transfers a couple of years ago during a visit to U of Toronto. Nothing published yet, but this interview seems to sum up at least part of his argument nicely:
I think it’s partly about labor. For so long, there was this sort of terror of undermining the incentive to work, because what you needed to do was to get poor people (and this holds particularly in South Africa), and force them to work. Get them off their land and get them into the mine. Get them into the wage labor market so that their wage labor could be exploited and put to work. And we’re now looking at a world where there are loads of people willing to be exploited: there are actually loads of people willing to offer their labor yet there are no takers. So I think one of the things that may be going on is that poverty technocrats are starting to say, ‘Well, maybe undermining the motive to work is not such a problem because we don’t have jobs for these people anyway’. That’s one of the things I’m thinking about at least.
Capital does not need the poor. So why keep them in the labour pool anyway?
Everybody invested a lot in legislating Aid Accountability in Canada. But it seems to be treated as a reporting exercise rather than something that would change what kind of aid Canada gives and how it gives. From the CCIC:
Landmark Legislation Suffers from Lacklustre Implementation: “Two years after passing the Official Development Assistance (ODA) Accountability Act the government has failed ‘to fulfill the Act’s spirit and the intention of parliament’ according to a report released May 18, 2010″
So why are we so reluctant to have the same realism about NGO officials? Many condemn any discussion of their motives being anything besides selfless devotion to the poor as hopeless cynicism. But why can’t we do political economy on NGOs?
via Are we allowed to talk about the self-interest of NGO officials? (Aid Watch).
It seems to me that Aid Watch has not been talking to the right people. Having worked in development and studied development for years, it is baffling to hear anybody assert that nobody is asking about the self-interest of NGOs. In my experience, it happens every day, both in print and in hallway discussions. Naturally, press releases and policy reports produced by NGOs don’t ask tough questions, but would we ever expect them to?
Quick searches on Google Scholar leads to a number of interesting leads: here and here
[Oxfam] To End Hunger — More Aid, Quicker Aid, Smarter Aid:
from All AfricaInter Press Service (Johannesburg)Moyiga NduruJohannesburgGlobal aid agency Oxfam has called for a thorough review of efforts to end hunger in Africa, arguing that emergency assistance is often inadequate and arrives too late — while the underlying causes of hunger are going largely unaddressed.This comes in a report titled ‘Causing Hunger: An Overview of the Food Crisis in Africa’, issued Monday.Humanitarian assistance to the continent increased from 946 million dollars in 1997 to just over three billion dollars in 2003, says the agency. Yet, hunger remains acute throughout Africa, as evidenced by the string of food crises that has ravaged the continent during the past months alone in the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Horn of Africa.According to Oxfam, donors point to doubts over the ability of United Nations agencies to administer aid effectively as constituting one of the reasons for insufficient or late funding of U.N. appeals. Nonetheless, the aid group believes a one billion dollar commitment by donors to the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund is key to “quicker and more equitable assistance.”Inadequate early warning systems and the failure to heed signs of an impending food crisis are also amongst the factors that delay aid — while the allocation of funds may be more influenced by media attention and politics, than need.The report further highlights a “disproportionate emphasis on in-kind food-aid donations”, noting that this form of assistance only goes part of the way to addressing food crises.”Although food aid can play an important role in emergencies and save lives, it should not be viewed as the inevitable default response to food insecurity, particularly where poverty is the main cause of hunger,” says Oxfam. “Other innovative solutions — such as cash transfers, food vouchers or cash-for-work programmes — may be more appropriate.”The agency cites the case of seed fairs in Zimbabwe, where farmers have been given vouchers to purchase seeds. This has provided them with the option of buying seeds for crops that are hardier than others, giving farmers a better chance of reaping a harvest under difficult conditions.Food donations from abroad may also have as much to do with enabling donor countries to get rid of agricultural surpluses, as with humanitarian motives, notes Oxfam.”Dumping imported food from the United States and Europe in Africa is not the most helpful way of addressing food security,” Nicki Bennett, Oxfam regional humanitarian advocacy co-ordinator, told IPS. “It’s cheaper and quicker to buy food locally.”The group states further that graft can undermine the effectiveness of aid.”Another key challenge is to ensure that emergency aid is not diverted by corrupt elites, or used by governments or other groups for their own ends. This is a particular risk in conflict situations However, aid programmes can be designed to reduce these risks,” indicates the report.But, dealing with the loopholes in emergency aid provision will only go part of the way to addressing African food insecurity. As important are measures to target what Oxfam calls the “root causes” of hunger.These