development aid and africa - aalborg...

Master's Thesis Rethinking Official Development Assistance

ContentsAbstract................................................................................................................................1Introduction..........................................................................................................................3Problem formulation............................................................................................................6

Why Official Development Assistance?.........................................................................7Theory................................................................................................................................11

What is development?...................................................................................................12A Variety of Aid.............................................................................................................13Critical Development Theory........................................................................................15Europe’s role in development theory............................................................................17Dependency Theory......................................................................................................21New Development Models............................................................................................24

The Millennium Development Goals.......................................................................25Methodology......................................................................................................................27

Structure........................................................................................................................30Limitations....................................................................................................................31

Analysis..............................................................................................................................32The Mid-African Countries...........................................................................................33

DR Congo.................................................................................................................33Nigeria......................................................................................................................35Somalia.....................................................................................................................36

ODA in Mid-Africa.......................................................................................................37Why Do Mid-Africa Stay Poor?...................................................................................42What Can Be Done?......................................................................................................51

Institutions, Infrastructure, and Governance............................................................51Aid dependency or local involvement?....................................................................54

The Tiger Economies – A Comparison.........................................................................57What is a Tiger Economy?.......................................................................................57The Tiger Economies' Way To Prosperity................................................................59Thailand....................................................................................................................60

Comparison...................................................................................................................62Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6Bibliography........................................................................................................................9

Books...............................................................................................................................9Websites........................................................................................................................12

Marie Helene Holst 1Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


Abstract

Official Development Assistance (ODA) is viewed very differently today than it was just

10 years ago. 10 years ago it was the mantra of many institutions and organizations.

Today it is questioned whether foreign aid is efficient enough and the right way to

embrace poverty.

In this paper the role of ODA together with improvements in poverty alleviation will be

addressed.

Critical Development Theory (CDT), Eurocentrism and Dependency Theory will be

thoroughly examined in the section on theory. Critical Development Theory is relevant in

reference to examine ODA, as it questions the almost impenetrable ideology of

development. It questions whether the role of the West is too dominating in finding a

doable development method for Africa. In the same breath there will be a coherent

description of the term Eurocentrism, which describes the role of the West in the aim of

developing Africa and its role in relation to the effect it has on terms and definitions more

generally. Dependency Theory is implemented to examine the role between the West and

mid-Africa to find whether dependency has had an influence on the development process.

ODA, with primary focus on ODA in mid-Africa, will create the foundation for the

analysis to find why development aid has been damaging for mid-Africa instead of being

profitable and improving, which has always been the primary target of ODA. There have,

however, also been secondary targets such as interests, trade and alliances and that is one

of the reasons why development aid has continued flowing into Africa.

Furthermore, looking into what makes it so difficult for Africa to get out of the

impenetrable wall of poverty and what can be done to change the impasse will be

included in the analysis. Several possible ways will be analyzed and discussed to find

what will be doable for Africa and in the end can create sustainable development.

In this thesis mid-Africa, who are among the poorest regions in the world, will be

compared with the tiger economies and more specifically Thailand, who has been in a

similar situation as Africa; poor development and high poverty rates, but is now in a

phase of improving economies. The comparison will be used to find whether Africa can



benefit from Asian prosperity and improve economies or whether Africa needs different

methods to become financially independent.

Processes that can create poverty alleviation are various, some of them include

institutional and governmental improvements, national involvement and sector oriented

aid, and should be adjusted to the specific country contexts which can create the

foundation for poverty alleviation in Africa.

There are signs of minor improvements in development processes in mid-Africa,

however, there is still a long way to go to reach sustainable stability and growth.



Introduction

Foreign aid has existed for many decades. Furthermore, assistance for the poor less

developed countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, has been a consistent part of the rich

North's development policy.

There are many types of foreign aid; direct money transfers organized by NGOs and

other organizations, bilateral aid, micro loans, small projects etc, and all of them have

been tried out in the search for the way out of poverty. It is, however, necessary to

consider several types of ODA and combine some of them to adjust them to a country's

needs in its development process to alleviate poverty.

Despite the fact that the less developed countries received great amounts of aid, in 2010 it

was estimated that 700 million people were still living in extreme poverty (less than 1.25

dollar per day) and in Africa 48% of the population is a part of that statistic (The UN

2014: 8). Generally seen, the poverty rate has decreased on a global scale, though the

balance of the decrease is uneven and the number of extreme poor is still very high in

Africa. As stated in the UN report on the millennium development goals, the

overwhelming majority of the poor lives in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia (The

UN 2014: 9).

The aim of decreasing poverty has not been completely unsuccessful. Countries have

experienced prosperity and development and conflicts has ended. Countries that have

experienced development are, among others, Ghana and Senegal, but overall there should

have been a much higher decrease in poverty compared to the assistance and aid

provided.

The extent of poverty in Africa has always been a cause for wonder and that is the reason

for writing this thesis. Though the entire African region cannot be determined as being

underdeveloped and the aim of this thesis is therefore narrowed down to research on the

reasons for the constant poverty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and

Somalia and what can be done to improve the processes of development in these three



different countries, which suffer from poverty, instability and underdevelopment. For

instance, according to the UN report on the millennium development goals, DR Congo is

number 5 on the list of ‘the largest share of the global extreme poor, 2010’, which shows

that 4.6 % of the world’s poor live in DR Congo (The UN 2014: 9).

Tiger economies is well developed economies in East and Southeast Asia. The tiger

economies have in common that they found a way out of the dominating poverty and is

steadily finding its way to sustainable development though they are not there yet. They

have developed into rather well-functioning economies, though it is not yet possible to

keep up with the standards of the West. The development of the tiger economies will be

placed in connection with the mid-African countries to find if it can be beneficiary for

mid-Africa.

The African countries used in this thesis are located centrally in Africa but they are not all

a part of the Central African Region. So to avoid confusion the African countries in this

thesis will, when mentioned coherently, be referred to as 'the mid-African countries' or

simply 'mid-Africa'. The developing world will be defined as 'less developed countries'

(LDCs). 'The Third World' is another term but as indicated by Sousa Santos it is

meaningless (Munck & O'Hearn: 35). Bob Sutcliffe also touch upon this, he states that

concepts as ‘periphery’ and ‘Third World’ are obsolete due to the effect of globalization

and the exclusion of national boundaries (Munck & O'Hearn: 147). No matter what term

is chosen they are all imperfect and insufficient and as Baker states “each of the terms

has its flaws and slightly divergent connotations” (6).

There is still a desperate need for assistance; something that can change the ongoing

inequality between the North and the South. The meaning of development in the

developing world should be questioned to find whether it is the right approach to poverty

alleviation and Critical Development Theory will aim at this, simultaneously

Eurocentrism will be implemented to analyze the dominating role of the West. The

dependency that exists between the two regions has also been influential in the

development processes or lack of same, but has it damaged the opportunity for mid-



Africa to develop?

As indicated by Moyo, “the lives of billions rest on getting the right financing solutions

to the problems of developing nations” (16). It is about finding the most suitable and

workable process for mid-Africa. It might not be that ODA is the most appropriate

process for poverty alleviation, national involvement, public institutions, and good

governance are processes that needs to be considered in a successful alleviation of

poverty.

Problem formulationDue to these contradictory terms: 'aid' and 'poverty', there is a basis for researching on

foreign aid and how it works. There are a number of questions to be asked but to narrow

down the many questions and to analyze the main issue, the following will be

approached;

Rethinking Official Development Assistance - Is Official Development Assistance a

solution to poverty alleviation?

A case study on mid-Africa (DR Congo, Nigeria and Somalia) in connection with

the tiger economies, more specifically Thailand.

There is no doubt that mid-Africa is very poor even after trillions of dollars of aid and

several projects and assistance (Baker: 137). To be able to go into the thesis in depth the

overriding question will be combined with the following sub-questions:

- How can Official Development Assistance be utilized to alleviate poverty?

- What influence do aid dependency and Eurocentrism have on development?

The aim is to research on the matter of Official Development Assistance and find the

reason for stalemate in mid-Africa despite large amounts of aid and assistance.

Why Official Development Assistance?In this section, the reason for researching on ODA and its impact on poverty alleviation



will be outlined here, as to connect it to the study on Global Refugee Studies.

This topic is interesting to look into in reference to Global Refugee Studies, as to find

better solutions for the poorer countries where most of the refugees come from. If the

Official Development Assistance is more targeted; aiming at specific sectors, it can create

long-term solutions which can diminish the refugee flows. But how can Official

Development Assistance be targeted to benefit the poor? It will be further elaborated in

the analysis.

In Africa, diseases, civil war, and famine are common issues and they are causing major

refugee flows. Only three African countries: DR Congo, Nigeria and Somalia, have

generated a total number of 1.664.030 refugees where the greater part is from Somalia;

1.136.719 refugees. Changing the current situation with a more suitable development

process could have an effect on the number of refugees – but what is suitable

development for Africa?

If essentials as infrastructure and stability were improved, it could help the UNHCR in

cases like this:

“In many parts of Africa, access to people of concern is limited by insecurity, lack of

rule of law, a dearth of even the most basic infrastructure, such as passable roads,

and environmental challenges, including heavy and erratic rainfall […]. In other

instances, as for example in the Central African Republic, Sudan and Somalia, access

to parts of the country remains limited, with UNHCR and its partners taking

advantage of every small window of opportunity to bring humanitarian assistance to

people of concern.”1

Furthermore, natural disasters are becoming a new phenomenon within the refugee

agenda. Floods or extreme weather conditions are new topics on the list of issues causing

refugees and in a report from the European Commission, it appears that the countries

most vulnerable to these disasters are the poorest and among them are the ACP countries2,

1 '2014 UNHCR country operations profile – Africa'2 The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States; where 48 of them are African countries from the sub-Saharan region.Marie Helene Holst 7Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


which includes all three mid-African countries. To be able to diminish the risk the EU is

working towards sustainable development and therefore the aim is to implement

regulation of natural resources to secure environmental sustainability as a part of

reducing poverty (The European Commission 2014: 3).

It will be possible to change the frequency of such catastrophes if the general situation in

mid-Africa were changed and arguably, if foreign aid and assistance were better utilized,

the situation in mid-Africa could gradually change for the better and refugee flows could

be reduced. Since the first time aid was distributed, it has not proven to have much effect

on a general level and Africa has been the poorest continent for decades. It can be

discussed further whether foreign aid has played a major part in creating the current

situation for mid-Africa and therefore plays a large role in the causes of refugee flows. If

the foreign aid is changed into a more efficient strategy, the refugee flows will decrease,

because the situation will improve.

There is a connectedness between solving the problem of displacement and internally

displaced people (creating safer environments) and the effect of ODA (means for creating

safer environments) and therefore this topic is of relevance to the study on global refugee

studies.

As argued by Christensen and Harild, the reasons for forced displacement can be related

to the lack or failure of development which results in i.a. poverty, corruption and lack of

government authority. These factors can create conflict that can lead to displacement (11).

It is evident from the UN report on the Millennium Development Goals that “every day in

2013, 32,000 people had to abandon their homes to seek protection due to conflict”

(2014: 8) and in an attempt to stop this problem, ODA could be a useful tool (the

Millennium Development Goals will be elaborated further down).

Development interventions are necessary to remove barriers that can hinder durable

solutions for refugees. Christensen and Harild mention four durable solutions which are

needed to create the best circumstances for refugees' displacement (Christensen & Harild:

14):



i) Land, housing and property: is essential to sustainable recovery and livelihood

restoration. It is crucial with housing, land and property rights even if resettlement is in

another country since it provides capital to build a future;

ii) Reestablishment of livelihoods: creating new livelihood opportunities through

development interventions is essential for durable solutions;

iii) Delivery of services: health care, education, access to infrastructure and services,

restoration of the rule of law and security are some of the main services that ought to be

available for the returnees;

iv) Accountable and responsive governance: plays an important role in creating good

relations between the displaced and the communities where they will resettle.

Communication between the two groups is needed to create good integration. There is a

need for consultation and participation processes that replace social fragmentation with

cohesion.

It is the same with refugee resettlement as it is with country development, as stated by

Christensen and Harild: “Different refugee groups may require different solutions tailored

to facilitate their return to their areas of origin, settlement in a different part of their

country of origin, or integration in the host country” (15).

The UNHCR created Refugee Aid and Development in the 1980s in targeting

development assistance to support durable solutions for displaced people. In 2003, it

became a part of the Framework for Durable Solutions for Refugees and Persons of

Concern which also include (i) Development Assistance for Refugees (DAR), (ii) the 4Rs

of Repatriation, Reintegration, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction, and (iii) Development

through Local Integration (DLI). These are examples of the connectedness between

development and refugees.

Refugee assistance is still believed to belong to the humanitarian spectra rather than the

developmental spectra due to the perception that longer-term solutions will be created as

soon as the conflict/crisis is over and immediate needs are met, though that is not the case

since repatriation or resettlement alone does not put an end to the crisis (Christensen & Marie Helene Holst 9Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


Harild: 16). There are, according to Christensen and Harild, four reasons why refugees

continue to be a matter of the humanitarian aspect: i) refugees are not part of the host

government’s political constituency, ii) refugees are located in remote areas, iii) refuges

are not a priority to development actors because they follow the priorities of the recipient

government, and iv) low prospects for support by host governments for local integration.

If the governments change attitude and integrate refugees and IDPs as a part of their

development aspect, it can lessen fragility by reducing social conflict, strengthening

government capacity and lessen insecurity through benefiting local host communities

(Christensen & Harild: 19).

According to Collier, one of the main risk factors for conflict is low income and slow

growth – poverty for the people is low income, poverty for the government is slow

growth (178). Furthermore he states that “poverty is simply the default option when

economies malfunction” (157).

This chapter has included the introduction, the problem formulation and the reason for

researching on ODA and the importance of development in relation to improve the

situation of refugees. In the following chapter Critical Development Theory will be

introduced in connection with the term Eurocentrism and Dependency Theory.



Theory

In this section, Critical Development Theory will be presented and described and the

conduction will be done with 'Critical Development Theory - Contributions to a New

Paradigm' by Ronaldo Munck & Denis O'Hearn and 'Dead Aid - Why Aid is Not Working

And How There is a Better Way for Africa' by Dambisa Moyo, as the main point of

orientation.

The concept of aid began in 1944, after World War II, to create a stable economy after the

effects of WWII. Secretary of State in the US, Georg C. Marshall, created a rescue

package to Europe after WWII to help reconstruct a stable Europe - a financial

intervention. It became a success and did create stability which was the intention. If it

works for Europe, why should it not be working in places like Africa? (Moyo: 12) And

this is how it started.

Around the 1950s and 1960s development became a part of the political agenda by

manifesting itself through initiatives by President Truman and President Kennedy,

respectively.

