At a time when the competition for oil, fuels, land and commodities is heating up between the older industrial countries of the North and the emerging industrial countries of the South such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa, ‘aid’ from the North could be a means of tying down the aid recipient countries – especially in Africa, which appears to be the principal target for aid – to the colonial apron strings of the older empire. In such an environment, Yash Tandon argues in Ending Aid Dependence that putting into action an exit strategy from aid must become a top political priority for all countries heavily dependent on aid as current policies aim to perpetuate aid before promoting development.

When many here brow-raising statistics about the billions of dollars in development assistance transferred from global North to Africa alone, they begin to question the utility of aid, but few question first whether the statistics are right. The book highlights how official development assistance (ODA) statistics become misleading when the methodology by which ODA is determined allows donor countries to include indirect costs incurred within their nation to develop awareness.  To apply this to a practical example: is Save Darfur giving aid effectively and efficiently to Darfur by building awareness in the United States?  Would the grassroots Sudanese human rights activist working with limited budget in Darfur feel comfortable with millions of dollars being allocated annually toward informing a foreign audience over directly assisting Darfurians with basic needs and military support (which is also called into question). As aptly noted in Ending Aid Dependence, the current practices regarding aid fail to hold economically empowered nations accountable to internationally accepted benchmarks, nor do development practitioners call into question the outflows from aid dependent nation to the donor nation, which in some cases outweigh the inflows.

As Ending Aid Dependence makes plain the complexity of aid by classifying contributions according to the underlying intentions of

the donor, Tandon brings to light the prevailing problems of “red aid” – aid allocated in order to encourage a specific ideological framework within a government or to perpetuate imperial influence – and “orange aid,” which comes with leashes aimed in large part to empower donor countries in entering recipient markets with leverage.  He continues by imploring readers to examine “yellow aid” or military aid (e.g., AFRICOM and covert operations in Somalia and Uganda) carefully for its dual-potentiality to prolong or prevent independent developmental progress.

Ending Aid Dependence offers country-specific examples on the effects of aid to national development trajectories in countries like Zimbabwe, which suffered terribly after initiating the first structural adjustment loan (red aid) through the IMF that facilitated the pivotal devaluation of Zimbabwean currency and disarming of importation regulation.  Through the case studies, a pattern of economic sabotage via aid reappears across terrains in Africa, Asia, and Central/South America, which in the 21st century is old news represented necessarily as a reminder that tactics have already been used to abuse the global South.

What makes Ending Aid Dependence a particularly useful contribution is that it presents a possible framework for success – a “Seven Steps to Heaven” exit strategy. Beginning with removing the mental enslavement that holds so many of us dependent psychologically on foreign aid, the journey to independence entails a process of restructuring budgets to prioritize domestic market need and develop domestic savings that can lead to ultimately limiting aid to national democratic policies.

The author specifically notes that the anti-Apartheid liberation movement originally drafted a reconstruction plan, “Restoration Development Programme,” that was changed in 1994 with World Bank / IMF support into GEAR, the economic development platform that has set South Africa on the presently continuing trend of foreign capital-based development, leaving many of its people disenfranchised.  He aptly notes that while the donor-oriented development analysts criticize development programs like that in Cuba, their strategy places them high within the UNDP Human Development Index.

Ending Aid Dependence is recommended for all political leaders in the global South from local to national post and particularly for newly independent nations seeking alternatives to colonial domination.  I personally recommend it to Wyclef Jean and others considering a swift transition into international affairs in nation states with limited leverage against the imperial machine. As it incorporates positions along the spectrum of thought regarding aid, it is similarly suitable for secondary and university level discussions.

Ending Aid Dependence is a FAHAMU Book available regionally at Ikirezi Bookshop in Kigali, Fountain Publishers in Uganda, The Nile Bookshop in Khartoum, A Novel Idea Bookshop in Dar es Salaam, Shama Plc in Ethiopia, and internationally via www.fahamubooks.org.  Get a copy and arm yourself with research and analysis from Yash Tandon, a veteran policy maker, analyst, and activist in development and human rights.