Aid – what is it good for (and at)? Claire Melamed

March 31, 2011 | More on Economics and development, Global system, Influence and networks | 7 comments

What future for international aid?

Just because something, like improving political systems, for example, is important to development, does that mean it’s the business of development organisations? I’m not sure.

Think about the events in the Middle East. The revolution in Egypt will, we hope, do more for development in that country than any amount of NGO programmes or official aid. And there was probably nothing that donors could or should have done to encourage it, or shape it. So even if we can all agree that political events will shape development, that really doesn’t mean that outsiders need to get involved.

What are donors actually good at? We had Charles Kenny of CGD presenting his new book ‘Getting Better’, at ODI recently. As the title suggests, it is a largely optimistic view of the world of development and poverty reduction. One of his arguments is that donors haven’t been very good at encouraging economic growth – basically no one really knows how to do it – and so they, and their resources, would be more usefully occupied working in areas where it’s clear how to make a difference – vaccination programmes, for example.

Our understanding of what creates ‘development’ – or what enables people to live happier lives – seems to be becoming more complex as we understand more about what makes change happen. But maybe the world of ‘aid’ needs to move in the opposite direction and be a bit more modest, or at least transparent, about what bits of this development can actually be helped along by what kinds of outside intervention.

Can a donor really promote ‘empowerment’ or ‘good governance’ in any meaningful sense? Are even things like ‘economic growth’ beyond the scope of international aid? Maybe it’s better for outsiders just to concentrate on things that aid does well, like health and education and leave the really hard stuff to the experts – people who are living the reality of these things in the country concerned.

This makes me wonder if it might be more honest and more useful, to separate out outside involvement in different aspects of change. So maybe official development aid should be a much simpler beast, less worried about economic growth or political change in the long term and instead focusing in on a few things that we know will make a difference to people’s lives right now – health, education, social protection, infrastructure.

Probably promoting economic change over time is best left to those inside the country. Maybe outsiders can help most by putting political energy into the negotiation and administration of global public goods, like global tax rules, or rules on intellectual property or attempts to limit the impact of climate change.

And maybe politics should be more, well, political. Should advocacy NGOs turn into more explicitly political solidarity movements (like those which supported the African liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps?), who take their cue from the actual politics of the country concerned, rather than more generalised ideas of ‘empowerment’ or ‘rights’?

This is thinking in process for me. Does outside involvement in the economics, the politics and the welfare aspects of development need to be separated out like this? Is it a sacrilegious turning back of the clock or a needed dose of realism? Answers, please…..

7 comments »

Claude on March 31st, 2011 at 5:33 pm:

At a recent ODI event it was announced that Development (with a big D) was Dead – or at least charitable aid was. The aid industry (excluding the disaster relief humanitarian sector) needs to adjust away from money in two ways.

Firstly, ideas: not just technical capacity building, but exploring what works in different places and being a source of expertise for people in developing countries – if they want it. This means acting as a facilitator of ideas, for example linking the experience of someone in Rio's municipal city council with their counterpart in Nairobi … but with technology and the rise of the BRIC(s), is there even a role for the West in this idea equation? Maybe not…

Secondly, you're right: Being totally politicised. Perhaps taking a rights based approach, but perhaps also showing solidarity with civil society activists and their campaigns on the other side of the world. We all know that its politics that drives economic growth – and we also know that its politics that makes this economic growth support development. So its time to stop pretending to be impartial, stop worrying about the legitimacy of being political in a country on the other side of the world, and act… but then again, the MENA region – and lots of other places through, well, the entire world's history – seem to have managed their own political movements without outside support.

Oh well. Big D Death then maybe. Perhaps we need to stop trying to find ways to make ourselves relevant in a world that does not really need us – or ever did.
Alan Hudson on March 31st, 2011 at 6:17 pm:

Thanks for this post Clare. Very useful. I think that donors – and other external actors – need to be much more realistic and honest about their abilities to shape governance in developing countries.

I do think that there are some things that donors/externals can do, including in relation to transparency and the governance of cross-border flows (so, stuff on natural resource governance, aid transparency, corruption, narcotics, climate change, trade etc.), but when it comes to re-shaping political systems, it seems to me that there are clear limits.

Donors have little leverage, limited understanding and questionable legitimacy. Pretending otherwise is a recipe for waste at best and disaster at worst.

