Development aid is a form of public investment that people sought to optimize in view of its limited usefulness. Policy makers and experts agreed on a set of principles to maximize return on investment, the so-called aid effectiveness principles. The overarching rationale was a trend back to managerial principles and shift away from a practice purely justified by good intentions: national performance targets were aligned with a global developmental agenda. This paradigm shift has produced an MDG-decade of poverty decline and economic growth. Nearly all African countries have made dramatic socio-economic improvements and the perception of the continent changed from a desperate to a continent of growth composed of lions on the move.
The economic approach to the use of aid was a triumph of a people’s centered approach, according to which success was measured with improved socio-economic living conditions of the people rather than the state centered application of norms to satisfy political goals, the so-called political conditionality.
The agency focused economic approach to the use of aid might sound to some as cold utilitarianism. It is indeed good business since it allows for the best return on investment: aid effectiveness leads to improved living conditions, which in turn create market opportunities for the donor countries. However, the economic approach is in actual fact humanism par excellence: It puts the socioeconomic interests of the people above the interest of any structural consideration (political interests).
Someone might ask about the political interests of the people. Well, promoting political interests of others, such as human rights, can make you feel good but it is an aberration. Empirically, there are two considerations to retain. First, the promotion of human rights suffers from double-standards. The one giving lessons are immune of criticism against their own violations of human rights. Second, political conditionality has not proven to be efficient to advance the cause of human rights. It is not possible for a country to satisfy political conditionality on human rights without using the aid effectiveness principles to achieve socioeconomic transformation. Political conditionality focused on human rights has rather created a perverse effect of rent seeking behavior by human rights activists: a) they compete for the same resources as the beneficent countries b) on the basis that they can prove human rights violations. What is more, human rights activists escape by virtue of their image the realm of mutual accountability, enshrined in the aid effectiveness principles.
Dogmatically, one may even question how issues of human rights can be subject to a partnership contract. Unlike economic interests, human rights are inalienable and not fungible. Only the beneficiary of such rights is entitled to exercise them, however even such beneficiary is not allowed to bargain them. Stipulating human rights for the benefit of third parties is a fallacy.
Does it mean that powerful and resourceful nation should just neglect human rights violations perpetrated in partner countries? No, the best way to promote human rights is to promote the people, to empower them socioeconomically so that they can make their own choices. Imposing ones choices on other societies doesn’t function empirically. This is what the last decade of MDGs was about. It is now being questioned by donors looking for transcendence in the wake of the economic crisis that has shaken their beliefs.
Africa is a rising lion 