About The Book

Developing countries reliant on aid want to escape from this dependence, and yet they appear unable to do so. This book shows how the developing countries can liberate themselves from the aid that pretends to be developmental but is not. Exiting aid dependence should be at the top of the political agenda of all countries.

This timely book cautions countries of the South against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) offered by the OECD. If adopted, it would subject the recipients to a discipline of collective control by the donors right down to the village level. This will specially affect the donor-dependent countries, in particular the poorer and more vulnerable countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Author of This Book:

Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, Geneva, an intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries. Dr Tandon's long career in national and international development spans time as a policymaker, a political activist, a professor and a public intellectual. He has written on wide-ranging subjects from African politics, peace and security, trade and the WTO, international economics and South-South cooperation to human rights. He has also served on several advisory committees.

 Excerpts from the Foreword

by Benjamin W. Mkapa, President of Tanzania 1995–2005

The primary and long-term objective of this monograph is to initi­ate a debate on development aid, and to lay out a doable strategy for ending aid dependence. An exit strategy from aid dependence requires a radical shift both in the mindset and in the develop­ment strategy of countries dependent on aid, and a deeper and direct involvement of people in their own development. It also requires a radical and fundamental restructuring of the institu­tional aid architecture at the global level.

 Click here to download the full Foreword

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1 the bigger pictures: Why should developing countries escape aid dependence?

Is aid what it says it is?

OECD's definition of development aid

What is development?

Aid taxonomy

A litany of false questions and solutions

2 Case histories: the consequence of aid dependence

Red Aid - the poisoned chalice

Structural adjustment: Zambia 1978-2002

Structural adjustment: Zimbabwe 1980-97

Conclusion and postscript

3 An exit strategy: seven steps to end aid dependence 

Introduction

What creates aid dependence?

Seven steps to end aid dependence

4 The international aid architecture: structures, processes and issues

The international aid architecture

Restructuring the architecture: parallelism and reform

book reviews

• 'Keeping Developing Countries hooked on the aid drug', by Kath Noble, September 1, 2008. The Island Mid Week Review (Sri Lanka),

  Available at: http://www.island.lk/2008/09/03/midweek1.html and

         http://www.news.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6870&Itemid=52

...An interesting book to be launched this week suggests that the whole process is merely a tactic to assist in maintaining the supremacy of rich nations. The South Centre, an inter-governmental organisation of developing countries, puts forward this idea in a volume by its Executive Director, Yash Tandon, entitled 'Ending aid dependence'. It argues that what is really needed is a strategy for giving up on aid.

Mindset is apparently the principal barrier. Governments and public opinion in their respective constituencies often believe that they simply cannot manage without development assistance.

The South Centre proposes a fresh approach that starts from a new definition of what constitutes aid. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and its member states currently decide for themselves what is meant by the term. Aid therefore now encompasses any money from official sources given on a concessional or even slightly less than market basis to developing nations.

It is important to be clear about what is on offer. Rich countries provide a good deal of funds that have to be used on products and services from their own corporations, which often ends up being more expensive for recipients than commercial borrowing. Donors also count money spent on refugees and funds given to non-governmental organisations for educational work on relevant topics at home as part of their development assistance. Administration costs are included too. Debt relief on loans made to illegitimate regimes is another example of aid that isn't really useful. Rich nations also direct considerable amounts of money to trying to persuade recipients to change their policies on everything from governance of the financial sector to university curricula and staffing policies, and ideology doesn't often transfer into results in eradicating poverty. Technical assistance makes up almost half of all flows from donors, and payments to expensive consultants for advice of dubious quality on subjects of questionable utility are rife in the aid industry. ...

• 'Book Review: Ending Aid Dependence', by Thomas Lines, a development consultant and the anthor of Making Poverty: A History.

         See from: South Bulletin (September 1 2008),  Issue 22, pp.10.

