Against More Aid: Why Development Assistance Should Not Be Tripled

• Main Authors: VERWEIJ, Marco, GYAWALI, Dipak
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2006
• Subjects: foreign aid; developing countries; sustainability; social policy; Political Science; Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/143
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Since the early 1990s, many have analyzed, criticized, lamented, and protested five decades of large-scale development aid gone disastrously wrong. They have made two main arguments. First, many low-income countries are hobbled by corrupt governance and uncompetitive markets. Second, for various unfortunate reasons, donor agencies tend to favor development projects that are overly expensive and not sustainable. These profound critiques have come from both the political right and the left, from people and organizations in the South and the North, from academics and street protesters, and from people within and without the international donor community. Yet as if nothing had been learned, large-scale financial assistance for poor countries has suddenly resurfaced on political agendas everywhere. In the authors view, these plans should be abandoned as they suffer from the same weaknesses as the much-maligned aid efforts of yesteryear. Implementation of these plans would wreak havoc on poor countries.