Moyo divides aid into seven main categories according to decades, where the relevant

ones for this paper are: the 1970s; where aid was an answer to poverty, the 1980s; where

aid was the tool for stabilization, the 1990s; where aid was the answer to democracy and

governance, and today’s era where aid is the answer to everything in Africa. In reference

to this paper, it begins in the 1970s as poverty in this decade were diminished by means

of aid and that is, according to Moyo, where it goes wrong (Moyo: x). The past fifty years

of aid has given Africa slower growth, higher poverty and left Africa off the economic

ladder any more than economic prosperity (Moyo: 28). This is also emphasized by

Rwanda’s president when he states that the money was spent on creating regimes with no

focus on development (Moyo: 27).

Initially, there will be a short description of the term development and a presentation of

the relevant types of ODA for this paper. The next part presents a further description of



CDT, thereafter an exposition of the European involvement and lastly a look into

alternative development.

What Is Development?In this section, there will be a very brief description of development. In “The discourse of

“development” and why the concept should be abandoned” (2013) Aram Ziai gives an

account of development. Development theory has two roots which go back to the

nineteenth-century, namely: evolutionism and social technology. Evolutionism claims

that social change proceeds in historical stages and social technology claims that social

interventions based on expert knowledge is necessary for change. Alcalde states that the

“first and broadest function of the idea of development was to give economic activity,

particularly foreign economic activity, a positive and essential meaning for the lives of

less-developed peoples” (quoted in Ziai: 126). Ziai continues and states that the Post-

Development school defines development in two ways; number one as the development

type that occurred after WWII where the aim of development was to develop the less

developed regions and number two as a certain concept of social change.

There are a number of assumptions that indicate what development is and additionally,

there has been added more concrete assumptions that describe how development can be

achieved. Ziai mentions four assumptions which he calls the core assumptions because

they form the basis of what is written about development. The four core assumptions are:

‘The existential’, ‘the normative’, ‘the practical’ and ‘the methodological’. They

determine that there are differences among states and their degree of development and

that development is possible to realize. The more concrete assumptions were added to the

classical paradigm of development: ‘The specification of the goal’, ‘the specification of

the process’ and ‘the legitimation of the process’ which all describe how development can

be achieved (Ziai: 126).

In the following section a description of ODA and different types of ODA will be

presented.



A Variety Of AidBefore a presentation of Critical Development Theory, an overview of the relevant types

of ODA will be shortly presented. Some of the types of aid are: financial aid,

development aid and non-governmental aid. There is also humanitarian aid which include

institutional support, aid coordination and non-governmental diplomacy. There are,

however, a number of inefficiencies connected to humanitarian aid such as diverging

perceptions of priorities, rivalry between aid agencies, and, the most dominating, the

absence of a master plan based on consensus (Trefon: 12). Humanitarian aid is closely

linked with development aid, as stated by Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen;

“in recent years the borderline between humanitarian and development aid has become

more fluid“ (69). Official Development Assistance (ODA) is the most widely used

definition of foreign aid and also the reason for ODA to be used in this paper when it

considers foreign aid. ODA encompasses both the humanitarian and development aid and

both types of aid have relevance to this paper, however, development aid more so due to

the development aspect. The main objective of ODA is to promote economic

development and welfare in less developed countries (Feeny and Clarke: 25-26).

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD defines ODA as such:

“The most commonly used measure of foreign aid is Official Development Assistance (ODA)

which is defined by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD. To qualify

as ODA, flows to developing countries must consist of grants or loans which are: (i)

undertaken by the official sector; (ii) with promotion of economic development and welfare

as the main objectives; and (iii) loans must be provided at concessional financial terms (with

interest rates below market rates). In addition to financial flows, technical cooperation is

included in aid. Technical cooperation consists of grants to nationals of recipient countries

receiving education or training. It also includes payments to consultants, advisers, teachers

and administrators serving in recipient countries. Assistance for military purposes is

excluded (OECD, 2007a)” (Feeny and Clarke: 26).

In general terms, ODA covers aid from a donor in the North to a receiver in the South. It

can be bilateral, which means the aid is given directly from donor to receiver and it can

be multilateral, which means that it is donated through a third part; for instance an Marie Helene Holst 13Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


organization (Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen: 68). The humanitarian aid

includes emergency aid, protection, integration and repatriation of refugees, human rights

activities and so forth. It is in most cases donated in relation to extreme poverty, war and

other types of conflicts. It is all about a fast and effective contribution to vulnerable

groups of people. The development aid and the meaning of it has changed from 'relief aid'

to 'cooperation' and finally the newest tendency 'partnership', which indicates a rapid

change within aid types and strategies (Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen: 69).

Though, the importance of partnership were already considered in the 1960s, “as foreign

aid expanded across more developing countries, and as aid programs grew in

importance, practitioners began to emphasize that foreign aid must involve

“partnership”, not dependence“ (Bräutigam and Knack: 257).

The previous section indicated that there are a number of types of ODA and different

ways to distribute it; bilaterally or multilateral. The next section will give a description of

CDT and related terms will be covered.

Critical Development TheoryThe following section, will provide an introduction of CDT and its approach towards the

Western leverage in development in less developed countries.

The term ‘development’ is, according to the authors of ‘Critical Development Theory’, a

Eurocentric definition as they state “the West has appropriated and controls the past, the

present and the future of the non-West” (Munck & O’Hearn: xvi). What they seek to find

is other ways to develop than what is defined as development by the West – they claim

that it is about other ways of knowing and being. This is supported by Aram Ziai who

states that ‘development’ is a positive concept that has been exposed to Eurocentrism,

depoliticizing, and authoritarian implications (123).

The essentials of development is that the West perceives what is right and what should be

done, without involving the Africans and regardless of what they believe or find

necessary. Even during the revolution of France and Britain it was seen as a necessity to



execute military domination, slavery, genocide and colonialism before progress and

civilization could come into place (Munck & O'Hearn: 5). The fact that development is

done over the Africans' head is described very accurately by Munck & O'Hearn. They

explain development as

"an essential part of the process whereby the 'developed' countries manage, control and even

create the Third World economically, politically, sociologically and culturally. It is a process

whereby the lives of some peoples, their plans, their hopes, their imaginations, are shaped by

others who frequently share neither their lifestyle, nor their hopes nor their values" (1).

This is very straightforward and this could also be a reason to why development has

failed so severely - can the West decide what is best for Africa? This will be further

elaborated on in the analysis.

Reasons for many African countries to lack development are, according to Moyo, a

number of elements, such as colonialism, the climate, and terrain of the countries. The

colonialism because of the negative impact the colony had on the colonized by

constructing the country into something that it was not compatible with (Moyo: 31). The

climate and terrain makes it difficult to grow commodities and it is important to grow

commodities to sell and export to create sustainable development.

A fourth reason is the many tribes that exist in the African countries. The differences

between the tribes within one country can make it difficult to collaborate and as stated by

Moyo “ethnic rivalry can lead to civil unrest and strife” (32).

Yet another reason is the lack of public offers and institutions such as free health care and

police. Moyo explains that, according to David Landes, “the ideal growth and

development model is one guaranteed by political institutions” (Moyo: 33). An example

of an African country with an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is

Botswana where political institutions are seen as the reason for this prosperity (Moyo:

34). Though, she also argues for the difficulty of implementing public institutions and

making them work as planned. That can be difficult in countries where corruption is

commonly intertwined with the government. This will be further elaborated in the Marie Helene Holst 15Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


analysis.

Finally, Moyo argues, that many elements combined contribute to the situation in which

many African countries find themselves today. A mix of the above reasons contribute

largely to the poor development, some more than others.

There are two processes of change in the development term. The first concerns goods,

mastery over nature, rational organization and technological efficiency and the second

concerns power and ideology. The first process is shared willingly by the West with

Africa. The second one, however, the West is more protective of. Tucker states that "low-

income nations are often thwarted in their pursuit of goals implicit in the first processes

by the prevailing structures which govern the second" (Munck & O'Hearn: 4). He argues,

that cultural practices are important in hindering this. Shared beliefs are important in

challenging development practices and hinder a standstill of development. This cultural

practice will be further examined in the analysis. Tucker argues critically that culture has

been excluded from the development studies, a major blind spot, as he calls it, and that it

has negative consequences and is the reason for the undeveloped development (Munck &

O'Hearn: 2).

According to both Munck & O'Hearn (1999) and Moyo (2009), development is an

ideology that needs to be revised or completely destroyed before it destroys the less

developed countries since it has no positive effect, at least not on the poor developing

part of the world.

In the lack of a better word ‘development’ will be used in this thesis to define the process

of prosperity and alleviation of poverty, however the term is being questioned in relation

to the Eurocentric meaning of development.

The critical view on development and its negative impact on the less developed countries

have been outlined in the above section. In the following section the term Eurocentrism

will be further explained.



EurocentrismIn this section Eurocentrism and the role of the West in the less developed countries will

be outlined, as to find if Eurocentrism has negative consequences for the development of

the less developed countries.

In relation to critical development theory, it is relevant to look at Eurocentrism. It is

defined by Ziauddin Sardar as the defining influence of Europe. Europe has the power to

define whatever term, ideology, and ism and then the rest of the world have to accept the

definition. Eurocentrism is not only visible in Europe, but also in the non-western part of

the world as they are affected by the definitions and knowledge of the West. The non-

West uses the West “as the yardstick for measuring the social and political progress of

their own societies” (Munck & O'Hearn: 44). The influence Europe has on the non-

Western world is enormous in all aspects; market, economy, definitions, ideology etc. The

West defines the past, present and future of the non-West due to the influence it has and

the non-West is constantly aiming for Western results, though they can never really catch-

up; it shapes the world in the image of a single culture (Munck & O'Hearn: 46). This is

emphasized by Sutcliffe as he mentions that the most radical versions of globalization

argues that the world has become “a single society with a single class structure” (Munck

& O'Hearn: 147).

Eurocentrism plays a significant role in the development theory. Eurocentrism consists of

certain aspects that define it: technology and machinery, nation-state; the desirable and

legitimate form of political organization and liberal secularism; the only guarantor of

pluralism and freedom (Munck & O'Hearn: 47).

Disciplines reaching from economics to anthropology “are socially constructed and developed and grow within specific worldviews and cultural

milieus […]. They are all products of a particular culture and a particular way of looking

at the world and are hierarchically subordinated to that culture and worldview” (Munck

& O'Hearn: 50).

In this sense, there is referred to the West and its worldview. Examples of terms that have



been affected by Eurocentrism is ‘physics’; which is to conquer nature, ‘sociology’; to

understand Western societies and ‘anthropology’; to control and manage Other cultures.

One more thing these terms have in common, apart from Eurocentrism, is to perpetuate

the worldview of the West (Munck & O'Hearn: 50).

Sutcliffe argues that the West hindered the industrialization of the South. The West has a

tendency to disguise the problem as it is beneficiary for them. The lifestyle and interests

of the West will be less sustainable if the South will increase consumption and

productivity as the competitiveness will be equalized. The West will not have the same

amount of consumer spending at their disposal if equality on the consumption area is

reached. Currently they have the possibility to spend extra as the South is spending less

(Munck and O'Hearn: 144). Sutcliffe further argues that development is even undesirable

for the underdeveloped as their own culture and meaning can be destroyed due to by-

products that came along with development (Munck and O'Hearn: 145).

Tucker argues that the western idea is “used as a standard for measuring the performance

of other peoples' social imaginaries” (Munck & O'Hearn: 21) and that is, according to

Tucker, the essential issue of development theory. To demolish the crisis within the

development discourse, a deconstruction of the Western sovereignty is essential.

Vincent Tucker argues, furthermore, that "the discourse of modernization and

development is a European monologue conducted with Europeans' own mythic self-image

rather than a dialogue with other historically grounded cultures and societies" (Munck &

O'Hearn: 8). Which indicates the exclusion of less developed countries and their needs

and desires. The Europeans know what is right and how less developed countries should

develop. The issue of developing a country from the mindset of an external expert and

excluding the people who it really concerns will be included in the analysis.

There is a distinction between the West as the hegemony and power, and the developing

world as the Others; objects to develop (Munck & O'Hearn: 13). Tucker argues that it is

important to implement dialogs rather than monologues (Munck & O'Hearn: 14). The



importance of dialog with the Others is also emphasized by Danida, as they pinpoint the

importance of having a fruitful dialog with the recipient countries in relation to adjusting

poverty alleviation to each country (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 12).

Amartya Sen calls attention to the fact that civilizations are hard to partition in terms as

‘the Western world’ and ‘the Third World’, given the diversities within each society as

well as the linkages among different countries and cultures. It is not only religion that

defines us; it is the plurality. Dividing humanity into various groups impoverishes the

world and makes it more flammable. It is important to acknowledge that people are

diversely different and cannot be identified purely on religion or area (Sen 2001). As

previously mentioned, this is also emphasized by Sutcliffe he states that concepts as

‘periphery’ and ‘Third World’ are obsolete due to the exclusion of national boundaries

To hinder that the world is consisting of two discrete worlds it is important that western

social scientists communicate and cooperate with other intellectuals from other cultures

and open their worldview. Then "social worlds that are part of each other yet constituted

differently" can coexist (Munck & O'Hearn: 16). This is essential to the development

discourse. Tucker argues that respectful dialog is the road to a more equal modernity

between the West and its Others (Munck & O'Hearn: 20). Furthermore he states that:

"the encounter between Western modernity and indigenous cosmologies is problematic in that

the particular concept of secularity deeply ingrained in the normative ideal of Western society

leads to an intolerance of societies that it deems religious" (Munck & O'Hearn: 20).

What else is needed are open models that focus on process and dialogical exchange and

can render possible the dynamism of cultural exchange which is an important asset of

good development theory (Munck & O'Hearn: 22). Producing theoretical perspectives on

development that is not defined or imposed by the West is necessary. The cultural concept

is important in equalizing production of knowledge between the West and the less

developed countries, but the concept of politics and economy is also essential in

development theory (Munck & O'Hearn: 24).



Ziai continues the debate on the issue of forcing the westernized idea of development on

less developed countries and he argues that “the possibility that some cultures or some

people in general might object to the assumption that highly individualised consumer

societies based on competition, infinite human needs, and unimpaired exploitation of

nature constitute the best of all possible worlds” (128). He continues and looks into the

role of the hegemony and the Others and argues that the hegemony creates the Other as

an inferior version of the Self (the West) to make the Self superior, but “the attempts to

reform the Other in the image of the Self will never succeed entirely – the copy will never

achieve the status of the original, at least “not quite” (Bhabha quoted in Ziai: 128).

