he five poorest countries in the world, measured by GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Haiti.
One might imagine, then, that these countries are among the top recipients of UK aid. Wrong. The main beneficiaries are, in fact, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Not one of the five poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of British aid. [...]
Nor is it any different with multilateral aid (funds channelled through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than directly between donor and recipient). Again, not one of the poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of multilateral aid. [...]
Half of all international development aid is “tied”, meaning that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from the donor nation. As the USAid website used to boast (until the paragraph became too embarrassing and was deleted in 2006): “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development’s contracts and grants go directly to American firms.” Aid has “created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans”. Long before Trump entered the White House, USAid was “putting America first”. [...]
Aid not only boosts the economies of rich countries but also promotes their foreign policy aims. As a 2014 report by the US Congressional Research Service put it, aid “can act as both carrot and stick and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems and projecting US values”.
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