A reappraisal of so-called development aid is long overdue, and Professor Tandon is to be congratulated for initiating this debate in such an incisive manner. This very readable book does not merely ask what ‘aid’ is and what role it plays, but places it in the context of a wider question, ‘What is development?’ That also needs to be urgently reconsidered in the rapidly changing circumstances of our time.
Writing in an influential country in the North, I am encouraged to see that global poverty and development are more prominent in my nation’s media and politics than they were five or ten years ago. NGOs have galvanised people to raise development issues with our politicians. However, all too often the political answer to their questions is simply ‘aid’. The deficiencies of the global economy and international relations, which inhibit development as this book rightly points out, are scarcely considered. The development debate receives more attention in the North than it did, but its content has taken a few steps backwards. The dogmaticslogans of the 1980s, ‘The market is always right’ and ‘There is no alternative’, still frame the discussion.
Meanwhile a ‘development industry’ has mushroomed, but too many of its practitioners are beholden to aid donors. The NGOs retain some autonomy where they are funded by public donations.But outside of them, nearly all ‘development’ people in the North derive some if not all of their income from donor aid.As a result, there has been no serious debate about the nature of aid, as Professor Tandon calls for.
I too have worked in that capacity. How many complaints did Ihear from other consultants and consultancy firms about the absurdities of the aid system! Yet almost no one would voice open criticism, however mild, for fear of losing the next contract: a pernicious consequence of the commercialisation of aid projects.Even monitoring and evaluation, as I experienced them, were rendered incapable of taking deficient aid programmes seriously to task. Having witnessed countless technical assistance projects and read their terms of reference while working in programme management and M&E, I find it hard to recall even one which actually achieved what it was designed to do. What a waste of the North’s public money; what a deception played on the people of developing and transition countries alike. ...
 

• 'It is time to wean ourselves away from the aid bandwagon', by Rasna Warah, an editor wirh the UN.

         See from: http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/466194/-/3la41r/-/index.html

...The idea that aid is a bad idea has been around at least since the 1980s, when academics and activists began questioning the effectiveness of World Bank-IMF prescriptions, such as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), which increased poverty levels in almost every country where they were implemented.

In his book, Tandon, the executive director of the South Centre in Geneva, argues that there needs to be a “radical restructuring of the institutional aid architecture” but falls short of calling for a total ban on aid. Aid that imposes ideological positions on countries, for instance, should be shunned completely, according to Tandon, but aid that supports struggles for social justice in the international community is acceptable as long as it is people-centred.

Tandon's views are not as radical as those of “post-development” advocates such as Susan George and Arturo Escobar, among others, who argue that aid is just another form of colonialism and should be done away with completely. These views have been articulated by various East Africans in the recently-published anthology (edited by yours truly) called Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits. In this book, prominent writers, academics and activists, including Issa G. Shivji, Bantu Mwaura, Onyango Oloo, Firoze Manji and Sunny Bindra, present an African perspective on the aid industry and why it has failed to lift millions of people out of poverty. ...

• 'New book questions value of aid', by Lucy Hayes, EURODAD, Europe, August 19th, 2008.

         See from: http://betteraid.org/blog/?p=114

Whilst aid experts from all around the world prepare to go Accra to discuss how aid can be made more effective, three writers (Tandon, Glennie and Warah)are preparing to launch/have just launches new books, all of which argue that poor countries need to become less dependent on aid.

Yash Tandon from the South Centre has written a book entitled 'Ending Aid Dependence'. Benjamin W. Mkapa (President of Tanzania 1995-2005) in his forward to the book says that 'The primary and long-term objective of this monograph is to initiate a debate on development aid, and to layout a doable strategy for ending aid dependence.'

Tandon argues that 'Developing countries reliant on aid want to escape from this dependence, and yet they appear to do so. This book shows how the developing countries can liberate themselves from the aid that pretends to be developmental but is not. Exiting aid dependence should be at the top of the political agenda of all countries.' Tandon plans to launch his book at a side event at the High Level Forum in Accra which seems somehow a bit late given that one of his recommendations is that of the South beware against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) offered by the OECD which he says 'if adopted, it would subject the recipients to a discipline of collective control by the donors right down to the village level.'

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ISBN: 978-1-906387-29-7.  Price £7.99

Background Documents

Donor Harmonisation, Southern Discomfort

While the governments of rich nations want to streamline their global-development efforts in the OECD context, those of many developing countries are less enthusiastic, Some experts even views the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness as a document of new colonialist aspirations, and doubt the OECD High Level Forum in Accra in September will achieve much good. [by Yash Tandon]

see from: http://www.inwent.org/ez/articles/074408/index.en.shtml

South Centre Comments on the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness' Final Consultative Draft of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)

This South Centre Analytical Note looks at the 25 July 2008 final consultative draft text of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) that is expected to be adopted by participants at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, Ghana, from September 2-4, 2008.

It argues that the text of the AAA sets the participation of developing countries within the framework and the norms set by developed country donors and will therefore end up strengthening the OECD-DAC framework and its associated governance structure, and does not suggest any inherent change in the governance structure of the international aid system which continues to be donor-driven and reflects donors’ economic and policy agendas.

see from: http://www.southcentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=676&Itemid=1