As mentioned previously, there have been many stages of development (Moyo: x). One

that has been of importance to locate the rate of poverty was in the 1950s. The more

urbanization the better and the more modern a society would be perceived. It was about

industrialization rather than agriculture and that came with a cost for Africa; it led to

massive migrations and that destroyed the agricultural bases of the non-West, as they had

little industry which caused unemployment and that had an effect on the increasing

poverty rate (Munck & O'Hearn: 52). There is a different development stage for each

decade but they are all affected by the agenda of the West (Munck & O'Hearn: 53).

According to Sardar, development will always have the same meaning; “a standard by

which the West measures the non-West” (Munck & O'Hearn: 49).

The meaning of Eurocentrism and its effect on the less developed countries have been

described. In the following section, Dependency Theory will be introduced.

Dependency TheoryThis section entails a description of Dependency Theory and its involvement in the

development of the less developed countries.

Dependency theory had its beginning in the 1950s and continued being of importance for

thirty years. At its highest, it was the dominant theory for politics and economics in less

developed countries. The core economies had great influence on periphery economies, so



much that they could not shape their own economy and political agenda. From that arose

dependency. The dependency theorists blame an international bourgeoisie for creating

expropriation; selling a commodity to a higher price than the production price while

making sure the workers did not benefit from that. The theorists claim that the

bourgeoisie started it during the colonialism and then maintained it afterwards through

economic globalization. Multinational corporations managed to create a large surplus in

the periphery economies, by selling products for high prices while produced in the

periphery for cheap money. Instead of investing them there, they sent them back to the

developed world (Baker: 110). Capital can easily be transferred between countries, but

labor cannot due to restrictions on migration and that makes it difficult for workers in the

periphery to find better job opportunities and therefore, have to work for less. That leads

to good opportunities for the rich countries and they can get economic value as surplus

which benefit the bourgeoisie.

Dependency theorists believed this to continue through authoritarian regimes in the 1960s

which functioned as an intermediary for the international bourgeoisie. It is even believed

that foreign capital created politics in the periphery to its own advantage. A coup in

Guatemala was made by the US in 1954 and the rumor has it that it was because of the

democratically elected president and his reform, which could have damaged an American

company and its capital (Baker: 111).

What also made it difficult for the less developed countries to improve market capital was

the dependency on one single item for export and the foreign demand for it. Investment

was not major and therefore the LDCs were trapped with “sectors with little potential for

learning and productivity improvement” (Baker: 112). The dependency on one single

product created volatility and that caused poor economic progress.

Baker states that the tiger economies experienced sustained growth because of the

engagement with the global economy. They were following an export-promotion strategy

and therefore had to compete with quality and price standards of developed world



consumers. For the tiger economies it was the manufacturing sector that did well because

of reinvestment in capital equipment from export revenues and they could gradually

improve export technology. Thailand was also one of the countries that adopted the

export-promotion strategy and reached sustainable development (Baker: 114). The tiger

economies have thereby belied the before mentioned role of the international trade

relations regarding expropriation. According to Baker, “periphery countries can move up

the global commodity chain through engagement with global markets, and wages and

prosperity will increase as productivity rises” (114).

According to dependency theory, the multinational corporations, international markets,

and foreign aid determined the economic activities within the dependent states (McGee

and Warms: 5).

Critics argued that modernization led to growth of infrastructure and they further point to

the development of formerly poor countries as the Asian tigers and thereby belie the

dependency. Critics further argue that dependency theory exaggerate the influence of the

global market, as not all commodities cross borders and do not believe that everything

can be blamed on international forces. Furthermore critics argue that terms of trade did

not decline in the LDCs and “the level of a country's terms of trade is neither a cause nor

even indicative of its overall well-being”. (Baker: 112). They argue that peripheral

countries can reach prosperity by improving productivity and engaging in global markets.

Dependency theorists counter-argued that the less developed countries were still

depending on a number of factors such as multinational corporations, repressed labor

unions, and were still dominated by a small elite.

Dependency theory have inadequacies and lack in solutions for other issues than

dependency. They saw socialist revolution and independence as the only solution to

poverty, though it neglected focusing on programs combating HIV/AIDS, improving

agricultural production, or working toward women's rights issues (McGee and Warms: 7).

Dependency theory focused on an explanation for the development and



underdevelopment of countries in a capitalist world system and claims underdevelopment

is rooted in history and political economy. It has a eurocentric view and claims that

powerful nation-states and multinational corporations became the dominant power over

less developed countries (McGee and Warms: 8).

According to Bräutigam and Knack “aid dependence is a problematic condition caused

by, but not synonymous with, large transfers of aid” (257). As stated by Bräutigam and

Knack, Roger Riddell claims that aid dependence, caused by continuing aid, makes no

contribution to the achievement of self-sustaining development. Furthermore, Rehman

Sobhan, describes aid dependence as “a state of mind, where aid recipients lose their

capacity to think for themselves and thereby relinquish control” (quoted in Bräutigam and

Knack: 257).

Aid dependence, is by Bräutigam and Knack defined as a situation where the government

is unable to maintain its core functions as government, such as the maintenance of

existing infrastructure or the delivery of basic public services, without foreign aid

funding and expertise. This is applicable for many countries in Africa today, where many

governments are perceived to have developed a “cozy accommodation with dependency”

(Bräutigam and Knack: 257).

“The evidence indicates that high levels of aid are the cause rather than the result of

deteriorating governance” (Bräutigam and Knack: 272).

Dependency Theory and its role in the less developed countries has been introduced. In

the next section, examples of alternative models to the Western development model will

be described.

Alternative Development ModelsIn this section, a selection of other development models will be introduced to implement

alternatives to the Western development model.

Munck mentions a new development model which he refers to as ‘the other development



model’. It is described as a counterpart to the Western development model because the

Western model prescribes what is defined as development and what is not. 'The other

model' focuses largely on “self-reliance, sustainability, cultural pluralism, and the need

to prioritize human needs” (Munck & O'Hearn: 201) which the western model does not

entail in the same degree. Björn Hettne states that “alternative development is a cry for

visibility, participation and justice” (quoted in Munck & O'Hearn: 201) for those who are

overlooked in the Western development model. This is referred to as a normative

approach of development, which Ziai has described as one of the core assumptions of

development (126). However, much is promised, but it also has to be practiced and

preferably by the known and the moral, as the white man's burden still weighs heavy

(Munck and O'Hearn: 201).

‘Popular development’ is yet another model to replace the Western model. It is based on a

process that makes people capable of taking control of their destinies and focuses, among

other things, on gender, environment, and needs. Though, according to Munck, the

human race is not ready for that type of development where one can take control of one’s

own destiny (Munck & O'Hearn: 202).

The positive element of the new models of development is that they listen to the voice of

the unheard (Munck & O'Hearn: 203).

Munck sums up by stating that what is needed now, in a post-development era, is “ the

transposition of universal theories and concepts into locally relevant forms of

understanding”. That is making the already existing models into individual models which

is interpreted and approved on a local basis. Among dependency theorists, including

Andre Gunder Frank, socialistic revolution was the way out of poverty for the less

developed countries. The theorists recommended that the countries developed their own

industries and controlled their surplus production (McGee and Warms: 3).

The Millennium Development GoalsAnother relevant approach to consider in the development process and poverty alleviation



is the Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals; to

decrease poverty by 2015, came about. 2015 is approaching with high speed and the

world is still poor; at least parts of it. There is not much time left to reach the goals and

parts of the world are poorer than ever before; almost half of the African countries have

experienced a higher level of income poverty within the last fifteen years (Feeny and

Clarke: 6 + 8). The major issue from the beginning was the funding of development and

the world leaders agreed upon an increase of Official Development Assistance (The

European Commission 2014: 4).

On a UN summit in 2000, 191 member states agreed upon eight international goals which

each has minimum one target and a set of indicators3, that should reduce poverty by 2015.

It includes the following:

1. Eradicating extreme income poverty and hunger

2. Achieving universal primary education

3. Promoting gender equality

4. Reducing child mortality

5. Improving maternal health

6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. (Today Ebola should also be

considered. It is spreading fast and is very deadly)

7. Ensuring environmental sustainability

8. Developing a global partnership for development

To fulfill the goals, it is important that both developing and developed countries commit

to the overall goal of decreasing poverty by implementing the subsidiary goals. The less

developed countries in the sense of committing to poverty reduction by combating

corruption, improving governance and using aid funds effectively. The developed 3 See Feeny and Clarke ‘The Millennium Development Goals, Targets and Indicators’ p: 18. Marie Helene Holst 25Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


countries in the sense of increasing the quality of their foreign investment (Feeny and

Clarke: 3).

The Asia-pacific as a whole has proven to be very successful in reaching the MDGs; the

region is on its way to reduce the proportion of people living in poverty by half (Feeny

and Clarke: 4). Though, it must be said that measuring development on a national level

gives another picture of the situation; some Asian countries and countries of the Pacific is

not doing quiet as well as the general picture prescribes (Feeny and Clarke: 4).

There have obviously been similar goals before these, though, the difference lies in the

comprehensiveness, in clarifying the objectives of development policy, and the involved

parts of the summit are made more accountable to the people. However, there are several

critics of these goals some are critical towards the level of ambitiousness while others do

not believe these goals will lead to any change (Feeny and Clarke: 6). In 2009, the rate of

progress showed that only the target of halving the proportion of people without access to

safe water would be fulfilled, which indicates that there is a long way to go. According to

the 2014 UN report on the Millennium Development Goals, the rate of progress shows

that there have been progress in some of the goals, for instance the aim of reducing

extreme poverty by half. But far from all have been achieved and they will not be

achieved before 2015. It is noticeable that there are more sections in the part on goals that

have not been achieved than in the part on achieved goals. Though, the UN Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon ends the report by stating that there is “a solid foundation for

further progress”. Though, the goals have failed to be fulfilled, the UN still manages to

see it through rose-tinted glasses (The UN 2014: 57).

The theory has been described, including a description of the term development,

explaining ODA and the types of aid that exist, a description of Critical Development

Theory, Eurocentrism, and Dependency Theory. Ending the theory with an introduction

to alternative development models. The next chapter will contain the methodological

approaches, the structure and the limitations of this thesis.



Methodology

In this chapter the methods used to come about the research questions in this thesis will

be described. Marie Helene Holst 27Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


In this paper, a case study will create the basis for the research. The Democratic Republic

of the Congo, Nigeria, Somalia and Thailand will set the framework for the case study in

order to analyze whether ODA is a solution to poverty alleviation. Furthermore, how

Official Development Assistance can be best utilized to benefit the least developed and

the situation in which the countries are today will be analyzed in relation to the three

countries.

The analysis will contain a thorough description and analysis of the four countries, with

main focus on DRC, Nigeria, Somalia, and Thailand. The variation of countries is used to

give a varied picture of ODA and its influence on these countries. Data and statistics will

be used to make a comparison between the countries. In the end of the analysis the

countries will be compared in order to study how Official Development Assistance can be

best targeted and what created the differences. Is it efficient, inexpedient or damaging for

the country that receives the aid (Bräutigam and Knack: 263)?

DR Congo is one of the poorest countries in Africa and therefore, it is relevant to find out

what places DRC at the bottom of the World Bank list of low-income countries4. If the

reason for lack of development is recovered in DR Congo, other countries can follow suit

though there are deciding differences among the African countries. Furthermore, it is

interesting to look at DR Congo because it is a very central part of Africa and the largest

country by area (Herderschee et al.: xi). It also has a small coastal line which can be very

important for agriculture. What is interesting to examine in relation to DR Congo is how

it ended up in such a critical situation after decades of Official Development Assistance

(In 2012 Congo received $2.859 billion in aid (OECD)). What makes DR Congo so

vulnerable is, among other things, the climate and terrain which makes productivity of a

number of commodities very difficult. Colonialism is another factor that makes it difficult

for development to break through. DR Congo belongs to the low-income countries5.

Before 2002, between the mid 1990s until 2002, Nigeria experienced negative per capita

4 The World Bank website 'Country and Lending Groups'5 The World Bank website: 'Country and Lending Groups'Marie Helene Holst 28Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


growth though the terms of trade were improved. This shows that trade is not alone

sufficient for sustainable growth (Noman et al.: 188). Nigeria is, by Noman et al.,

described as a poor-performing economy controlled by a regime inherent in the socialistic

strategy of development (186). It has been difficult for Nigeria to stay stable. According

to Collier, one in six less developed countries risk falling into civil war during a five-year

period and that includes Nigeria. If growth is not present or simply is slow then it

becomes hard to maintain peace.

Nigeria is also placed centrally in Africa. Nigeria is not receiving as much aid as DR

Congo and it is, furthermore, not as badly ranked on the list of low-income countries.

Though, Nigeria is not a well-off country and the poverty rate of Nigeria is 46 percent.

Nigeria belongs to the lower middle-income countries6.

Somalia has experienced years of civil war and conflict and it continues. Somalia has for

many years been the most failed state in the world (Baker: 278) and, furthermore, it is the

country in Africa which currently has the highest number of refugees (1,136,719 people)7.

The factors that matter when defining a state as failing is poor governance and policies.

According to Collier, a failing state is one with a low rating within poor governance and

policies for a period of minimum four years. According to Collier, Somalia neglects its

citizens that live in a stagnating country which fails to grow (68). Somalia belongs to the

low-income countries8.

There is no doubt that the countries with lesser development progress was chosen from

the knowledge gained from the books about ODA where Africa is the most frequently

mentioned and most undeveloped continent. Therefore, African countries will dominate

the analysis. The three African countries were chosen based on their different history and

background, to give a nuanced picture of poverty in Africa, though having one thing in

common; the status of being less developed.

6 Ibid.7 The World Bank website ‘Refugee population by country or territory of origin’8 The World Bank website: 'Country and Lending Groups'Marie Helene Holst 29Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


The more developed country was chosen from Asia based on almost the same criteria as

DR Congo, Nigeria and Somalia. It has similar circumstance as many African countries,

but has been able to find a way out of poverty. Asia in general is mentioned in several

materials in relation to successful development stories. Thailand was chosen for this

thesis because it is among the countries that are doing very well without extreme high

amounts of aid, it has actually experienced growth without a democratic government

(Moyo: 37), and it has a positive development history, though still with some degree of

poverty. Asia is the counterpart to Africa. It is a contradiction to the way the West wishes

to develop Africa – with aid and democracy. Furthermore, I was working in Thailand as a

volunteer and it gives me an insight into the situation in Thailand. Thailand is the

developing obverse of many African countries and to look at another country can maybe

provide possible approaches that can contribute to poverty alleviation in Africa.

A comparison of the countries might not give an unequivocal answer and what works in

one country may not work in the other. It is a plausible way to conduct the analysis to

find what could be a new way for Africa; it is necessary to have a successful counterpart

as a benchmark for achievable development.

