American Foreign Aid

Michael L. Buckler, the author of From Microsoft to Malawi: Learning on the Front Lines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, argues that the foreign assistance that the U.S. provides to poor countries benefits the U.S. more than the designated country. His Op-Ed titled "The Secret of Foreign Aid" is published on The Baltimore Sun. Here is an excerpt from it:

Overseas assistance in the federal budget is actually American assistance in disguise. Poor countries receive money from our government under the condition that some of the money (about 50 percent) be used to acquire goods and services from American companies. By doing this, Congress ensures that aid money stimulates the American economy, not fragile ones in need of help. Other self-serving tactics include showering aid on strategically important countries like Egypt, while geopolitical twerps like Malawi — where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer — get squeezed; and conditioning aid upon the adoption of Western ideals like multiparty democracy and free-market capitalism. In short, we finance them to enrich our companies and import our culture.

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Can’t Have It Both Ways!

A few people have written about the ineffectiveness of foreign aid in Nepal. As concerned citizens it is important for us to criticize the INGOs and the NGOs, institutions who are in control of the projects from the beginning, especially when these projects fail to meet the criteria set up to measure progress. This kind of discourse helps propel the debate on aid effectiveness forward and brings the issues to the forefront, which is important and could lead to solutions. A couple of articles (here and here) written on daily newspapers seem to have hit some nerves. People who are part of the aid machine in developing countries, especially the locals, seems to be resentful of any criticism. This is perfectly rational as from where they stand everything looks good--good inflow of funds, good wages, good office, sense of being an elite, self gratifying deeds--even though the macro picture looks grim. 
Here is an article written by Mr. Simon Galimberti, the deputy country director of CCS Italy (Nepal) and associated with the Association of International NGOs in Nepal (AIN), complaining about the criticism and frustration expressed in national media regarding the failures of these organizations on many fronts, including the alleviation of poverty.
Here is a graph that I created on Gapminder that shows the total aid received by Nepal over the years. We all know what has happened to income disparity, access to health care, clean water, electricity, etc., not just in Kathmandu, but also in other parts of the country. Now, it is not the NGOs or the INGOs actions that have brought a lot of pain to the Nepali people, however, it is their model and dispensing mechanism that has failed to do any good. So it is not only fair but also our responsibility to ask questions about the effectiveness of foreign aid in Nepal—it is the right thing to do!

A Problem With "Development"

Most of the Op-Ed written on the development aid sector of Nepal seems to fall on deaf ears. At best, the concerns are dismissed as --"what do you know about development?" The criticism of such pieces are mostly personal, designed to discredit the critics rather than a defense based on empirical evidence. Well, there could be some dire circumstances that will prevail if things are not changed. And, as Dr. Jeremy Rappleye (PhD, Oxford) points out in his very interesting Op-Ed (CLICK HERE), Nepal "will see increased exit and violence, not less," if we continue down the same failed path of "development."

Research Methods 101

A simple question about how much your country gives in development assistance to poor countries could result in different answers. The problem could be in the way one asks the question. Xavier Marquez, a political science lecturer in NZ, points out in his blog (CLICK HERE) that "European public opinion turns out to be uncannily accurate at determining the answer to that question, far more than Americans."