Lectures 1-2: Basic Concepts Flashcards
Development definition
In general: Positive change in a society
(as understood in Development Assistance) = a process of accomplishing planned short and medium term goals
technocratic approach, easier to operationalize in practice
Why should we study development “industry”?
- big “business”
- it has an impact on many spheres (political,economical…)
- it brings forth hugely differing opinions (e.g. Sachs x Easterly)
assistance/cooperation/aid: definition
concrete external interventions in the developing countries with the overall aim to bring about a positive social change, most often poverty reduction
Development Assistance
Different Understandings (limited/broad):
a) all the financial resources from private and public donors provided for development aims
b) only funds provided by the official donors => ODA
Forms of Development Assistance
humanitarian emergency assistance, budget support, country programmable aid, food aid, military assistance…
de-politicization of development
Dealing with immediate, urgent individual needs,
ignoring the broader context (political economy, power structures, global income inequalities etc.)
ODF
= used for measuring the inflow of public resources to recipient countries
OOF = transactions by the official sector with countries on the DAC List which do not meet the conditions for eligibility
as ODA
OOF
transactions by the official sector with countries on the DAC List which do not meet the conditions for eligibility
as ODA
Development Assistance: Public Sector
Development Assistance: Private Sector
OECD DAC
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s
- Development Assistance Committee
- international forum for the major donor countries
- seeking new ways of doing business to increase both the quantity and the quality of aid
- 30 members + observers
- Candidate country assessment based on criteria:The existence of appropriate strategies, policies and institutional frameworks that ensure capacity to deliver a development co-operation programme; an accepted measure of effort; and the existence of a system of performance monitoring and evaluation
- established in 1960 as Development Assistance Group (1961 => DAC)
- original aim: accurate and comparable data reporting
- aid statistics, especially on ODA
ODA: Official Development Assistance
- specific category of official financial flows from donor to recipient countries
- created in 1969 to:
→separate some of the problematic forms of aid in 50s and 60
→unify the reporting of aid data
OECD DAC put limitations on what can be classified as official development assistance in terms of:
- aim of the funding
- which country receives the funding → e.g. military assistance (& DAC imposed geographical limitations on classified ODA)
- 1970: target of providing 0.7% of GNI as ODA annually
ODA Flows (starting 2018)
- flows to countries and territories ONLY on the DAC List of ODA recipients: LDCs, other low income countries, lower middle and upper middle income countries:
- and to multilateral development institutions that promote and specifically target economic development and welfare
the resource flows which are:
a) provided by official agencies, including state and local governments, or by their executive agencies;
b) concessional in character (grants and soft loans)
ODA as grant equivalent (starting 2018)
before, grants and concessional loans valued in the same way &“concessional” was open to interpretation
only “grant equivalent” of loans is now recorded as ODA = the more generous the loan, the higher the ODA value
encouraging donors to prefer grants and highly concessional loans