What Good Is Foreign Aid? Ctd

A reader with 20 years of development experience urges us to expand the terms of the debate:

The fact is, Bill Gates and William Easterly are both right – to a point. In health, aid has made enormous difference on many fronts, not least of all HIV. The rapid resurgence of drug-resistant TB is incredibly scary, and aid’s role is essential. That said, you can find lots of waste and programs that don’t improve things, at least for very long.

Still, the debate really misses the point. This is a rich time in the development world, where people are asking very hard questions about what works and doesn’t work, rather than merely defending aid money. There are, of course, the randomnistas using randomized controlled trials to test whether development projects have caused quantifiable change. And thinkers like Owen Barder are among many promoting complex, adaptive approaches to projects (based on the evolutionary idea that each community/organism succeeds by trial and error and making adaptations suitable for its circumstances) in reaction to linear, command-and-control,”best practices” (logframe) approaches of aid donors. Others are looking at whether just giving cash to poor people is effective, and under what circumstances. I‘m just scratching the surface, but the “Is aid good or bad?” debate is stale.