Critical Development Theory and Dependency Theory will be the dominating theories in

the analysis to find out what caused the unequal development scale between the less

developed countries and the Western world and to find out what can improve the situation

of the LDCs and how poverty can be alleviated. Critical Development Theory will be

applied in the analysis because it critically examines development theory to find whether

it is the best targeted approach to alleviate poverty in mid-Africa. Dependency theory will

be applied to examine the dependency between mid-Africa and the Western world and

examine what role dependency plays in that relation.

Eurocentrism will be applied to the analysis to analyze what role the Western world has

in mid-Africa. Eurocentrism is a dominant element of the Critical development theory, as

Europe have had and still has a great influence on Africa and what they call development.



StructureThis section, will entail the structure of the thesis.

The aim is to research on the matter of Official Development Assistance and find the

reason for the long period of poverty in Africa despite large amounts of aid and

assistance.

Firstly, the theory will clarify and explain Critical Development Theory and Dependency

Theory and its purposes which are relevant theories in the research on ODA and how

poverty alleviation can be reached. The theory will also entail relevant terms such as

Eurocentrism to include the role of the Western world and cultural practice to consider

the developing world.

Subsequently, methodology will give an overview of how the thesis will be addressed

based on a case study and a comparison between less developed African countries and a

more successful, developed Asian country.

In the analysis section, a thorough analysis and a research on DR Congo, Nigeria,

Somalia, and Thailand will be conducted. A short historical overview and figures for each

country will be presented. The African countries are chosen based on their rather poor

development and to give a nuanced picture of poverty and development in Africa. The

analysis is made to find how ODA can be a part of poverty alleviation and whether it is

the right approach.

Lastly, a conclusion on why Africa continues to go down the poverty lane and what can

be the possible way out will complete the paper.

LimitationsThis section will entail the limitations of this thesis, which have been omitted due to the

limited amount of time and the many relevant aspects of this topic.

It could have been relevant to implement more of post-colonialism to find what effect

colonialism has had on Africa and whether it has had any importance in the poor

development process. But it has been deselected in favor of Critical Development Theory



and Dependency Theory which has great relevance for the topic.

Field work or simply paying the three countries a visit to experience the situation could

have been very useful and could have given an insight into the situation the countries are

in. But the lack of time and money prevented this.

Interviewing relevant experts or organizations to gather relevant material on their work

and find what they see as the best possible way to alleviate poverty were also considered,

but as finding the exact research topic took some time, the interviews would have been

too time consuming. Furthermore, it could have been very relevant and interesting to

interview people who are affected by poverty and who either live in the countries in

question or had left recently. To get their perspective and come close to the everyday life

of the poor and hear their side of the story and how the ODA affects them.

The number of countries used in the paper has been limited. Including more countries

could have given a wider comparison and broader perspective. It could in all probability

have provided other approaches for the poverty alleviation in several different African

countries. It could have given a more nuanced image of Africa to show the many different

country profiles in Africa and that the African countries cannot be lumped together as one

poor region.

This chapter has contained an outline of the methodology, the structure and limitations of

this thesis. In the next chapter the three countries and the theories described will be

implemented in the analysis to find whether ODA is a solution to poverty alleviation and

if so how it can be utilized.



Analysis

In the following section, an analysis on how Official Development Assistance can be

improved to create poverty alleviation will be conducted. It will be supported by an

analysis on the effectiveness and disadvantages of aid. The analysis will be conducted

based on a review of the DRC, Nigeria, Somalia, and Thailand and the different

development backgrounds of each country. It will be completed with a comparison of the

four countries to find whether the mid-African countries can benefit from the

development processes of the tiger economies in Asia.

The Mid-African Countries

In this section, the three mid-African countries will be presented with a short review of

the recent development and relevant data which include gross domestic product (GDP),

poverty rate (headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% of population))9, gross national

income (GNI), and ODA figures.

When ODA figures occur, it includes Net ODA which “consists of disbursements of loans

made on concessional terms and grants by official agencies of the members of the

Development Assistance Committee (DAC), by multilateral institutions, and by non-DAC

countries”10.

The Democratic Republic of the CongoIn the 1960s, when Mobutu came to power, DRC (formerly Zaire) experienced an

economic prosperity. But in the mid-1970s, it all backfired because of oil price hike, the

price of its main export, copper, fell dramatically, and furthermore, a large debt caused by

nonviable projects and the government’s own decision to transfer all economic activities

to Zairian nationals (Devarajan et al.: 631). In 1983, a reform was set into play and it paid

off to some extent; i.a. liberalization of exchange restrictions, the lifting of remaining

price controls and control with debt payments. In 1986, a new program was launched to

contain the external account deficit to 6.4 percent of GDP, limit the budget deficit and 9 The World Bank website ‘Refugee population by country or territory of origin’ 10 The World Bank website 'Net ODA Received (% of GNI)'Marie Helene Holst 33Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


reduce inflation, though it failed; expenditures increased and inflation accelerated. In

June 1986, a reform agenda was created by the World Bank to increase the inflow of

private capital (633). “The experience of 1986 showed that […] persistent structural

weakness prevented Zaire from achieving a sustained rate of economic growth” (634).

In 1988, a new attempt to make progress was made. A new government with a newly

appointed prime minister was at the head of making new initiatives. Though, president

Mobutu failed to do the necessary and in 1991 the economy went into a free fall and

poverty spread, the former Zaire failed to reach prosperity and the demise of President

Mobutu occurred in 1997 (Baker: 635). Between 1996 and 2002 DRC entered two wars,

the first from 1996-97 and the second from 1998-2002. Millions were killed and the

development and prosperity of the country were paralyzed. Especially the infrastructure

was damaged and today DRC has still not recovered (Herderschee et al.: 2). During 2001

to 2005, state effectiveness was improved as armed groups started to cooperate. A new

constitution to improve government effectiveness was approved in 2006 and the first

democratic election in forty years came about. Despite these improvements there are still

governmental inefficiencies; the government agencies are not managed as institutions and

policies are not implemented. In 2011, the constitution was amended to strengthen the

role of the president (Hederschee et al.: 4).

In the following paragraph, a short overview of relevant data will be given. The World

Bank and OECD provide us with these figures for DR Congo.

In 2013, the total GDP for DR Congo was $30.63 billion (it has been on the decline since

1975) (Herderschee et al.: 2), the poverty rate measured that 71.3 % of the population

were poor and Congo received a total of $2.859 billion of aid in 2012. The aid accounted

for 18.1 per cent of GNI in 2012 and that figure has improved markedly since 2011. In

2011 Congo received $5.534 billion in aid and that accounted for 38.5 per cent of GNI; it

has decreased more than double. That is at least one positive measure to encounter,

though it still needs enormous improvements. In 2011, GNI per capita was $200 (Atlas11

11 To smooth fluctuations in prices and exchange rates, a special Atlas method of conversion is used by the World Bank (World Bank).Marie Helene Holst 34Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


USD) and in 2012, it was $220. The newest figure for GNI is measured by the World

Bank and was $400 in 2013 and it obviously shows a constant increase. The total

population of DR Congo is 67.51 million people12 (OECD). Most of the aid to Congo is

given to the 'action relating to debt' sector, mainly because they do not have any means to

pay off the debt (OECD).

DRC experienced prosperity in the 1960s-70s but it did not last long and in the mid-

1970s DRC experienced primary commodity exports dependency which caused a

collapse because the copper prices fell dramatically and a civil war was about to break

out. Since then, civil unrest, war and economic decrease has been dominating DRC.

NigeriaNigeria is Africa's most populous country with more than 170 million people (The World

Bank). Only China and India have more poor people than Nigeria where 85 percent live

on less than $2 per day (Baker: 97). Nigeria became independent in 1960, but that did not

create stability. In 1967, a civil war between the region of Biafra and Nigeria broke out

because Biafra wanted to secede from Nigeria and lasted until 1970. Since then, Nigeria

has had irregular systems of governance: the highly unstable military regimes after the

war and the Second Republic from 1979 to 1983. At the end of 1983, Nigeria plunged

back into military dictatorship, returning to civilian democratic rule again in 1998 with

the Third Republic (Ejiogu: 4). These irregular systems have caused instability and

continue to do so; they are a threat to the existence of a modern Nigeria (Ejiogu: 4). In

2000, Nigeria was ranked first out of ninety countries in corruption levels. The political

system continue being unstable and authoritarian and the same party has been ruling the

country since 1999. By 2003 Olusegun Obasanjo was starting his second elected term as

president (Collier: 48).


Bank and OECD provide us with these figures for Nigeria.

The figures for Nigeria shows that its GDP was $521.8 billion in 2013, the poverty rate

12 The World Bank website ‘Refugee population by country or territory of origin’ Marie Helene Holst 35Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


showed 46 per cent as of 2010 and GNI per capita was $2,710 in 2013 13. The population

in Nigeria is more than 2.5 time as big as the population of DR Congo, but if the GDP is

compared, Nigeria’s GDP is more than seventeen times as big. That is a comparison that

has given a greater perspective; Nigeria is not one of the best-off countries in Africa, that

tells a little about how extreme the situation in DR Congo is.

Nigeria received $1916 million in ODA in 2012 (Congo received more than one third as

much; $2859 million), but compared to Congo, the difference is that for Nigeria, the

amount of ODA increased between 2011 ($1769 million) and 2012 ($1916 million)

(OECD) whereas in Congo, it decreased. Though, the increase in Nigeria was not very

high, but in Congo the decrease was almost double the amount, which of course is a good

sign. But before the decrease, the difference between the two countries was more than

three times as high. The aid in Nigeria is more static over the years whereas in Congo it is

much more dynamic. In Nigeria, the ODA only constitute 0.8 per cent of GNI, very low

compared to Congo’s 18.1 per cent in 2012 figures (OECD). Most of the bilateral aid

given to Nigeria is used for the health and population sector, around 70 per cent of the

total amount of aid.

SomaliaSomalia has been ranked as the most failed state of all in many years, mainly because of

its continuing civil war, an ungoverned state, and numbers of rebel groups trying to take

power (Baker: 276).

Somalia has been dominated by weak governance and political violence for long. The

civil war in 1991 was caused by United Somali Congress to overthrow the president Siad

Barre and the state failed as the central government authority collapsed. Since 1991, most

of Somalia has been a stateless society. A number of times there have been major

governmental changes and new rebel factions since the civil war. Al Shabab is one of the

newer factions and they have been in control of major parts of southern Somalia and

there are many other governments, movements, and factions that control parts of Somalia



outside of central government authority (Baker: 277). For more than two decades civil

war and severe state failure have been on the agenda for Somalia. These factors have

resulted in a famine in 2011, killing tens of thousands, creating more than 500,000

refugees, and destroying infrastructure. At times the population of Mogadishu have been

depending on international agencies for food supply.


Bank, OECD, and UNDP provide us with these figures for Somalia.

In a quick overview, the figures for Somalia show that the GDP was $917 million in

1990. There is, according to World Bank records, no GDP figure that has been calculated

after 1990. However, according to the UNDP, GDP was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2012

(145). The population in Somalia is 10.50 million. GNI per capita was $284 in 2012

(UNDP: 25). Somalia received $999 million in ODA in 2012, and in 2011 it was a bit

higher; $1096 million. OECD does not provide any figures showing how many per cent

ODA constitutes of GNI, but the UNDP estimates that remittance accounts for 35% of

GDP and is amongst the highest in the world (25). Figures show that most of the ODA is

provided for the humanitarian aid sector; close to 70 per cent of the total amount of

bilateral aid. The poverty rate for Somalia is 73 per cent, according to the United Nations

Development Programme (UNDP: 25), which is the highest of the three mid-African

countries.

The three mid-African States have been shortly presented with basic facts and data. In the

following section, Official Development Assistance will be analyzed in relation to these

countries.

In this section, the mid-African countries have been introduced with a short economic

background and development data. In the following section a description of ODA will be

given.

ODA In Mid-AfricaIn this section, ODA and its influence on development in the less developed countries



will be presented.

As it turned out, when aid was growing and at its highest the receivers were at their

poorest; this was between the 1970s and the 1990s (Moyo: x). A restructuring of the debt

payment was set in to help the LDCs repay what they owed, though it caused an

increasing aid-dependency and a higher debt (Moyo: 18). The amount of aid that has

gone from the West to the South (mostly to Africa) during the past fifty years runs into

around $2 trillion (28). That is a great sum compared to the situation in which the African

states find themselves today. Bräutigam and Knack (2004) who have made a research on

the connection between aid and governance, found that the higher amount of aid is not

necessarily tantamount to better governance, rather the contrary.

We are pushing development down on mid-Africa and as sufficiently stated by Collier:

“We (the West) used to be that poor once. It took us two hundred years to get to where we

are. Let’s try to speed things up for these countries” (100). Aid has provided stagnation

and hindered severe cumulative decline; that is at least something. In 2005, it was agreed

upon that aid to Africa should be doubled, however, a Washington think tank; Center for

Global Development, found that when aid constitutes around 16 per cent of GDP,

effectiveness stops. Placing the three mid-African countries in this calculation shows that

both DRC and Somalia has reached the point of aid ineffectiveness, as the percentage of

the aid they receive is 18.1 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively.

More recently a new proposal regarding aid was made; The UK and other European

countries agreed on turning 0.7% of their gross national income into aid – the West still

works on increasing ODA as if it is the only solution to increase development and, as

before mentioned, to speed up the process but it can be fatal and create dependence rather

than independence and prosperity. Feeny and Clarke state that “there are likely to be

limits to the amounts of foreign aid inflows that an economy can efficiently absorb” (30).

As indicated by Munck and O'Hearn, the West creates and manages the less developed

countries and even shapes their plans and hopes (1). The West is very dominating in the

process of changing the less developed countries into something better and this could,



instead of being beneficial for the less developed countries, be one of the main reasons

for why they stay poorly developed. The dominating involvement of the West is one of

the critical roles of Eurocentrism. In this regard, it is also relevant to bring in the

importance of culture which is indicated by Tucker who argues that culture is very

important to include in development processes as there are major differences between the

African culture and the Western culture. It could be that Africa is simply not ready to be

developed in the Western pace with Western values, but the cultural factor is not

considered.

Furthermore, dependency theory points to the role of the West and claims that they

became the dominant power over less developed countries. Thailand (and the East Asian

tigers), on the other hand, managed to develop without too much involvement from the

West by implementing an export-promotion strategy that focused on engagement with the

global economy. Instead of being led by the West they engaged with them. The critics of

dependency theory also emphasize that peripheral countries can reach prosperity by

improving productivity and engaging in global markets (Baker: 112).

