Does Foreign Aid Subsidize Bad Governments?

By | April 28, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Here is the video I mentioned earlier this month.

At the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in 2007, Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist, publisher, entrepreneur and activist made the case that foreign assistance prevents Uganda’s government from being accountable to its people.

For full disclosure, I worked for Andrew in the past as a journalist at The Daily Monitor and then at a new Ugandan magazine he started called The Independent, so I’m a little biased.

For everyone else, thoughts on how to make sure international assistance doesn’t bankroll cronyism and patronage? Boston Review author Edward Miguel thinks aid can still play an important role in preventing war and strife and in promoting development.

How should emergency aid be administered in countries like Zimbabawe or Sudan, where the government is often actively interfering? How should economic and political assistance for development be targeted to avoid patronage?

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