A Primer on Aid Effectiveness: Development Partners or Development Parasites? Evidence from Uganda
Abstract:
During the 1990s, and especially over the second half of the decade, Uganda experienced high economic growth, falling income poverty, and relative political stability. In this dynamic environment, donors’ contribution to Uganda’s effective implementation of the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) can be conceptualized along a spectrum of aid partnership. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, while true development partners (e.g. DFID) support the government’s development agenda by welcoming a switch from projects to government budget systems, development parasites like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
remain foreign to Uganda’s dynamic development plan. Government and development partners share the responsibility to continue pursuing the effective implementation of Uganda’s PEAP, while applying political pressure to regulate the activities of development parasites, who have failed to keep up with the pace of the policy debate.
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Speaking ahead of the
Speaking ahead of the Bank-sponsored summit, which will bring together African health ministers, OECD development partners, development agencies, and other participants to mobilize additional support for African countries fighting malaria, World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, says the Paris conference is proof that, just a matter of months after the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, the international community is determined to help African countries gain the upper hand against a disease that mostly strikes children under the age of five. Based on his recent travels in Africa and South Asia, where he said he had been struck by the reported progress that countries such as Eritrea, E20-322 Madagascar, and India are making in controlling malaria, Wolfowitz says that evidence clearly showed that the mosquito-borne disease is completely preventable and treatable.“It is a sad fact that malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds despite the existence of methods to both prevent and cure the disease,” Wolfowitz said. We must act now, before the malaria parasite adapts and grows resistant to the insecticides and drugs we have available to us today.”In 1998, the World Bank and its international partners - World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the UN Development Programme - announced a "Roll Back Malaria" initiative intended to cut malaria rates in half in 12 years. 117-102 “Since then, additional donors and partners have joined this effort, including other development banks, donor countries, as well as the private sector, academia, NGOs and foundations,” Wolfowitz noted. “Despite very good intentions, malaria is as much of a threat today in Africa, if not worse. Obviously, we must do better.” Last Thursday, the Bank's Board of Executive Directors approved a US$150 million health project grant for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 642-587 a key feature of which is a US$30 million anti-malaria measure to help the DRC Government to rapidly increase numbers of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets available to people (aiming for two to three nets per household) and to treat malaria-infected patients promptly with more effective drugs, in a large portion of the country.