Rather than promoting specific models of governance, what donors can do is, I think, to help to nurture an environment of transparency and accountability out of which locally-appropriate solutions to development challenges can emerge. Working out how to do that remains a work in progress ….

See http://www.alanhudson.info/2011/02/governance-and…

PS: Today is my last day as a Governance Adviser with DFID …
Matthew Lockwood on April 1st, 2011 at 8:18 pm:

"The revolution in Egypt will, we hope, do more for development in that country than any amount of NGO programmes or official aid. And there was probably nothing that donors could or should have done to encourage it, or shape it. "

Er…except stopping giving billions of dollars in aid (ncluding military aid) to the Mubarak regime, which produced precious little in the way of employment growth and poverty reduction and lots in the way of cronyism (oh, and I nearly forgot, support to the US's policy in the Middle East…). The case of Egypt comes as close as anything in the 21st C world as that good old fashioned Cold War aid that kept the vicious kleptocrats going for decades. What happened to "do no harm"? One of the few things donors could do is know when to desist.
Marc on April 2nd, 2011 at 12:21 pm:

You're making sense here Claire, but what of the consequences to this more explicitly solidaritist cadre of development NGOs? Will the humanitarians be left out in the cold, any last shreds of their protective cloak of principles (impartiality, neutrality, independence) completely gone? Inside the aid industry we would all understand the differences, but various NGOs would all get lumped together as Western NGOs, each tainted by the actions of the other, and so the distinctions lost on the ground, where they translate into access (or not). Then factor in (1) NGOs that would be doing both, overtly playing politics and trying to deliver humanitarian relief in polarized conflict areas (as is sometimes the case already) and (2) humanitarians engaged in "protection" activities which are locally (and not incomprehensibly) understood as political/partial. So we already have a pretty significantly shredded cloak. Development needs fixing, but not at the expense of emergency relief.
Sam Gardner on April 9th, 2011 at 6:13 am:

A very good post, Claire,

Like with all complex systems, aksing the right questions is more important than one size fits all solutions.

For real change the concepts of rights holder, rights bearer, and the role of civil society in contrast with the role of NGOs are important.

To get accountable governance, the government must be hold accountable for its services by the people. In practice, they are hold accountable by the organisations representing the interests of the people. Unions, chambers of commerse, churches, one issue organisations, political parties.

In a country molested by donors this structure is broken. Services are often delivered by NGOs that are mostly accountable to donors. The added value of civil society is limited, as they don't have a role towards NGOs. The civil society withers away. Accountable government goes down the drain. In the extreme case, the fragmentation of society, without any central power left, occurs, as seen in Haiti.

This is a black and white picture, but considering the NGO-centred incentive system, it makes sense.
alexjacobs1 on April 11th, 2011 at 10:43 am:

For me, the principle is that aid agencies should focus on helping people help themselves. Or, in other words, all we can do is add value to other people's efforts to improve their lives and societies.

We get into trouble when we try to solve other people's problems for them – which is both patronising and ineffective. Worse, it tends to be anti-developmental, undermining people's ability to make choices about their own lives & institutions – ie disempowering. Ouch.

This would add up to a major change in agenda for a lot of agencies. As you suggest, we could help different people in different ways: what works for John needn't work for Jill. We could measure how well we're contributing to other people's efforts pretty simply – by asking them. We could allocate resources on our ability to make a difference to a specific situation, rather than anything as arrogant as 'needs'. Organisational strategies would look pretty different too. And where senior people just don't want to do things we class as 'development' – like Mugabe – then there's not much we can do to help solve the macro problems.

David Ellerman wrote great stuff about this, drawing on eight philosopher activitists like Freire, Schumacher & Kierkegaard, & setting out an alternative approach to 'autonomy-respecting help': http://www.ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Dev-Theory/J…
marjeaksli on May 24th, 2011 at 2:32 pm:

Claire, as I am newbie in the development field (will start my graduate studies this fall and have run some CIDA projects in the health field), I am just curious on your take on Moyo's suggestion that official dev aid should be gradually stopped and the governments should replace it by issuing bonds? We should not forget that besides official aid, there will alwyas be bilateral cooperation projects, which can still tackle specific issues like health or governance or other fields, based on the government's requests and the country's needs. I suggest it works better, as the bilat projects are very specific and target areas in need.

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