Why foreign aid should be recipient-centred

CHE RESEARCH BITES

By Jack Hennessy, Duncan Mortimer and Rohan Sweeney

Published: 28 September, 2023

In 2021, Official Development Assistance (ODA) reached an all-time high of 178.9 billion USD. Yet foreign aid does not always change what matters most to recipients.

Donors generally allocate funds according to their own strategic priorities or what they think recipients might need. These donor preferences for directing foreign aid don’t always align with recipients’ preferences. This is important because foreign aid may be wasted or ineffective if donors and recipients have different ideas about how aid should be used.

Provided we are willing to listen, it should be easy enough to make sure that aid is getting to where it is needed and changing what matters most to recipients. CHE researchers Jack Hennessy, Duncan Mortimer, Rohan Sweeney, and Maame Esi Woode conducted a systematic review summarising what we already know about donor and recipient preferences for aid allocation.

Their review identified some important and surprising differences between donor and recipient preferences. Donors favoured the health sector and cared about aid effectiveness, more than aid recipients. Their review also revealed that only six of the 58 included studies described recipient preferences.

After more than 30 years of discourse promoting ‘locally-led development’ and the ‘decolonisation of aid’, this perplexingly small number suggests there remains scope to listen more carefully and perhaps also to achieve better outcomes from aid.

Find the original academic paper here:  Hennessy, J., Mortimer, D., Sweeney, R. and Woode, M.E., 2023. Donor versus recipient preferences for aid allocation: A systematic review of stated-preference studies. Social Science & Medicine

Find out more about the Global and Environmental Health Economics , Disadvantage and health and Economic behaviour, incentives and preferences in health research themes.

CHE Research Bites are short, easy-to-understand summaries of our recent academic papers highlighting new evidence and insights on topical issues in the health and healthcare sectors.

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