Giving Compass' Take:

• Christensen Institute investigates the best way to provide international aid to countries that need it, but without forcing those countries to become fully dependent. 

• The author ends of the article with a quote from Jim Kim, President of World Bank who says, " ...we begin to focus less on the transfer of resources to poor countries and do more to harness the potential that already exists within these communities. Prosperity begins there." What are the benefits to mobilizing small populations in developing nations rather than giving resources outright?

• Read about the increasing popularity of international grantmaking. 

While some make the case that wealthy countries should give more resources, other economists argue that aid fuels corruption, dependency, and props up dictators. Both arguments are compelling, but they beg the question: what feasible alternatives to providing aid even exist?

Innovators created new markets which in turn created new jobs and infrastructure. As these markets and infrastructures grew, governments began regulating them and creating institutions that ensured the safety of its citizens. But since the industrialization of development, many other stakeholders—multilateral organizations, foreign aid programs from high-income countries, development economists mostly from high-income countries, charities, multinational corporations, low-income country governments—have become more prominent players in the economic development discourse.

Many of the industry’s players are experts at distributing resources. From loans to schools to hospitals, and even to good governance, we have created a system that is adept at distributing, measuring, and developing success metrics for the resources it distributes.

The main reason why we’re seeing so little progress is because resources, whether financial or technical, are often transferred from wealthy countries to poor with little consideration of local capabilities. For aid programs to be impactful local communities must be able to sustain them long after the donors step away, which means that a program’s size and complexity can’t exceed the recipient’s capability to sustain it.

As an example, transferring resources as simple as water wells or as complex as sophisticated IT systems to improve governance, may be helpful initially, but the impact won’t endure if the local community lacks the personnel, the expertise, or the infrastructure to maintain them.

Read the full article about distributing resources for international aid by Efosa Ojomo at Christensen Institute