Review: 'Ending aid dependence' by Yash Tandon
This week, ministers from over 100 countries, heads of donor agencies and representatives of civil society organisations are gathering in Accra, Ghana, for a meeting to discuss ways in which rich nations can help “developing countries and marginalised people in their fight against poverty by making aid more transparent, accountable and results-oriented”.
“Aid Effectiveness”, the main theme of this high-level meeting, has, however, come under severe criticism from the most unlikely quarters – the recipients of aid themselves. A leading voice is Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania, who in a foreword in the just released book, Ending Aid Dependence, by Yash Tandon, urges developing countries to formulate strategies to exit from the aid dependence bandwagon.
Mkapa argues that aid subjects recipient countries to “a discipline of collective control by donors right down to the village level” and that some of the most successful emerging economies, such as China, India, Brazil and Malaysia, developed not through aid, but through strong nationally-oriented investment and trade policies. (Mkapa’s own country, ironically, is one of the most aid-dependant countries in the world.)
The idea that aid is a bad idea has been around at least since the 1980s, when academics and activists began questioning the effectiveness of World Bank-IMF prescriptions, such as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), which increased poverty levels in almost every country where they were implemented.
In his book, Tandon, the executive director of the South Centre in Geneva, argues that there needs to be a “radical restructuring of the institutional aid architecture” but falls short of calling for a total ban on aid. Aid that imposes ideological positions on countries, for instance, should be shunned completely, according to Tandon, but aid that supports struggles for social justice in the international community is acceptable as long as it is people-centred.
by Yash Tandon is published by Publisher: Fahamu and the South Centre 160pp.
Tandon’s views are not as radical as those of “post-development” advocates such as Susan George and Arturo Escobar, among others, who argue that aid is just another form of colonialism and should be done away with completely. These views have been articulated by various East Africans in the recently-published anthology (edited by yours truly) called Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits. In this book, prominent writers, academics and activists, including Issa G. Shivji, Bantu Mwaura, Onyango Oloo, Firoze Manji and Sunny Bindra, present an African perspective on the aid industry and why it has failed to lift millions of people out of poverty.
Bindra argues that “far from being productive or necessary, the donor-dependant relationship most often ends in mutual hatred” and that by and large, countries that have ignored donor prescriptions have prospered. Shivji, a leftist Tanzanian scholar, says that aid wrenches policy-making – a key function of government – out of the hands of African countries and into the hand of donors, which in effect makes these countries impotent bystanders, rather than active participants, in nation-building. Shivji even goes so far as to claim that the rapid rise of NGOs in Africa “is part of the neoliberal organisational and ideological offensive” that began in the 1980s with the adoption of SAPs. Manji argues that current models of development assistance breed and sustain inequalities in Africa because they are framed not in the language or rights or justice, but “with the vocabulary of charity, technical expertise, neutrality and a deep paternalism”.
So what can African governments do to get out of the aid trap? Tandon offers a seven-step programme: 1. Adjusting the mindset (psychologically liberating countries from aid dependence); 2. Budgeting for the poor and not for the donors; 3. Focusing on employment and decent wages; 4. Creating a domestic market and owning domestic resources; 5. Plugging the resource gap; 6. Creating institutions for investing national savings; and 7. Limiting aid to national democratic priorities (e.g building knowledge and research capacity or expanding social infrastructure, such as legal institutions etc.)
One of the shortcomings in Tandon’s book is that it does not show how countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil weaned themselves off aid or what policies or strategies they employed to dramatically boost living standards and reduce poverty levels. In many of these countries, committed leadership made all the difference, not democratic institutions. Often, it is not “people-centred democracy” that delivers high per capita incomes and reduced poverty levels, but visionary dictatorship, as the Singaporeans and Chinese will attest.
Democracy alone has never delivered economic growth or prosperity to nations: democracy must be accompanied by a vision that is focused and aggressive. The vision should ensure that economic growth does not increase levels of inequality (which can be politically and socially destabilizing and which can adversely impact growth in the long term). The vision must also focus on developing people’s skills and strengthening institutions that enhance productivity (as did Malaysia). In addition, it should focus on eliminating corruption in order to gain citizens’ trust. Without these, it is unlikely that governments will be in a position to say no to aid.
*Rasna Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations. ([email protected]).
Ending Aid Dependence by Yash Tandon is published by Publisher: Fahamu and the South Centre 160pp.
*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/