1 - Development Cooperation in an Era of Globalisation

Question 1

How is Official Development Cooperation (ODA) defined?

Answer 1

ODA is the financial-equivalent aid governments provide to developed countries listed in the UN Development Assistance Committee’s list of Aid Recipients (around 30 members). Aids include loans, concessional grants, debt cancellation and technical cooperation. Aid for military purposes is excluded.

Question 2

What are the problems with ODA?

Answer 2

Aid is only viewed in the donor’s terms, which overestimates its value through debt cancellation or overvaluation of purchased goods.

Question 3

What is TOSSD?

Answer 3

TOSSD is another approach to development cooperation. It stands for “Total Official Support for Sustainable Development”. It is centred around the SDGs and also takes into account state-backed private support, South-South cooperation and Islamic Finance.

Question 4

How are development cooperators coherent and consistent?

Answer 4

Development cooperators developed coherency and consistency by means of advocating for strictly non-commercial aid

Question 5

How do development cooperators establish a collective agenda?

Answer 5

Development Cooperators establish a collective agenda through coordinated lobbying. Lobbying is especially important for them because development cooperation does not get political attention by itself and also because the universe of development cooperation is varied and fragmented, requiring joint action to achieve important outcomes

Question 6

What is FID?

Answer 6

FID (Finance for International Development) is an alternative measure which encompasses, on a grant-equivalent basis, the aid provided by States—DAC members or not—to other countries. As opposed to DAC, it does not account for the domestic spending in the provider country (e.g scholarship, support, development-related R&D, in-country refugee spending …)

Question 7

What is the 0.7% target? Why is it contested?

Answer 7

Back in the sixties, the 0.7% of national GDP target was considered the annual contribution developed countries must invest to fill the gap with developing countries. Today, the target is met by a handful of actors.

Question 8

What are the four pillars of development cooperation?

Answer 8

1 - Official (i.e. governmental) bilateral development cooperation
2 - Multilateral Development Cooperation: activities founded by governments but executed by international institutions
3 - Private and specialised development cooperation organisations which receive funds from governments or civil society to implement their projects (e.g. NGDOs)
4 - Varied organisations, institutions and companies which only recently took part in development cooperation

Question 9

Who are the actors in development cooperation?

Answer 9

Civil servants, ministerial staff, NGDO employees and volunteers, field workers, consultants, researchers, local employees, target groups, recipient governments and all kinds of local institutions. They are all competing with each other to get more power in the process

Question 10

What are the arenas in development cooperation?

Answer 10

Arenas are located in the donor country, in the recipient’s and in every city or village impacted by the projects

Question 11

What is the redistribution model in development cooperation?

Answer 11

It is the approach of those advocating for the equal redistribution of global wealth

Question 12

What is the growth model in development cooperation?

Answer 12

It is the approach which retains that only the joint growth of the economies of the Global North and South will help. It has the upper hand in the field

Question 13

What are the critics of short-term intervention?

Answer 13

Some scholars criticise short-term intervention because it can actually reinforce poverty by making people dependent and can lead to wrong policies such as vertical healthcare approaches that focus on a single disease and hinder much-needed horizontal and all-encompassing healthcare policies.

Question 14

What are the critics of structural intervention?

Answer 14

Some scholars argue that sending technical experts to other countries forces local people out of the employment market and question the appropriateness of debt cancellation since it might reward and encourage bad policy.

Question 15

Why are the right local levers for development?

Answer 15

For some, development cooperation is only the catalyst through which local dynamism unfolds. For others, it is a way to fix the weaknesses of local actors and institutions, for example, by sending experts

Question 16

What is the difference between generalised and concentrated development work?

Answer 16

• Generalised development work focuses on general measures to reduce the North-South divide (e.g access to Western markets, debt cancellation)
• Concentrated development work focuses on case-based analysis at the local level

Question 17

Who owns the means of production?

Answer 17

They are jointly owned by a variety of stakeholders. In practice, the donor country, the receiving country and the various organisations involved fight to gain control.

Question 18

Why are players in the development market so competitive?

Answer 18

Because, while actors have increased, funds remained almost the same in the last decade. The sector might still be very lucrative: UN alone is an over 18 billion USD market

Question 19

What are development impact bonds?

Answer 19

Development impact bonds are based on a contract between a private investor and conventional donors who jointly want to achieve an objective in the field of development cooperation. The investor takes the initial risks of paying for the interventions, such as infrastructural investments, equipment or activities, to hit the goals. To compensate for the risk-taking, the investor will be remunerated if and to the extent that the intervention succeeds.

Question 20

What are the new donors?

Answer 20

New donors come from the Southern World (e.g. BRICS, UAE, Indonesia, Thailand, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico …) and mostly operates outside the DAC framework.

Question 21

How is China funding development cooperation?

Answer 21

China adheres strictly to the principle of non-inference in international affairs. It invests in development cooperation mostly in the form of customs duties exemption and non-concessional loans, which might catch the recipients into debt traps. They also offer grants for initiatives in countries which are strategically important for their projects (e.g. Belt and Road initiative)

Question 22

How are Turkey, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar approaching development cooperation?

Answer 22

They mostly invest in their Muslim neighbours to achieve security and stability, besides economic gains.

Question 23

How are South Africa, India, Thailand and Brazil approaching development cooperation?

Answer 23

They are following the SDGs

Question 24

What is soft diplomacy?

Answer 24

It is a form of soft power exerted through cultural influence (e.g. foreign culture institutes built in the recipient countries)

Question 25

What elements should be considered in the shift towards new forms of development cooperation?

Answer 25

Development cooperation should be agile, interactive and iterative. Plans should be human- and not project-centred. From the recipient side, the top-down approach used by governments should be revised as it often overpowers non-state actors undermining their capacity to take leading roles and efficiently complete the projects.