Questioning Aid - again

It's not the first time, but it's particularly serious. The usefulness of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) is once again under question throughout the 'developed' world. From Sweden - long a strong giver of ODA - to the UK to the USA, citizens and their elected leaders are more openly questioning how useful is aid for sustainable development. And this time, sustainable development means not only Africa's development, but Sweden's (and other country's) ability to sustain long term financial donations in a situation where it is unclear whether or not 'aid works'.

The financial crisis is partly to blame. Many threw up their hands in fury several months ago at the ease with which bankers got millions and millions while for decades it has been a struggle to give the world's poor even a half of the less than 1% of overall budget that most countries commit to give to ODA. Sustainable development was reduced to mere rhetoric. Now, with budgets tightened (I've yet to hear a viable plan for how either the UK or the US is going to get out of the enormous debt my unborn children are currently saddled with as a result of the bailouts and the ongoing loans, not to mention any future damage due to climate change), and people looking to pinch, that old question is raised again: why should we give money to someone else's poor when we've our own poor people to look after?

I'm glad to see ODA having to think seriously about outcomes and accountability - the question, what's really value for money, is an important one. DFID (the UK's ODA arm) is putting renewed emphasis on Monitoring and Evaluation. But ODA, like much of governmental work for long term societal change, is not always easy to evaluate. Some of the best work is almost impossible to evaluate - how can you say, with certainty, that a particular program in a particular town has made an impact? Was it the training a group of professionals received that made a difference? Was it a conversation at the right moment? Was it trust built over 10, 15 years of working together that enabled a new venture or a new program to make a difference? Was it the larger political economic situation which most ODA has little control over? Much of the time, you can't say (though of course sometimes you definitely can).

To really understand when ODA is fostering good work for sustainable development will require greater education of the citizens in the developed world, as well as good programs in recipient countries, programs that encourage high levels of ownership by the recipient country. One piece is realizing that with ODA, its going to be very difficult if not impossible to account for 100% of the money, and to expect that that money will never go into the hands of corrupt governments. Yes, one can lessen corruption - but so long as one is working with and trying to support the people who are ruled by corrupt governments, some of the money from Sweden (or the UK) will line corrupt pockets.