foreign aid

In the World

Agribusiness and the Obama budget

Apr 11, 2013 by Steve Thorngate

Brad Plumer has a helpful list of winners and losers in the White House budget. If you want to understand the president’s proposal at a deeper level than a soundbite (but a shallower level than actually reading the whole thing), I recommend starting here.

One small quibble: Plumer’s list of losers includes “farms and agribusinesses.”

Books

Foreign aid: Does it harm or help?

Donors and clients in the developing world

Feb 23, 2000 by David Sogge

Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done, by Carol Lancaster
Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century, by Michael Edwards

From the Editors

Build back better

Haiti's future
Mar 23, 2010
The initial humanitarian response to the January 12 earthquake in Haiti has been impressive. Within weeks, Americans pledged over $500 million to the relief effort, almost equaling their response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It’s been estimated that half of all American families have donated to Haiti relief.
Books

Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty

Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way for Africa

Dambisa Moyo

Still hungry

Dec 29, 2009 reviewed by Sandra F. Joireman
When I was in southern Ethiopia in 1994, I watched truck after truck roll into a community with food aid. I asked a farmer if the harvest had been bad. He told me he had an abundant harvest of tomatoes and onions—cash crops. Because of all the food aid they were receiving, he could use his land to make some extra cash—and his family would eat wheat from America. That same year I could purchase corn oil at the local grocery store—in big metal containers labeled "A gift from the people of America." I resented having to pay for what was clearly intended to be food aid.
Cover Story

Smarter foreign aid

How to fix USAID

Dec 29, 2009 by David Beckmann

With U.S. funding, nongovernmental organizations have helped immunize millions of babies. Thanks to debt relief, most African children are in school, and in the last six years the number of people receiving HIV/AIDS medicines in developing countries has increased tenfold. Our country provides assistance through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. But the world has changed dramatically since then. It's time for the U.S. to get smarter about how it delivers foreign aid.

Impressions

The arms deal

More weapons for the Middle East
Sep 04, 2007 by James M. Wall
When Congress returns from its month-long vacation in September, President Bush will ask members to agree to a package of more than $63 billion in military aid and weapons to our “allies” in the Middle East. Why such generosity?
Impressions

In security we trust

Needed: A new Marshall Plan
Jun 19, 2002 by James M. Wall
For several months Congress had been calling for President Bush to coordinate the work of security-oriented agencies spread throughout the executive branch. The president, who retains a 75 percent approval rating, resisted such a move.
From the Editors

Power for good

The Millennium Challenge
Apr 24, 2002
The United States “has too much power for anyone’s good, including its own.” So argues Timothy Garton Ash, who observes that since the demise of the Soviet Union there is no countervailing force on the world scene to check the use of U.S. power. Economically, the U.S.’s “only rival is the European Union. In military power it has no rival.