While too emotional for my taste (see the last line), this article has me much more intrigued than the entirety of Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid. Within these few lines is the ambiguity that surrounds aid and international development, an ambiguity that we need to understand and pick apart – in order to rescue the ingredients that do work.

The thesis of the article highlights that aid is probably not a tool that will change whole societies, politically, socially or economically. At best, aid offers small opportunities (health care, education, micro-loans) that will eventually compound into a wider change when many are lifted out of poverty. I agree that this is probably not a tangible change anyone will see during their life-time. The shifts are too small to notice, rarely culminating in something as grandiose as, for example, Barack Obama’s election.

So, whose faults are these lofty aspirations?

So perhaps the reputation of aid is a victim of the aspirations of its supporters.  To justify the aid budget, we have made extravagant claims about what it will achieve. Not content with making an extraordinary difference in people’s lives – a difference which more than justifies the very small cost of aid – we have sold aid as a tool to transform institutions and societies.  But the cases in which aid can do this may be few and far between, and even in those cases it is very difficult to demonstrate the contribution that aid has made.  By making excessive claims for what aid can achieve, we may have opened the door for critics to say that it is not working.

The MDGs have particularly ticked me off. When set, I assume it was clear that the targets could not all be met (people can’t really be that positive, can they?). So, why set them at all? To justify the aid budget and a nifty marketing campaign. However, in the process, disillusioned characters are using “aid” as an excuse for their countries’ failure to advance in leaps and bounds. Harnessing the common perception that aid delivers country-wide noticeable change, they use its failure as a scapegoat: scrap all aid.

Well, at least that’s one broad perspective. I also think that aid – even in small applications – can be harmful if delivered the wrong way. Without government cooperation and local deliverance through community members, aid becomes a white man (or woman) handing over cash. The opening of schools with the smiling mzungu, the abundance of foreign-run orphanages.

There is need for children to find leaders and role models around them – from the same cultures and communities – who can present the new school, the new orphanage, the new road. Proof that change is internal and that the West does not hold the key to economic, social and political freedoms.

I suppose, in conclusion, we need to carefully consider the merits of aid. Granted, funneling money from the rich to the poor countries to bolster infrastructure and help build a government’s capacity to deliver health care and education is important and necessary. Other forms of aid, however, have detrimental effects that continue the mythical “halo” of the Rich West among people who might feel increasingly disempowered as their values are thrown out the door. Is it possible to seperate the two?