By Sir Ronald Sanders:
The development ministers of the world’s most economically powerful nations – the G8 – met in Berlin this month to consider aid to developing countries. The conference underlined two things: first, aid is not a response to need: it is a tool for achieving the objectives of the donor; and second, there is a rivalry evolving between the G8 countries and new donor countries such as China and India using aid as a tool.
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Sir Ronald Sanders is a business
executive and former Caribbean
diplomat who publishes widely
on small states in the global
community. Reponses to:
ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
This second point is underscored by a report in the London Financial Times that the G8 countries are concerned that their efforts to link some aid to performance-based criteria “could be undermined by emerging economies”. The G8 countries are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
By “performance-based criteria” they mean those conditions that they have imposed for decades on developing countries bilaterally and through organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). I should acknowledge that Russia is a newcomer to the collective approach to setting conditions for aid. Nonetheless, Russia too has used aid bilaterally to bolster Russian interests (and before Russia, the interests of the former Soviet Union).
In any event, the G8 link their aid to developing countries to the following conditions: opening up the markets of developing countries to goods and services from the industrialised world; privatization of State-owned companies; deregulation; low foreign debt and taxes.
For decades each of these countries has used aid to influence or coerce developing countries into adopting positions that suited the donor. Aid was also withdrawn or reduced either to punish developing countries for pursuing policies that a donor country considered to be inimical to its interest, or simply because the country or region concerned no longer held any strategic interest to the donor.
There was – and is – nothing altruistic about aid from G8 countries except in the most dire of circumstances such as the Asian Tsunami. And, even then it is the people of these countries – rather than their governments – who have responded magnificently to alleviate human suffering. Years ago, at the United Nations, the industrialised nations promised to allocate 0.7 percent of their gross national income to aid; none of the G8 countries have yet done so. Only the Scandinavian countries have been outstanding in trying to meet their commitment. Then, in Scotland in 2005, the G8 heads of government made a commitment of US$50 billion in development aid. Almost two years later, they are far from fulfilling their promise.
Now, at the Berlin meeting the development ministers have declared that their governments must “keep their pledges to increase official development assistance”, including ‘doubling their funding for Africa by 2010”. Not many people or organisations are holding their breath in the expectation that these pledges will be met. Tellingly, the G8 development ministers invited China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico to their meeting as the “next generation of potentially large donor countries”.
It is clear that the G8 expects these countries as well as the oil-rich Middle Eastern States to relieve them of some of the responsibilities of providing aid. Increasingly then, moral obligations for providing aid – such as the exploitation of countries and their peoples - are being shunted aside by the rich nations. They want what they regard as the burden of aid to be shared with other countries. But, they also want to influence the purposes for which aid is given and the amount of latitude that such aid gives to the recipient countries to resist the conditions imposed by the G8 and the organisations they control such as the IMF and World Bank.
According to a London Financial Time report G8 ministers said “a global partnership with emerging economies was needed when setting benchmarks for potential recipients”. The real message - directed at China and India both of which have made substantial investments in Africa recently - was simple: do not undermine G8 efforts to constrain and direct the policy options to developing countries by giving them help that reduces their dependence on the G8.
Of course, China and India will be no more altruistic is delivering aid and investment in developing countries than the G8 have been. They, too, are seeking to influence decision-making and to oversee the establishment of conditions that best suit their purposes.
But, if they do not join the G8 agenda, their independent participation in the aid-giving process will reduce the reliance of developing countries on the G8 countries and their institutions, and might broaden the scope for some policies that command national consensus to be adopted. | 
