A very challenging post, I can support most of the statements. However, when looking at the European Aid, we see a rather results oriented, project based approach, which is indeed overly bureaucratic, but way more effective than most of the aid given by the member states themselves. Indeed, the individual member states will not stop their thing soon, although if they keep in the same politically correct course, they might wither in irrelevance.

It is a very interesting article. Indeed, the architecture and effectiveness of development aid has been the focus of debates in the past several years. Some interesting work has been done by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) in assessing the development effectiveness of World Bank Group’s programs and projects. IEG’s resources are available on http://www.worldbank.org/ieg/. Also, users can follow latest updates from IEG on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/IndependentEvaluationGroup.

There is an inherent “mind block” within aid agencies to not grant money to private companies that are making profits but at the same time are satisfying social obligations.

Somehow “making money” is synonymous with being evil in the aid agency nomenclature. By providing grants to companies that are actually sustainable has a much bigger and lasting impact on the problem than simply a one time donation of money.

The model is broken and nobody admits it. My company works in Ghana and other countries – we are making a real impact (over 100,000 people have access to clean drinking water) but we do it in a profitable and sustainable way.