The prospects of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 seem distant. Changing trends in development focus on a new issue every time – better governance, less corruption, more community involvement, a greater role for the private sector and so on. Perhaps donors should offer more money, instead.

An article in the Institute of Development Studies Bulletin (UK), reviews estimates of the resources required to achieve the MDGs, shows that the recent growth of aid has been insufficient to achieve them and counters arguments that more aid would be ineffective. The author challenges donors to change the amount and type of aid that they give and the means by which they give it.

The argument that aid recipients lack capacity to use donor aid is no longer seems plausible. Dedicated staff with professional training in health and education are now abundant at district government level in many developing countries. If civil servants are sitting idly and not working it is usually because they do not have resources or even the means, to get out of their offices.

Critics of aid complain about recipient ‘incapacity’, but much of this is the result of reporting demands of donors. Government officials are often too busy managing donors to spend time delivering government services. Donors spread their aid over too many countries – so each government has to deal with a range of different donors.

Donors push technical assistance, even when it is obvious that it is material support that is required. Teachers, for example, may be trained to put desks in circles and to display posters on the wall, even though they may have neither desks, posters nor, in some cases, even walls. Donor enthusiasm for promoting ‘social capital’ can lead to aid money being spent on teaching people to hold meetings.

The author shows that:

• Donor harmonisation is much talked about, but little progress has been made.
• Many sector programmes actually comprise a large number of traditional project-style activities: the share of genuine budget support remains low.
• Lack of money is the reason why immunisation coverage in Africa remains at unacceptably low levels.
• Donors provide funding for workshops and overseas travel, but then express surprise that government officials take advantage of opportunities which distract them from their duties.

There is no shortage of things which could be financed by immediately doubling the level of aid – immunisation, school rehabilitation, provision of school text-books, school feeding programmes, incentive payments to teachers in rural areas, cash transfers to promote school attendance, rural infrastructure – the list is endless, and there are staff ready and willing to deliver services.

The author calls on donors to:

• avoid the tendency to micro manage programmes and stop demanding excessive monitoring
• show more humility: policy discussions could become real dialogues in which donors help create spaces for public discussion of development priorities, not dictate the outcomes
• ensure more aid is really pro-poor
• put more emphasis on providing goods and services for the poor and less on technical assistance.

Source(s):
‘The case for doubling aid’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 36 (3), pages 8 -13, by Howard White, September 2005

id21 Research Highlight: 27 June 2006

Further Information:
Howard White
Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 67874
Fax: +44 (0) 1273 621202/691647
Contact the contributor: h.white@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies

Other related links:
'Aid to African agriculture: working for poverty reduction'

'Aid does raise economic growth in Africa – indirectly'

'Making European aid democratic'

Human Development Report 2005 > International cooperation at a crossroads:Aid, trade and security in an unequal world >

Aid Harmonisation and Effectiveness