Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa.

• Author: Kalu, Kenneth

Foreign aid literature is quite vast. Some scholars work on why donors give foreign aid, others dwell on the outcomes of foreign aid. While, from a realistic perspective, foreign aid is seen as a political tool, from a liberal perspective, foreign aid is a must for a developing country's economic and political progress. From a structuralist perspective though, foreign aid is a new way to colonize the underdeveloped world. Kenneth Kalu's Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa is about the outcomes of foreign aid, and mostly with negative connotations.

In the book, the author dwells on why foreign assistance does not work. Apart from other works, apparently as he claims, he gives some concrete solution to Africa's poverty; and he is very critical of the foreign aid regime of the traditional donors. The main argument of the book is that although foreign aid helps a lot in softening some aspects of harsh poverty in Africa, it does not have the capacity to eradicate poverty altogether. Even though foreign aid has been very concentrated in Africa, there has not been any meaningful development in the lives of ordinary citizens.

Kalu's main point to support his argument is that foreign aid, and capital inflow might be very much connected to the good will of the developed countries. However, he suggests poverty in Africa is a reality not because of a lack of financial resources, rather, financial resources are a consequence of poverty itself. Hence, if the absence of financial resources is not the cause of poverty, for example, in a lot of Sub-Saharan African countries, what is the reason for this extreme poverty status in Africa? These countries are the main concern for Kalu, and they are mineral rich countries. According to Kalu, it is about the African state institutions which were not built for the welfare of their citizens, but they were built, mostly in colonial times, in order to benefit only a few political and social elites. Hence, to target poverty and achieve true development, restructuring and transformation of African states into developmental states are the key.

According to the author, post-colonial state structure is inherited from the colonial times, and the unique position of the African countries are very much bound to today's political economic conundrum. Kalu underlines, in Africa, there existed no states in a modern Eurocentric sense and so colonialists had to establish new institutions. Although modern is used in the Westphalian...