Approaching the question “Has Aid to Africa been helpful or detrimental to the African People?”
I would consider a given period say from 1960–2022, and the specific countries say sub-Saharan African countries.
I would consider the different kinds of aid or funding that is necessary for the output (economic development variables): foreign direct investment (FDI), humanitarian aid/assistance, foreign trade incentives, Bilateral Aid, Military Aid, and multilateral aid.
I would consider the total amount of aid that was given to these countries with the defined time and correlate them with the level of corruption, poverty, level of human development, political instability, and poor institutional quality.
I would take into consideration the amount of money that was spent on the different projects that were implemented with the given aid and compare it with their perceived worth and correlate that with what was claimed to have been spent on it.
I would also look at the effect of specific aid like FDI or humanitarian assistance etc by implementing a generalized regression analysis model between the specific aid and its specific target, and also between foreign aid in general and economic development indicators and economic growth. Implement a Granger hypothesis test to test if economic development can be predicted by aid and also the dynamic relationship among the different variables, statistical test.
I would quantify what I mean by work or not work, if aid is directly proportional to economic development variables like economic growth, governance index, political stability then it worked otherwise it did not work.
Sources:
OECD, World Bank, IMF, AFDB, Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, African Peer Review Mechanism(APRM), NGOs, WTO, UNDP, Afrobarometer, Kaggle.
Indicators/variables
Level of accountability and transparency of the government
Is there a consensus among the people of that country that they need such aid security and rule of law participation, rights, and inclusion,economic opportunity, human development .
Sections to Include
Internal factors
(Enabling Environment for business, security, social protection, and inclusion)
Security and safety, Rule of law and justice, Accountability and transparency, Anti-corruption
Participation, Inclusion, and equality (income and otherwise), Gender, Effectiveness of Public
Administration, Business environment, Rural or informal and traditional sector
External factors
(foreign interest, reason for giving aid, goal of aid, who the aid is supposed to help(thegovernment officials or the people?)
Analysis and discussion of findings
Social protection
Sustainable development goals(SDG)
External perspective (what the aim of the aid is and who the aid is supposed to help, the government or the people? politics of aid).
Conclusion and recommendation to both aid donors and governments
The recommendation will focuser that improving the effectiveness of the specific aid also vis a vis its ability to enhance the characteristics of the “enabling environment” if there is a direct correlation between the aid that was given to implement certain projects and the usefulness of that project, the
worth of that project, and a general increase in the characteristics of the enabling environment, then such aid could be classified as haven worked otherwise we would conclude that it did not work.
