Monterrey Consensus Two Decades After: Rethinking Foreign Aid Architecture and the Future of Human Development in Africa

Abstract

Changing scenarios in the second decade of the new millennium make revisiting the questions around aid effectiveness quite critical for understanding current human development challenges in Africa, considering that 2022 marks two decades since the Monterrey Consensus and the adoption of its resultant Declaration. Flowing from this original multilateral endeavour at crystallising a paradigm shift among role actors on the need for new approaches to foreign aid and development planning as well as the concerted efforts at standardising development assistance practices over the past two decades, critical questions emerge: (i) Beyond merely pronouncing new pathways of responses for dealing with the critical issues around aid, has the ‘new’ understanding impacted Africa in any different way? (ii) Could there be more than mere political explanation for the intrigues and divergence surrounding the ever-evolving principles on new aid architecture as propounded by various multilateral actors? (iii) In light of the noticeable contradictions in the approaches of donors and recipient governments to new aid architecture, what implications do these distinctions portend for aid effectiveness in Africa such that will promote human development in real terms? (iv) If development aid is particularly key for the very survival of poor people in Africa, should we not begin to identify more radical designs that will strategically counter-balance the shortfalls of the dominant approach to foreign aid and development planning? This article is an attempt to respond to this plethora of questions, advocating an approach that could transform the landscape of aid architecture and development agenda for Africa.