{"id":267,"date":"2016-09-23T15:08:20","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T14:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=267"},"modified":"2017-08-11T13:48:07","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T12:48:07","slug":"altering-the-foreign-aid-equation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2016\/09\/23\/altering-the-foreign-aid-equation\/","title":{"rendered":"Altering the foreign aid equation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ali Salman is Founder and Executive Director of the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy<\/a> in Islamabad, and is studying on the IPR's Professional Doctorate<\/a> programme.<\/em><\/p>\n

The West has spent US$2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and has not managed to \u201cget 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths, or $3 to each new mother to prevent 5 million child deaths,\u201d writes William Easterly, the author of The White Man\u2019s Burden: How the West\u2019s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Easterly believes that economic development comes not through aid, but through the home-grown efforts of entrepreneurs and social and political reformers. It could also be added that strengthening of the civil society also helps in economic development.<\/p>\n

Criticisms of government-to-government foreign aid can be divided into two groups. One group rests its claim on the technical evaluation of aid programmes, thus raising doubts about the efficacy of foreign aid - especially in relation to poverty reduction.\u00a0This group makes recommendations for improving the programme design and accountability mechanisms, but it accepts the basic paradigm of foreign aid that the poor need external help. This is aid managerialism.<\/p>\n

The other group criticises foreign aid in terms of its probable use as a leverage to extend influence on the domestic policy of developing countries. This group raises fundamental questions about how the aid is structured and relates it with what it\u00a0calls a neo-imperialist agenda.<\/p>\n

In most cases, 75% of aid money goes back to donor countries in the form of contracts and supply of goods. Governments are often engaged in a turf war when negotiating the terms of engagement with foreign aid agencies.<\/p>\n

The currently enforced Foreign Contributions Act 2015 in Pakistan links the use of foreign aid with transactional approval from the Economic Affairs Division. This is aid politics.<\/p>\n

There are important actors in foreign aid \u2013 the aid professionals, consultants, evaluators and international and local contractors. They associate themselves with governments, civil society and donors.\u00a0More often than not, they broker the flow of aid between donors and recipients by preparing programmes, proposals and projects. Their interest obviously lies in expanding foreign aid. This is aid business.<\/p>\n

Problems<\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem with the first argument \u2013 aid managerialism \u2013 is that it may end up demanding more foreign aid and, just like any failed government programme, it gets more budget. This just feeds into the foreign aid cycle and increases the cost of fundamental change.<\/p>\n

The problem with the second argument \u2013 aid politics \u2013 is that it may deny external resources when and where they are needed the most, especially for meeting challenges of the on-going humanitarian crisis including disaster preparedness and mitigation.<\/p>\n

This argument also increases the risk of government\u2019s increased control in the recipient country, which in turn could be utilised to further a government head\u2019s undemocratic ambitions.<\/p>\n

Possible remedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

An alternative scenario, a hypothetical one, can be considered in which there is no government-to-government foreign aid. In such a scenario, the recipient government declares a ban on foreign aid for publicly funded programmes and departments such as public education and health.<\/p>\n

Instead, it creates channels and mechanisms where foreign aid can flow directly to civil society, NGOs, the private sector and philanthropic organisations, serving the same purpose of public goods delivery, albeit in a much more cost-effective manner.<\/p>\n

An immediate consequence of this ban will be a fundamental change in intergovernmental relationships altering the power structure. At the same time, it will keep donor countries committed to the Sustainable Development Goals. This is aid globalism.<\/p>\n

Altering the foreign aid equation by this fundamental shift will strengthen civil society and private institutions, which will also bring a positive change to social and political structures in the recipient countries.<\/p>\n

The re-directed foreign aid will be government-light, society-heavy. Governments on both the donor and recipient sides will have reduced controls. However, this should not undermine collective efforts to make aid flows more transparent and more accountable.<\/p>\n

Under\u00a0aid globalism, less money will be flown back to donor country-based contractors and less money will be stuck in the bureaucratic gridlock of recipients. More of the aid will reach the places where it is needed the most.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The Express Tribune<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ali Salman is Founder and Executive Director of the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy in Islamabad, and is studying on the IPR's Professional Doctorate programme. The West has spent US$2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":738,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-development"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/738"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}