Styles of Foreign Assistance: Policy Transfer and Domestic Development in Sub-Saharan African States

Abstract

With the end of the Second World War in 1945, Official Development Assistance (ODA) mainly from the United States went to formerly industrialized European countries to help rebuild their war-torn infrastructures and societies. By the 1950s, Asian countries and societies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan became major recipients of US and other international aid as support for institutional and economic development. At that time, development in many African states was the responsibilities of the colonial powers that had political and economic management responsibilities in the colonial territories. With decolonization starting in 1957 and accelerating in the 1960s in sub-Saharan Africa, and at the height of the Cold War, foreign assistance to the region was mainly as support to governments on the basis of their ideological proclivities rather than for institution building and economic development. With the end of the Cold War, the use of foreign assistance as a tool of foreign policy has not changed, but countries like Japan, China and South Korea have joined the club of donor nations in the international system. The question becomes: to what extent are these new donors likely to change the game of foreign assistance to achieve better economic development results than Western aid donors in Africa? This paper examines the hypothesis that to the extent that Western and Asian donors continue the practice of policy transfers that use funding decisions and implementations based on Western and Asian experiences devoid of policy lessons from domestic realities, foreign assistance will remain ineffective as a significant tool for economic development and growth in Africa. The bulk of the paper will focus on a comparative analysis of foreign assistance and policy outcomes in Nigeria and Zambia.

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