The EU tends to speak highly of themselves in the report on ‘Development and

Cooperation’. They mention a lot of good initiatives and things that have been improved,

but they tend to neglect the fact that some countries are still very poor and a lot still needs

to be done. Of course the improvements are one step in the right direction, but the

development goals for 2015 are not going to be adequate for all countries involved (The

European Commission 2014: 13). It is as if the EU are not willing to see the bigger

picture and they tend to keep the work as it is; pour lots of ODA into Africa. What if

Africa does not need ODA any longer? Then what are the donors supposed to do? Papers,

reports and other material in relation to ODA from organizations and NGOs, mostly, only

look at the results in a positive perspective, but never really take them further; as to place

them in relation to the overall picture of poverty or development. National, political or

economic interests of the organizations and donors are other reasons for keeping ODA in

motion (Pedersen: 701).



There are other ways to reach prosperity and to decrease poverty than by economic

growth. As examples, Feeny and Clarke mention assistance for rural development and

raising agricultural productivity (32). Danida also argues that economic growth cannot

reduce poverty alone (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 10) and Amartya Sen (2002) states that

development is “a process of expansion of human freedom”. It is not only about capital

and growth.

Bräutigam and Knack were researching on the impact of aid and good governance. They

had three major findings: 1) there is a robust statistical relationship between high aid

levels in Africa and deteriorations in governance, 2) strong relationship between higher

aid levels and a lower tax share of GDP, and 3) increases in GDP per capita tend to be

associated with improvements in governance while political violence is associated with

declines in governance and in the tax share of GDP (276). Their research showed that

large amounts of aid have several negative consequences; bad governance, institutional

weakening and perverse incentives; Large amounts of aid can also make it more difficult

to handle budgets and debts which foster perverse incentives. Aid supplied as loans

creates debt, which create incentives to give ever more aid, in particular to the states who

are more aid-dependent and often also the most highly indebted. In the end this creates

moral hazard for the aid agencies (Bräutigam and Knack: 277). The solution to the

problem is found in firstly: official aid needs to become much more selective and

competitive delivered with few if any strings to proven. Secondly: large-scale aid

programs needs to be explicitly seen as a temporary (albeit medium-term) development

tool (277). As indicated in the theory, Moyo argues that when aid became the mean to

diminish poverty in the 1970s, the poverty alleviation started to collide (Moyo: x).

Feeny and Clarke mention a number of initiatives that can be used to improve aid. For

instance enhancing the reduction of transaction costs, diminishing the monitoring and

evaluation of aid, and diminishing the individual requirements and procedures for each

donor (43).

Another way to improve the quality of aid is giving aid through Program Based



Approaches (PBAs) where a specific sector such as education or health is supported and

not a distinct project such as building a school. PBAs are provided in budget support; the

money is given to the government and then they have the full right of disposal and no

other government or aid agency to be taken to task by (Collier: 101 & Feeny and Clarke:

44). Collier argues that it can be problematic in the sense of corruption; the aid can end

up being used for private purposes by the leader or, in worse case for internal conflicts if

there are no control or accounting procedures (Collier: 103).

This can be prevented by using Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps), which is created to

fund and coordinate the actions and resources. These approaches arose to replace Project

Implementation Units, which does not cooperate with recipient government ministries.

However, Feeny and Clarke argue that fragile states will not be able to manage these

approaches, as it requires strong government leadership and can therefore not be vouched

for as a universal improvement of aid (45).

Collier is not fund of aid and does not believe it will have the necessary effect alone to

help the poor. He argues that aid is highly politicized that its design is often dysfunctional

(99). This is also indicated by Ziai in the theory, as he states that development has been

exposed to Eurocentrism and depoliticizing (123). Instead, Collier argues for other

initiatives such as military intervention and trade policy to be effective tools in improving

the standards, economy and governance of mid-Africa. They will, however, not be further

implemented in the paper as Collier argues that we are scarcely using the tools (176).

Collier has researched on how aid can be best allocated to those most in need of it. The

aim was to find whether need and effectiveness could be reconciled. He found, that aid

from many agencies was allocated to middle-income countries instead of the low-income

countries due to the higher commercial and political interest they possess. The problem is

that the World Bank, which is not so greatly affected by political influence, have loans to

give and that is provided to the poorest countries since the political interest is not of

importance. The European Commission has grants to give, but only to middle-income

countries due to the political influence they are affected by (Collier: 104). This is what



OECD defines as ODA; “to qualify as ODA, flows to developing countries must consist

of grants or loans” (Feeny and Clarke: 26) which should be undertaken by the official

sector and promote economic and development welfare. However, this lacks efficiency

since it is the middle-income countries that end up benefiting from this and not the

poorest countries. What is needed is to design aid so it works in the poor governed

countries that are most at risk of conflict (Collier: 107) or something completely

different, because, as argued by Critical Development theorists Munck and O'Hearn,

development is an ideology that needs to be revised or completely destroyed. 'The other

development model', described in the theory, could be an alternative to the Western

methods because it focuses more on sustainability and the need to prioritize human needs.

Furthermore, Munck argues that it is time to change the universal theories and concepts

into locally relevant forms. A number of theorists (Moyo, Tucker) agree on this; to place

more focus on the need of the poor and create dialog, which can be useful in the

alleviation of poverty. Danida is also working towards increasing focus on reducing

poverty by making sure the ODA ends up in the poorest countries.

Through further research on aid and its effect in reducing the risk of war, Collier found

that aid was not very effective at raising growth in a country with poor governance and

policies – therefore a better use of aid must be found so the poorly governed countries

can benefit from aid (105). However, he also found that aid proves to have a high effect

in raising growth in post-conflict countries because that is what aid was brought up to do.

Though there are still some improvements to be made, for instance that the aid is given to

soon. The government, institutions, and policies need time to be reestablished so aid can

reach the appropriate level of effect (106). Collier concludes that aid has been

overemphasized because it is the easiest way for the Western world to help and he states

that “alone [aid] will not be sufficient to turn the societies of the bottom billion around.

But it is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The challenge is to

complement it with other actions” (Collier: 123).

As mentioned above the high levels of aid has proven to be more of a burden than a

relief. There are several reasons for this; Feeny and Clarke mentions some of them: the



high level of aid diminishes returns to capital or investment; gives the recipient a large

administrative burden; management and reporting requirements; and officials spend too

much time on aid bureaucracy compared to the time they spend on their core functions

(30). The aid and the work that comes with it requires too much effort.

Collier has the formula for using aid effectively. He believes that the donors should wait

for political opportunity after a turnaround, then pour in technical assistance quickly to

implement reform and then, after a few years, led the money flow to government

expenditures (116).

In this section, ODA and the influence it has on poverty alleviation in mid-Africa has

been analyzed. In the following section the question 'why do mid-Africa stay poor' will be

approached.

Why Do Mid-Africa Stay Poor?In this section the poverty domination in mid-Africa will be analyzed by looking at

reasons for poverty.

There have been several speculations and opinions about why mid-Africa maintains the

poverty level. Some of them will be described in this section. The main issue is, however,

to find what can be done about these poverty indicators. That will be further analyzed in

the next section.

Moyo compares the Marshall plan with what has been done for Africa in terms of aid.

The Marshall Plan was created to provide aid to Europe after WWII to create stability and

economic growth. It was a success but why is it not the same for Africa after sums of aid?

What Moyo mentions a number of times are the public institutions and their relevance for

poverty alleviation. They were in place in Europe and existed before the war whereas in

Africa institutions are non-existent. She emphasizes the importance of institutions when

talking about building/rebuilding a country and that is one of the important factors that

Africa lacks. As mentioned in the theory “the ideal growth and development model is one

guaranteed by political institutions” (Moyo: 33).



Poor governance includes inadequate official information, weak mechanisms of

accountability, poorly enforced rule of law, and bureaucracies that are ineffective and

unresponsive (Bräutigam and Knack: 259). As stated above, Moyo also emphasizes the

importance of good governance and institutions as a part of sustainable development

(Moyo: 33). An example of a country with poor governance is Somalia. Somalia lacks

institutions, stability, good governance, education, the health-care system is overburdened

and the infrastructure destroyed. Millions have left Somalia. Most of them were forced to

due to conflicts and lack of governance. Low demand by the global economy and one of

the highest tropical disease burdens in East Africa have been influential. Furthermore, dry

climate, the colonization, and division of clans, as in Nigeria, also matters in creating war

and conflict in Somalia and makes development difficult (Baker 280). Somalia's

population consist of six major clans that have been grouped together because of the

drawing of colonial borders by the Europeans. This has caused fractions in the society

and that is, according to Baker, an important factor when finding the reason for civil war

and state failure in Somalia (279).

Another issue is whether LDCs are simply adjusting to aid. There is a tendency that less

developed countries has come to the point where they are adjusting to aid to make sure to

receive it and whether aid has simply become a fixture of the government’s economy. It

is viewed as an easy solution and easy money, instead of working hard for improvements

and creating reforms and policies. Somalia is an example of a country which is dependent

on ODA and tries to stay in a certain state to make sure to receive aid, which is a

hindrance to development. This can be referred back to the dependency theory, which

indicates the government's lack of function due to the aid funds which causes aid

dependency (Bräutigam and Knack: 257). However, some donors have become aware of

this issue and have created new aid programs which support specific countries based on

their better use of development funding (Bräutigam and Knack: 277).

Bräutigam and Knack define aid dependence as a term which takes away the

independence of a state, as it becomes unable to perform as a government, maintain



existing infrastructure or the delivery of basic public services, without foreign aid

(Bräutigam and Knack: 257). Furthermore, they state that “aid dependence structures

accountability as something between the executive branch of government and aid donors

rather than between state and society, weakening this important aspect of governance”

(Bräutigam and Knack: 265). The state becomes insufficient and cannot govern a state

without help. If the governance lack, it will become difficult to manage development.

According to Reyntjens, Rwanda plays a critical role in the lack of development in DR

Congo and has caused protracted regional instability (177). In the 1990s and start 2000s,

DR Congo was exposed to several massacres and invasions by the Rwanda Patriotic

Front (RPF). Rwanda has been very dominating and controlling in DR Congo apparently

as to secure property and make use of Congolese resources and are accused of derailing

the peace process in DR Congo (Reyntjens: 206). That obviously also plays a role in

reaching prosperity, as the Rwandan impact on DR Congo prevents development and

stability. It is not only the West that interferes in less developed countries; neighboring

countries also tend to play the dominant power.

There are not only internal regional conflicts between Rwanda and DR Congo. Another

example of a regional conflict was the one between Rwanda and Uganda in 2003

(Reyntjens: 207). Regional conflicts such as these happen frequently and reasons for

them to occur are several but among them are alliances and resources. These regional

conflicts are damaging for the long awaited betterment of Africa.

Collier also argues for the massive importance civil war and conflicts have on poverty

and the difficulty of developing; “one of the factors known to impede growth is war” (17).

There are a number of causes for war. Some include: slow growth, stagnation or decline,

low-income countries, dependence upon primary commodity exports, and natural

resources (international companies fund to gain resource concessions). Collier also found

that the cost of civil wars in the recent decades has been estimated to more than double

the global aid budget. So placing those two up against each other certainly tells a little

about the costs versus the supplies, rather imprecise but still an indication of the battle



between civil war and aid. Civil war is a tough opponent to aid and development (32). If

the cost of civil war continues to be so high or simply if civil war continues, aid also

seems to be necessary. Though, civil war is of course not the only hindrance to decrease

aid funds and increase development.

Collier has made a research based on the question: what causes civil war? The first cause

he found was the level of income. Poverty plays a role when it comes to the risk of a civil

war to break out. There is a higher risk of civil war in a low-income country and where

there is conflict there is a higher risk of being poor (19). Poverty is of course not the only

factor that matters when the risk of civil war is measured, other factors are slow growth

and dependence on primary commodities (22).

According to Collier, it will take half a century of peace for DRC to create proper income

levels. In order to reach just fifty continuous years of peace, the low income, slow

growth, dependence upon primary commodities, and history of conflict must be changed.

“This country is likely to be stuck in a conflict trap no matter how many times it rebrands

itself unless we do something about it” (Collier: 34). The conflict trap “shows how

certain economic conditions make a country prone to civil war, and how, once conflict

has started, the cycle of violence becomes a trap from which it is difficult to escape”

(Collier: x). Baker has found that “no reduction in poverty rates occurred in countries

that experienced major violence between 1981 and 2005” (272).

Collier argues that resource-scarce, landlocked African countries should not have been

countries in the first place as the challenge of development and prosperity is made even

more difficult. Collier has looked into the relation between neighboring states and found

that the relationship and their history matters in trade and as transport corridors. African

countries affected by poor development have not got much use of neighboring countries.

Non-African land-locked countries gain a 0.7 per cent growth from every 1 per cent the

neighboring countries grow but African resource-scare landlocked countries only gain 0.2

per cent (57). According to Collier, African countries tend to have inward-looking

policies focused on the world market and not neighboring markets. This effect is,



however, only valid for resource-scarce, landlocked countries and they primarily exist in

Africa (57).

King Leopold II of Belgium set the scene for humanitarian intervention in Africa in 1876.

He proclaimed to be a man not interested in profit but in serving others. His reason for

“helping” DRC in particular was the displacement and decimation of the natives because

of slavery. There was something righteous happening here though the good intentions

were far off. Kabemba argues that all engagement in DRC is affected by a colonial

mindset that sees the Congolese as ‘others’ which, as indicated in the theory, shows the

lack of cultural understanding. Kabemba goes on explaining about the ‘other’ and states

that the intervention by King Leopold II was used to enforce the identity of the ’other’

and they should be educated and civilized. As explained by Sartre, “other human beings

are perceived as objects, as tools or as obstacles”; in this case, the human beings of DRC

(Everill & Kaplan: 142). According to Kabemba, the humanitarian intervention was

authoritarian but Belgians justified the colonialism and argued that it could be used as a

solution towards the problems of underdeveloped people and thereby equalized

humanitarianism and colonialism (Everill & Kaplan: 143). This can be linked to

Eurocentrism where the West is defined as the hegemony and the developing world as the

Others which creates a distinction between the two worlds. To avoid the division,

communication and cooperation between the West and other cultures are important

(Munck and O'Hearn: 13+16). As mentioned in the theory, Tucker argues that cultural

practices is important because shared beliefs are important in challenging development

practices and to make something good out of it instead of development becomes a

standstill (Munck and O'Hearn: 4), which has become the case in DRC, Nigeria and

Somalia.

The main reasons for Western states to intervene on a humanitarian basis were economic.

For instance in DRC, it was the control of its mineral and natural resources. According to

Kabemba, the humanitarian interventions have been a cover for economic intervention

and the humanitarian efforts has not paid off yet (Everill & Kaplan: 140). There is thus an

indication of the West intervening for own gain. Marie Helene Holst 47Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


Once again, it is interpreted as if the West knows how to create betterment in

underdeveloped countries without taking its people into consideration. Numerous crises

have occurred in Congo since the intervention by King Leopold II. Among them are the

invasion by Rwanda and Uganda in 1996, ‘Africa’s Great War’ in 1998, and a number of

humanitarian interventions. It is estimated that 5.4 million lives were lost due to these

crises in Congo between August 1998 and January 2008 (Everill & Kaplan: 148). The

peacekeeping force MONUC was set to create peace in DRC in 1999, but it failed and

instead it has been perceived rather negatively; as western powers advancing their

interests in the DRC, plundering resources, and ineffectiveness in establishing security

(Ibid: 152). MONUC is an example of a Western idea of Responsibility to Protect gone

wrong and the Congolese president requested it withdrawn.

