Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog

It is detrimental, says Thilo Thielke in Der Spiegel, because it creates unfairness and dependency in many different ways. First, using the case of Kenya, Thielke invokes a classical concept of formal organizational behavior: self-perpetuation.

"The roads are in horrid disrepair, and they'll stay that way for a while. As a result, it would take days or even weeks to get the corn from the west to the northern parts of the country. But why would they need it there anyway? There's a shortage in the north because the World Food Program is usually there to hand out food for free. The UN's employees are paid to fight hunger, and that's why they usually write reports in which they dramatically portray the situation in Africa and which they usually end with appeals demanding more donated food.

These developmental aid workers, whose reports largely shape our image of Africa, behave this way to a certain extent out of an instinct for self-preservation that they believe the Africans don't have. Without help, they say, all the Africans will starve. And, indeed, without aid, all the helpers would also be out of a job."

A first problem then is that the persistent handing out of free food (largely surplus from Western countries) eliminates any incentives to be locally self-sufficient. And there is also the idea that the WFP needs people to be hungry in order to justify its existence and work (and some well-paying jobs for UN consultants). Even if some adventurous local entrepreneur tried to start local food production in an area with a numerous malnourished or under-nourished population, the results would likely be disastrous:  Read more…

"Aid does not work" is a meme we often hear when it comes to development. Actually, it is a pronouncement made by people who would like foreign aid to stop and see it as "one of these failed government projects." Aid does work under proper conditions, but quite often, as Jeffrey Sachs has demonstrated, aid does not work because of the donor countries who either do not live up to their commitment or actually set up aid to benefit themselves without much consideration for the people that are supposed to be helped. Two stories in the news highlight these problems.