International Development Assistance Research Articles

Bottom-up development as framed freedom: developmentality and donor power

ABSTRACT International development assistance is founded on and reproduces a set of conceptual and structural binaries. Development actors themselves have attempted to alter lopsided aid relations, as illustrated by the prominent policy agendas of ownership and localisation in the 2010s. These are both expressions of bottom-up approaches to international aid, which challenge the very hierarchical nature of development as a particular Western instrument and historical project of intervention. This article argues that the top-heavy, donor-driven policies to turn development bottom-up fail not simply because of these discursive challenges. Aid asymmetries also persist because of the neoliberal audit culture evolving in tandem with the liberal contours of ownership and localisation agendas. This is analysed in terms of developmentality, which, as a tacit and indirect form of power, is both produced by and simultaneously undermines the liberal tenets of bottom-up approaches.

The co‐governance of basic education: Assessing the complementary effects of intergovernmental support, municipal capacity, non‐governmental organization presence and international development assistance

AbstractEnsuring equitable local service delivery requires sustained investments that are often beyond the reach of local governments in poor countries. In many developing countries, access to basic education is achieved primarily through the complementary efforts of state, municipal, non‐governmental and international development agencies — what I call the complementary “quartet” of service delivery. While the current literature acknowledges the individual roles of this “quartet,” it has not given much attention to the influence of their complementary efforts on access and quality of education outcomes. Using a unique (2013–2015) dataset of 260 Ghanaian municipalities in a cross‐sectional pooled regression analysis, the study finds that state assistance has broader influence on both access and quality of education outcomes, while municipal capacity, international development assistance and the presence of education focused non‐governmental organizations are associated with access (enrollment).

Transforming Global Aid: An Analysis of the Evolution of International Development Assistance Policies and the Optimisation of Strategies During the 2000-2030’s

The sphere of international development assistance (IDA) is undergoing significant changes, primarily due to the economic rise of the countries of the Global South. At the same time, the importance of IDA as an area of interstate cooperation remains high, as evidenced by the priority attention to this area on the part of the UN and other influential international organisations. In this regard, from the standpoint of historical and sociological institutionalism, we have analysed the cause-and-effect relations that condition the current problems of IDA and proposed ways of solving these problems. Using the aforementioned theoretical approaches, the gap between the conceptual and practical development of international aid was identified, including how donors impose the development track and the concept of IDA itself on recipients. It is shown how, including as a result of “institutional layering” in the relevant organisations, the interaction between “new” and “traditional donors” is significantly impeded, and how the latter use historically developed structures to pursue their state interests against the background of objectively falling volumes of aid from their side to the countries in need. It was noted that in order to resolve the identified contradictions, it is necessary to start a discussion in the academic and professional community, based on inclusiveness and respect for cultural diversity, on the individual development trajectory for each society, the tasks of IDA and the forms of appropriate interaction in each case. It is important to encourage openness and independent criticism in order to objectively highlight the benefits to both recipients and donors of engaging in IDA activities. Efforts should continue to develop an integrated approach for more accurate and consistent monitoring that communicates results to the general public.

UNESCO-UNDP’s “Save Carthage” Campaign: Americans and Internationalisation of Heritage in Tunisia

ABSTRACTIn the early 1970s, the Tunisian government sought to balance the preservation of cultural heritage and tourism with urban development at the sprawling archaeological site of Carthage. UNESCO launched the ‘Save Carthage’ campaign and brought together 18 international archaeological teams to survey, excavate, and stabilise the site. Two American teams from Michigan and Harvard represented the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). However optimistic their aims, we demonstrate how the internationalism that the ‘Save Carthage’ campaign embodied through the 1970s was undermined by disputes between the American archaeologists and their Tunisian hosts, limited funding opportunities, and a failure to integrate deeply with the postcolonial landscape of North Africa. Lessons learned from this case study illustrate the major role played by archaeology in the landscape of international development assistance and highlight the mixed success of both UNESCO and the United States in Tunisia.