Since the humanitarian intervention in 1885, DRC has not known peace and today,

humanitarian intervention is still a fixture. DRC is the country in Africa which has been

the most exposed to humanitarian actions (Everill & Kaplan: 141).

DRC is not the only mid-African country to have been exposed to humanitarian

intervention. In 1960, at independence, three ethno-religious territories with very

different identities were merged into one country; Nigeria. Nigeria has more than 250

ethnic groups and that has caused ethnic-based violence which is contributing to the

constant instability (Baker: 98), which is also emphasized by Moyo, as she states that

ethnic rivalry can lead to civil unrest (32). In the Nigerian Civil War from 1967-70 the

humanitarian intervention, used as an international emergency relief operation, is, by

Aaronson, argued to have prolonged the war and thereby human suffering (Everill &

Kaplan: 176). It is estimated that around 600,000 people died during the war and the vast

majority were civilians. “Hence, in the context of ethnic diversity such as in Nigeria [...]

autocracy has failed to generate conditions conducive to growth, and its return would

hold no promise of improvement” (Collier: 50).

The international NGOs and private organizations played a significant role in the

Nigerian war. The first time terrible pictures of malnourished children came to the West,



was during the Biafra crisis and that created an enormous support for the relief agencies,

which gave them better possibilities to provide help (Everill & Kaplan: 183). Though,

according to Aaronson, some people of the Gowon administration claimed that the relief

operation was prolonging the war.

These are examples of Eurocentrism in mid-Africa and Kabemba explains further that

“humanitarian intervention became the politics of power of Western civilizations over

non-Western civilizations” (Everill & Kaplan: 142). That of course explains why

humanitarian intervention is not exactly looked positively upon, at least not by the ones

exposed to intervention. It is the West’s tool for bursting in on others and interfering in

their matters. It is time to include the Congolese, the Nigerians, and the Somalis and

create dialog (Munck & O'Hearn: 22) to find what they need and not what the West needs

(ex. mineral and natural resources).

The question is whether the situation would have been better today if the interventions

never took place. Of course that question will never be answered but, according to

Kabemba, the interventions have only maintained a status quo of economic balances of

power and a “destabilization of indigenous structures in favour of Western economic

interest” and humanitarian aid has done nothing to change that (Ibid: 155).

I argue that, DRC, Nigeria, Somalia, and its people should be involved in the processes of

intervention and not be regarded as the ‘Others’ to create progress and, furthermore, it is

necessary to create an interplay between the two parts; the donor and the country in

question.

It is not alone the humanitarian interventions that keep the mid-African countries poor.

There are other challenges that need to be addressed; such as the transposition from post-

conflict society to sustainable development; mistrust in the institutional reform is

decreasing; more employment for the youth; and improving the private sector by

removing revenue agencies that handle solicit informal payments – small companies

cannot pay and that is an obstacle for growth (excessive taxes) (Herderschee et al.: 103).



All of them are to some extent valid for the three mid-African countries, some though

more influential than others.

The colonizer Great Britain had negative influence on the manufacturing in Nigeria.

Britain charged fees for the locally made goods, and, furthermore, they imported own

goods to Nigeria and outmatched the local industry. Because of these restrictions, only

three per cent of Nigeria's GDP came from manufacturing in the 1960s. According to

Baker, based on these factors and others, the West could seem guilty of the

underdevelopment of Nigeria, but the critics say otherwise as they argue that the

interventions made by Britain were not influential enough to have ruined the

development of Nigeria (99). Because of the unstable political system, investors are

holding back and that can harm economic growth. The huge population also contributes

to the difficulty of developing: the economy is challenged, continually extenting

infrastructure, the electricity sector cannot keep up with the industrial demands and that

makes the manufacturing sector small. Baker also argues that geographical factors can

have an influence on the undeveloped, unstable country (100).

The unequal distribution of land has contributed to poverty and is viewed as one of the

most serious problems in the rebuilding process in Africa (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 14).

Many African countries have been marginalized in international trade, the export goods

from Africa is not particularly favored in international trade. It is the aim, at least from

Danida, to remove the barriers and the tariffs on African goods (ibid: 17). This was also

emphasized in the theory on Europe's role. According to Sutcliffe, the West is excluding

the less developed countries from the consumption and trade area (Munck and O'Hearn:

144).

The three mid-African countries are evaluated very differently and some are speculated to

be worse off than others and less capable of reaching sustainable development that can

alleviate poverty.

There are some degree of development in some sectors in DRC; for instance in infant



mortality rates and the educational sector. But overall, DRC remains poor and “the

persistence of poverty can be understood in the context of rapid population growth,

modest investment, and inefficient use of existing resources”. According to Herderschee et

al., the agricultural sector is growing and will have an influence on poverty alleviation as

it can create employment and lower food prices (Herderschee et al.: 29).

Nigeria is regarded differently; of course the view of the researcher also affects the

evaluation. “Until recently, Nigeria’s best phase of economic policy (which was less than

wonderful) was the reform phase of the late 1980s but the benefits of these reforms were

completely swamped by the coincident crash in the world price of oil” (Collier: 64). The

2000s have shown some sign of improvements, economically and politically. Economic

prosperity due to increasing petroleum prices and increasing per capita income (Baker:

100).

Lastly, Somalia is, according to Baker, the least governed state in the world, mainly due

to the many factions and their political differences (278). Baker argues further that

Somalia was poorly governed before the civil war, that guerrilla rebellion and piracy is

common among the civilians, and that misguided economic policies created economic

decline. Baker states that “war may be the consequence, not the cause, of Somalia's

social and economic underdevelopment” (278).

What can make it difficult for some states to develop is the lack of capacity and, in some

governments of fragile states, the lack of commitment to the process of reducing poverty

(Feeny and Clarke: 29). Some less developed countries may play its own significant role

in maintaining the poor status, while others simply are incapable of doing what it takes

despite they may be willing to.

The speculations and opinions on the reasons for poverty in mid-Africa have now been

clarified. In the following, the analysis will contain what can be done to diminish and

prevent the poverty factors and how to reach poverty alleviation.



What Can Be Done? In this section, relevant methods will be analyzed, the methods that should be used to

improve development and prevent the above described factors to continue its dominance.

The most significant method that will be presented in this section is the improvements of

governance and its institutions. It is the all-important method. “Accommodating

institutional changes […] represent perhaps the most important ingredient in

developmental success” (Ranis: 1452). There are, however, also other methods and some

of them will be analyzed shortly.

Institutions, Infrastructure, and Governance There is increased focus on improving governance, institutions and infrastructure, as

important parameters for development and this paper argues that it is the right parameters

to follow. It is about implementing them with focus on local development strategies in

each country; DRC, Nigeria and Somalia.

To boost economic growth government effectiveness, infrastructure development and

private sector development is necessary (Herderschee et al.: 22) and as indicated by

Herderschee et al. “while hard infrastructure may in the short term open the path to

growth, soft infrastructure, such as adequate governance and institutions, is needed to

sustain it” (ibid: 11).

Infrastructure and transport are vital for growth, trade and investment, but it lacks in

many areas of DRC. There are only transportation possibilities between four provincial

cities and the capital Kinshasa which makes it difficult for investment, trade, and aid to

reach rural areas due to poor transport infrastructure. If it needs to change there are

several initiatives that can enhance the chances for improved infrastructure.

For instance in DRC an initiative is made to increase growth through certain studies

which include DRC in the processes. A trajectory leading to growth and development was

established and fourteen studies were made to tackle cross-cutting impediments to

economic growth. Among these fourteen studies are 'growth diagnostics', 'economic

growth as an instrument for poverty alleviation' and 'infrastructure' and they are based on



country context; DRC's institutions and its current economic situation, to reach well-

prioritized growth strategies (Herderschee et al.: 20). The analysis is made to help policy

makers implement their interventions to create growth and poverty alleviation

(Herderschee et al.: 21).

There has been other recent initiatives for improving the governance of DRC, i.a. peace

agreement in 2002, a new constitution in 2006, and a democratic election in 2006. It is

simply a matter of time to find if this proves to be the decade where DRC develops into a

more well-functioning state with sustainable economic growth or whether it is yet another

limited period with relative prosperity (as was the case in the 1970s).

Herderschee et al. also place large emphasis on infrastructure and the serious need for

improvements as it has great influence on economic development, private sector growth,

and employment (57). “A core challenge of the ongoing reconstruction is to reestablish

infrastructure that is critical for growth and equity” (10).

According to Herderschee et al., DRC has reached an institutional basis. It has reached a

legal framework, a modern institutional structure and an implementation of sound

macroeconomic policies. However, more is needed. Coalitions which are ready for a

more technocratic approach to policy making and service delivery. There is furthermore a

necessity for a higher implementation of announced policies. Decentralization is the tool

for this, it can -> create more accountability → improve public policy → raise state

effectiveness (55).

Though fighting for democracy and stronger governments in the mid-2000s, the

presidency was still the most powerful body and there continues to be inefficiencies at

government level (Herderschee et al.: 4).

As argued by Bräutigam and Knack the reason for developmental issues in Africa is due

to crisis of governance (255) and there is reason to argue that the improvement of

governance could increase sustainable development. Some of the challenges for

improving governance is, according to Bräutigam and Knack, “moral hazard, soft budget

constraints, the tragedy of the commons, and shifts in accountability” (265).



It seems that, according to Herderschee et al., it is possible to create institutional

improvements with four types of development: i) recent agricultural growth (for instance

local markets' growth increase), ii) mobile telephone service, iii) external anchors to

strengthen legal procedures, and iv) public-private partnerships (has been used in

education and health services). With these four developments DRC's government can

minimize its challenges. Furthermore, they emphasize the improvements of the legislative

activity which can improve institutions (Herderschee et al.: 5).

Effective instruments to boost state effectiveness, infrastructure, and private sector

development is, according to Herderschee et al., coordination among politically

influential people, new technologies, leveraging of external anchors and development of

social accountability (8). There is still a lack in implementation of agreements that create

trust through delivering reliable public services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo


To accomplish these factors to improve development in less developed countries and

create poverty alleviation it can be relevant to implement 'the other development model',

described by Munck (Munck and O'Hearn: 201). It prioritizes self-reliance, sustainability,

cultural pluralism and human needs. The model focuses on participation and justice,

which is absent in the Western development model.

As indicated by Herderschee et al. it is about “identifying a set of priority areas and

actions to promote and sustain growth” (21). The priority areas for mid-Africa are

improved infrastructure, adequate governance and well-functioning institutions and the

actions are dialog and local involvement, primarily. They can lay the foundation for

further development and make sure it can be sustained. There are several factors that

needs to be considered and it is a long process, but the main focus areas are the three

mentioned here.

Aid Dependency or Local Involvement?

One of the most important elements to consider in the development process is ODA. In



this section, the effect of ODA, aid dependency, and the influence of the local and

national society will be outlined.

It is important to find "more-applicable ways for Africa to finance its development" for

instance initiatives as micro-loans and hybrid venture capital structures is the way ahead.

Moyo gives an example of what a well-functioning African economy could consist of. In

this case it is based on a fictitious country, Dongo; 5 per cent from aid, 30 per cent from

trade, 30 per cent from FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), 10 per cent from capital

markets, and 25 per cent from remittances and harnessed domestic savings. African

countries "need a mix of each of these solutions and an end to aid-dependency" (141).

According to Moyo, aid-dependency has wreaked the possibility for good governance.

Good governance consist of open and transparency in decision making processes,

effective use of resources, and politics and development strategies in agreement with the

needs of the poor. Good governance is an asset to good development that can give better

opportunities for foreign investment due to trust and cooperation on a different level

(143).

Aid as technical assistance is, by Collier argued to be, a substantial type that can help

failing states (115). It is just not any time it is appropriate to implement aid, for instance

in the beginning of a reform aid can chills the prospects of sustaining the reform. Based

on research, Collier argues that “sudden extra money, whether from export booms or aid,

detract from the hard choices involved in reform” – as mentioned previously, people

would rather focus on easy money than aiming for reform (116). Aid is also consisting of

technical assistance – supply for skilled people. However, aid should focus on promoting

‘capacity building’; improving the skills of the local people though it can be difficult to

keep them in the country if there are no prospects (Collier: 112).

“Part of the path to good governance involves learning. Providing technical assistants

who do not transfer skills but simply do the work themselves, or setting up bypass units,

limits a central (or local) government’s ability to learn skills for more effectively

managing and administering” (Bräutigam and Knack: 261). This indicated the need for



the locals to be involved. This can be approach through Joint Assistance Strategy (JAS).

The donors' means comes in a joint fund and go directly in the LDCs' budgets. The

receiving country gets much more influence on how the resources are spent

(Udenrigsministeriet 2012: 71). The aid is now an essential part of the receiving countries

own development strategy and is not money that is being spent without the involvement

of the countries or for projects that are unnecessary or insufficient. As indicated by

Collier “change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within;

we cannot impose it on them” (xi).

According to Collier, some of the challenges for mid-Africa is the emigration of the

educated people, the difficulty of attracting private investment inflows and the blocking

of global markets. He argues that, the LDCs are growing, though with very slow speed

and unfortunately “even if their present growth rate is sustained, they will continue to

diverge rapidly. It will take them many decades to reach what we now consider to be the

threshold of middle income, and by that time the rest of the world will have moved on”

(Collier: 95). But if mid-Africa can find the right strategy development can increase

sufficiently as has been proven by the tiger economies. This will be further elaborated in

the section on the tiger economies.

In the mid-1990s, Danida worked on a new development strategy which is still relevant

today, it included: (I) dialog with the aid receiver and involvement in economic reforms,

development politics and programs, (II) choice of target group, who should receive the

aid. Danida supports the decrease of poverty in general with aid provided for economic

and social development. The extremely poor receive relief aid which help them surviving

here and now, but is not effective in the overall reduction of poverty and (III) result

oriented demands (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 25). It can be difficult to measure the effect

of each donor as the demand for concrete results is growing. In order to measure the

effect of ODA, Danida is working towards increasing focus on reducing poverty by

making sure the ODA ends up in the poorest countries and evaluating the effect the aid

has on poverty. Danida argues that, the poor people must be a part of the decision making

process, have an influence on their own situation, and be a part of implementing the Marie Helene Holst 56Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


projects and programs that concern them (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 11). This is also

emphasized by Bräutigam and Knack (257) stating that foreign aid must involve

“partnership” not dependence and Moyo who argues that national involvement is

essential for development (16). However, this should be mixed with implementation of

relevant politics and strategies on a political and institutional level and the international

society must contribute with ODA, trade and investment (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 11).

