Dead Aid in Undeveloped State Apparatuses: Retrograding African Growth (original) (raw)

The Plight of African States and Good Governance

2003

Promoting good governance and improving governance in Africa has drawn increasing attention from the international community as a new approach to solving a variety of problems such as military conflicts, poverty, and sluggish economic development. The question of how to achieve good governance came under the spotlight in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War era. Establishing good governance, along with democratization, has now come to be recognized an issue related to the “conditionality” imposed by donor countries on recipients in exchange for financial assistance. Structural reform programs crafted by the World Bank and the IMF in the 1980s were the first set of policy prescriptions by the world community to address sluggish development in Africa. Under “the Washington Consensus,” the World Bank and the IMF called for the battered economies of Africa, which were plagued with expanding budget and current-account deficits since the late-1970s, to reform their political and ec...

Foreign Aid, Institutions, and Governance in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Foreign aid, stranger influence in public policy's in development countries by donors, weakness institutions, the local governance is not able to provide the Basic services to their society, the Government is weak to opposite the conditions did put by donors. many countries in development rec-core the foreign aid to implement vary politics or programmes, they make dependents in extreme.

Foreign Aid and Governance in Africa

Purpose – This paper investigates the effect of foreign aid on governance in order to extend the debates on foreign aid and to verify common positions from Moyo’s ‘Dead Aid’, Collier’s ‘Bottom Billion’ and Eubank’s ‘Somaliland’. The empirical evidence is based on updated data from 52 African countries for the period 1996-2010. Design/methodology/approach – An endogeneity robust instrumental variable Two-Stage-Least Squares empirical strategy is employed. Findings – The findings reveal that development assistance deteriorates economic (regulation quality and government effectiveness) and institutional (corruption-control and rule of law) governance, but has an insignificant effect on political (political stability, voice and accountability) governance. While, these findings are broadly in accordance with Moyo (2009) and Collier (2007) on weak governance, they neither confirm the Eubank (2012) position on political governance nor the Asongu (2012) stance on the aid-corruption nexus in his debate with Okada & Samreth (2012). Practical implications – The use of foreign aid as an instrument to influence the election and replacement of political leaders in Africa may have insignificant results. It is time to solve the second tragedy of foreign aid and that economists and policy makers start rethinking the models and theories on which foreign aid is used to influence economic, institutional and political governance in recipient countries. Originality/value – The paper extends the debate on foreign aid and institutions in Africa in the light a plethora of recent studies in the aid literature.

The political economy of development assistance: peril to government quality dynamics in Africa

This paper assesses the effectiveness of foreign aid in improving government institutions in 52 African countries using updated data (1996-2010). Findings suggest development assistance deteriorates government quality dynamics of corruption-control, political-stability, rule of law, regulation quality, voice and accountability and government effectiveness. It is therefore a momentous epoque to solve the second tragedy of foreign aid; high time economists and policy makers start rethinking the models and theories on which foreign aid is based. In the meantime, it is up to people who really care about the poor to hold aid agencies accountable for results.

Foreign Aid and Economic Growth in West Africa: Examining the Roles of Institutions Foreign Aid and Economic Growth in West Africa: Examining the Roles of Institutions

International Economic Journal, 2020

This study examines the roles of institutions on the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in the 16 West African countries. Relying on panel data obtained from the World Bank's world development and governance indicators, from 1996 to 2017, the study employs the autoregressive distributed lag technique in investigating the relationship. The empirical findings depict that foreign aid exerts a neutral effect on economic growth; the effect turns negative when the institutional variable is incorporated into the analysis. Again, the interaction effect of foreign aid and institution on economic growth is such that it reduces the negative effect of foreign aid on economic growth. The other factors of growth included are trade openness and government size, whose effects are positive and largely negative on the growth of the West African region, respectively. A significant policy implication from these findings is that the efforts of governments of the region should be directed towards building formidable economic, social and political institutions. This would not only reduce the negative impact of aid on growth but would also promote the competitiveness of the countries for private domestic and foreign capital; thus, reducing reliance on foreign aid.

Governance, Politics, and Economic Development: Some African Perspectives

Governance and Politics

The article documents the evolution of governance measures in Africa during post-independence: economic freedom, electoral competitiveness, political rights and civil liberties, executive constraint, and polity2. It examines their implications for economic development, considers political instability (PI) in the form of coups d’état and civil wars on the premise that PI results from poor governance. In addition, the article sheds light on the links between the more recent measures of governance – the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) – and economic development outcomes among African countries. The article concludes by paying special attention to potential governance/institutional instruments that might reflect “good governance”, and highlights the implicit risks faced by African countries in their efforts to sustain the continent’s recent economic gains within the current political economy framework.