include poverty, unfair global trade rules, conflict and HIV/AIDS, climate change — and a dearth of effective policies to assist rural communities.Amongst its recommendations for tackling the underlying causes of hunger, Oxfam advises increasing long-term investment in the development of rural areas to a minimum of 10 percent of government spending; this target was set for African states by the African Union.These funds should be supplemented by foreign aid, building on the “slight recovery” that Oxfam says has characterised external assistance to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa recently — this after years of decline. According to the report, foreign aid for agricultural activities in Africa dropped by 43 percent — from an average of 1.7 billion dollars to 974 million dollars — between 1990 and 2002.Notes Sam Moyo, executive director of the Harare-based African Institute for Agrarian Study, “We need to improve productivity through modern technology, through provision of water, improved seed varieties and fertilization.”Oxfam’s recommendations for dealing with the root causes of hunger also include calls for greater African and international efforts in support of peace, an end to the dumping of subsidised agricultural exports by the developed world that undercuts sales of local produce, and increased funding for HIV/AIDS programmes.”By 2020 a fifth of the agricultural workforce in Southern African countries will have been claimed by AIDS,” the agency warns.Oxfam further states that wealthy states and large emerging economies should focus more on reducing global warming, and preparing Africa to cope with climate change — while African countries should address environmental degradation, and plan their own response to climate change.”Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change because of its extreme poverty and dependence on rain-fed agriculture, which means that even small changes in the weather can have big impacts,” says the report.”If current trends continue, some climate models predict that by 2050 Africa will be warmer by 0.5-2 degrees Celsius,” it adds.”One credible prediction estimates that Africa will have between 55 and 65 million extra people at risk of hunger by the 2080s if global temperatures increase by less than 2.5°C. That figure will rise to 80 million if the increase is higher.”
The LA Times is doing a four part series on remittances and the role that they play in the developing world. Titled The New Foriegn Aid”The New Foriegn Aid” the series sets itself up to “examine the worldwide flow of remittances.” The series will look at Mexico, Haiti, the Philippines and Kenya.
The read the articles go to www.latimes.com/foreignaid
Hillary Benn, Britain’s international development secretary, can called for Europe and the US to relinquish their hold on the Presidencies of the World Bank and IMF.
The Guardian quotes him below:
“Perhaps we should move towards a rules and merit-based process for appointing the senior management of all the international financial institutions…Is it really acceptable that the presidencies of the World Bank and the IMF should be restricted to European and US nationals respectively, because of a cosy deal made 60 years ago?”
The natural reaction is: finally!!!! That said the likelihood of US and Europe giving up their power over the institutions is next to nil.
Dans le meilleur des mondes possibles has an interesting poll on the go to define who is an aidworker. The reason is simple – to decide who should be linked to on the Blog, which contains a roll of bloggers working in aid. But the results may be interesting for many other reasons. When everybody from volunteers who spend a week in Mexico to build a school to World Bank staff are sometimes lumped into the same category, a little disaggregation may be in order.
What is the use of Aid if it is all spent outset of the recipient country? Many commentators, Bono and ActionAid among them, have argued that ‘phantom aid’ that is spent outside of Africa is hurting the continent.
Jagdish Bhagwati, writing in the Financial Times, argues that the assumption that Africa needs more Aid now, and that this Aid should be spent in-country rather than outside, does not hold up to empirical scrutiny. The problem is the ability of most – though not all – African governments to absorb aid.
–snip–
The large amounts of aid given to Africa and the small results that have generally accrued from them require us to look at the absorptive capacity question with a critical eye. We should disregard the hysterical charge that everyone who questions the effectiveness of a sudden and substantial increase in aid flows is a heartless reactionary. The increase in the number of democratic governments in Africa, and some bold initiatives by the African Union in places such as Darfur, have increased the absorptive capacity of a growing number of African nations. But that justifies a graduated increase on spending in Africa rather than a substantial and sudden one.
–snip–
He argues that Aid should be raised gradually, and that moneys spent outside of the continent, such as on vaccines, may be the best use of increased aid.
Amartya Sen has also chimed in or Easterly’s recent critiques of the development world. His recent review of Easterly’s new book, The White Man’s Burden, says that while the critiques are valid, Easterly offers little in the way of solutions:
–SNIP–
In The White Man’s Burden, William Easterly offers important insights about the pitfalls of foreign aid. Unfortunately, his overblown attack on global “do-gooders” obscures the real point: that aid can work, but only if done right.
