In a Globe and Mail comment piece, Engineers Without Borders's George Roter argues that a new paradigm for foreign aid is needed (yawn). He calls his proposal "Cash on Delivery": to transfer funds to poor countries only once explicit performance objectives have been met. He writes: "This puts responsibility for achieving results firmly in the hands of
recipient countries, providing the flexibility and incentives needed to
achieve a goal in the way that makes the most sense."
I don't have time this morning to visit his organisation's website to see if he clarifies his point with a greater word-count. I will just comment on the logical error in his proposal. Foreign aid implies there is an absence of capability to accomplish some objective: not enough doctors, poorly trained teachers, inadequate crop yields, etc. It implies that, through foreign assistance (often money), these objectives can be met and 'development' can occur. If the recipient country already possessed the means to meet said objective, foreign assistance would not be required. Thus, however the donor-recipient-complex conceives of what activities need to be funded (and this is of course highly political), the relationship to accomplish the desired objectives is necessarily aid -> activity -> result.
Roter states that it would be better for the aid industry to sit and watch, and provide money only when the results are met. He thinks this sort of incentive is likely to encourage greater performance. But what is the incentive? If the results are achieved, they were done so without any foreign assistance, since it was withheld until the results had been shown. So is it just a cash transfer for a job well done, a performance bonus like our friends on Wall St.? Such a proposal will not address any of the systemic problems in poor countries.
Roter's piece is short on ideas, but high on rhetoric; I hope I have not made a straw man of his argument.