International development contested: the American Child Health Section in Belgium (1922–1924)

ABSTRACT Failed humanitarian projects provide us with an opportunity to shed light on the complex interactions and conflicts among international donors, humanitarian workers and local recipients. This article explores such a contested and terminated project in post-First World War Belgium. The Child Health Section (1922–24) was a US international development programme initiated by Herbert Hoover and the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation. Its aim was to provide health education to school children. Despite reaching 113,136 Belgian children between the ages of six and 12 in 1221 schools across the country, the project was abruptly discontinued after only one year. This contribution examines why the development assistance programme failed by using a micro-historical approach combined with concepts from development studies. The well-kept records of the CHS on the enduring conflicts with Belgian administrations reveal how US assumptions about their role in transforming or modernizing Europe clashed with (the diverse) European views on their own post-war reconstruction. This case demonstrates that the shift from providing short-term, needs-based humanitarian assistance to investing in long-term international development assistance did not always go smoothly or uncontested in post-war Europe.

Evaluating Country Performance After Transitioning From Gavi Assistance: An Applied Synthetic Control Analysis.

Over the past decade, international development assistance for health has slowed. As donors seek to increase domestic cofinancing and ultimately transition countries from donor aid dependence, COVID-19 has severely constrained public budgets. The evaluation of sustainability and longer-term impacts of donor withdrawal is increasingly important. We assess vaccination coverage and post-neonatal mortality to estimate country performance of these outcomes among countries that no longer received assistance from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) between 2000 and 2018. Using data from all countries receiving Gavi support between 2000 and 2020, we employed a synthetic control method to generate a pre-transition counterfactual with the same characteristics as the observation of interest to predict a future that empirically never existed. The synthetic unit is constructed from the weighted average of other units with good fit to the unit of interest before transition but did not transition. We found substantial heterogeneity after transitioning from Gavi assistance. China, Guyana, and Turkmenistan overperformed their expected coverage rates; Albania, Bhutan, China, Guyana, and Turkmenistan maintained coverage over 90%; and Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine reported precipitous drop-offs that fell well below their synthetic controls. We also observed a vaccination coverage decline in 2020 for several countries after transitioning and most synthetic controls, which we attribute to COVID-19-related service disruptions. We recommend that Gavi adjust its transition model to systematically assess contextual externalities and risk. In addition, countries that no longer receive Gavi assistance can leverage technical assistance and communities of practice to mutually assist each other and other countries advancing toward transition. This could also foster intracountry accountability after transition. We also recommend that Gavi systematize post-transition assessments and evaluations that leverage the expertise and experience of graduated countries to encourage cross-learning.

The German Development Bank as a policy entrepreneur for social health protection: a case study of the development and implementation of the ‘Sehat Sahulat Programme’ in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Background The German Development Bank (KfW) supported the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (GoKP) to design and implement its first social health protection (SHP) scheme, named the Sehat Sahulat Programme (SSP). We described the role of KfW in the evolution of SSP with a view to identifying transferrable lessons for international development agencies working on similar initiatives in socioeconomically comparable contexts. Methods We employed a qualitative instrumental case study design approach. First, we obtained and analysed key programme documents to describe the chronology of events and policy changes. We then undertook in-depth interviews to understand factors influencing policy changes. Finally, we carried out non-participant observations to understand how policy decisions were made and implemented. We employed maximum variation sampling to recruit participants and conducted a thematic analysis of data. Results SSP was described by GoKP officials as an innovative financing strategy and a flagship project of the government formed by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). First, programme officials reported that KfW was instrumental in both designing and financing SSP, which had plans to provide free health insurance to low-income families and raise revenue through paid enrollment of the wealthy (solidarity). Second, GoKP deviated from this model and covered the entire population of KP free of cost. Through SSP, GoKP envisaged service provision through private hospitals (subsidiarity). In the third year, GoKP included public sector hospitals in the programme. Although planned supplementary insurance products might result in inequitable utilisation, KfW continued supporting SSP and committed funding for piloting outpatient department services for two years, 2023 and 2024. Conclusions This in-depth case study has highlighted the potentially positive role of international development assistance in introducing innovative financing strategies to promote universal health coverage. However, development partners might have limited control over how things evolve.

