ABSTRACT
From the outset the study of international economic development has been closely tied to questions about the need for, and the potential contributions of, what has become known as 'overseas development assistance' (ODA) or, in more common parlance, 'foreign aid'. ODA entails critical issues that from time to time surface in a seemingly never-settled academic and policy debate among liberals and structuralists, neoliberals and neostructuralists. The term 'foreign aid' is at best ambiguous, disguising more than it reveals. Bilateral and commercial loans, as well as loans from the international financial institutions, require the payment of principal and interest. In the colonial era, following the initial period of bloody conquest and pillage, the 'authorities' set about to combine 'normal' capitalist exploitation with foreign aid to educate and train a class of indigenous clients in the lower levels of the colonial administration and armed force.
