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Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?
SocioLingo Africa
Jun 11, 2011
This is an extract from an article which can be read in full on the SocioLingo website.
Since the end of the Bush administration in the USA ... there has been a steady increase in the activities of individuals and groups who are presenting arguments supporting a move to have aid to the African Continent, south of the Sahara, changed in radical ways. One of the most persuasive publications presenting these arguments is the multi-author book, " Aid to Africa-Redeemer or Coloniser". The publication is interesting in many ways, and not least because, besides presenting solid arguments with references and citations it also contains a considerable amount of detailed insider information related to West African Aid which is skilfully written into the text but not referenced as contributed by any individual or organization. These type of inclusions are now becoming more common in other European media presentations, news or otherwise, indicating that supporters of the European Anti-Aid Lobby are targeting West Africa.
- Denis Tither
Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?
New Agenda 40
Dec 15, 2010
For some time, critical publications about foreign aid to Africa have been stimulating in-depth reassessments. This pocket-sized collection of 12 papers further widens the spectrum of critical voices, with its sponsors – Fahamu, the African Forum on Debt and Development and the German Development Church Service – adding status. In fact, the contributors list reads like a who's who of left-wing critical or "progressive" voices on aid and African development.
Its message is made quite clearly at the start of Hakima Abbas' preface: Africa is the biggest recipient of aid globally, but the terms, conditions and principles upon which aid is conceived and delivered are not defined by the people for whom, at least rhetorically, this aid is supposed to create positive change. In global politics, aid is often flaunted as a golden carrot by established and emerging global powers alike. Lofty pledges are pronounced during crises or to wield political clout. Yet the effects on African peoples’ lives have been limited.
Against that background, the contributions cover a very wide range of topics related to the nature, conditionality, implementation and geopolitical dynamics of foreign aid to African countries. The first chapter focuses on aid as a (modern) tool of colonisation and advances an alternative "transition towards ethical aid", which the author links to “the need for continental integration”.
Other chapters look at China’s current aid to Africa and contrast it with the former Soviet Union’s “aid” to Africa during the cold-war era, at the (limited) impact which foreign aid had on the emancipation of women in African development and on “post-9/11” security issues related to US foreign aid to Africa.
The critical stance towards the Washington Consensus approach to aid is most explicitly presented by Samir Amin, past director of the UN’s African Institute of Planning and a co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives.
While some of the early chapters seem strongly – if not unduly – biased in their critical stance towards conventional aid, later ones reveal a more balanced view, leaning towards questions about appropriate reforms to the “aid business”, rather than its termination. In this context, the current rise in Chinese and Indian aid to Africa seems as relevant as case studies about specific African countries. (Kenya is unfortunately the only in-depth case presented in the volume.)
Although the collection is relevant, academically well produced and a useful addition to the debate, it is sad that the gulf between aid critics and aid providers still seems deep and almost impossible to bridge. Such bridging seems a precondition for the steady improvement (rather than termination) of aid to Africa.
Part of this dilemma may be the relatively limited attention given to progressive NGOs active in the aid field. One also finds very little about the rise of corporate development-focused thinking and engagement at the “bottom of the pyramid” (CK Prahalad). In a similar vein, one would want to ask what role graduate business schools across Africa are playing to reshape corporate as well as public-sector thinking about new and more appropriate strategies for development aid.
Finally, it seems ironic that the economic and business interaction between South Africa and Zimbabwe provides vast opportunities for interpretations of present and potential future “aid” to our neighbours. Similarly, we should be aware that our business engagements in other African countries are quite frequently viewed as “South Africa’s re-colonisation of Africa”. Here as well, rather than sloganeering, we need bridge-building towards a productive partnership approach.
- Wolfgang Thomas, University of Stellenbosch Business School
Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?
Bond
Jun 7, 2010
Despite a flurry of recent books probing the current aid system, very few have been written by authors raised and resident in developing countries. Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser? is the antidote to this - profiling the voices of sixteen writers from sub-Saharan Africa.
Although the contributors frequently disagree, Samir Amin of the South Centre captures a common theme when he argues 'The choice is not between aid as it is and no aid at all. The battle must be waged for radical transformation of the concepts regarding the function of aid'.
The deceptiveness of what is counted as aid is continuously highlighted, as the spotlight is turned on tied aid, high interest loans, aid used to lubricate damaging 'free market' trade deals, loans and debt relief based on policy conditionality, military aid, aid to finance oil pipelines and aid which is promised then not delivered. This is placed in the context of debt repayments, transfer pricing and corporate tax avoidance, resulting in a net financial flow from Africa to the North.
On the other hand, reparations, predictable budget support and solidarity with critical civil society are all met with approval, whilst the frequent quoting of Bond member policy reports reveals the reach of the research functions of UK NGOs.
The arguments in this book provide a nuanced counter-balance to those of the populist aid sceptics. However it is too fragmented and academic to become a bestseller able to make this case to the public. That book, it seems, is still to be written.
- Tim Gee
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