Terminological Aspects of International Development Assistance

Terminological Aspects of International Development Assistance

The Effectiveness of Millennium Challenge Corporation Grants in Accelerating Economic Growth

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a United States’ agency, with a novel structure that provides international development assistance. It operates with the stated objective of assisting the grant-recipient countries in their attempts to accelerate economic growth through poverty reduction, particularly by identifying and removing the binding constraints to growth. There is much debate over how the MCC programme is effective in realising its growth-supporting objective. A few studies have been conducted to examine this aspect. The present study, another attempt to shed light on the comparative growth performance in the MCC grant recipient economies, did not enable the inference that the MCC grant has successfully accelerated the growth impetus in recipient nations. This suggestive inference, however, has to be reconfirmed through future research, that could possibly include any other variables which might be considered as influential, and also capture the long-term growth effects which may not have been reflected through macroeconomic data thus far.

The Arab Countries of the Persian Gulf as “New Donors” in the World Economy

This article deals with the peculiarities and aspects of foreign aid by Arab countries of the Gulf (Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC members)). Relatively recently, almost all the countries that are members of the integration association GCC were countries with extremely backward consumer economy. But with the discovery of the richest oil deposits, this region has become the main oil-bearing region of the world. During the so-called “oil boom”, the economy of the Arab countries of the Gulf was at the initial stage of development and was not able to invest the growing revenues from oil rents in national projects, so free financial resources were used to create development funds and provide assistance. Now two countries – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – are among the top 20 donor-states in terms of funding, are very influential participants in international development assistance processes and play a leading role in international humanitarian activities. The directions and geography of assistance are quite extensive and diverse, and the amount of funds allocated is solid. For these States, humanitarian assistance is a priority direction of foreign policy and contributes to increasing prestige in the international arena in order to ensure national interests.

The crisis of maternal and child health in Afghanistan

In the past two decades, despite ongoing war, international development assistance and funding, channelled through Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health, expanded access to primary care, improved government hospitals, and trained thousands of health-care providers in Afghanistan, especially women. Accompanying technical assistance strengthened the capacity of Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health to develop policy, design requirements for and oversee services provided by international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and initiate surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation systems.

The unequal geographies of climate finance: Climate injustice and dependency in the world system

Central to climate justice is the question of who will pay for the mitigation and adaptation efforts needed as the climate crisis worsens, particularly in countries that bear little responsibility for global greenhouse gas emissions. Climate finance is a complex set of mechanisms intended to address this concern. World-systems theory has long understood international development assistance as a tool that reproduces spatial dependency between states. In this paper, we ask whether climate finance follows the expectations of world-systems theory and reproduces relationships of dependency, or if it instead advances climate justice and challenges spatial dependency in the world-system. Through this analysis, we consider the implications of climate finance for world-systems theory. We use recent empirical data to ask whether climate finance follows or challenges world-systems theory expectations, focusing on five areas: (1) spatial flows of climate finance between the core, semi-periphery, and periphery; (2) the governance of climate finance institutions; (3) the types of projects supported by climate finance; (4) the relationship of projects to dominant systems of extraction, production, and consumption; and (5) the agency of peripheral state and non-state actors in shaping climate finance in relation to their interests. Taken together, we argue that climate finance in many ways reproduces relationships of dependency, though potential avenues exist for contesting this unequal balance of power and for advocating for climate justice. This case illustrates the need to approach analyses of dependency in a nuanced way, interrogating specific processes through which dependency is produced and contested across scales.

