AID- General

AID- General

1. Definition of Aid

   • Resources transferred from one country to another without expecting full repayment
     • Types
       • Tied Aid
         • One country donates money or resources to another but comes with conditions. This conditions are usually in favour of MEDCs
       • Multilateral aid
         • Given through an international organisation such as the World Bank or UN
       • Bilateral aid
         • One country donates money or resources to another
       • Emergency aid
         • Urgent life saving aid needed after disaster and conflict - Short term

2. Why do countries give aid?

   • Political reasons
     • Cold war aid was given to bring countries on their side
     • Secured supply of natural resources
     • Limited expansion of opponents influence
   • Economic reasons
     • Less grants, more tied aid
   • Moral reasons
     • MEDCs have a moral duty
     • Because of colonial past
     • For humanitarian reasons

3. Benefits of receiving aid

   • Economic Reasons
     • Supplement of their lacking resources
     • Development infrastructure
   • Political reasons
     • To maintain power in the region or area

4. Arguements

   • For Aid
     • Benefits our country through political links and relationships
     • Experience and expertise to the less well off
     • Redistributing global income
     • Satisfies moral imperative
     • Saves and improves lives
     • Stimulus to push through growth stages of development
   • Against Aid
     • Little impact
     • distracts from solutions like trade
     • creates dependancy
     • distorts markets
     • Tied aid
     • used to oppress people (dependency theory)

5. What makes good aid & What makes bad aid

   • high administration costs mean not much actually goes to the recipient, keep them low.
   • Bottom up aid is better than top down
   • NOT TIED
   • Donors should coordinate
   • to good democracy makes less corruption and can be held accountable to decision makers
   • Negotiate, don't over rule
   • Don't squeeze out local markets. Eg. Dambisa Moyo and the mosquito nets
   • Practical- must be what they want and need
   • Monitoring interventions