Some Elements of an Aid Disengagement Strategy

The experience of 50 years of aid shows that the donor countries in collaboration with the recipients must define far more clearly exactly where and how they can add value. They started to do something like that during the first decade of the 2000s at Monterrey, Rome, Paris, Accra and Busan; but after nearly 10 years of New Aid, the achievement has been small and the full implications of important changes in the dynamics of the international order have apparently not yet been absorbed.

One key implication of the new dynamic is that aid resources and diaspora resources are not necessarily complementary and may instead be to some extent mutually exclusive, with diaspora resources superseding aid resources. The surge in private transfers across the world and a growing partnership between the diasporas and many home countries may be a historic opportunity for a new impetus to development without aid, in Africa and the poorer countries of South Asia and Latin America.