Impacts of Terrorism on Biodiversity Management in West Africa Sahel: A Review

Over the past 50 years, a number of homegrown solutions and international development assistance have been initiated and implemented to address the West Africa Sahel region’s biodiversity resources decline. This ranges from indigenous/community led natural resources regeneration and land restoration techniques, funding and technical support in developing protected areas, military aid, specialized training of forest rangers and massive education of populace on biodiversity protection. Terrorist activities have negatively affected the biodiversity management in West Africa Sahel. However, there is a paucity of information about the impacts of terrorist activities on biodiversity management in West Africa. Therefore, this study tries to close this knowledge gap by describing and highlighting the impact of terrorism on biodiversity in West Africa Sahel. The authors used a systematic review of data through search engines like Google scholar, Z-library, Mendeley, Researchgate and Jstor for reports, scientific articles, books, field notes and other already published materials. The authors also consulted videos and media reports on YouTube, France24, PBS news etc. The study highlighted the key impacts of terrorist activities on biodiversity management. Some of these include the kidnaping of foresters, hijacking and controlling the management protected area like the case of Park W, destroying forest/bush fires, the use of explosive and poaching. These activities destroy animals’ habitats and therefore causing biodiversity depletion. The authors recommend the enhancement of the framework of protect areas, enhance the management of conflicts between population around protected areas as some sustainable solutions to biodiversity management. The Sahel states should strengthen their cooperation in building the capacities of the citizens in reducing the viability of terrorism through sustainable green jobs.

Economic Prospects and Challenges for Sudan after the Juba Peace Agreement: The Role of Development in Peacebuilding and Stabilization in Darfur

The peacebuilding-development nexus has progressively captivated scholars and practitioners who have thoroughly questioned their correlation and causality. Sudan’s persistent unrest and development efforts embodied an ideal testing ground for the theorists of the nexus, whose driving paradigms evolved parallel to the unfolding of the conflicts and the progressive affirmation of the peacebuilding-development nexus in international narratives. This article reviews development endeavors in sustaining peacebuilding in Sudan by exploring the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) vis-à-vis the economic reforms advanced by the transitional government of Sudan and the ever-growing international development assistance. The article argues that economic reforms and revitalization represent a fil-rouge throughout the JPA. By asserting that addressing inequalities, marginality, and injustice constitutes the litmus test of the agreement’s efficacy in terms of peacebuilding, it will be appraised whether this inclusive approach has been adopted in national development policies and what has been its effectiveness in sustaining the pathway for peace and democratization.

The impact of INGO ties on flows of aid for women’s health in the developing world

Recent literature on international development aid has emphasized the role of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in determining who receives international development assistance. However, few analyses have investigated the specific sectors of international aid and the influence of INGOs by INGO type. Using panel data from 94 countries from 1996 to 2015, this study tests the effects of general INGOs, women’s international non-governmental organizations (WINGOs), and health international non-governmental organizations (HINGOs) on the flows of aid for women’s reproductive health, family planning, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) control/HIV/AIDS. The results show that general INGOs, WINGOs, and HINGOs are an important source of women’s health aid. However, the effects of these organizations are conditioned by recipients’ levels of political and economic development. These findings provide supporting evidence for the idea that INGO ties are important in women’s health aid, but also suggest that the size and significance of INGO effects should be considered cautiously.

The effects of coloniality and international development assistance on Made in Africa Evaluation: Implications for a decolonised evaluation agenda

Background: It is imperative to recognise the effects of the intrinsically Eurocentric development agenda on attaining transformative evaluation that appropriately addresses development priorities in Africa. The role of international development agencies as critical anchors in African evaluation practice needs examination to advance the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) discourse.Objectives: This article critiques the dominance of a Eurocentric lens to evaluation in Africa, illustrating how this impedes MAE. It harnesses the importance of MAE as a transformative, contextually relevant approach to espousing Afrocentric values in evaluation theory and practice.Method: Through a desktop review, the article examines the intrinsic power relations inherent in Western knowledge systems and how the effects of coloniality on African knowledge systems can deter the progression of a transformative, decolonial evaluation agenda.Results: The article recognises positive strides towards legitimising African knowledge systems and harnessing a more African evaluation agenda, for example, through the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), leading the standardisation of African evaluation competencies and guidelines.Conclusion: It establishes, however, the adverse effects of long-standing power imbalances, with the development agenda in Africa being primarily set by international development organisations, such as donors. This leaves little room for African evaluators to manoeuvre and define contextually appropriate approaches to the evaluation outside of the dominant Eurocentric evaluation standards. The article contributes to understanding the role of the dominant international development agencies on evaluation in Africa and proposes recommendations for achieving a more decolonised evaluation agenda. It highlights the importance of the legitimisation of African knowledge systems, a multidisciplinary approach to monitoring and evaluation (ME), ensuring inclusivity and representation in evaluation and negotiating power balances with international development agencies.

