Global Development: Aid - the myth of western support

Development Aid has to be one of the most misconceived and ill composed terms. We believe aid to be a donation to an individual or collective that will help support their needs. However development aid is in fact a term coined by Western enthusiasts to try and dampen the disgusting truth, that is aid (in the western context) is in fact a loan that carries an unfixed interest.

To put into example the truth of aid we need not look any further than the DFID (The Department of International Development), in a report DFID made it clear of their intentions that aid was going to be directed into the most important areas of developing countries. Of course by important they mean ‘areas that suit capitalist interest’. Furthermore they stressed the matter of D.R of Congo’s failure to facilitate a comparable amount of paved roads to Britain, according to the DFID the need to construct more paved roads lies in the interest of the poor and the vulnerable of the sub-Saharan countries. First and foremost roads cannot allow greater geographical or social mobility if the civilians cannot afford cars and if there is no public transport to allow it (which in the D.R.C there isn’t just as many other sub-Saharan countries). Secondly the word ‘paved’ really stands out to me, why is it that to alleviate the poverty of a country they must have paved roads? Apparently this creation of paved roads will benefit the economy, whatever way you look at it; it will ultimately benefit the capitalist world and in fact under develop the periphery countries as the GDP mostly spent on paying back the debt amounted from ‘Aid’.

Western countries do not give aid to countries as a symbol of amity but because it creates a good profitable return. So much so that Aid given to Sub-Saharan African governments will be paid back at a higher sum, thus creating a boomerang effect. Why is it that western countries are so insistent on giving aid but not canceling periphery country debt? The aid transference from one country to another goes through multilateral institutions, these could include IMF, WTO and World Bank etc. If these pro-capitalist organisations are monitoring the transference of the aid, then aid is open to manipulation by capital. International development in infrastructure is un-surprisingly aimed at capitalist interest, the development of factories with outdated technology, which creates dependency of the country on the west. A moderate portion of aid spent by Britain (although an official figure does not stand as DFID has selectively not released this information) is on Governance and National Security, against such things as terrorism and gang-warfare. Somali pirates are a western influenced problem as are many of the gang and terrorism related issues, putting more money into the countries military budget only hastens to bring about the corruption of governments run by the elites, who where elected by the West.

The imperialism that exists today is that of a hundred years ago, but instead of overt slavery the West cushions itself by covertly oppressing the people of developing countries. Development Aid is a invitation to spiraling debt with increasing interest, but as countries cannot afford not to accept for sakes of their people they must oblige. One study by U.K and U.S academics found that aid was one of the ‘good things about capitalism’; if I had to choose two of the most contradictory words in the dictionary it would be ‘good’ and ‘capitalism’. The only good that can be done is to cancel all the debt owed by poorer countries; this won’t have a dramatic effect on western budget as most countries owe millions rather than billions. 

Take Niger for example, a nation which owes £8 million to the UK, if the UK were to simply cancel this debt then the nation would be free to act on issues of disease and poverty (AQA Sociology A2 Third Edition: Page 88 Stephen Moore, Dave Aiken and Steve Chapman (2009)). Mozambique is also a country with a fairly small debt; it owed Brazil within the region of £185 million in 2004, Brazil were fortunate enough to cancel 95% of the debt, thus releasing most the pressure; although the IMF had lent Mozambique in the region of $16 million to sustain their budget up until 2006. Consider the ‘loaning’ by the IMF and the ‘canceling’ of Brazil, only one actually benefits the country in terms of finance and development especially as Mozambique’s government had said that the debt was virtually un-payable. In the Ivory Coast, the IMF decided to ‘wipe away’ $3 billion dollars of debt from the previous $13 billion, this debt will eventually just come back as the country cannot afford any of the debt. Furthermore the IMF had actually loaned Ivory Coast $565 million to pay for debt and poverty related issues! Is it not ridiculous that the loaning of money is to pay for a loan from the same organisation? There is a good 100 other examples of countries in this debt and loan fiasco. It seems semi-periphery and periphery countries have more of an idea of development and improvements, I’ll throw in one other example of this; South Africa cancelled around $137 million owed by Cuba in order to sustain relations between the two countries and to allow development, cancelling debt sounds better doesn’t it?