Foreign Aid in the Twenty-First Century

Foreign aid in the twenty-first century promises to be different from aid in the twentieth century in four important ways: who provides it, why it is provided, how it is organized and delivered, and how large it is, not all of which point in the same direction. The balance of change focuses on promoting development with aid. The way aid giving governments organize themselves to manage their aid has a major role in shaping the purposes of that aid. Aid organization often reflects the government's purposes at the time a particular organizational arrangement is put into place and usually influences their evolution. This chapter focuses on official development assistance (ODA), as defined by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to encompass concessional public resource transfers from one government to another with at least a 25 percent grant element, one purpose of which is furthering development in a poor country.