Foreign aid has been a major feature of the political economy of postcolonial Africa .1 Through several multilateral and bilateral initiatives, the industrialized nations have supported Africa’s development effort in various ways. Foreign aid2 has included direct cash transfers, grants , gifts of materials, and technical support among others, from overseas charitable organizations, industrialized countries and multilateral institutions. The principal aim of these forms of support has been to help African states to deal with the perennial development challenges that have spelt poverty, diseases and misery for the majority of Africans . Although African states have received a huge volume of aid over the past few years, most of the continent’s development challenges persist, and poverty continues to torment majority of the citizens .3
It is important to acknowledge at the beginning that Africa is made up of 54 different countries which vary widely in terms of the systems of government, cultures, histories and economic arrangements. Such differences exist even within Sub-Saharan Africa – the main focus of this book. However, despite these differences , there are a number of commonalities across these countries, making them readily amenable to similar broad categorizations. While acknowledging the unique features of the respective countries in Sub-Saharan Africa , our views are largely consistent with those of Crawford Young,4 who asserted that Africa is a region of the world that can rightly be subjected to common analysis largely due to the continent’s similar, even unique histories and their mode of state formation . For example, despite some differences , most of the African continent faced exploitation by European imperialists during the colonial era. While one would agree that there have been differences in terms of the levels of colonial exploitation and the forms of government in these countries, the horrors and underlying principles of subjugation and intimidation of Africans that were the hallmarks of colonialism were broadly similar. Again, the postcolonial challenges of bad governance , economic hardships and poverty have been largely similar across the region , with the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa remaining within the low-income bracket throughout most of the postcolonial period. These disclaimers are necessary to emphasize that although Sub-Saharan Africa comprises of several countries with very unique characteristics, these countries also have much in common, implying that broad conclusions can be drawn.
Africa’s development failures have elicited enormous interests from academics, policy makers, industrialized nations and international development institutions . They have generally concluded that foreign aid could be employed as a major instrument with which the world could eradicate poverty in the developing world.5 However, the reality is that Africa has received more aid than has any other region in the world, yet poverty has also been more endemic in Africa. If foreign aid could procure growth and development, African countries should have enjoyed their fair share. Given the seeming inconsistency between the position of aid proponents and the reality of poverty in many African countries , a number of studies have explored the effectiveness of foreign aid in alleviating poverty on the continent.6 The general verdict on the effectiveness of foreign aid to Africa has been, at best mixed, and for the most times dismissive of aid as an effective instrument to change the conditions of the poor.
In recent years, calls for an increase in the volume of foreign aid from the developed world to poor countries have also been overwhelming, with pop stars and international celebrities joining in the crusade for increased aid and advocating debt cancellation for developing countries .7 Despite calls for increases in foreign aid, most analyses acknowledge the need for some reform in the aid system in order to make foreign aid a more effective instrument in the fight against poverty. However, the reforms often proposed by these advocates have largely revolved around increased transparency in the use of aid funds , capacity development in aid-receiving communities , local community involvement in the design of aid programs , and better coordination and harmonization between donors in order to reduce the waste and redundancy associated with aid administration.8 While such reforms can help to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in aid administration, they are unable to make foreign aid an effective instrument to fight poverty in Africa.
The assumption that more aid will help to eradicate poverty in Africa is encapsulated in the following quote from the United Nations document that set the tone for the Millennium Development Goals and the succeeding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
The United Nations is obviously right to call for increased action from international forces to “cut world poverty by half”. However, the action envisaged by the United Nations cannot achieve the result of cutting poverty by half – at least, in Africa’s developing countries . By calling on the industrialized nations to increase their aid budgets to 0.7% of gross national product, the United Nations is working on the belief that more funds sent to African states could procure growth and development and help reduce poverty levels in these countries. It is our considered view that such an assumption is grossly misleading because subsisting evidence shows that a lack of financial or human resources is not the cause of Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment . Throughout this book, our aim is to highlight the real causes of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, and to show that foreign aid – defined as the gift of cash and material resources to Africa – cannot, and indeed does not have the capacity to reduce poverty levels , and cannot produce sustainable growth and development in Africa. Consequently, we argue that the need for more aid as canvassed by the United Nations and the global aid industry is wrong-headed if the overall aim is to curb the poverty levels in Africa.We have the opportunity in the coming decade to cut world poverty by half. Billions more people could enjoy the fruits of the global economy . Tens of millions of lives can be saved. The practical solutions exist. The political framework is established. And for the first time, the cost is utterly affordable. Whatever one’s motivation for attacking the crisis of extreme poverty – human rights , religious values, security, fiscal prudence, ideology – the solutions are the same. All that is needed is action.9
The premise of this book is fundamentally different from the approach and conclusions of most studies that have explored the subject of foreign aid to Africa. This book acknowledges that foreign aid to Africa has been useful in helping to ameliorate some of the debilitating consequences of poverty and underdevelopment , such as providing vaccination against killer diseases or helping to build schools where there would have been none. Besides its role as palliatives for some of the pains of poverty, foreign aid does not have the capacity to eradicate poverty. This is because we assert that poverty is not caused by a lack of financial resources. Rather, this lack of financial resources is a consequence of poverty. In effect, this book argues that the observed financial constraint of majority of Africans – a gap which donors would like to fill with foreign aid – is not the cause of poverty and underdevel...