ABSTRACT
In June 2000, the World Bank announced it had decided to extend a loan package worth several hundred million dollars to the government of Chad, in support of a controversial 650 mile pipeline project (Rosenblum, 2000). Since the end of the Cold War and the emergence of international civil society, the old donor policy of blindly supporting corrupt authoritarian governments was no longer tenable. The story of Chad's relationship with the donors is worth telling because it encapsulates many of the continuing dynamics of foreign aid in Africa. In recent years, a new rhetoric of governance and participatory development has emanated from the donor community, suggesting that in the post-Cold War environment, it is much less willing to countenance economic and political governance deficiencies. The response of the West to the emergence of Africa's economic crisis in the late 1970s was contradictory. The sustained increases in aid flows have had several important impacts on Africa.
