She even realizes her shortcomings when she admits that "I'm glad this isn't a concern being run for private profit and that I wasn't born a businessman." This concern over creating a more financially accountable humanitarian system remains a central preoccupation of the
aid industry.
Finally, the architects of the
aid industry, namely the OECD countries and the World Bank, have recognised that they cannot use that word any more.
Meanwhile, the so-called
Aid industry states that Africa needs $20bn to survive the credit crunch.
Day arrives at a crucial time for the financial
aid industry and plans to further the initiatives that Martin took to improve the integrity of financial aid professionals.
A provocative anecdote sums up William Easterly's indictment of the
aid industry. An ex-World Banker now teaching at New York University, he recalls how, in 2005, conscience-stricken executives attending the World Economic Forum at Davos in the Swiss Alps contributed $1 million on the spot to buy bed nets for poor people in Africa.
THE Government yesterday faced demands to further
aid industry expansion plans as 60 new research jobs were confirmed.
Thomas Dichter, who spent four decades in developing countries, including working for a variety of national and international aid agencies, admitted that late in his career he finally understood that, "as a means of reducing world poverty, aid has not worked, is not likely to work in the future, and cannot work." (Emphasis in original.) In a Cato Institute policy briefing last fall, Dichter, the author of Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed, also noted: "Whereas a large corporation cannot lose money forever without facing some consequences, the
aid industry has gone on for 60 years with hardly anything to show for the two trillion dollars it has spent (something it does not really bother to deny), and yet it is still very much in business."
Well perhaps, but don't count on it--especially if the
aid industry is expected to do the heavy lifting.
Primarily to
aid industry and enhance its competitiveness, Congress mandated in 1993 that the Department of Defense (DoD) establish an office of technology transition.
The leading lights of the development
aid industry, he reports, don't know much about economic growth.
If, as the editor tells us at the outset, 'governance' is shorthand for 'good government' in the language of the
aid industry, then most of the chapters in this book can be read as descriptions of 'bad government', or at least as descriptions of post-colonial states in which the institutions of liberal democracy and public administration which form part of their colonial legacy fail to function in a manner which is either pleasing to the former colonial powers or conducive to the achievement of economic growth and public order.
This two-part series takes a critical look at the international emergency
aid industry and explores whether well-intentioned aid operations like Band Aid have inadvertently caused more suffering than they have alleviated because the agencies were used by unscrupulous governments.