Changes in international development aid policy: from Trump to Biden

International development assistance is an integral part of the foreign economic and foreign policy activities of the US government. International aid is one of the largest components of US foreign relations spending and is regarded by many members of Congress as one of the most important foreign policy instruments. However, many US citizens and members of Congress feel that the US cannot afford such international aid spending, given the current budget deficit and competing budgetary priorities. As one of the largest donors of international development aid, the United States is of considerable interest to many researchers, including those who study trends in the polarization of attitudes toward foreign policy, including international aid. This article is devoted to the current US policy in the field of international development cooperation at the beginning of the presidency of Joe Biden. It examines the economic component of US government assistance: the total amount of US economic assistance, as well as the structure of international aid spending and country priorities for US economic assistance, are considered. An assessment of the prospects for US assistance is presented based on an analysis of the Joint Strategic Plan of the State Department and the Agency for International Assistance 2022-2026 and the US National Security Strategy 2022. Despite the stability and relative inertia of the international aid system, one can observe an increase in US interest in development assistance after the transition of power to President Biden, including in the context of competition with China.

Европейский союз и постсоветские страны: новые тенденции в помощи развитию

The article analyzes the policy in the field of international development assistance implemented by the EU in the post-Soviet space. It is shown that in the second half of the 2010s – early 2020s the largest European donor countries perceived this region as peripheral. The main part of the funds was allocated by the supranational authorities of the EU. Geographically, most official development assistance (ODA) was provided to Eastern European countries and the South Caucasus, while development assistance to Central Asia was financed on a residual basis. After the crisis in Ukraine escalated in 2022, the EU’s collective ODA increased sharply, and the country itself became the main recipient of European assistance. However, the bulk of aid is expenditure on refugees in donor countries, which is statistically recorded as ODA. Financing of projects on the territory of Ukraine itself is not so significant. In the context of the degradation of relations between Russia and the West, the EU countries are interested not so much in the reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy, but in using the anti-Russian potential of Ukraine. In this regard, not economic, but military assistance is of paramount importance.

Гуманитарная политика Турции в странах постсоветского пространства

Humanitarian policy is an important tool of Ankara’s strategy towards the post-Soviet states. A number of state institutions in Turkey contribute to the development of ties with the Turkic and Muslim peoples of the former Soviet republics. Ankara participates in international development assistance to the countries of the region and at the same time builds bilateral ties with them. Turkish policy comprises assistance programs in the fields of education and culture, which contribute to the development of the idea of the historical unity of the Turkic peoples.

Humanitarian activities of American NGOs and charitable foundations in developing countries

The article discusses the mechanisms and directions of charitable activities of US non-profit organizations and foundations in developing countries, which determine the humanitarian direction in the framework of International Development Assistance. Currently, humanitarian problems are exacerbated due to the growing risks to human life in the context of globalization, which, while providing a wide range of self-realization opportunities available to every person, at the same time expanded the boundaries of using human potential as a “consumable” material, increased risks and devalued the status of human life. Today, humanitarian crises cover entire regions - Tropical Africa, the Near East, a number of Central American countries, where, due to the limited capabilities of the respective states, NGOs and charitable foundations operate within the framework of social, technical, educational and medical programs. Independent studies show that often the services of the non-profit sector have no analogues in the commercial sphere - they often provide assistance to the population of developing countries in hard-to-reach locations, in places engulfed by military conflicts, develop and use new approaches and communication and information technologies in their work.