While it is true that some foreign aid has been wasted, on the whole foreign aid has been a great success over 50 years. Some of it has been wasted to promote political ideologies during the Cold War; to ship surplus unwanted agricultural products; to pay the salaries of high priced consultants; their accommodation in five-star hotels or homes; filling the pockets of corrupt government officials, etc.
However, what foreign aid has achieved over this 50-year period was improvement in health and education indicators in poor countries; life expectancy improvement from 48 years to 68 years over 4 decades; 131 out of every 1,000 babies born in poor countries died before reaching their first birthday 40 years ago; now it is 36 babies; elimination of smallpox and other diseases; etc.
The New York University economist William Easterly estimated that $2.3 trillion were spent on foreign aid over this 50-year period. This was however all aid to all poor countries from all donor countries according to another economist Jeffrey D Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Mr Sachs added that the aid by person per year tells us that the average aid recipient received the grand sum of $15 each year. In the past few decades this was about 0.3% of gross national income. Compare the $2.3 trillion of foreign aid to the 50-year spend by U.S.A alone on military spending of $17 trillion, about 8 times the aid level. G-7 countries need to rethink.
Nagindas Khajuria
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