Is official development assistance harmful for Africa?

Is official development assistance harmful for Africa?

Official development assistance (ODA) is not only not harmful for Africa, as some recent publications would have us believe, but when we actually look at the concrete policies that ODA encompasses, we can observe that it has achieved real successes.

If aid were harmful, would the “aid darlings” such as Ghana, Botswana and Mozambique (just to mention a few) also be the African countries that experienced the highest growth rates in the years prior to the crisis?
 
Aid alone cannot create growth, but it can stimulate it, support it, or offset its imbalanced nature as it provides a safety net for the most disadvantaged. Indeed, several social indicators for Africa have risen sharply over the past three decades. Illiteracy has been reduced by 40%. The figure is the same for infant mortality. Such progress has been achieved despite unprecedented demographic growth which heralds profound upheavals.
 
Why then should this policy consequently be sometimes seen as ineffective? This stems from the fact that aid is neither analyzed in terms of the resources that are allocated to it, nor in terms of the objectives that have been set for it. Aid has alternately been mobilized to promote geopolitical stabilization (during the Cold War), to refinance debt, to prevent crises or catastrophes, to regulate globalization and has not always had one sole mission to reduce poverty.
 
It is consequently impossible – if we wish to make headway in the debate on aid effectiveness in a fair and objective manner – to examine this policy as if it were uniform and timeless.
 
 
Jean-Michel Severino, Director General of Agence Française de Développement (AFD)
 
Published in the special “Readers’ Views” No 100 issue of the journal Les Afriques