There needs to be a better interplay between the donors and the mid-African states to

make as much of the aid as possible. It is crucial that the African state is taken more into

consideration and gets to play a bigger part in the allocation of aid. As stated by Feeny

and Clarke, “aid programmes need to be designed with recipient governments and

aligned with their development strategies” (33).

I argue that mid-Africa do need some assistance to be able to create prosperity. They will

not be able to reach it the way Asia did, though they also received assistance. The

assistance should come from the West in the form of selective aid provided to specific

sectors to make the government able to improve institutions, infrastructure and the

general governance, enhance accountability and security, and decrease corruption. But the

influence of the West and Eurocentrism should be decreased.

The EU is working on changing its way in donating aid. It is not only aid, but there are

also other initiatives involved and the EU is working on using the aid more wisely and

effectively which at the end both benefits the EU and the receiver. The general directory,

EuropeAid, is the instance that creates the EU’s politic for development cooperation and

implements the goals (the European Commission 2014: 8). Eurocentrism is decreasing

and the EU is also aware of the importance the local society has in implementing aid

effectively.

When aid is recipient led, it has a better effect, meaning that local priorities and the

recipients’ existing systems and procedures should be taken into consideration and are

very important aspects in making aid effective. The five principles of The Paris

Declaration on Aid Effectiveness helps improve aid effectiveness and key areas: I) Marie Helene Holst 57Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


ownership, II) alignment, III) harmonization, IV) managing aid for results, and V) mutual

accountability (Feeny and Clark: 31).

If everyone is aware of the problem then why is nothing changing? There are still

enormous amounts of aid flowing to the less developed countries which is not marked to

a specific purpose. It can be argued that a great part of the poverty has been maintained

because of the large amounts of aid that keeps rolling in. There is not much control with

the aid and it is as if the West continues to believe that the solution is aid funds but after

decades with no major improved progress it seems as if it is not the most profitable way

to alleviate poverty and the West must soon realize that other initiatives are necessary.

The importance of institutions, infrastructure and governance, the influence of aid

dependency, and local involvement and their relevance in the development of the mid-

African countries have been outlined. In the following section the tiger economies and

their development processes will be presented.

The Tiger Economies – A ComparisonIn this section the tiger economies and their way to prosperity will be presented, followed

by a review of Thailand and its development process. The section will be finished with a

comparison of the mid-African countries and the tiger economies with focus on Thailand,

to find whether the development strategies and processes the tiger economies followed

can have a positive influence on the mid-African countries.

What Is a Tiger Economy?In this section, the tiger economies and what they entail will be presented.

Asia is mentioned by O’Hearn as the one that challenges the Western development

strategy since they did not fall into the hands of dependency and democracy but still

managed to become economically successful (Munck & O'Hearn: 118).

The meaning of a tiger economy is one that experience economic growth without turning

into a ‘developmental-state’. It is gained through foreign investment and participation in

international trade. The tiger economy states; Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore Marie Helene Holst 58Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


and Taiwan were intervened in the economies; they created initiatives to improve the

economy such as promoting local industry, creating competitiveness through ‘pervasive

intervention’ and clearing out class interests. Japan was the leading state within all these

initiatives and made other East Asian states highly authoritarian but effective

development states (ibid: 119).

The Japanese method of development was better than the Western; Japan competed by

constantly upgrading their products and ways of producing, they had products made by

non-Japanese subcontractors, and there were differences in Japanese and US foreign

investment, which affected the development of countries involved in their regional

divisions of labor (Munck & O'Hearn: 119).

In the 1980s it was the Southeast Asian states; Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, that

experienced a boom in their economy due to privatizing, decreasing public expenditures

and attracting foreign investors (Munck & O'Hearn: 115). They became part of global

networks and followed a neoliberal pathway, by Peter Evans they are argued to be states

who are involved in economic units not only in the initial phase (Munck and O'Hearn:

115). The Southeast Asian states are defined as the new tigers. The new tigers depend

more on direct transnational corporation (TNC) investments. Thailand is one of the new

tiger economies. In the period 1970-93 Thailand experienced that the share of industry in

GDP grew from 20-25 to 40 per cent and in 1970-92 the share of machinery and

equipment in manufacturing output grew from 4 to 40 per cent (Munck & O'Hearn: 125).

The tiger economies have without a doubt experienced prosperity. There are, however,

also negative elements for the tiger economies; they are, for one thing, excluded from

innovative high-profit activities because they are still managed by the West, and the

number of tiger economies are limited (ibid: 116). Another field where the tiger

economies are inferior is in the technological field where the West is still dominant due to

expertise in the field. According to Denis O’Hearn, the tiger economies have mainly

experienced economic growth, but lack in the sustainability of growth and consumption.

The states cannot attract enough foreign investment projects to create growth and they



cannot keep up with the competition within foreign investment. O’Hearn blames

globalization for the rapidly decreasing consumption; it is limiting local development and

reducing success for those dependent on foreign investment (Munck & O'Hearn: 127).

O’Hearn asks several interesting questions in relation to the rise of the tiger economies;

he questions whether the tiger economies and the West can cooperate and as he expresses

“achieve new ways of providing material and nonmaterial things on a more equitable and

sustainable basis, in ways that are more sensitive to community priorities and individual

diversities?” (Munck & O'Hearn: 129). This is about creating better ways and not

necessarily in the spirit of the European development ideology. This will be further

discussed in the analysis.

The definition of a tiger economy has been outlined, in the following section the reason

for the tiger economies' prosperity will be introduced.

The Tiger Economies' Way To ProsperityThis section entails a description of the tiger economies' prosperity and development

processes.

First Japan, then came Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Then Thailand,

Malaysia, Indonesia, and lastly, in the 1970s, China and Vietnam. All these countries

have in common that they have been through a rapid development. After three decades of

super growth, the first five countries are now belonging to the developed countries and

live on a European level (Paldam: 69). What made it extraordinary that these countries

went through such an enormous development is their requisites, which is similar to the

current situation in the mid-African countries. In the 1950s, these countries had low GDP

levels, political instability, they were war torn, and, furthermore, they had a settle and

anti-development culture (Paldam: 69), and the adversity from many other less developed

countries due to the regimes and politics in the tiger economies. They have tried different

strategies and they found the politics that worked, but they did not follow one specific

strategy and that makes it difficult to find out what led them to their prosperity, in an

attempt to try it out in other strategy experiments in other less developed countries.



“The greatest disappointment of the [East Asian Miracle] Report’s market

fundamentalism is a failure to study seriously how elements of the East Asian model can

be adapted to suit conditions in other countries” (Amsden: 627). According to Amsden,

the World Bank report on the miracle of East Asia tends to be very narcissistic and give

credit to own approaches for creating the East Asian miracle - “market-friendly

approach” and “getting the basics (a twist on prices) right” (627). The World Bank tends

to publish only the information they find right and appropriate for own gain. There are

several things that come into play when looking at the “miracle”: East Asia achieved high

growth by getting the basics right, private domestic investment, rapidly growing human

capital, and superior accumulation of physical and human capital. To find out how this

miracle can be transferred to other countries that lack economic and social prosperity was

the real challenge. According to Amsden, a step in the right direction could have been

exploring and analyzing which one of East Asia's supporting institutions had served

investment, education, and exports especially well and what should be done to modify

these institutions to integrate them into other states (628).

Some of the things that can characterize the tiger economies' development is small public

sectors, focus on export, equal income distribution and macroeconomic administration

(Paldam: 72). There is a close cooperation between government and the elite of the

business community but there is a remaining question about who really has the great

power in the country; is it the greater companies that control the government or the

government that controls the companies?

The strategies and processes that has lead the tiger economies to prosperity and

development has been outlined.

In the thesis Thailand will be used as a comparable unit to see if mid-Africa can, to some

extent, benefit from the same processes. Beforehand the following section will provide a

short presentation of Thailand and its development processes.

ThailandThis section provides a description of the economic development of Thailand and



relevant development data.

Thailand is a middle-income country with strong economic growth, but there is still a

large gap between rich and poor and tendency to political instability. However, they are

working towards increasing their national income to reduce poverty and increase living

standards (Feeny and Clarke: 159).

Thailand is the counterpart that could be necessary for Africa in order to find a way out of

poverty. Feeny and Clarke state that, several observers have argued for Thailand as a role

model for the less developed countries (159). Despite a number of challenges in the

1970s the Thai economy managed to grow. In the 1970s, Thailand’s economy changed

from an agricultural to an industrial economy. This economic transformation happened

despite explicit government policies and interventions (ibid: 160). In the 1980s, the Thai

economy continued to grow and kept attracting industries, especially in the

manufacturing sector, because other Asian countries started to shed their manufacturing

operations. As indicated by Feeny and Clarke, the economic growth was not the result of

carefully developed economic policy. Thailand managed to take advantage of global,

regional and national circumstances instead of leading towards a specific policy. The Thai

economy was one of the fastest growing in the world in the period between 1982-1993

(ibid: 161). The economic growth had a drastic halt in 1997, but after the crisis in 1999,

the Thai GDP started growing again by 5 per cent per annum until 2004. According to

Feeny and Clarke, the economy will not stop growing within the nearest future (ibid:

162).1

It must be said that this economic growth is not permitted to all of Thailand, some areas

are still poor, among others the Northeastern part of Thailand and specific groups of

peoples; Muslim communities and hill tribes (ibid: 164). There are, furthermore, many

Burmese immigrants in Thailand and they too do not have good conditions.

Thailand has itself become an aid donor and is providing ODA to its lower-income

neighbors (Feeny and Clarke: 169). NGOs and the international community also play a

significant role in the positive process Thailand has gone through and are going through.



The international community and the NGOs have, however, been less dominant in

Thailand compared to what they are in Africa, where the agenda is set by the

organizations rather than the government.

The figures for Thailand are very different from mid-Africa and gives a clear impression

of the development it has gone through. In 2013 the GDP was $387.3 billion and the

population was 67.01 million people. The poverty rate was 13.2 per cent in 2011 which is

considerable lower than DRC, Nigeria and Somalia's' poverty rate which was 71.3 per

cent (2012), 46 per cent (2010), and 73 per cent (2012), respectively. GNI per capita was

$5,370 in 201314. The amount of aid is registered as $-135 million in 2012 and it accounts

for 0.0 per cent of GNI. In 2011 it was $-154 million. Most of the bilateral aid is used in

the humanitarian aid sector (OECD).

Thailand and its economic growth have been briefly outlined. In the following a

comparison of the mid-African countries and the tiger economies will be given to provide

an insight of the differences between the countries and what development process they

have been through and whether they have had an effect.

The ComparisonIn this section, the three mid-African countries will be placed in connection with the tiger

economies, mainly Thailand, to find if mid-Africa can benefit from the prosperity the

tiger economies have experienced.

There are a number of direct opposites between mid-Africa and the tiger economies: The

tiger economies had a small public sector and mid-Africa has a poor private sector. The

tiger economies focused on export, through an export-promotion strategy and mid-Africa

is bound by the dependency on 'a single item' export and the foreign demand for it;

Nigeria is very much dependent on the oil sector and its changes in prices or

performance. Nigeria is depending on one single commodity and that can be challenging

for growth and economic stability. The consequences of the single commodity

dependence has been previously mentioned.



The tiger economies focused on equal income, in mid-Africa there is a serious lack of

jobs; both DRC and Somalia experience a serious lack of jobs for the youth (UNDP: 38).

In the tiger economies macroeconomic administration is one of their reasons for reaching

prosperity and in mid-Africa there is simply a poor economic administration. There is

macroeconomic uncertainty in Nigeria due to the dependence on oil (The World Bank: 2).

The Nigerian economy report from the World Bank argues that the prospects for

macroeconomic stability are generally good, but on the other hand the macroeconomic

risks in Nigeria remain high (The World Bank: 2)

The tiger economies have proper educational opportunities whereas mid-Africa has poor

educational opportunities; in Nigeria less than 45 per cent of children between six and

sixteen in rural areas attend school (The Word Bank: 22). Lastly, there is good private

domestic investment in Asia whereas the investors flee from or avoid mid-Africa. In DRC

infrastructure has formerly been constructed by development partners, but since 2008,

that changed and now innovative institutional arrangements are being used. An example

is a partnership with Chinese companies and since 2008, public investment as a per cent

of GDP has increased in DRC until 2013 where it started to decrease slightly


There is a number of factors that clearly show the differences between the tiger

economies and mid-Africa and if all that was accomplished in mid-Africa then they

would reach Asian standards. But it is not as simple as that.

Feeny and Clarke argue that there are many factors playing a part in the growth of the

Thai economy and the success of implementing the MDGs. Among them, they mention

national harmony, astute policy making, stronger democratic governance, and public

investment in social services. They also mention the national coordination and the

commitment of the Thai government as reasons for achieving the economic prosperity

(165). The political will and the embracing of the MDGs of the Thai government was/is

also very influential. The will the government has to fulfill the goals and reach for

prosperity will also affect the population and it will create interplay and a mutual will to



reach, in this case, the MDGs. The key to create the necessary institutional structure for

growth is, according to Ranis, a government's willingness to exercise self-restraint in the

areas in which it can intervene effectively and in those it cannot. According to Ranis, the

absence of this institutional structure makes modern growth much more difficult (1452).

The importance of institutions in the relation to growth is mentioned by a number of

academics, among them Moyo, who also argues that well-functioning institutions are one

of the main assets for development (Moyo: 33). Critics of aid dependency, claim that

dependence caused by continuing aid, makes no contribution to the achievement of self-

sustaining development (Bräutigam and Knack: 257). To reach

Collier asks interesting questions in relation to Asia and development in connection to

Africa: Why have China, and indeed many other countries, changed policies while others

have not? Why is bad governance so persistent in some environments? He gives a simple

answer: Not all loses from it!

The leaders often benefits and likes to keep things as they are; their people uneducated

and ill-informed. The ones that are educated leave the country, reformers do not get a

chance to make changes and economic reforms are not exactly a popular phenomenon

due to the coercion from western states. In this case it is relevant to look at the

willingness of the state which is needed for improving development and in cases where

leaders wish to maintain status quo, development is challenged. Furthermore, the human

mentality is also relevant. The Asian people tends to be pragmatic and functional,

whereas African people tends to be more uncertain in growth and economy matters such

as entrepreneurial risks (Baker: 169).

