Hey guys!
Earlier this morning i was going to share this reading i had from one of my classes that i thought it’d be interesting and relevant but then i had to rush to attend Dambisa Moyo’s talk and it was really cool that it was around the same lines as the article i was going to post.
So the paper is called “Aiding Conflict: The Unintended Consequences of US Food Aid on Civil War” by Nunn & Qian, 2010. I am sure you can access it on google scholar or on the UBC library website. The study examines the relationship between US food aid, namely Food for Peace Program (which was about 20% of total US foreign aid during 1976-2004), and foreign conflict.
The results from this study showed that an increase amount of food aid actually extended conflict in civil war countries because of corrupt leaders and government abusing the program. Rather than distributing food, they were actually selling food to make revenues to use towards the military instead. So basically, showed the adverse effects of food aid.
Of course, one of the shortcomings of this study is that it didn’t take into account the cost benefit analysis, but even so, Dambisa Moyo argued the same thing today and in her book of course, and in her talk she specifically said “aid fuels civil war” mainly because the African leaders are not held accountable. It was interesting because she brought up President Kagame’s economic approach of not accepting any international aid, and how it seems like a good approach that he is taking.
I know a few of us were lucky to make it and i hope the rest of you did too. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, either here or in class… : )