Development_Reflection Memo

The development aid is sometimes approached with misconceptions. Overall, we can agree that it is always meant well. However, beyond the intentions being good, this sensitive issue tends to be approached in a business model way. To explain, the targeted country needs to have certain economic characteristics to be interesting for the donors. It needs to achieve some point of poverty to be considered as a worthy target of development aid. Such approach may be understandable, but still, I would say it is too disconnected from the personal attachment, the feeling of moral responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate than us. The living conditions of ordinary people should be at the centre of donors´ interest because their improvement is the starting point of boosting economic development of the country.

            In the class, we spoke about the history of development aid and motivations behind it. We identified the roots of the development aid to the establishment of the Marshall plan, as we could have found also in our readings. This American aid was intended to help Europe to overcome the consequences of the second world war. It focused on helping the European economy, prevent poverty, to make Europe resilient against the spread of communism. The American aid expanded later on. Its financial help to Japan was intended to create economic dependency in order for it to become beneficial for US economy. Such calculations are usually made with creating links where it is agreed ahead that donor´s country´s producers´ products are going to be purchased by the recipient of the aid. This way, both economies can prosper. The donor thus makes sure that he gets something back for his generosity. Nowadays, Japan belongs among the greatest donors in development aid, along with the US. However, the scale of American development assistance in the future is questionable with newly-elected president Trump taking the office, as he claims that he is going to cut this budget radically and rather spend more money on military.

            Nordic countries have a particular position as donors of development aid. It is a particularity in these countries, that their political sphere shares a consensus on moral motivations behind providing the aid. We call this kind of non-business approach ´untied aid´. These countries perceive themselves as the lucky ones, the wealthy states and they consider it naturally to be their moral duty to help the poor countries. They even hold the primacy in being the greatest donors if we consider the amount donated in consideration of their GDP. The Nordic countries prefer to convey their provision of development aid through multilateral channels, such as UN.

            Later on, we spoke about a specific position of France and United Kingdom as former colonial powers. Their example serves as an illustration of a wrong approach of abroad interventions and development aid provision. There are visible signs of colonial legacy which can be observed. These countries both keep relatively strong ties with their former colonies- they influence their economies and politics. Some cases were mentioned, like French president receiving a diamond as a political gift, French interest in economic benefits in contrast with their disinterest in genocide (economic motive prevails). During the debate, there was a hypothesis spoken that if Marine le Pen would become the next French president, we could see an increase in the enforcement of the ties between France and its former colonies. I would say this hypothesis is really probable, as France under le Pen´s rule would need to compensate retraction from the European Union by some other measures and closer relations with its former colonies would be likely a great option to do this as there is still a great potential (ex. source of mineral resources).

            To sum up, every country which participates in the development aid provision decides for itself why and how to do it. The scepticism and criticism of aid is rather a new phenomenon. Before, aid used to only be labelled positively without people trying to examine the donors´ hidden interests behind it. We should take the actual debate about it positively, as constructive criticism can take it all further- it can show us what are our mistakes, why it is not successful in some cases, what we are doing wrong. Taking lessons from our mistakes will lead towards introducing improvements into the process of developing the right approach.

            We also contemplated some questions about the development aid. Why didn´t we succeed to fulfill the millennium development goals? The failure has more reasons. First, the focus was made on a very precise kind of aid. Second, not all the money raised was spent in a meaningful way, which is a result of bad administration of resources. Third, there have been various multiple private charities emerging in recent years which, despite their good intentions, did not help, they may have even made the situation worse. Working with the development aid needs to be taken seriously. It should be channelled through experienced and well organized organizations. The quantity cannot take over quality, because that way the entire effort, including resources, is likely to become useless. Moreover, raising the funds is only part of the work. The entire process of development aid provision needs to be thought over in advance, including its distribution once it gets to the target country. This is sometimes a problem and waste of the efforts once again, as warlords and militias are able to take over it, which makes the situation of ordinary people even worse. In this regard, global trends shows us an improvement as we are getting from ´any kind of help is good´ conception towards seeing a need for more complex projects. These should not only be focusing on helping one part of the problem but to orient on cooperation with political sphere (local politics´ will and participation in the efforts for improvement) and private sphere (making changes in society, make local public participate) of the target state at the same time. One without the other is useless. Mozambique case shows us that is it possible. The beauty of the development aid is that we can see the difference, the improvement, in case of success. And what is important, we need to keep in mind that the motives, no matter of their nature (business or moral), are well meant. If we discover business plans behind it, we need to understand it and not to perceive it as some shady, self-interested calculations. After all, raising money from private companies or other donors with a vision of economic gains in exchange for their charity is one of the main sources of how to raise aid money.