Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done

Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done. By Carol Lancaster. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press for the Century Foundation, 1999. Pp.xiv + 303. $55 and $22. ISBN 0 226 46838 0 and 46839 9

After nearly four decades and several billions of dollars in assistance, foreign aid has been largely ineffective in promoting economic development in Africa. Average GNP per capita is almost the same today as it was in the 1960s; social indicators of development such as the Human Development Index and Physical Quality of Life Index remain among the lowest in the world; the region continues to be the most heavily indebted; and international capital flows have essentially bypassed Africa. This monograph by a former deputy administrator of USAID tries to explain why foreign aid has accomplished so little in Africa and what can be done to improve its performance.

The first part of the book comprises four chapters. Following an introduction, possible reasons for the ineffectiveness of aid in Africa are reviewed in Chapter 2. Africa's poor economic performance may be attributed to a number of factors including harsh physical environment, weak institutions, corruption, political repression, faulty policies, and unstable governments. At a more fundamental level, however, aid appears to have failed Africa due to the poor targeting and weak design of aid programmes by donors, and also because Africans are given little chance or responsibility in identifying or contributing to aid projects. The latter point is important but should not be surprising. When recipient involvement in programmes is weak, donor's objectives dominate. In...