What Is Foreign Aid And Development Aid?

While it seems difficult to imagine in contemporary times, foreign aid and development assistance were not always important parts of a nation’s international relations and strategy. It is an idea that, while articulated previously, became significantly more common following World War II, when the United States emerged as the predominant world power, eager to exact its newly embraced influence upon the world. In order to better understand how foreign aid and development assistance has changed since its popular implementation, America, and the rest of the World, must reflect back upon the history of development assistance since World War II, strategies that have been used, and what has been successful, and what has failed.
The history of development
While such provision of aid, particularly when enacted by the United States, often had political undertones, as seen in the provision of aid to Nicaragua in the later 1970s to combat leftist guerrillas that the US saw as political threats, other aid, such as that to Africa, was provided with the genuine hope it would make a difference. For example, the United States provided aid to Benin and Mali in Africa, and emergency assistance to Ethiopia, who suffered from a famine (Williams 6). In the 1980s, foreign assistance began to focus on economic liberalization—supporting the development of open and free markets through currency monitoring and the furthered development of financial systems and individualized development assistance plans. During this period of time, the World Bank and IMF became more important, and it was not simply the United States that dictated aid policy—though the idea that competition and liberal trade would lead to stronger democratic institutions was certainly an American-inspired concept (Williams 16). In the 1990s and
For example, regions established their own banks, such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank, and certain countries, like France and Britain, focused on using foreign aid as a way to maintain their relationships with former colonies, “even by the mid-190s, 70% of British aid went to Commonwealth countries, and nearly 90% of French aid went to its former colonies” (Williams 9). Thus, while there are patterns of aid, it is also necessary to understand that each case is different and that there is bound to be some variation depending on a region’s history and