Foreign Aid In African Countries Essay

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Title:
The impact of foreign aid in African countries: challenges, consequences and prospects of the International Monetary Fund and Zambia.

Abstract:
Sub-Saharan Africa has been defined by its instability and development discourse, since the countries gained independence from the oppressive colonial regimes, in the 1950s. As a result, Africa has been a pearl that attracts international donors’ attention for foreign aid. These donations emanate from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, governmental, non-governmental and multinational organizations. Aid that stems particularly from the IMF and WB is most widely contested, due to its penetrative conditionalities, which give the international financial institutions a great deal of control over the recipient governments. Aid is given to governments to repair their tarnished economies; the effectiveness of aid is measured on the fiscal response of …show more content…

This perception stems from the conditionalities attached to foreign aid, these conditions range from removal of trade barriers, adoption of democratic values and system, adoption of free market values, cutting back on government expenditure, devaluation of a country’s currency. These conditions have spun political leaders to be labelled as “Western puppets because their domestic and foreign policies are directly or indirectly dictated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank” (Mugabe, 2012).
This study aims to unpack the challenges, consequences and prospects of foreign aid in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will be done by looking at the link between forced democracy and conditional aid, the external (power politics) and internal (corruption) sources of aid failure, the capitalistic thinking that trickles down to the ordinary citizen.
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