Less aid proliferation and more donor coordination? The wide gap between words and deeds

Abstract

We present a two-step approach of assessing whether major donors of foreign aid have met recent demands for less proliferated and better coordinated aid efforts. First, we calculate Theil indices revealing the concentration of each donor's aid on recipient countries and specific aid sectors. Second, we map overlaps of aid from different donors and over time to analyze the degree of coordination. Our results point to a wide and persistent gap between the rhetoric of political declarations and the donors' actual aid allocation during the period 1995-2006. Few donors have specialized on a limited set of recipients and aid sectors, and coordination has remained elusive. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The EU and Donor Coordination on the Ground: Perspectives from Tanzania and Zambia

“…Donors operate in many different developing countries and in various sectors within those countries, resulting in aid fragmentation (Fengler and Kharas, 2011, p. 4). Aid agencies employ their own strategies, procedures and requirements, which translates into a huge burden for recipient countries (Birdsall, 2008, p. 523;Aldasoro et al, 2010). They have their own motivations, priorities and strategies and apply their own allocation criteria, resulting in overlaps or duplication, as well as funding gaps or orphan sectors (Barry and Boidin, 2012, p. 656).…”

Do We Know What We Think We Know? Aid Fragmentation and Effectiveness Revisited

“…In addition to relevant differentiations related to country and sector characteristics, the effect of aid fragmentation cannot be duly examined without taking into account the different modes of delivery including the degree of donor coordination (see also Aldasoro, Nunnenkamp, and Thiele 2010). While this information is not directly available, the way in which fragmentation is measured is indirectly related to the type of the coordination problem expected in any given context.…”

The Hollow Ring of Donor Commitment: Country Concentration and the Decoupling of Aid‐Effectiveness Norms from Donor Practice

“…To avoid any distortion from single-year anomalies, it is preferable to compare multi-year averages. A second study assessing the proliferation of aid over time uses a sample of only ten donors to examine three time periods using Theil index values, and finds that only two donors (France and the Netherlands) are in fact focusing their aid more selectively (Aldasoro et al, 2010). Unfortunately, given the limited sample of donors, we are left with questions about the extent to which country concentration has been implemented among the rest of the DAC members.…”