For decades foreign aid has been seen as a fast track to economic development. Since World War 2 over $2.3 trillion has flowed out of the Western world into projects that would aid the third world in its endeavour to move out of poverty. The question is really one of what motives the developed world has when it gives aid?

Aid is seldom given from motives of pure altruism. It is often given as a means of supporting an ally in international politics and with the intention of influencing the political process in the receiving nation. The consideration of such, being bad or not, has depended on whether one agrees with the agenda being pursued by the donor nation in a particular case. During the conflict between Communism and Capitalism in the twentieth century, the champions of those ideologies, the Soviet Union and the United States, each used aid to influence the internal politics of other nations, and to support their weaker allies. The US developed the Marshall Plan in order to pull European nations toward Capitalism and away from Communism. Aid to underdeveloped countries has always been in the interest of the donor than the recipient. Specific motives have included defence support, market expansion, foreign investment, missionary enterprise and cultural extension. In recent decades, aid by organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been exposed as being primarily a tool used to open new areas up to global capitalists, and being only secondarily, if at all, concerned with the wellbeing of the people in the recipient countries.

Professor William Easterly, a noted mainstream economics professor on development and aid issues has criticized foreign aid for not having achieved much, despite grand promises. He says: ‘A tragedy of the world’s poor has been [that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths…It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children.

The effectiveness of foreign aid has long been questioned since in all cases it has come with strings attached. Donor countries as well as the US have used aid to meet their geopolitical aims. For example:

a. The US has directed aid to regions where it has concerns related to its national security, e.g. Middle East, and in Cold War times in particular, Central America and the Caribbean.

b. Sweden has targeted aid to “progressive societies”.

c. France has sought to promote maintenance or preserve and spread of French culture, language, and influence, especially in West Africa, while disproportionately giving aid to those that have extensive commercial ties with France.

d. Japan has also heavily skewed aid towards those in East Asia with extensive commercial ties together with conditions of Japanese purchases.

Africa in particular has been promised aid ever since the end of colonialism. Countless G8 summits have promised aid and debt relief to the continent. However, this has been in order to win support for national interests rather then helping the impoverished continent. As noted by Action for Southern Africa: ‘It is undeniable that there has been poor governance, corruption and mismanagement in Africa. However, the legacy of colonialism, the support of the G8 for repressive regimes in the Cold War, the creation of the debt trap, the massive failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank and the deeply unfair rules on international trade. The role of the G8 in creating the conditions for Africa’s crisis cannot be denied. Its overriding responsibility must be to put its own house in order, and to end the unjust policies that are inhibiting Africa’s development.

The status quo in world relations is maintained through foreign aid. Rich countries like the US continue to have a financial lever to dictate what good governance means and to pry open markets of developing countries for multinational corporations. Developing countries have no such handle for Western markets, even in sectors like agriculture and textiles, where they have an advantage but continue to face trade barriers and subsidies.