ABSTRACT
Our judgements about a number of issues have appeared in preceding chapters. Here we draw some of them together and bring out the implications for British aid policy in Kenya. How far these implications have validity elsewhere we leave to others’ consideration. Our standpoint is that aid should have the purpose of raising incomes in the recipient country with particular emphasis on the incomes of the poorest. Inequality is acceptable in so far as it serves the purpose of raising the absolute level of income of the poorest, but in so far as it fails to do so, it is to be disapproved. Ideally policies should make a state more able to withstand external pressures and less reliant on external support. Sometimes this objective and that of raising material living standards go hand-in-hand but sometimes, we fear, they do not. Then choices have to be made by the legitimate government of the recipient country. In general terms our preference would be to emphasise living standards where people were very poor, but rarely to the point of sacrificing all freedom of action in any particular area of policy. Such general statements are, however, of little use to someone dealing with policy and confronted with specific trade-offs.
