ABSTRACT
The majority of people in the world inhabit what are known as the developing countries. Most of these people are poor, often to the extent of being undernourished and debilitated by ill-health. The process of aid involves not one but two bureaucracies — one in the donor country and one in the recipient country. Aid donors are faced by two alternatives. One is to go further along the road of controls: to devise more sophisticated techniques of planning, appraisal and implementation and become more involved in the decision-making processes of the recipient countries, while preserving the myth that they merely provide what is requested of them. The second is to allow recipients more control, to make aid more automatic and no longer conditional on the performance of the recipient agencies, and to concede at least some power over the purse-strings and hence over the way in which aid is used.