These are examples of elements that many African countries lack; the national harmony

is hampered by corruption, policy making is hampered by the mistrust to the politicians,

strong democratic governance is non-existent and public investment is very low because

of insecurity in African investment. In East Asia there is a much higher share of private

capital than public capital. By contrast, Africa has a higher share of public capital than

private capital. “This translates into a lack of equipment for the labor force to work with,

and this in turn condemns workers to being unproductive and so to having low incomes”



The labor force in mid-Africa needs private capital (Collier: 87). Here Africa could

embrace what East Asia has done for increasing private capital. One thing that could be

beneficial for mid-Africa is the export sector. “Diversify their exports into labor-using

manufactures and services, the sort of things that Asia is already doing” (Collier: 167).

What worked in East Asia was a strong government that built institutions that could

provide facilities such as provision of infrastructure, export processing zones, and

cooperative banks (Ranis: 1453).

The government plays a significant role in achieving all of what Thailand has achieved.

The government is the leading part of making it all happen and possible. This is yet

another important element which Africa lacks, if the government is not a solid partner

and leader, achieving development can be almost impossible.

Somalia suffers from several inefficiencies such as remaining poverty, underdeveloped

social services, insufficient basic infrastructure and the private sector which has

somewhat improved but there is still a need for legal and regulatory frameworks. There is

also a need for a proper relationship between the state and the autonomous regions.

Some of the key challenges for Somalia is building peace and security, establishing

democratic processes and institutions and strengthening human rights (The European

Commission, Somalia Joint Strategy Paper: 6). According to the Joint Strategy Paper,

peace and security are the main prerequisites for long-term development. But to reach

peace and security a well-functioning government and proper institutions are mandatory

and should be reached first and peace and security will follow suit. Since 1991 there have

been several attempts to create peace and stability in Somalia, but with no further

success. In 2004 it was the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that took power, in

2006 the Union of Islamic Courts tried to take power but failed, in 2007 a resistance

movement partly consisting of Islamist extremist units had daily clashes with the TFG. In

2009 a new prime minister were elected and he wanted to change the image of the TFG

which were approved by the public and the international society (The European

Commission, Somalia Joint Strategy Paper: 10).



In DRC the government efficiency needs a consensus on the objectives of government,

but it keeps getting stalled by the continuing violence, external intervention, and the size

of DRC (Herderschee et al.: 45). Herderschee et al. blames, to a large extent, the lack of

efficient governance for the poor development in many sectors in DRC (43).

Experiences from Japan and South Korea show that extensive land reforms can play an

essential part in fighting poverty in rural areas (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 10). This can

be transferred to mid-Africa in the effort to alleviate poverty in rural areas, which are

extremely vulnerable especially in Nigeria. It is important to make everyone a part of the

political and economic development, also the rural areas, through dialog and decision

making processes. In the rural areas there is a need for distribution of land, agriculture

and terrain. As indicated by the European Commission that can be changed through a

sustainable agricultural reform adjusted to the country (The European Commission 2014:

11). Though, in Thailand they have gone from an agricultural economy to

industrialization but it does not indicate that it is the most proper transition for mid-

Africa. The rural areas are very relevant to implement since it is an important sector in

mid-Africa. As indicated in the theory, the more urbanization the more developed a

country seemed, but it ended up destroying the agricultural sector of the less developed

countries and ultimately it made the poverty rate increase (Munck and O'Hearn: 52).

The report on economic relations in Nigeria indicates that the poverty rate and poverty

reduction figures are better than first assumed. Growth and poverty reduction is mainly

valid for the urban areas. The rural areas are still affected by poverty and lack of growth.

Furthermore, the report indicates that “Nigerians are clustered around the poverty line,

implying a high degree of vulnerability for a large part of the population” (The World

Bank: 1). The reasons for the high differences in living standards lies in the provision of

public services and the link to larger markets. Nigeria needs agricultural progress to

alleviate poverty in rural areas which are badly affected, whereas in Thailand the industry

took over and created prosperity.



One of the reasons for the tiger economies to reach such prosperity is, according to Ranis,

the pragmatism of the Chinese people and their ability to focus on individual work that

benefit the majority and a stable political environment (1445). This can turn out to be a

hindrance for the African people, as indicated previously, they have another mentality;

according to Baker, they are “hesitant to accept uncertainty, to take entrepreneurial risk,

and to save” (Baker: 169) which can challenge economic growth.

Danida also touches upon lacks that can have a negative influence on growth. Cultural

relations and social structures keeps people poor and Danida further argues that lack of

initiative and enterprise is blocking the way for change (Udenrigsministeriet 1996: 9).

The role of the African civilian also matters in the poverty alleviation if their mentality

cannot cope with the development process then maybe that could hinder the

development, though the influence from the African people is not one of the main reasons

for lack of development and their desire to prosper is most likely higher than the desire

not to.

Human conditions (individual work for the greater good) has been important in the

change of the tiger economies' societies and proper institutional actions which gave

flexibility (making them willing to change processes that did not work) were also very

important. They made sure the institutional milieu was changed to adjust to the sub-

phases. For example in Taiwan, they went from unskilled labor surplus conditions to

secondary import and export substitution rather uncomplicated because of the

institutional adjustments (Ranis: 1452).

In Thailand, I experienced that local humanitarian organizations told the donors what the

people needed and the donors would contribute accordingly; funds to specific projects or

material such as school uniforms, improvements of the school, games, excursion for the

kids etc. This can be referred to the previously mentioned strategy JAS. JAS creates local

development strategies in correlation with the local authorities and organizations. The

means go directly in the less developed countries' budgets and the receiving country gets

much more influence on how the resources are spent (Udenrigsministeriet 2012: 71). The



aid is now an essential part of the receiving countries own development strategy. In

Somalia there is also a tendency to improve the donors' approach. In 2006 the Joint

Needs Assessment (JNA) was established, which was made to coordinate and create

coherent programming from donors and the need for rapid and flexible responses (The

European Commission, Somalia Joint Strategy Paper: 6).

Thailand has reached all of the MDGs even before 2015 and are now working on

additional goals customized only for Thailand (Feeny and Clarke: 164). Contrary to

Thailand is DRC who is not going to reach all the original goals before 2015 but a

customized strategy for reaching the MDGs within the next five years, in 2020, are made

(IMF: 15).

Parameters to create an economic program is outlined in the Poverty Reduction Strategy

Paper (IMF). The program was expected to boost economic growth and accelerate

employment opportunities.

The strategy should make possible the country's development vision: "take the DRC to

the human development level of middle-income countries and to converge towards the

Millennium Development Goals" (IMF: 13). The strategy will involve all development

actors and the civil society to create national ownership. Progress reports describe the

countries macroeconomic, structural, and social policies in support of growth and poverty

reduction. The report shows improvements on the institutional level but the institutions

have serious capacity deficits making it difficult to fulfill their remits. Dialog with

neighboring countries to create a lasting solution is becoming a useful tool in reaching

security. There are also governmental improvements. In 2009 a new legal framework was

created and institutional audits were carried out and restructuring measures have been

implemented in many ministries. Despite these improvements there are still major

shortcomings in the state administration for instance inadequate and anachronistic laws

(IMF: 14). Economic governance has been improved and several reforms has been

initiated. In 2009 a new IMF program were signed and showed more balanced accounts

and spending and the reforms have enabled a substantial reduction of the debt burden.

Most of the aid in 2012 was given to the 'action relating to debt' sector which indicated



the high amount of debt (OECD). The improvements in the debt sector can be a good

remedy for economic prosperity. The private sector still experiences significant funding

pressures. The overall conclusion of the report must be that there are improvements

within almost every aspect of the report but they are all followed up by insufficiencies.

So are there really any development or is it the same as the last thirty years; a little bit of

development and a bit more insufficiencies?

It is not possible for DRC to reach the MDGs by 2015, but they have postponed the

targets to 2020. Two of the goals will be reached by 2015, that is the combat of

HIV/AIDS (goal 6, target 6A) and the empowerment of women (goal 3). The goals that

will not be reached and have shown little progress are: fight against poverty (goal 1),

education for all (goal 2), child health (goal 4), fight against malaria (goal 6 target C), and

sanitation (goal 7). Goal 5; maternal health and goal 7; access to drinking water

experience mixed progress (IMF: 15).

There are a number of key challenges (reconstruction and rehabilitation of basic socio-

economic infrastructure, and building the capacity of the institutions) that need to be

addressed to achieve the goals within five years. What is important to be able to reach the

goals is the government's willingness, as indicated previously, it matters in poverty

alleviation not only of the MDGs but in the general development (IMF: 15). Whether

DRC has the willingness to reach the MDGs will be proven within the next five years.

To ensure lasting stability and sustain strong growth there are focused on four pillars:

Pillar 1: Strengthening governance and peace;

Pillar 2: Diversifying the economy, accelerating growth and promoting employment;

Pillar 3: Improving access to basic social services and strengthening human capital;

Pillar 4: Protecting the environment and fighting against climate change.

A positive mind towards development comes from G.H. Fagan who argues that

“development theory, as a body of knowledge, is still useful in conveying the structural

trends of disparities and inequalities on a global scale” (Munck & O'Hearn: 182).



Development theory can have a positive influence on measuring the wickedness of the

world. However, he also argues, a very striking point, that the situation of inequality

keeps getting debated and described but no solution is found; “it is as if by describing,

and describing again, how bad the situation is, that this will automatically lead to

change” (182). Are we getting anywhere with all this debating about what is wrong with

Africa and why it cannot change; will something ever happen? It can, however, be argued

that it is about finding the right path and that has not yet been found. There are many

parameters that need to be considered in finding the proper way for Africa and many has

been tried out. It is, as indicated, not very easy to find the most profitable and appropriate

way. As was the case with the tiger economies they found it through adjustment and

different strategies not an easy process though less time consuming than the process of

mid-Africa.

The many reports from the IMF, the World Bank and the EU indicate that there are

indeed improvements in the development of mid-Africa. Despite the development it

indicates that there is still a long way to go in the development processes in mid-Africa.

There are some aspects that has been improved but there are certainly also aspects that

has become worse for instance the basic infrastructure in Somalia (The European

Commission, Somalia Joint Strategy Paper: 6) or the rural poverty in Nigeria (The World

Bank: 1).

According to Noman et al., if Africa should reach the same GDP per capita level as

Thailand, the growth rate of GDP will have to be at least 11 per cent and growth rate of

GDP per capita will have to be 7.8 per cent annually (374). Currently the annual GDP

growth for DRC is 6.0 per cent, for Nigeria it is 6.7 per cent and for Somalia 4.7 per cent.

Which indicated that there is still a long way for the mid-African countries to reach the

same level as Thailand.

This paper argues that the Asian model is not the most suitable approach for Africa and

that these two regions cannot follow the same approach. There are a number of

indications of the differences between the two regions and the paper argues that these



differences are very relevant and needs to be considered in the alleviation of poverty in

mid-Africa.

On a general level mid-Africa can follow the tiger economies in the sense of trying out

different strategies and being willing to experiment to reach the right approach, but as

such mid-Africa should not go through the same strategies, as they need to focus on other

areas. There are, however, some areas where they can benefit by doing what the tiger

economies did: improve government and implement new export strategies.

The analysis on ODA in mid-Africa has now been conducted and showed that a mixture

of different methods and strategies, and ODA should be implemented for mid-Africa to

reach poverty alleviation. In the following section, the conclusion on the role of ODA,

aid dependency, the Western influence, and local involvement will be outlined.



Conclusion

We are on our way to a better world it is simply with baby steps. There are signs of small

improvements and if the West becomes capable of managing the ODA most efficiently

for the LDCs and incorporate it with other important elements in eliminating poverty

there will be further sustainable development. ODA cannot increase development alone

but it can have a positive effect if used properly in the country it is aiming at. If used with

other initiatives it will be helpful in reaching poverty alleviation.

Aid reduces capital flight and makes private investment more attractive and keeps capital

domestic. Collier argues, that aid is a part of the solution but cannot be the way out of

poverty single-handedly it needs backing from other actions (123). “Aid can contribute.

Yet despite what we believe to be generally good intentions, the foreign aid system also

poses problems for governance in aid dependent states” (Bräutigam and Knack: 256).

It is all about understanding the needs and implementing them for the benefit of the less

developed countries so they can reach prosperity. Furthermore, the LDCs need to open up

for solutions and be willing to try other methods to find their way out of poverty, having

the tiger economies in mind.

The essence is to find workable processes for each individual country and neglecting the

spirit of the European development ideology. But as indicated by O'Hearn the processes

could be found in cooperation with the West and Asia to “achieve new ways of providing

material and nonmaterial things on a more equitable and sustainable basis, in ways that

are more sensitive to community priorities and individual diversities” (Munck &

O'Hearn: 129).

One of the most important factors to consider in the enormous development process of

the LDCs is “the fact that different country contexts require different MDG targets and

different responses from international donors and NGOs” (Feeny and Clarke: 5).

“Donors should begin working with recipient governments to create long-term plans for



graduating from aid” (Bräutigam and Knack: 278). A system of debt relief, a strategy for

terminating funds, and find alternative ways to aid (ibid: 278). The donors also have to

focus on local involvement and adjust development processes to each country's specific

development strategy.

It is all intertwined, according to Baker, intrastate conflict is associated with poor social

development outcomes which also causes refugees: instability causes internal conflicts

which breed refugees, which causes destruction of human capital which causes decrease

in economic progress which causes poor (social) development, which causes political

violence, which finally causes instability and then it starts all over. It is just about finding

a way out of this circle of misery through government effectiveness, infrastructure

improvements and private sector development to increase economic growth.

The research on DRC, made by Herderschee et al., is showing that there is prosperity and

development processes in progress, however, it is limited and there is still a lot of change

needed and DRC is still greatly affected by poverty. The development is limited to some

sectors, primarily education and agriculture. In the other end is governance and

infrastructure where DRC still lacks development (Herderschee et al. 2012). Despite the

signs of economic growth, however low, the poverty rate is still very high (ibid: 40).

According to the Nigerian economic report, the per capital poverty rate is lower than first

estimated. There is a tendency to uneven growth in Nigeria; there has been an increase of

poverty in rural areas but a decrease in urban areas. (Nigeria Economic Report: 22).

Nigeria can, however, also reach poverty reduction in rural areas through urban growth

and increasing survival potential of the agricultural markets (ibid: 23).

Despite these many elements that go against any hope for development and betterment,

hope exists for Somalia. Al Shabab cannot hold firm in the capital and a new president,

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, seized power in 2012 and created good international

connections and a rebuilding process was in play (Baker: 280).

All countries are individuals and have to find their own unique way to poverty alleviation

and that is why the poverty keeps holding on if the way has not yet been found. It has Marie Helene Holst 74Global Refugee StudiesAalborg University, Copenhagen


proven to be a long process and it continues, development and prosperity might not come

within the next decades but in time the mid-African countries will find its way, as the

tiger economies did.



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