Does aid work?

‘Does Aid Work? was the controversial title of a well-attended talk at BPEC. Andy Batkin and Fiona Duby (development consultants) and Martin Powell (Debt Campaign Officer from the World Development Movement) had been invited to discuss the issue on the basis of their experiences and perspectives.

• For Andy, the effectiveness of aid depends on the state of a country’s institutions. Aid is more likely to benefit those in need in countries with peace and security, reasonable rule of law, economic management and transparent budget processes, rather than in countries with minimal rule of law and dysfunctional forms of government.
• Fiona emphasised the importance of grassroots consultation to ensure that aid benefits the people most in need of it. Her talk focused on family planning, and the need to be sensitive to a society’s cultural values surrounding
  child-birth.
• For Martin, the debate about aid has to take into account the economic conditions tied to the aid and debt relief granted by multilateral financial institutions, such as privatisation or trade liberalisation. As long as the privatisation called for in countries such as Tanzania or Malawi is driven by Western companies’ search for new markets and more profit rather than by a desire to improve these countries’ basic services, aid will not work.

Conclusion

In general, it is very difficult to assess the impact of aid. Aid cannot be considered separately from corruption, war, famine and the
international trade structure. Reducing world poverty is not
solely a question of improving aid programmes. For example,
Oxfam has calculated that 130 million people could be lifted
out of poverty if poor countries were allowed to increase their
share of global commerce by just 1%.