Tag: Aid
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UK government to cut aid
The UK Parliament voted on Tuesday to cut Overseas Aid from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP, a cut which The Guardian refers to as a ‘hammer blow’ for some of the world’s poorest peoples facing persecution in countries such as Yemen and Syria. This is an important update for any student studying the…
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How is UK Development Aid money spent? some useful tracking tools
Even with the recently announced cuts to UK development aid, the United Kingdom will still be spending around £10 billion a year on overseas aid from 2020 onwards. £10 billion is a lot of money, so it’s fair enough that we should be able to keep track of where our tax money is going! Thankfully…
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The End of the Department for International Development!
In September 2020 the long standing Department for International Development (DFID) merged with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). You can read more about the merger here. DFID was established as a separate department in 1997 under the New Labour Government, and its aim was to focus exclusively on delivering overseas aid, and over the…
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A Private Aid Failure: Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund
Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund was set up in 2016 and invested in private health care systems in developing countries. One of its stated aims is to buy up cheap land and build private hospitals with the intention of providing low-cost private health care for people in low-income countries. It started in 2016 and managed…
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The challenges of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Ebola recently resurfaced in Democratic Republic of Congo, and has now infected more than 2500 people in the Eastern part of the country, near the border with Uganda. Ebola is one of the world’s most infectious and deadliest diseases: as of 22nd July 2019 the World Health Organisation reported 2503 cases in this latest outbreak,…
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Where’s Our Aid Money Gone?
UK Development aid intended to maintain stability in Northern Syria has apparently ended up in the hands I Jihadists who abuse human rights. This is according to a recent BBC Panorama documentary, which aired this Monday. The problem seemed to be down to one private UK company who DFID channelled the money through. The programme…
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The Strengths and Limitations of NGOs in Development
The advantages of NGO Aid over Official Development Aid Generally smaller and thus more responsive to the needs of local communities than the kinds of large scale development projects undertaken in the days of Modernisation Theory. There is no political agenda as is often the case with government aid, and thus aid is not ‘tied…
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The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in International Development
There is a very wide range of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). NGOs are groups of concerned citizens who are independent of the government and business, and are thus nominally non-political and non-profit organisations. NGOs typically have charity status and raise funds through a combination of voluntary donations from the public, but also grants from governments and…
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More Arguments for Official Development Aid
The following two thinkers argue that aid can work, but it needs to be better targeted in order to be effective. This is really a return to ‘neo-modernisation theory’. Paul Collier (2008) Collier’s analysis of aid suggests that aid is merely a ‘holding operation preventing things from falling apart’. However, he does argue that without…
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Arguments for Official Development Aid
Early modernisation theorists believed that it was essential to inject aid into countries to establish infrastructure and change attitudes. From the 1950s to 70s aid programs seemed to have a positive effect on many developing countries as both economic and social development increased, however this progress seamed to stall from the late 1970s. Contemporary supporters…
