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International Dialogue

International Dialogue

Abstract

The international aid industry continues to export paid and unpaid Westerners to undertake development work of questionable and suspect utility to Africa, and to the less-developed countries of other regions. Despite its widespread acceptance in the West and tremendous financial support, this work has been criticized as failing to meaningfully improve the quality of life due to a multitude of systemic challenges within the industry. This range of challenges includes the intrinsic power imbalances found between debtor nations and their creditors; the dominant position of great powers within international organizations and as the funders of international non-governmental organizations; the pathological dysfunction of the developmental bureaucracies; and the state and institutional weakness of developing countries who, despite their inability to create the rule of law, often interpose themselves between the international aid industry and the communities who are the intended beneficiaries of development. It is the regime of international development that inhibits the forbearance necessary to permit an endogenous development which prioritizes the input and direction of the beneficiary communities themselves and would thus encourage the aid industry to formalize self-autonomy and to defend the dignity of the people whose resources the industry has ostensibly mobilized to assist. The structures of the international development regime present an overpowering inertia against reform towards forbearance; however, organizational reform of the aid industry remains the most realistic method of advancing endogenous development.

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