For the many thousands of professionals considering a career in international development, the possibility of making the world a better place probably features highly. Reading this rigorous and comprehensive critique of how international aid resources are allocated and the motivation and practices of those in positions of seniority, might therefore come as a deflating experience. David Sims is an independent economist based in Cairo, Egypt, who draws on five decades of international experience as a consultant and project leader for leading aid agencies to provide a penetrating, yet highly readable, analysis of how the aid sector operates and why it has, so far, failed to enable poor countries to shake off the shackles of poverty, rendering foreign aid unnecessary.
Sims presents a vast wealth of evidence to claim that the multiplicity of donor agencies, consultancy firms and individuals allocating or competing for donor funding represents a global development industry. He frames the relationship between rich and poor countries as the West versus the Rest and structures his critique in three parts. Part One, which occupies more than half of the book, outlines the complex web of bilateral and multilateral donors and their motivations, interests and procedures that have evolved in recent decades in what he claims is a largely self-serving manner. This includes the use of aid to promote strategic and commercial interests and other forms of soft power by donor governments and more recently the increasing role of multinationals which use aid to break into new markets and influence public policy in the developing world.
Although the amount of aid allocated annually is large at around US$160 billion, Sims puts this into perspective by comparing it with a similar amount for the global bottled water industry and the far larger amount spent on the fitness and mind-body industry. He plots the increasing scale and complexity of the aid industry, with multiple donors operating in the same countries, each of which follow their own policies, priorities and procedures with which weak recipient governments have to cope. Limited coordination between agencies compounds these problems.
As the scale of activity has increased, so has the size of consultancies competing for a share of the funding, while concerns about ensuring taxpayer value for money has resulted in complex and increasingly self-serving procurement procedures. Sims argues that to justify their expenditure despite their limited impact, donors resort to ever more complex demands for change and reform, except where this concerns their own operations.
In Part Two, Sims turns his attention to the governments of the Rest who are the recipients of almost all development assistance. Again, he comes to a largely negative conclusion in terms of outcomes, mainly because he considers that in most cases, the governments are ineffective and self-serving, with personal interests of politicians and officials prioritised over those of the public. While acknowledging that many local politicians, civil servants and other professionals do their best to promote progress, the index carries many references to corruption that have undermined their best efforts and those of donors. In addressing the increasing scale of officially unplanned forms of urban development, he shows that governments receiving aid have also been prone to applying planning and building standards that were either originally imposed by western countries or were adopted as norms to which countries aspired. Whilst understandable in many ways, Sims shows how this has impeded opportunities to enable the masses of the new urban populations to benefit from the development process even when under pressure from donor agencies.
Finally, a brief Part Three puts the two sides together and offers recommendations for major change. The book has a focus on urban development, which is appropriate, given that more than half of humanity now lives in urban areas and this is forecast to increase significantly. It also has extensive coverage of the application of aid in Egypt, where Sims has lived and worked for much of his life and this example serves to enhance the detail within which the broader issues operate.
Urban poverty, inequality and the climate crisis present major challenges for both governments and the international community, but Sims argues that by focusing more on poverty reduction, the aid industry is failing to address structural levels of inequality in the countries where it operates. He concludes that the industry aim to Move the Money is sacrosanct and changes in policy and personnel impede performance and even damage the institutional memory of an agency, though these issues are increasingly common in all national and multinational organisations, not just international development.
Sims’ critique provides right-wing media and politicians with all the ammunition they could want to reduce aid budgets and the UK, for example, has recently cut its commitment to international development from 0.7% of GPD to 0.5% and much of this is now spent within the UK on Ukrainian and other refugees. However, the need for the international community to address inequality and deprivation remains undiminished and suggests greater cooperation between aid agencies would help.
Professionals working, or hoping to work, in international development will find much in this critique on which to reflect. As Sims notes, the aid industry spares no effort towards analysing economies and societies in the Rest, yet never turns its efforts towards analysing itself, except in the most superfluous ways. His findings therefore present the aid industry with both a challenge and an opportunity. If it is to justify its existence against increasing opposition, those in positions of influence need to review what it exists for and how it can learn the lessons from past failures. The global crises of climate heating, conflicts and inequality, require greater international support for vulnerable communities, not less, so we must hope they will rise to the occasion.