Should we help ‘poor’ countries?

In his The Gift, Marcel Mauss shows that a gift is never an isolated act. It always creates a relationship between the person who gives and the person who receives. The former never simply relinquishes something; the latter cannot consider themselves free of any obligation merely because they have paid the giver nothing. A gift always calls for a response. It brings people closer, but it also binds them.

What Mauss observes between individuals offers another way of examining relations between states. For more than half a century, one part of the world — let us say it plainly: the Western world — has settled into the position of the giver, while another — the countries described as ‘poor’ — has occupied that of the recipient. The vocabulary itself has enshrined this division: on one side are ‘donor’ countries, on the other ‘beneficiary’ countries. Between these two poles flows what has come to be known as ‘international aid’.

Its current decline is, quite rightly, causing serious concern. Programmes are closing, food distributions are being reduced and staff are being laid off. When the withdrawal of funding means less food, less healthcare or less protection for those who depend on it, the urgency is undeniable.

But that urgency does not remove the need to examine the relationship itself. To help presupposes that a need can be met, that someone who has fallen can get back on their feet, and that someone going through a difficult period can recover their means. In its ordinary sense, therefore, aid tends towards its own disappearance: it fulfils its purpose when it is no longer needed.

Aid that continues from one generation to the next therefore changes in nature. It no longer responds only to a temporary difficulty; it eventually organises, on a lasting basis, the relationship between giver and recipient. It is this permanence that must be examined.

A post-war construction

Assistance between states did not begin in 1945. Loans, subsidies, concessions, alliances, investment and relief existed before then. The post-war period nevertheless gave aid a lasting institutional architecture: the Marshall Plan, the OEEC, Point Four, the World Bank, the International Development Association, the Development Assistance Committee and, later, the definition of official development assistance.

The vocabulary settled in alongside the institutions. There were donors and beneficiaries, developed and developing countries, technical assistance. These terms described real differences in resources and capacities. They also organised the relationship around an asymmetry.

When aid ends

The Marshall Plan had a defined duration. Japan joined the World Bank in 1952 and borrowed between 1953 and 1966. Thirty-one loans worth $863 million helped finance electricity, steel, Toyota, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, Kawasaki Steel, motorways, water and the Shinkansen. In 1967 Japan ceased to be a World Bank borrower. It repaid its final loan in 1990 and later became an important creditor and shareholder.

South Korea received substantial international aid after the Korean War. It left the DAC list of ODA recipients in 2000 and joined the same committee as a donor in 2010. It had established the EDCF in 1987 and KOICA in 1991.

These trajectories are not transferable recipes. They simply show that the position of beneficiary can come to an end.

Sixty years do not tell the same story

In several African countries, by contrast, aid has accompanied several generations. That does not mean that all their economies depend on it to the same extent.

In 2023, net ODA represented about 6.27 per cent of Senegal’s gross national income, 2.46 per cent of Kenya’s, 2.06 per cent of Ghana’s, 1.97 per cent of Cameroon’s, 1.50 per cent of Botswana’s and 0.60 per cent of Mauritius’s.

Botswana and Mauritius remain ODA-eligible while depending relatively little on it at the scale of their economies. Receiving aid, depending on aid and exiting aid are three different realities.

Dollars do not tell the whole story

The amount received is not enough to describe a relationship. Funding may build a road, train engineers, finance a public service over the long term or require goods to be purchased from suppliers in the donor country.

The OECD estimates that tied aid, which restricts the recipient’s purchasing options, can increase costs by 15 to 30 per cent. A dollar of aid therefore does not have the same effect under every set of conditions.

The recipient also possesses something

The image of the donor as the one who possesses and the beneficiary as the one who lacks becomes less convincing when we examine what each party brings to the relationship.

A country may lack capital while possessing oil, cobalt, uranium, a market, a geographical position, a vote in an international organisation or strategic importance. Receiving finance does not mean possessing nothing sought by the financier.

The donor’s interest

International aid is not separate from the interests of states. It served purposes during the Cold War, accompanies alliances, sometimes facilitates access to markets or resources and forms part of strategies of influence.

Recognising these interests is not enough to conclude that all aid is an instrument of domination. It does require us to examine at the same time what the beneficiary receives and what the donor seeks.

The ability to refuse

A relationship changes when the recipient has several partners, can mobilise domestic resources or can postpone a project. Its bargaining capacity increases.

Dependence becomes clearer when funding cannot be replaced without bringing an essential service, programme or investment to a halt. The issue is therefore not only the volume of aid, but the alternatives available.

What remains after aid

A road remains. A skill may remain. A strengthened institution may remain. But a service whose recurrent operation depends indefinitely on external financing may stop when that financing stops.

Aid justified by an insufficiency should be examined through what it leaves behind: greater capacity to act, or the need to ask again.

Co-operating

The word co-operation offers another representation of the relationship. It assumes that each party may have something to contribute and something to seek.

The word does not remove power relations. Calling a highly unequal relationship a ‘partnership’ does not make it equal. Co-operation must also be judged by the real capacity of the parties to negotiate, choose and refuse.

Should we help ‘poor’ countries?

When a life immediately depends on food, healthcare or shelter, humanitarian aid responds to a necessity that must be considered differently from a long-term economic relationship.

But when an aid relationship spans generations, the question of its purpose remains. Mauss reminded us that the gift creates a bond. Between states, we must also ask what that bond produces.

Development aid can be judged by a simple question: does it progressively make the recipient capable of doing without the donor?

If dependence remains several generations later, it is no longer only the amount of aid that must be examined. It is the relationship itself.