Debate on aid to Africa

While Africa is the biggest recipient of aid globally, the terms, conditions and principles upon which aid is delivered are rarely defined by the people of Africa – although it is for them that this aid, at least rhetorically, is meant to create positive change. With the current global economic crisis and high-level meetings on aid effectiveness, the debate on aid to Africa is resurgent.

African perspectives

Coming from the diverse perspectives of African social commentators, academics and activists including Demba Moussa Dembélé, Patrick Bond, Samir Amin and Charles Mutasa, this comprehensive volume explores the premise, history and foundation upon which the concept of aid is based. It considers aid's relationship to the broader development discourse in Africa, the politics and power dynamics of aid mechanisms and how the emergence of powers such as China and India are redefining the global aid architecture.

Understanding aid's inequity

Aid to Africa considers how to create a more just aid system that contributes to Africa's development while also elaborating alternative approaches that understand the inherent inequity of aid. Critically, this book provides a framework not merely to render aid more effective, something which the current mainstream discourse is grappling to define, but to create an alternative African development paradigm from Pan-Africanist, feminist and other perspectives.

A FAHAMU BOOKS AND PAMBAZUKA PRESS PUBLICATION

Edition First Edition

Audience Activists, campaigners, NGO-workers, academics, journalists, commentators

Co-publisher African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD)

Preface vii

Hakima Abbas

1 Aid colonisation and the promise of African

continental integration 1

Tim Murithi

2 The future of aid in North–South relations 13

Bernard Founou Tchuigoua

3 Aid from a feminist perspective 26

Awino Okech

4 Africa battles aid and development finance 42

Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife

5 Aid for development 59

Samir Amin

6 Aid and reparations: power in the development discourse 76

Hakima Abbas with Nana Ndeda

7 Post-9/11 aid, security agenda and the African state 93

Shastry Njeru

8 Africa: official development assistance and the Millennium

Development Goals 106

Demba Moussa Dembélé

9 Aid effectiveness and the question of mutual accountability 121

Charles Mutasa

10 The European Development Fund or the illusion of assistance 132

Mouhamet Lamine Ndiaye

11 Africa's new development partners: China and India –

challenging the status quo? 143

Sanusha Naidu and Hayley Herman

12 Internal displacement, humanitarianism and the state:

the politics of resettlement in Kenya post-2007 167

Lyn Ossome