Foreign Aids in Africa: From Realities to Contradictions

Akinola, Adeoye O.

School of Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

E-mail: oyeakinola@yahoo.com; Phone: +27738217453

Accepted 28 May, 2012

Abstract

Contrary to expectations, the global network of foreign aid has outlived the end of cold war, and giving alms to Africa remains one of the most sensitive issues in African-Western relations in the past decades. In the government circles, calls for more aid to Africa are targeted at doubling the $50 billion of international assistance that yearly goes to the continent for developmental projects. Although foreign aids serves as a humanitarian efforts to alleviate the suffering of those in distress, but the Brettonwood institution’s conditionality attached to “helping” Africa has engendered contradictions, reduced its effectiveness and fuelled masses inspired hostilities to Western aids in Africa. Therefore, the study tries to examine the motivating factors for donor and recipient countries attractions to aid. It becomes imperative to query the liberalist-oriented conditionality attached to aids, assess the socio-cultural impact and examine the cost-benefit of foreign aids to Africa. The study found that aids to developing nations remained an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster, especially in the fueling of corruption in Africa. It was also discovered that the contagious aid culture has left African states more indebted and lazy, poorer, inflation-prone, and more vulnerable to the politics of western exploitation.The study concludes that foreign aid is injurious to African psyche and would not aid Africa out of poverty; rather a rethink on adherence to those injurious cultural practices to sustainable development and insistence of responsive governance in Africa remained a sure path to development in the continent.

Keywords: Foreign aids, Africa contradictions