Why We Lie About Aid

Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system that mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spec [...]
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Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system that mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spectrum - those on the right claiming we don't spend enough, those on the left that we don't spend enough. The reality, as Yanguas argues in this highly provocative book, is that aid isn't - or at least shouldn't be - about levels of spending, nor interventions shacked to vague notions of 'accountability', 'ownership' and 'harmonisation'. Instead, a different approach is possible, one that acknowledges aid as being about struggle, about taking sides, about politics. It is an approach that has been quietly applied by innovative development practitioners around the world, providing political coverage for local reformers to open up spaces for change. Drawing on a variety of convention-defying stories from aid practitioners across the world - from Britain to the US; Sierra Leone to Honduras - Yanguas provides an eye-opening account of what we really mean when we talk about aid.